Author Archives: Joel Derfner

Okay, I just watched the eleventh episode in the fourth season of Queer as Folk, and here’s the thing:

I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, but aren’t there any people of color there?

Yesterday I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 and learned what I already knew, that our country is ruled by liars and recidivists oh wait to be a recidivist you have to have stopped committing crimes at some point, and then I went over to E.S.’s place and watched NOW With Bill Moyers and learned about how Alan Greenspan is quite literally mortgaging our country’s future and then I read the New York Times and learned that although the FCC won’t tell anybody what words they’re not allowed to say evidently “go fuck yourself” is totally fine so long as it’s the vice president who says it to a senator who criticizes his blatant cronyism and so long as he feels better afterwards and then I wondered what I or any of us could possibly do about any of this, other than going out and getting a gun and shooting all the Republicans we know whoops I don’t know any Republicans, since Antonin Scalia disenfranchised everybody in America or at least everybody in America that Katherine Harris hadn’t already disenfranchised and I just thank God we live in the greatest democracy in the world; otherwise I might be worried.

Yesterday, I went to City Quilter to buy material for the quilting class I’m starting next week.

Then I went to That’s SO Gay: Tales of Extremely Gay Gayness, where I performed a really, really gay cabaret song to which I’d written both the words and the music.

Then I knitted on the subway home.

This afternoon, I successfully auditioned to become an aerobics instructor at the Paris Health Club. (I’m officially on their sub list until the new season starts in September.)

In an hour, after walking my Maltese, I’m going to go to my boyfriend’s apartment in Brooklyn and have anal sex.

I’m not hubristic enough to think that I’m the gayest person ever, but I’m nevertheless pleased with the amount of gayness I’ve managed to concentrate in my body.

Yesterday, E.S. and I went to Baltimore to visit David and his boyfriend. At one point during the visit, David and I were discussing how much better things would be if we ran the world. E.S. said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

I asked him what he could possibly mean.

“I don’t see any problem with David’s running the world,” he said. “Just you. You’re too punitive and vengeful.”

I fixed him with a gimlet eye and said, “Just you wait. You’ll find out how punitive and vengeful I can be.”

Then, head held high, I turned on my heel and tried to walk through a closed screen door.

The other day, I told E.S. I would do something. I don’t actually remember what it is I told him I would do, but, whatever it was, he didn’t believe me. I promised him. He still didn’t believe me. “I swear on my mother’s grave,” I said.

Then I realized that this oath was utterly meaningless, as my mother, rather than being buried, donated her body to science, specifically to juvenile diabetes research. After giving up to researchers whatever secrets it held, it was cremated. Instead of a funeral, we had a memorial service at the state park that was one of my mother’s favorite haunts.

We did want some sort of physical marker, though, of my mother’s life and death, so we had a gazebo built in the park in her memory. That way, visitors to the park could rest on its very comfortable benches and in its shade, and even in death she could soothe weary souls.

Not wanting to trick E.S., I told him all this. “But the promise still holds,” I said. “I swear on my mother’s gazebo.”

Those of you who live in New York City or will be here next Tuesday evening should make every effort to attend this event, at which I will be performing a song I wrote:

Many other fine bloggers will be reading, and the Hazzards will be performing their smash hit song “Gay Boyfriend”.

The problem is that “Gay Boyfriend” is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard, and it’s entirely possible that, before Tuesday, I will die of anxiety that the audience will hate me because my song isn’t as good.

If you want to take the chance that I won’t die before Tuesday, or if you hold the correct belief that the fabulousness of the event will be unaffected by my death, you can get tickets here.

For several months, my brother (who is also my roommate) has been complaining that I knit things for everybody except him. Ignoring for the moment the fact that “everybody” is far too broad a term to use in this situation, as I have knit things for nowhere near the six billion plus people who inhabit the earth, he did have a point.

So I knit him these.

Go here at once to get your horoscope.

Here is mine for this month. Technically, it says it’s from last month, but I’m going to pretend.

Stay at least 100 miles from any major city on the 14th day of the month. Evil forces may manifest massive destruction on that day. Avoid contact with obsessive cult members, paramilitary police and intelligence agents from any country during the month.

Set aside your long term goals and devote your energies to your mental health. Triple the doses of all medications you are currently taking for anxiety and depression. If your psychiatrist refuses to prescribe the pills you want, consider discontinuing the medications and switch to heroin.

A sick individual will assume your identity and commit multiple felonies. Authorities may try to prosecute you but eye witnesses will exonerate you once they see you are not the culprit. The impersonator is a person you are acquainted with who works for a large institution.

It’s too late for me to get 100 miles away from Manhattan by tomorrow, so I’ll just have to weather whatever massive destruction is manifested by the evil forces as best I can.

If I survive, I want to hire whoever wrote this as my personal astrologer.

People who talk at the theater should be taken out and shot like dogs.

People who talk at the theater and then get up to leave during the final moments of a show so as to beat the crush of people who will be leaving once the show is actually over should be simmered in oil and set on fire; the fire should then be put out and they should be left to linger for weeks, if not months, as infection ravages their bodies; then they should be drawn and quartered and, once dead, refused burial in hallowed ground.

One of the advantages of having a boyfriend who’s about to start his residency in psychiatry is that I get to learn all sorts of terrific things about how society deals with crazy people.

For instance: the Secret Service keeps a list of crazy people who have threatened to kill the President of the United States. Then, whenever the President of the United States comes to town, the Secret Service sends a pair of agents to spend the day with each crazy person. They go to lunch, they go to the movies, maybe do a little shopping. Apparently the crazy people love this. “Oh, wow!” they say. “Stan and Joey are coming to town to take me out!”

Now that’s a deal I’d love to be in on. Especially if Stan and Joey were hot.

The problem, of course, is that threatening to kill the President of the United States is a federal crime, and I’d have to be able to convince the authorities that I was crazy rather than criminal.

I’m going to truncate this post here, because the more I write, the more I fear a knock at my door followed by the entrance of anonymous men from the Department of Homeland “Security” and my inexplicable but permanent disappearance.