Author Archives: Joel Derfner

Tonight I saw two shows of the musical theater variety.

One had songs that were heartbreakingly funny and full of holiness, music that was melodic and fresh, and lyrics like this:

So much has torn,
So much is broken,
So much has fragmented and failed
Since first the “let there be” was spoken.
Is it tragic?
Or a kind of magic
That lets us in
And helps us start the healing
By revealing
So much life?

The other was full of unfunny jokes, many of them offensively homophobic, and lyrics like this:

Garlic, garlic,
It’s the secret to staying young.
Garlic, garlic,
It’s why we’re so well hung.
Our songs are strong
And our schlongs are long.

So which one do you think had the multi-million-dollar Broadway production and which one is, for the moment at least, languishing in obscurity?

Not that I needed further proof that there is no justice in the world.

Today I heard the following conversation on the subway from two pubescent children:

PUBESCENT CHILD #1: “We’re trying to decide between St. Thomas or St. Croix.”

PUBESCENT CHILD #2: “Oh, not St. Thomas. They’re mean and rude.”

PC #1: “Yeah, that’s why my dad said he was never going back to St. Thomas, ’cause the natives were horrible.”

PC #2: “Yeah. St. Croix’s the way to go.”

No jury on earth would have convicted me.

Yesterday, the universe paid me back in spades for the horror it had visited upon me the night before.

On my way to meet a men4sexnow.com guy for sex at the obscenely early hour of 8:30 in the morning, I noticed that the neighborhood looked vaguely familiar. When I got to his building, the sense of déja vu intensified. And when I saw the names next to his buzzer, I realized that the déja vu came from the fact that I had déja vued the place.

This was the very apartment that was the scene of a disastrous date I went on FIVE YEARS AGO. A date that left me sinking in a morass of self-hatred, rage, and anguish.

Of course, most of my dates do that, but that’s beside the point.

The last time I was in this apartment it was occupied by 1) my date, who spent the entire evening fooling around with me before revealing that he was a hopeless alcoholic and kicking me out, and 2) his roommate, who happened to be an acquaintance of mine. I knew that the guy I was meeting this time was neither one of these people, so I assumed he’d just moved in recently and the landlord hadn’t had a chance to change the names by the buzzer yet.

And he was totally hot, and we had totally hot sex.

I cannot begin to communicate the sense of invincibility I felt. I had conquered the genius of the place. I had returned to the scene of my humiliation and triumphed in a blaze of victorious glory. I realized that my old defeats don’t have to be millstones around my neck, that I can leave behind the parts of me that displease me and become, fully, the person I wish to be.

Then when I got home I found I’d gained a pound and a half since the day before, and burst into tears.

I didn’t even mention the worst part, which was that all the effort I put into Nairing my ass earlier in the day was totally wasted.

At least I have forestalled any bubble gum trauma for the foreseeable future.

Tonight I went to an absolutely dreadful orgy. What made it worse was that I dragged a totally hot guy along with me as my guest, and he will undoubtedly never speak to me again.

When the host opened the door looking fully ten years older than he did in the picture he sent me, I should have turned around right then.

My guest and I sat around and chatted with the host, waiting for a few other people. Within twenty minutes, the following people arrived:

—a man with a bizarre rash or birthmark on his face;
—a totally hot guy; and
—a man who was old and (as I later discovered) smelled funny.

We got started, and I was instantly bored out of my skull. My guest, clearly disgusted with the whole proceedings, left almost immediately; I wanted desperately to leave with him, but I was, shall we say, in no position to do so. The old man left too, but not, alas, before I found out that he smelled funny. Which left me, the deceitful host, the disfigured man, and the hot guy. So I just focused on the hot guy.

Thankfully, the rest of the event was mercifully short. Here is a sampling of the thoughts that were running through my head during that time:

“Maybe I should reread the complete works of Jane Austen, starting with Persuasion.”

“Damn—I can’t remember whether I’m on row 5 or row 7 of the sweater pattern I’m knitting.”

“Ice cream.”

“Maybe I should reread the complete works of Jane Austen, starting with Persuasion.”

“Ice cream.”

And now the totally hot guy I dragged along as my guest will never speak to me again. I met him at the one other orgy I’ve been to, which was as delightful as this one was wretched. But the thing is that he was fat then, and now he is 40 pounds lighter and much more built and sexy and quite possibly my soul mate, except for the never speaking to me again part. So I spent the entire subway ride home trying to figure out how to make it up to him.

I mean, I can think of a few different ways, some of which wouldn’t require him to speak to me anyway.

But maybe I should leave well enough alone, because he’s the one who left the bite marks on my ass that got me in trouble with E.S., so maybe he’s brought enough anxiety into my life.

I was floating around on men4sexnow.com last night and saw somebody whose member name was actually jimjones. Plus, he didn’t have a picture, so for all I knew it could actually have BEEN Jim Jones. I was terrified.

Then I realized that it was the 24th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, and “terrified” didn’t even begin to cover it.

I’m going to stick to nice guys like latinotongue or ahot14ya.

And run like hell if anybody offers me Kool-Aid.

Yesterday, my hometown paper ran a profile of my father, discussing the fact that he is a giant in the field of civil rights law. I already knew this.

What I didn’t already know was that he had already argued and won his first case before the United States Supreme Court by the time he was my age.

I called him to ask about this and he said the article had gotten it slightly wrong, and that he’d won the case not at age 29 but at age 30 (and four months).

This gives me six months to do more for the downtrodden and oppressed than most people manage to do in their entire lives.

Not that this made me feel inadequate or anything.

I am now back in New York, all rested from my long, long weekend in Garrett County, Maryland.

We went to an antique store while we were there, and I bought a reproduction of a sign from 1942 that reads:

STREET GIRLS BRINGING
IN SAILORS MUST PAY
FOR ROOM IN ADVANCE

As soon as I figure out who it is that I pay in advance, this place is going to be awash in seamen.

I spent the entire evening tonight flirting with a fellow guest in D.R.’s vacation home while knowing the whole time that, even if he wanted to have sex (which I wasn’t sure of), we couldn’t because there are simply too many of us here to manage it discreetly.

Why do I do this to myself?

We saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets this morning.

If I could cast a spell that would force my enemies to vomit slugs, my life would be complete.

Also, I would be on my back in two seconds for Lucius Malfoy.

Of course, chances are that I’ll be on my back anyway at any given moment, so maybe that’s not saying so much.