Swish Quotes

“It is easy to see in retrospect that what I longed for was not a boyfriend but a version of me without my defects --- a man in whom I could see myself as flawless, a man whose jokes always caused riotous laughter instead of sometimes falling flat, whose German was fluent instead of passable, who actually knew everything instead of pretending to and then Googling it when he got home.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“Yes, being gay is just one of a thousand traits that make up my character, no more remarkable than my love of M&M's or my ability to mess up a room in fifteen seconds flat or my failure to understand the appeal of Luke and Owen Wilson.

But I believe that the desire to love and be loved is the strongest force on earth. And in that way, being gay affects every interaction in which straight people take part. Every human motive is in the end a yearning for companionship, and every act of every person on this planet is an effort not to be alone. ”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“People aren't tidy creations to be stacked neatly in the Tupperware or poured in premeasured quantities from a box into the Cuisinart with no spills; everybody alive is a lost and disastrous mess.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“Next time, involve me in what you’re planning. How had I gone so easily from feeling excluded to doing the excluding? Did I dislike the reminder that I hadn’t always been on the inside looking out? Was I so relieved to be there that I didn’t notice the people who still wanted desperately to be invited in? Had I learned that the only way to be part of a society was to shun its outcasts?”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“...everybody alive is a lost and disastrous mess...the scattered moments of kinship we feel with others are, when reduced to their most basic elements, accidental discoveries of kinship with ourselves. ”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“There are two differences between an orgy and a sex club. First, at a sex club it's considered bad form to introduce yourself to someone before you start putting parts of his body in your mouth. At an orgy you are allowed to offer your name as long as you do so with an obvious sense of irony. ”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“I had never before seen somebody I admired understand what was expected of him, choose to act otherwise, and be happier for it. For the first time in my life I realized that it was possible to reinvent oneself.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“There are two differences between an orgy and a sex club. First, at a sex club it's considered bad form to introduce yourself to someone before you start putting parts of his body in your mouth. At an orgy you are allowed to offer your name as long as you do so with an obvious sense of irony.
The second difference between an orgy and a sex club is that at a sex club the snacks are wrapped hard candies, while at an orgy they are cold cuts, or, if the hosts are really classy, canapes.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“For the most part I felt nothing but scorn for an art form that required the pretense that it was natural for people to communicate with one another in rhymed song. ”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“His skin is the color of the leaves, the most beautiful ones I collect and blow into piles around my headstone.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“At the time he seemed both ancient and French, but the wisdom that has come with age tells me he was thirty-two and faking the accent.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“In intimate conversation I am as supportive and positive as the next man, but gatherings of happy people make me miserable. I long to share in the collective joy, but instead I am racked with anxiety.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“But I could not bear to look into this man’s eyes any longer and see such voracious need, because what if I realized that I was standing in front of a mirror?”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“I love my life because a part of me has learned how to give up hope, and that, I suspect, is a dangerous lesson to unlearn.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever

“Mostly, though, I prefer to believe that God has no grace to give. Because the alternative is that He gives grace capriciously or, even worse, that He plays favorites. Some desolate valleys become places of springs, and others wither until they are sere beyond hope, and if God is the one who chooses which is which then I would rather live in a universe lucky enough to have escaped His notice.”
― Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever