Author Archives: Joel Derfner

This is the story of the worst thing I have ever done.

At the tender age of ten, I participated, along with the rest of my class, in a readathon to benefit an organization that assisted blind children. Since this happened 23 eleven years ago, I have forgotten both the name of the organization and the specific way in which it assisted blind children, but I remember thinking that it was a particularly noble cause to which I was contributing my reading services.

The readathon worked like this: I asked people (mostly my parents’ friends) to sponsor me to read for a month. My marks pledged either a fixed dollar amount or a dollar amount per book I read. I was a voracious reader, so when the month was over and I collected my pledges, I found that I had the inconceivably huge sum of $276.00 to give to the blind children.

Then I spent it all at the mall.

At the movies and Spencer’s Gifts.

Please understand; it’s not as if I made a decision one day to steal money from blind kids. My friend Frankie and I simply wanted to go see Trading Places again, and I was a dollar short, so I borrowed a dollar from the blind kids’ money, fully intending to replace it the next time I got my allowance.

But the next time I got my allowance, there was some sort of Rubik’s cube or octagon or icosahedron that I really wanted, and I could get it if I borrowed ten dollars from the blind kids. And I borrowed another five just in case I needed snacks at the mall, which, as it happened, I did.

And so on and so forth.

And by the time I was through, I had no idea where to get $276.00 to pay the blind children back. (I was not yet advanced enough to realize that I could make that sum in two nights in certain areas of town.) So I just tried to forget about the whole thing.

It is a wonder to me that God let me live six days after this, much less 23 eleven years. So yesterday I decided to pay back the blind children. As I mentioned, I don’t remember the name of the foundation, but I figure as long as I send money to some organization that helps blind kids then I’ll be okay.

I just went to the How Much Is That? web site and learned that $276.00 when I was ten would be worth $541.29 today. The problem, of course, is that I am totally broke, but once I’m in the black again, the first thing I’ll do will be to find some blind children and write a check to them.

Well, okay, the first thing I’ll do will be to go to Mrs. Fields and get some cookies. Then I’ll send a check to the blind children, as long as I have enough money left over.

Okay, can I just say that if I woke up in the morning to discover that overnight and unbeknownst to me someone had deposited a cryptic letter from Tyra Banks on a table in my apartment, I would be so fucking terrified that I would dye my hair, change my name, and leave the country?

Behold my first attempt at lace:

I am delighted to report that its recipient is pleased.

A few years ago I wrote a couple of posts about being filmed in my first (and so far only) porn movie.

In the second of these posts, I revealed the porn name that I had chosen. I did not use the standard Name of First Pet/Name of Street Where You Grew Up algorithm (though, to be honest, doing so would have resulted in the terrific porn name Stan Savage); it was simply the inspiration of the moment. However, I have just gone back and removed it from the post, because yesterday inspiration struck much more powerfully and I have now come up with a porn name for myself that is quite possibly the most brilliant thing I will ever do and I should just kill myself now because it’ll all be downhill from here.

And the name is:

Toby Defarge.

“Toby” is the bottomest name I can think of. And “Defarge” of course is the name of the woman in A Tale of Two Cities who works her enemies’ names into her knitting, thereby dooming them to the guillotine.

Bottoming, knitting, and revenge. If only there were a way to add chocolate to the mix, I really would have distilled my very essence into a name, at which point I would probably never be able to reveal it to anybody for fear that, by using it, s/he would gain power over my very soul.

Of course, this is all moot anyway, unless I can persuade E.S. to appear in a porn movie with me.

Okay, I know what I’m asking for for my birthday next year.

This may be the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen:

“Let’s make believe that blood is coming out from inside your body through an opening between your legs now”?

Dear God, I am so, so very glad that I live in this decade.

I’m also glad I don’t have Down Syndrome, but that’s really another topic altogether.

Thanks to him for the link.

So yesterday was my official début as a go-go boy. The dollar in the contest photo was given to me the night I auditioned; from 11:00 p.m. last night to 3:00 a.m. this morning I had my first paid engagement. For four hours, I stood on a bar and writhed in simulated ecstasy while appreciative men stuffed cash down my underwear.

And I now have an important piece of advice for everybody:

Try never to touch singles with your bare hands again.

You have no idea where they might have been and with the remnants of what effluvia they might still be covered.

Well, you probably have some idea. But that should be enough to give you pause.

I want to write a post about the hour-long conversation I had with the professor of a writing class I took in college (freshman year) after I looked him up tonight on switchboard.com and called him to tell him that although I was a terrible student in his class I finally understand what he was trying to teach us, fifteen six years later, but, given the time stamp on this post, I am writing instead about how I must face the fact that the days when I could pull an all-nighter and end up with anything to show for it (other than a now-empty jar of Smucker’s Low Sugar Strawberry Preserves) are officially over.

Can Botox and suppositories be far behind?

A quick and boring note: I will not be dancing at Splash tonight. I have been rescheduled for next Wednesday.

You know, in case you were planning to come and stick cash in my underwear.

This year, to celebrate Passover, E.S. and I went to the house of my second cousin once removed for a seder. There were about fifteen guests there, all of whom were related to me and none of whom I had ever laid eyes on before, with the two exceptions of my cousin’s daughter, who used to be Puff Daddy’s dresser, and my second cousin twice removed who is the funniest bitchy old lady I have ever met and who is in fabulous shape. She ended up sitting on my left; on my right was E.S., and on his right was a (literally) demented old lady (way older than my second cousin twice removed) who kept telling E.S. about how Hitler had built these camps, see, and sent everyone in her village there. She was talking to him, but it was impossible for me not to overhear her.

My experience of the seder conversation went therefore something like this:

FAUSTUS: Gosh, this turkey is terrific.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: Oy, I can’t eat a bite. It’ll ruin my figure.
FAUSTUS: But your figure is divine.
DEMENTED OLD LADY: Hitler built camps, you see? And he sent my whole village there.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: I love you. You wanna be my son? My son was supposed to be here tonight but his wife invited him for dinner. They’re separated, why should they have dinner together? Whoever heard of such a thing? Young people today.
DEMENTED OLD LADY: Everyone in the village. The men to one camp, the women to another.
FAUSTUS: Have some turkey and then come to my aerobics class on Sunday.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: I used to do aerobics all the time.
FAUSTUS: It shows.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: Pass me the salad.
DEMENTED OLD LADY: There were showers at the camps, but there was no water in the showers. Instead it was poison gas.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: What’s that book you wrote?
FAUSTUS: It’s called Gay Haiku. Here, have some more matzah.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: Make sure it’s the salty kind. Would I like it?
FAUSTUS: Probably. I’ll send you a copy.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: It better be good.
DEMENTED OLD LADY: When Hitler took over Poland, he started building camps, concentration camps.
FAUSTUS: It is. I promise.
SECOND COUSIN TWICE REMOVED: There’s not enough salt on this matzah.

Our dollar-bill contest has a winner!

Among the many excellent entries people sent in for the contest, the audience favorite was written by the Faggoty-Ass Faggot, who is now the lucky recipient of a gift certificate to Powell’s City of Books. Here is his entry, after which I will reveal the truth behind the mystery.

Faustus and E.S. recently closed on their new home together. Because of taxes and fees, the final purchase price was an odd number. Rather than splitting the costs down the middle, resulting in a number that included cents, Faustus generously agreed that he would round his half up to the nearest dollar, and E.S. would round his down. The difference being a single dollar.

At the closing, just before both lads signed away their lives and fortunes, E.S. suddenly had a revelation. Faustus was not being generous, he was using the tactic to gain the upper hand! He would forever get his way because he would own just more than half of the house.

E.S. dug in his pocket, found a lone dollar bill, and handed it Faustus.

“You’re a sneaky little bastard,” he said. “And if you ever think I’m topping you again, you’ll take my dollar and never speak of this again.”

The transaction went off without further hitch.

I must say [Faustus here again] that I hadn’t actually considered this brilliant plan. We haven’t closed on the house yet, however, and so I suspect that E.S. will soon be finding himself a dollar richer than he expects but a tiny fraction of a house poorer.

In any event, the true story of the dollar bill is a long and sordid one, but I will boil it down to its essentials.

I have become a go-go dancer.

The dollar was the first dollar bill a strange man ever shoved down my underwear. It was not, however, the last.

I used to be fat and unpopular, and now men are paying me for the privilege of touching my penis.

For those of you in the New York City area, I’ll be dancing at Splash this Wednesday, from 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.

The last time I was awake at 3:00 a.m. of my own volition was in 1998, so this stint may not go on for very long. But I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.