Joel Derfner puts the Queer in Quests
By PJ Maytag

Of course, it wasn’t really the mantle he wanted to wear— the gayest person ever—but author Joel Derfner has grown to a place of acceptance about his title. Derfner wrote Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever, a smart, revealing, humorous memoir about the influences and adventures that shaped him—and the ultimate failure of his quest. And what’s best about this book is it invites the reader into the mind of the man himself, in all its quirky, witty, introspective, oft self-deprecating and somewhat maniacal glory, never flinching in his honest self-appraisal.
It’s the second book for Joel; he wrote Gay Haiku, a collection of tongue in cheek poetry on the subject of gay dating, which was published in 2005. Swish hit the bookstores this May, and if you haven’t picked it up yet, do—it’s a perfect summer read. But it’s not fluff. Joel manages to be entertaining, witty and still consider bigger philosophical ideas in his search for self. It’s a common denominator for us all—it just happens Joel’s quest is a comedic odyssey exploring the rich pageantry of gay pop culture and what that means to him. Yet behind the humor in Swish there’s an emotional heft that may surprise you.
But really it shouldn’t, when you consider he’s a Harvard grad in linguistics. After he got his B.A. he followed his first love to New York, where he got a M.F.A. in Music Theater Writing from NYU. He now teaches musical theater writing to undergraduates there. And Joel loves being a teacher. It was at NYU that The BottomLine caught up with Joel between classes and he shared with us some of his musings on a variety of topics—including his latest stint as a teacher.
“I love, love, love it. … As a writing teacher, I have a huge responsibility to make the writing experience good for them.” I wondered if as a writer his students ever inspired him. He admitted that they occasionally plant ideas in his head. “One example, that I haven’t done anything with yet, I had a student once who brought in a scene, and the student was not a native speaker of English. The scene was very good, but English was her second language. She had somebody meeting somebody in a bar, and the woman was proposing to the man that he kill her husband. They had been lovers long, long ago. And they met and her line went, ‘I’m here to make you a preposition.’ And I was like, oh my god, that is the most amazing thing I’ve heard. I wanted to do something with that, I don’t know what or how, but about making someone a preposition.”
It’s the ironic minutiae like a wrong word that Joel revels in. And though he loves writing, he, like so many others, is hesitant to rely solely on it for a steady income. “It’s going to be a while, if ever, that I can keep body and soul together with the writing. I like to say that I’m subsidizing my career in the musical theater, with a career in the much more stable and lucrative career of writing books.” He broke off his sarcastic tone to laugh. “So obviously I need to do other things to keep body and soul together. I do a bunch of different stuff. I teach at NYU. I teach aerobics. I do some freelance writing.”
Joel is a busy man—you know the type, the kind of person that knows only two speeds—fast and faster. Besides juggling his eclectic workdays, he’s planning a California wedding to his partner of five years, Mike—now that his partner’s theoretical marriage proposal, which he theoretically accepted last December, has become an actuality. Joel is ecstatic, admitting he was overcome by emotions when he heard the news about the State Supreme Court decision in California. “I started sobbing, sobbing in my house. Can I tell you? I sobbed for an hour and a half. So when I finished sobbing I went grocery shopping, ’cause I had to get out of my house. And I grocery shopped differently. I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to buy this ice cream. I’m buying this ice cream as a person who now has the right to get married.’ I realize how silly that sounds but I was buying ice cream not as a second-class citizen.”
There’s a lighter side to the whole gay marriage thing—it opens the door for a new set of problems. Joel recounted a recent experience he had at one of his readings. “It was a fascinating thing, it was a small crowd, but the oldest person there was 70; the youngest person there was 22. It was a fascinating range of ages of the gay perspective. And the 22-year-old was like, ‘Yeah, I guess I’m happy about it [gay marriage] and all but really I’m just annoyed because my mother is going to start bugging me about it now—“When are you going to get married?”’ Oh my god! The thought that I would be hearing someone say that! You know, 15 years ago if you had said to me that during your lifetime you’ll hear someone say these words, I would’ve been, ‘Yeah right, give me some of whatever you’re on.’”
Joel was in Palm Springs not too long ago for the Palm Springs Book Festival where he sat on a discussion panel held at The BottomLine’s LGBT Stage, entitled “Campy Personified: Gay Influence on American Culture,” along with fellow funny authors, Marc Acito and Eddie Shapiro. So I had to ask, what he thought was the best thing gays do for pop culture? “Existing,” he said laughing, adding, “I mean I know it sounds flip, but I think that…” he trailed off before shifting conversational gears. “Ok I’m going to talk about something that may seem a little bit different, but I think it addresses this issue. I don’t know if you saw a few months ago, there was an article about how scientists in a lab had been able to turn fruit flies gay and then back to straight again. As soon as I saw that I was, ‘Well, now that’s it’ because I can’t think of a single technological advance that hasn’t become a part of the human array of tools. So eventually people are going to be able to say, ‘Well, if my kid’s going to be gay, I don’t want that, I want him to be straight.’ Or, a particularly tasteful person would say, ‘Oh well, my kids going to be straight, I don’t want that, I want him to be gay.’ What I think the real loss to be, to society, in thinking about all the things that gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender have accomplished in the arts, in politics, I think without that [gay] perspective, culture in general would be a lot poorer.” He paused briefly before glibly adding, “Who would write the musicals?” 
So what’s next for Joel? Is he hard at work on another novel? “Um, no. My therapist could tell you a lot about that too. It’s tricky. I’ve been trying to figure out basically ever since I handed Swish in, what was going to be next. And I just haven’t got it yet. I feel much more comfortable with nonfiction than I do with fiction. There’s any number of fluffy cute things I could do—tips on gayifying yourself, or whatever. … Swish looks like some fluffy, frothy thing. You look at the cover, you look at the title and you think it’s a cute piece of fluff. Then you read it and find out there’s a lot going on there. So it’s finding that idea, the next idea, that is both really accessible and leaves room for a lot of meaning—it’s an idea I haven’t come across yet.”
He will though—the man is full of thoughts and ideas, though they’re sometimes hedged in existential angst. “My muse basically tortures me.”
There is a point in his book when Derfner shares with a friend over dinner his insecurity about writing Swish. He says, “I feel like there’s some aspect of gay life I haven’t tapped into. And if the book isn’t perfect, then everyone who reads it will hate me. Maybe I’m not gay enough.” He needn’t worry; anyone who teaches musical theater and step aerobics (thankfully, not at the same time), knits as a safety valve for his OCD, has had stints on a gay men’s cheerleading squad and shaken his bootie as a go-go dancer—is truly gay. Plus, you just gotta love a man that admits to the occasional Googlestalking of ex-boyfriends.