Author Archives: Joel Derfner

I am now in the Middle of Nowhere, Maryland with my friends D.R. and B.N. I am in the country. There is a lake here, as well as a lot of leaves on the ground.

I don’t ever want to leave.

I suppose at some point the religious wacko white supremacist snake handlers will discover that we’re here and come and burn crosses on the lawn until we’re forced to flee the state.

But until then, I’m just going to sit here by the fireplace fire, watch my dog play with D.R.’s dog, eat carbohydrates like there’s no tomorrow, and be blissfully relaxed and unconcerned about my responsibilities back in New York.

This is terrible. I don’t even feel neurotic here.

What is happening to me?

I just saw the following personal ad in The Village Voice:

SANE, SMART, SENSUOUS
GWM seeks same for days full of intellect
and nights full of passion. Be brilliant and
delightfully wicked.

Then, in tiny letters at the bottom, it said:

Also, must be born November 12, 1957.

So close, and yet so far.

Tomorrow, I am going with my friends D.R. and B.N. (who are dating each other) and five of their other friends to D.R.’s parents’ vacation home in western Maryland.

I just realized that this is the first non-work related trip I have made out of Manhattan in about two years.

I don’t know what I will do with myself. There is a lake there. Perhaps I’ll drown.

Or perhaps I’ll have to change the title of this blog to The Search for Love in Western Maryland.

It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but maybe the search itself will be more successful.

As my brother and I were crossing the street earlier this evening, a man came up to us and said, “excuse me, I have these two things that I wonder if you’d be interested in.”

In his left hand was a paperback copy of The Gay Man’s Wellness Book.

In his right hand was a steam iron.

I don’t understand the world at all.

Straight people can be so funny sometimes.

I mean funny weird, not funny ha-ha.

Tonight, as I was walking my dog A., I passed two women walking together and overheard one saying very loudly and earnestly to the other, “I need to trust my higher power, y’know? I just need to trust my journey.”

I’m all in favor of people self-actualizating through whatever means work for them. I just don’t want to be subjected to it when I’m walking my dog.

If I have a higher power, I don’t trust it further than I can throw it.

Yesterday I got my hair cut by Jazz at Dramatics, NYC. I have had my hair cut at Dramatics, NYC four times, by a different person each time: Sunshine, Eagle, Justice, and Jazz. I think it’s the worst thing ever that they don’t even let these people have their own names.

But the reason I go to Dramatics, NYC—a serviceable but by no means excellent salon—is because I am terrified to go back to the place I used to get my hair cut.

When I lived on the Upper East Side, I went to Eve’s Hair and Nails, on 92nd and 1st. Eve was an East German post-operative male to female transsexual. She was the only one who cut hair there and she took forever. A simple cut took at least two hours—she would cut a little bit, talk on the phone, cut a little bit more, do some crystal meth, cut a little bit more. My friend N.C. and I went there together once—he to get his hair highlighted and I to get mine relaxed—and it took her four hours. I don’t know how she kept the place open; I assume it was a front for a lucrative drug-dealing business.

After I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a show about another East German post-operative male to female transsexual, I went to get my hair cut and asked her what she had thought of it. “Ach, I hated zat show,” she sneered. “It vass not an accurate representation off my life.”

She gave me the best hair cuts I’ve ever gotten. But she was so glamorous and cool that whenever I went, I was so keenly aware of my own inadequacy as a gay man it was almost unbearable. Next to her, I felt about as interesting and compelling as a Necco Wafer or a plastic-covered living room couch. This feeling would persist for hours, sometimes days, after a haircut.

It was a cruel dilemma I faced yesterday: have fabulous hair and lose my already tentative grasp on my sense of self-worth, or maintain some shred of self-esteem but have boring hair?

I think I made the coward’s choice.

Ever since I moved into my building four months ago, I have lived in fear of my hostile doorman. No matter what I do—smile, thank him, salute, try to strike up a conversation—the most I can hope for from him is a resentful grunt. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make him like me, all to no avail.

This morning my dog A. won his heart.

As A. and I left the building, A. straining at her leash because she knew there were too many things to sniff and too little time, the doorman looked down at her and smiled. He then barked at her, and she barked back. They repeated this exchange a few times and then A. ran off, dragging me after her, in search of new experiences.

Upon our return to the building, the hostile doorman actually struck up a conversation with me about how many dogs lived on the second floor. It turns out that A. is the only one. I suggested that I could get five or six more dogs. The hostile doorman asked why. I said, “to keep her company.” For some reason the hostile doorman thought this was the funniest thing anyone had ever said and laughed a big, unhostile guffaw.

I am in shock. I dare not hope that this is the beginning of a thaw.

But A. will be eating steak tonight.

My contractor has ripped my kitchen out. Now, where there used to be a kitchen, there is an empty, gaping void.

I’m worried that my soul is next.

I’m also worried that I’ll have to give up forever my fantasy of being ravished on the kitchen counter by the UPS guy. Because when I have a kitchen counter again, it will be marble, which seems like a terrible surface on which to be ravished.

Being a good friend, and also one who knows how to return a favor, I agreed to guest blog on Upside-down Hippopotamus while its usual writers are otherwise occupied.

Today was my inaugural post, and now I am in a state of panic, because I realized I have to maintain my own blog, too.

Coming up with one interesting thing a day to say is hard enough. Two is Herculean.

So tomorrow I will be Herculean, I promise. For today, just check out my guest blogging.