Author Archives: Joel Derfner

Okay, if I am not the last person on earth to have found out about “How Not to Act on J-Date,” then you must go here at once. Have the sound on; you’ll need it.

The man who has never been seen in the same room as me is participating in a reading in Soho this Friday evening along with some other LGBT writers. He will be reading a short story that he thinks is grim and pretty funny but that I suspect isn’t nearly as accomplished as he believes it is.

If you’re interested in coming, the relevant details can be found here.

I have it on good authority that he’s going to wear something tight.

Update: The reading starts at 7:00.

Every couple years or so I switch from a shoulder bag to a backpack (or vice versa). When I weary of a shoulder bag, I long for something that will distribute weight more evenly across my back. When I tire of a backpack, I yearn to carry my things in something that won’t make me feel as if I were in seventh grade.

A few months ago, I decided it was time to retire the trusty shoulder bag that had seen me through good times and bad since 2004. However, my search for a backpack to take its place in my affections proved to be more frustrating than I had expected. The bag store where I had bought my shoulder bag had closed, and every time I went into a sporting goods store I was overwhelmed by the complexity, size, and technological subtlety of the backpacks on offer. They had pockets and zippers and straps whose purpose I could not fathom, and/or they were capacious enough to hold any number of corpses I might not wish to leave in plain sight, and/or they featured heated compartments or MP3 players or built-in emergency flares. I was interested in none of these (except for the room for the corpses, but those ones really looked ridiculous on my rather small frame). I had almost given up and resigned myself to a life of back problems.

Then I walked into Staples and saw this:

I bought it at once. I am now happier than I have been since learning that Tycho Brahe died not from accidental mercury poisoning via his alchemical experiments but because he was poisoned by his protegé Johannes Kepler, the father of astronomy (among other things).

E.S. expressed his concern that the people living in the crack house two doors down might not react with unmitigated enthusiasm to a pink and silver backpack. Here I played my ace in the hole: the people in the crack house two doors down love me. They call me Jimmy, after Jimmy Olsen, Clark Kent’s enthusiastic if not overly penetrating sidekick at The Daily Planet. Whenever I walk by, they tell me to have a blessed day. They will love the pink and silver backpack too.

Now I just need to find some unicorn and rainbow stickers to put on it, preferably puffy ones.

Friday morning, E.S. and I went into Manhattan together, he to go to work and I to the gym. As we waited in the Atlantic Avenue subway station, he said something incredibly annoying–I can’t remember what, alas–and I made as if to push him onto the train track. Then we had the following conversation:

E.S.: In front of the N train? Is that really how you want me to go?
FAUSTUS: No. It’s not nearly painful enough. But it’s what’s available.
E.S.: I just don’t want my last thought to be he won’t get the insurance.
FAUSTUS: I won’t get the insurance anyway. Your sister is your beneficiary.
(Pause.)
E.S.: Never mind.
FAUSTUS: Oh, look, here comes the train.

I had a delightful lunch today with a friend who works for O, The Oprah Magazine, which has its headquarters in the Hearst building. On our way out, we saw a group of male models sitting in the reception area, apparently waiting to audition for something or be photographed in something or advertise something.

And I realized I didn’t know the collective noun for a group of models, regardless of sex.

I have been searching for the proper term since I got home, and I’ve found nothing, which seems ridiculous. I mean, come on. You’ve got a neverthriving of jugglers and a sequitur of logicians (okay, Bertrand Russell made that one up, but still) and nothing for models?

So I propose that we adopt the collective noun a vapidity of models.

All right. Now that I’ve done my intellectual heavy lifting for the day, please excuse me while I go watch last week’s Biggest Loser.

I am so, so excited for today.

Because today is the 184th anniversary of the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Yes, it was on September 29, 1822 that Jean-François Champollion published his Lettre à M. Dacier, setting forth his (correct) arguments that the ancient Egyptians used a phonetically based writing system.

He built on the work of Thomas Young, among others, but it is Champollion who is generally credited with breaking the code.

Thank God I have events like this to give my life meaning.

Because if I were confined to Organic Potato Day I don’t know what the fuck I’d do.

On July 3, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died, at the age of 52, of complications of breast cancer. She was the greatest classical singer of our day, and I count myself among the luckiest of men to have been able to hear her perform live.

There is a tribute to her in this week’s New Yorker, as well as an audio commentary that includes clips of some of her recordings. This is not her first appearance in The New Yorker; a profile of her in 2004 got it exactly right.

I cried on and off for the whole day when I heard that she’d died; I still haven’t gotten over it. Thank God she recorded as much as she did.

Last night E.S. and I were talking about a friend of his and her husband, who is going through a rough patch. E.S. said he was going to go over to their apartment and do a motivational interview. Then we had the following exchange:

FAUSTUS: What’s a motivational interview?
E.S.: It’s a Jedi mind trick psychiatrists use to further our evil plans.
FAUSTUS: Yes, but what is it?
E.S.: I can’t tell you. Then you’ll know our ways, and you’ll try to manipulate and control people all the time.
FAUSTUS: I already try to manipulate and control people all the time.
E.S.: That’s true. But if I tell you our secret you’ll be more successful at it.
FAUSTUS: So what’s the secret?
E.S.: I’m not telling.
FAUSTUS (coyly): What’s the secret, big boy?
E.S.: Nope.
FAUSTUS: You don’t love me.
E.S.: And how does that make you feel?

I did not realize when I moved to Brooklyn that it is actually another dimension and that people who entered it are at risk of turning into aliens. Now, however, this fact has been made eminently clear to me.

I just went out into the back yard, and saw E.S. whitewashing the fence.

Obviously I have to move back to Manhattan as soon as possible.

From a conversation I had this morning with my therapist:

FAUSTUS: Yesterday I wrote a fan email to this singer I like in French and all I could think was, God, I wish my French were better.
DR. M.: But why?
FAUSTUS: Because then he would like me more. Which is important, because he’s really cute.
DR. M.: But don’t you think he’d be pleased? Pleased that you liked him enough to write, pleased at the compliments? And maybe admire you a little bit for being American but writing him in French?
FAUSTUS: Yes, but not as much as he admired somebody who wrote him in better French.
DR. M.: That’s an odd thought.
FAUSTUS: What planet are you from?
DR. M.: I see our time is up for today.