Author Archives: Joel Derfner

N.B.: Another old entry I somehow managed not to post.

From an article in yesterday’s Times about a controversial Egyptian movie:

When are people going to stop saying “happened to be gay”?

My translation:

“An affluent, dashing, Francophone newspaper editor who takes it in the ass, something I find distasteful and you do too, but since you and I are men of the world I’m going to mention it in the most off-hand way possible, to indicate that my opinions are in the right place.”

Nobody says “happened to be black,” right?

I mean, it’s not as bad as admitted, but come on, folks.

Hmm. I seem to have written this post three weeks ago and failed to post it. Here it is, with commentary.

—

Okay, I can handle getting a hard drive with all my recovered data on it (thank GOD) in the mail and then discovering that the drive itself is a dud so I have to wait even longer to accomplish anything because of course without several years’ worth of accumulated crap I am completely powerless to get anything done at all.*

And even after that happens I can handle going to my neighborhood pharmacy and finding out that my new insurance provider, which I had thought would be much, much better than my hideous old insurance provider, is actually much, much worse when it comes to what I actually need and does things like deciding that the amount of psychotropic medication it takes to keep me from throwing myself under a subway car is really more than I ought to have and that I’d be better off with, like, a third as much.**

But I have to say it would really have been nice if these things hadn’t happened immediately after I’d spent 45 minutes in therapy sobbing about how my entire life is a moral failure.***

*This turned out to be incorrect. I was just using the wrong plug for the drive, since evidently I am a moron.

**Three days after writing this I went back to my old hideous insurance company, so now I have all the drugs anybody could ever want.

***This is still a problem. But now that the writers’ strike is over I’ll be able to deaden my awareness of it by watching television every waking hour.

This is basically the inspiration for everything I have ever written:

This is really kind of extraordinary and not a little frightening.

Here is a transcription of the message my father just left on my answering machine:

“Hi, Faustus, it’s Dad. I’m calling at about 1:00 on Saturday, March 9. Gee, today is Felix Mendelssohn’s birthday. Or is it Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s? Well, one of those. Give me a call, and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks.”

I haven’t called him back, mostly because I don’t want to break his heart by telling him that it is neither Felix Mendelssohn’s birthday (February 3) nor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s birthday (February 24).

But wait! I can totally forestall any potential heartbreak by telling him that it’s Carmen Miranda’s birthday!

Whew. That’s a relief. I mean, he’s old. So God only knows how much disappointment he can take.

Last night I dreamed that I was in therapy but that there were two of me there. When the session ended, one me stayed and the other me left but then came back to clarify a point to our therapist. By the time I got there, however, the me who had stayed had already shot myself in the head (in front of the therapist). Then the surviving me went around telling people I had some amazing gossip, though I mostly told only individuals, since I worried that people who didn’t know me well would think I was insensitive for turning my horrible suicide into a juicy anecdote.

Then I was in a park and Detective Benson from Law & Order: SVU was there and got shot and I was all like, where’s Chris Meloni?

The guys at stickK.com are evil, evil geniuses.

Click here for a brief discussion of the site, which was set up as a way to help people stick (get it? get it?) to their commitments. One sets one’s own parameters for the most part.

My new year’s resolution was to lift weights regularly so that, come May when my book is released, I’d be able to make public appearances in the most revealing outfits possible. However, like most of the rest of us, I found the flesh to be as weak as the spirit was willing and, after keeping my resolution faithfully for a week and a half, I allowed it to fall by the wayside.

But with the help of stickK.com, I have set up what I suspect will be a very effective arrangement.

Two days ago, I sent them a sum of money, which is to be held in trust for me. If, over the next three months, I lift weights for at least 45 minutes at least three times every week, then at the end of the three months they will send the money back to me.

If in a given week, however, I fail to lift weights for at least 45 minutes at least three times, stickK.com will send a portion of my money to the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy (“strengthening marriage for a new generation”).

In other words, if I fail, I strike a blow against same-sex marriage.

The thought of doing so is abhorrent to me.

I could just lie, of course, but to do so I’d also have to convince the friend stickk.com has insisted I recruit as a monitor to participate in the deception, and, since I’ve picked somebody with scrupulous morals, that would be a very difficult proposition.

Evil, evil geniuses.

I’d write more but I have to leave for the gym.

I am such a fucking idiot.

Our plasma-screen TV arrived today. It was large enough and heavy enough that it required two Polish men with admirable muscle mass and tone to bring it into the house and attach it to the wall. One of them was older and gruff in a sort of gone-to-seed-but-still-fit kind of way, and the other was in his twenties, bright and pleasant and totally hot. They installed the TV, the bright and pleasant one explained the remote control to me in fairly good English, I gave them a cash tip, and they left.

Seconds later, the doorbell rang. When I went to answer it, there stood the bright and pleasant and totally hot Polish man, holding something electric in his hands. “I forgot to install part of TV,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “You mind I come in and finish up?”

“No problem,” I said, and went back to writing whatever it was I’d been trying to write while he went upstairs and installed the part. He came back downstairs and, as he left, called out, “Thank you! I sorry about that!”

Without looking up, I called back, “No problem!”

Seconds later, the doorbell rang again. He looked even more sheepish this time. “I have problem,” he said, and seemed not to know quite how to continue. After a short awkward silence, he said, “Battery in my truck dead,” and looked at me with pleading eyes. I frowned in concern. He said, “You have car maybe, help jump start engine?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t have a car.”

We stood there for another moment or two, silent, at which point he smiled again. “Okay, I figure something else out,” he said, and went back out into the street, at which point I closed the door and went back to writing.

Obviously this is what happens when you get old: you become unable to understand a shriekingly obvious communication from a hot delivery worker that he and his partner want to have sex with you.

I’d just go eat rat poison now, but at my age I worry about whether or not I can chew.

A few weeks ago I had to write a very delicate business e-mail. I was going along fine–it had taken me a couple hours, but I felt good about what I’d written–when all of a sudden I stopped short in the middle of the last sentence.

I tentatively typed seven words to finish the sentence. It didn’t work. It was grammatically correct, but it meant something very slightly different that what I needed to convey.

I moved one of the words to another position in the sentence. It still didn’t express my meaning exactly. And the sentence really was a vital part of the communication.

So I took a deep breath, moved the word I’d moved before to yet another position, read the paragraph over to confirm that the sentence now conveyed exactly what I needed to say, closed my eyes, and clicked send.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of the first time I split an infinitive.

I haven’t quite recovered yet.

I mean, from today’s perspective it all seems so straightforward, doesn’t it? Show the nation images of children in Birmingham being attacked by policemen with clubs and fire hoses and bull dogs, and from the resulting outrage would perforce come change. I’m not saying that it was easy: I can barely imagine the courage it must have required to take that first step from Kelly Ingram Park onto the street.

But the thing is, back then, the evildoers didn’t understand the power of the media or of dissembling. In the last fifty years they have learned subtlety. They have learned to cozen and to distract and to manipulate; and they have learned, when those don’t work, to corrupt and cow the media so that even the worst of their hubris is presented as one side of a balanced argument. I think there’s very little more insidious in the world than the idea of a balanced argument. How do you balance the truth? Well, you can’t. So in order to maintain balance you have to toss truth out on its ass. Some people think the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was inappropriate and insufficient. Other people disagree. How is that any different from saying that some people think segregation is necessary to maintain the order of society because black people are inferior to white people in intelligence and in character, but other people disagree? And then you put it on TV and call it an objective report, because if you tried to upset the status quo you might find yourself replaced tomorrow by somebody more tractable.

And in the fifties and sixties, the civil rights movement drew an almost inconceivable strength from the belief in a righteous God. Today the evildoers have managed to twist religion so thoroughly to their own ends that it’s difficult to allow God onto your side, because if our leaders–regardless of political affiliation–have reduced Him to a tool to help them maintain power, how can you believe He’ll be of any help in the fight for justice?

I guess my point is: to me, in 2008, the weapons of righteousness in the movement led by Dr. King and his allies seem to have been powerful weapons and easily discernible ones. And today those weapons have been rendered useless, and no matter how hard I try I can’t think of what on earth might replace them.