Author Archives: Joel Derfner

A man who got angry with his wife because she wanted to cuddle after sex when what he really wanted to do was watch sports on television was sentenced to death for killing her with a claw hammer. . . . “The defendant struck his wife approximately 70 individual blows after spending a happy interlude with her,” the judge said. “Her desire to cuddle after sex does not justify the extremely violent, brutal response of the defendant.”

Though I am a fan of all kinds of violence and mayhem, this response really does seem a bit excessive.

Now, if it had been America’s Next Top Model that he wanted to watch–well, that would be a different story entirely.

(Thanks to him for the link.)

A few years ago I was posting about participating in orgies and being filmed in pornographic movies.

Now I have shared my thoughts on the latest Harry Potter book for three days in a row.

Dear God, I feel old.

Well, I thought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was quite good.

Unfortunately, I somehow managed to obtain a copy with 534 extra pages before the book actually started. I have half a mind to call the publisher and demand a correct version.

Oh, wait.

A couple nights ago, E.S. and I went out to eat. I had my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with me, and put it under my chair.

About halfway through dinner, I heard a nearby voice say softly, “Excuse me? Excuse me, sir?” I paid it no attention until E.S. said, “Faustus, she’s trying to get your attention,” and indicated a girl sitting across from us at a table with her mother. The girl was staring longingly at my feet.

I was baffled and beginning to be somewhat disturbed, until the girl’s mother said, “She’s looking at the Harry Potter book. She wants me to get it for her.”

The girl’s eyes were so full of longing, of love, of the pain one feels when one is separated from one’s heart’s desire–even if by only a few feet–that I reached down and handed her the book. “Here, go ahead and take a look at it,” I said. She accepted it reverently, as if it were a Gutenberg Bible. She caressed its cover, opened it to where I’d marked my place and read a few words, flipped around and read a few words elsewhere. “You should get it for her,” I told the mother with a smile.

“She wants it,” she replied, “but $30.00 is a lot of money.”

“You could probably find it online at a heavy discount,” said E.S.

The mother didn’t quite seem to believe this, but after a moment she nodded. “I’ll check it out,” she said.

After a few more minutes, the girl got up from her table and returned my book. “I want it so bad,” she said. “I’ll get a job if I have to, so I can get the book.” Her face was wracked with emotions so complex it would demean them to describe them here.

Eventually, E.S. and I paid our check and left. I almost gave her the book on the way out. I mean, if they were eating at that restaurant then the mother had $30.00 to spare, but the girl’s performance was so committed and powerful I felt it deserved to be recognized. If not with an Oscar, then at least with a Harry Potter book.

How is it that I am 200 pages into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and have found three errors (one grammatical, two spelling) but no actual plot events?

I survived the baseball game.

I spent the first hour and a half watching the game out of the corner of my eye while I devoured a hot dog, a huge bag of Cracker Jacks, a cup of frozen lemonade, and an ice cream cone.

I spent the next hour and a half knitting a scarf.

In between, I held an infant in my lap.

The whole afternoon was such a bizarre mix of the familiar and the terrifyingly foreign that I didn’t really know what to do with myself afterwards, so I just went home and took a nap.

I do not understand how such a thing could possibly have come to pass, but I am leaving my apartment in 45 minutes to be a spectator at a live baseball game. The New York Yankees are playing at Yankee Stadium. My brother says they are probably playing the Minnesota Twins. I have never seen a live baseball game before and I am very frightened. What if I get hit in the head with a ball and develop amnesia? What if I get food poisoning from a hot dog?

What if I have to watch people playing baseball?

If there are never any posts on this blog again, you can blame the New York Yankees for my untimely demise.

Everyone must go out and buy the latest issue of The Advocate. On page 87 there is a short essay by the man who has never been seen in the same room with me and on page 18 there is a cute photograph of him along with a short bio.

I’ve heard he’s extraordinarily self-involved and somewhat prudish, but inexplicably I feel some measure of good will towards him.

So finally, after years of putting it off, I have to read Alfred C. Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.

Let me tell you, this is, as they say, some good shit.

“In the total male population, single and married, between adolescence and old age . . . it is not more than 0.3 per cent of the [number of orgasms] which is derived from relations with animals of other species.”

Now I’m just trying to figure out if, given my ex-boyfriend, I make up part of this group.

It is I, Faustus. I have returned.

I was away for two weeks at what I can best describe as an artists’ colony; the work my collaborator and I did there went very well.

Then I flew to North Carolina for a week-long top-secret mission.

I knew I was in North Carolina when, for dinner the first night, I was served chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and fruit salad with maraschino cherries and little marshmallows in it.

Let me assure you that I don’t need to be reminded of the reasons I left the South.

But if I did, this sure would have helped.