Author Archives: Joel Derfner

The worst part of the training I wrote about yesterday was that, even though nobody wanted to be there, some of the other people in attendance took the attitude that they ought to make lemonade out of the lemons they had been handed.

This was fine on principle, except it meant that they shared.

“Who can tell me what they think an optimal experience is?”, asked the leader of the session.

Silence for a brief while. Then, from somewhere in the room: “The BEST!”

“Good, good,” said the leader. “Anybody else?”

Silence for a briefer while. “An experience unencumbered with frivolous baggage!”

The trainer was taken aback for a moment, but then recovered himself. “Excellent! That’s definitely a very specific definition. An optimal experience is . . .” and kept on talking.

It got worse; people started raising their hands unprompted and contributing anecdotes from their own personal experience. “The other day, I had an awakening,” they would begin, and then they would describe the tedious awakening.

And I was like, excuse me, don’t you realize that the more we talk, the later we’re going to go home?

But by the afternoon, I was so beaten down and demoralized by the whole experience that I actually started to buy into the rhetoric. I saw what the trainer was doing and yet, despite all my efforts to resist, I felt motivated. “Gee,” I thought to myself, “that does sound good. If I do a really great job [which my mind refused to translate consciously to ‘if I sell more of our product’], the clients can feel understood and be happier and I can be happier too.” I was revolted to find myself thinking such thoughts, but I was powerless to stop myself.

Thank God I was locked out at the beginning of day two. Maybe I should quit the gig while I’m ahead and count myself lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed.

Over the weekend I was forced to attend a group training session for a company for which I do some freelance work.

On the first day (of three) I walked into the room ten minutes late, only to find that all the people there–sixty or more–were introducing themselves to the rest of the group.

Oh, dear God, I thought.

Then I looked up at the board in front of the room and saw this written there:

“Expectancy determines outcome.” –Deepak Chopra

Oh, dear God, I thought.

Once the excruciating process of introductions was finished, the session leader–who was actually pretty cute–got up and said, “Okay, so I have this thing written on the board, ‘Expectancy determines outcome.’ Who can guess what it means?”

God, I begged, please strike me down now. Better locusts should consume me from within than that I endure this.

God did not comply with my request. Eight hours later, the first day finished, I stumbled out into the street, a broken man.

The next morning I was eighteen minutes late and when I got there they had locked the door and wouldn’t let me in. This means I have to go back the next time they offer the training and take the second two days.

Unless they make me take the first day over again, in which case I’ll quit or perhaps go on a killing spree.

It’s one thing for a collaborator of yours to win the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.

It’s quite another for her to look so fucking gorgeous accepting it.

Sometimes there is justice in the world.

The other day, after wrestling for an afternoon with a thorny passage in something I’m writing, I finally came up with the perfect way to solve the difficulties it presented. Full of pride at my own cleverness, I told E.S. about it. Then we had the following conversation:

E.S.: That’s great, honey.
FAUSTUS: Aren’t I really smart? Aren’t I a terrific writer?
E.S.: You are a wonderful writer.
Pause.
FAUSTUS (dangerously): And?
E.S.: Oh. And you’re really smart.
FAUSTUS: That’s better.
Pause.
FAUSTUS: Don’t you love dating me?
E.S.: Um . . . yes?

Tomorrow night at 8:15 EST, I am going to be interviewed about Gay Haiku on Derek and Romaine, a show on Sirius OutQ internet radio, channel 149. I don’t quite understand how internet radio stations work, but if you’re interested in listening and you’re not a Sirius member, you can go to the Sirius web site and sign up for a three-day trial (and they won’t automatically bill you after the three days are over).

Keep in mind that I will have just come from teaching aerobics, possibly without having had time to take a shower, and so I will either look sweaty and sexy or smell really bad. Not that either of these aspects will translate over the medium of internet radio, but still, you can hold whichever picture you like in your mind’s eye, or switch back and forth between them depending on how you’re feeling about me at any given point during the interview.

This is the second online quiz result I have ever posted. The first was almost two years ago, about what my medieval name would be, and I posted it mostly because it said I was “only violet when provoked.”

But today I came across a quiz I couldn’t resist, and so now I can tell you which antipsychotic drug I am:

You are GEODON! Your snazzy new wave antics have landed you a solid place in the mainstream. The problem is that you make all the cuties (QTs) long for you. You are an effective, special person who likes to help.

Which antipsychotic drug are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

In the interests of full disclosure, I will reveal that the first time I took the quiz I was Thorazine, but I didn’t like that result, so I went back and took the quiz again. Now I am Geodon.

Oh, right. I forgot:

Why did we once think Brad Pitt was really hot?

Is it that he used to be hot, and he simply isn’t now?

Or were we suffering from some collective delusion?

The other day, E.S. and I were watching Antiques Roadshow, a television program in which unsuspecting people bring possessions they think might be valuable to be appraised on national television. I’ve seen the show only a handful of times, but, as far as I can tell, generally one of two things happens: either somebody brings some random thing her grandmother gave her once to keep her quiet when she was a mewling eight-year-old and it turns out to be worth tens of thousands of dollars, or somebody brings something he bought in an antique store for $250, thinking he was cleverly putting one over on the store owner, and it turns out to be worth $12.

The best part of the episode E.S. and I were watching came when a woman brought in her dead husband’s guitar. It was a Martin and turned out to be a very rare model and in pristine condition, so the appraiser suggested she could get as much as $35,000 for it at auction. She smiled and said that was nice to know, but that she wasn’t going to sell it, because the memory of her dead husband was too dear to her. She said it in a way that made me believe it, too; she didn’t play guitar at all, but it was obvious she was telling the truth.

I turned to E.S. and we had the following conversation:

FAUSTUS: Honey, if I die and it turns out that some worthless-seeming tchotchke I have lying around would get $35,000 at auction, I want you to sell it in an instant.

E.S.: No. I won’t care how much it would get at auction. I’ll want to keep it forever, so I’ll always have something to remember our love by.

Pause.

FAUSTUS: Okay, what I actually mean is, if you die and it turns out that some worthless-seeming tchotchke you have lying around would get $35,000 at auction, I’m going to sell it in an instant.

E.S.: Why are you so unromantic?

FAUSTUS: I wonder how much this chair is worth.

The reading went well.

However, right now I am flying so high from the Vicodin I “borrowed” from my brother and took last night to quiet the agony in my shoulder enough for me to fall asleep that even thoughts of getting as fat as Matthew Perry and having to check myself into rehab aren’t enough to bring me down.

Oh, shit. I just had a thought of my career tanking as much as Matthew Perry’s has after the end of Friends.

Now that’s a bucket of cold water in the face.

Okay, back on earth again.