The Year of Yes

  Employed as Bathroom Attendant in High-End Strip Club. Yes. He was the guy who stood in the men’s room, handing out towels, spritzing cologne and getting tipped with hundred-dollar bills. It was not something I liked to think about, so when I told people about him, I left it out altogether. It had a distinct aura of skeeze, even though, I reminded myself, New York was a hard city, and he was just trying to make a living. Still. He hung out with G-strings, boob jobs, and mafia brass all night long. Surely this would eventually have a bad effect on his psyche. Surely he’d be karmically punished for not loving me. Surely he would die in abject misery.

  Why Didn’t He Love Me? Why? I could have helped him run lines! I could have edited his grammar! I could have taken new headshots that showed his radiance, and then made him look tall by standing next to him while wearing flat shoes! I could have fattened him with homemade butter-slathered scones! I could have cut my hair short and dressed like a boy!

  My list started to devolve into a list of my own flaws. I was seeing the world through a fun-house mirror since the Actor. Everything looked bigger and sadder than it really was.

  UNDESIRABLE QUALITIES OF MARIA (A PARTIAL LIST)

  Destined to Be a Bearded Old Lady. The Actor was devoid of body hair. I, on the other hand, had to shave my prehensile monkey toes. As time went on, I was pretty sure I’d be immersing myself in soak baths of Nair. It seemed I was actually some sort of Wooly Mammoth Woman, suited only for existence in Siberia. Which would make sense, given number 2.

  Shaped Like Miniature Manatee. Perfect for cold climates. I could store fat like a walrus and wallow across ice floes, congratulating myself on my solitude. If I started to starve, I could just eat myself. Basically, that’s what I was doing anyway. Along with disgusting quantities of chocolate-covered raisins, which I didn’t even like. Since my depression over the Actor, I had become disoriented. Did I hate chocolate-covered raisins? Maybe not. Why not buy a bag the size of Cuba and find out?

  Severe Social Ineptitude. Self-explanatory. I wasn’t meant to be around people. I needed to find myself a nice little cave, and meet someone named Nimue, who could enable me to go back in time and fix the problems that had begun with getting born. Maybe I could just start over. Everything that was wrong with me had been wrong with me for a long damned time.

  Blabbermouth. Unable to stop talking. Neurotic need to fill silences with random sentences and stories, desperate desire to be the most popular person in the room, even if the room was full of people exponentially more attractive and interesting than I was. Which was the case, almost all the time.

  Arrogant. Even in the situation of number 4, I still felt superior to almost everyone I met. Hence my unwillingness to settle for the kind of man I clearly deserved, something more along the lines of a Rosencrantz or a Guildenstern. Instead, I perpetually felt that I should date the leading men of the world, even though they kept sending me to nunneries, and dumping me fully dressed into rivers of discontent. I wanted the man with the most lines. Even if his lines were all monologue.

  Insatiable. Someone had once asked me, not nicely, how much love I needed from him. “All of it,” I’d answered. This, of course, had pissed off the person—who’d already thought I was greedy—even further. If I fell, I fell all the way. If I didn’t, I threw the whole thing out like bad lettuce. No wonder the Actor/Bathroom Attendant didn’t love me. I wasn’t worthy. Not. Worthy. Destined to be alone forever and ever and ever. Unless I could somehow subjugate myself into becoming the woman of the Actor’s dreams. Okay, so yes, the process of conversion would be akin to that of turning a goose into foie gras. Not pretty. Not ending happily for the goose. Fuck it. I was in love. I couldn’t help myself. Grasp on reality? What grasp? Masochism! Degradation! I wanted to be miserable.

  I OPENED MY ADDRESS BOOK to the Actor’s tearsmeared voicemail number. I put my hand on the phone. Elise, who I’d hired to take some shifts at my personal assistant job, looked over my shoulder and grabbed my dialing finger.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Let go of the phone. He’s dead to us.”

  “I want him to love me,” I whimpered.

  “There are millions of men, right outside,” Elise informed me. “And what’s this? I don’t think so.”

  She picked up the list of my flaws and fed it to the shredder.

  “Now. Available male brainstorm. How about the PR Guy?”

  “Already tried him,” I said.

  “And?”

  “He told me a story that culminated with the words ‘hot, dripping treat.’”

  He also spelled “scary” with two Rs. Not good for the long term. We’d never even gone out. He’d just sent me pornographic e-mails.

  “Vile,” said Elise. “Scarry and vile. Who else?”

  “I might have met one this morning,” I said. “We didn’t speak. I ran.”

  “Would he have asked you out, if you’d actually spoken to him?”

  “He’s probably not even single. And he has a pit bull.”

  “Pit bulls are irrelevant. All you need is someone to get the taste of the Actor out of your mouth.”

  “Bitter taste,” I said, and reached for my list.

  “Bitter, bitter, bitter,” said Elise. “How do you get the guy you met this morning?”

  “He’s my neighbor.”

  “Not Pierre. Not Pierre again. Don’t tell me it’s Pierre again.”

  “Another neighbor. Almost a whole block away.”

  “Stick a note in his door.” She handed me a sheet of stationery from our boss’s drawer. I slowly used my best penmanship to write,

  I’m the girl in the bad tuxedo. You made

  my morning better. Call me. I bet you

  can improve my night—Maria.

  Then I added my number.

  “If nothing else, that’s very straightforward,” said Elise.

  “Too much?”

  “If he’s a guy, it’ll totally work,” she said.

  I stuck it in his door on my way home, and then ran.

  I was breaking rules right and left. Giving him my number. Asking him out, even though he’d spoken to me, even though he’d given me that grin, was clearly against the Year of Yes credo. My taste was back in the equation, and though the past many months had yielded neither the perfect man, nor any sort of perfect happiness, in theory I still wasn’t supposed to be going out and pursuing according to my own flawed judgment. I arrived in my kitchen, panting, appalled, and considering ways to fish the note out of the door. There did not seem to be a discreet way to do it. No doubt, the guy would catch me. Oh God. What had I done?

  Zak and Griffin were sitting at the table, a jug of wine between them. I confessed.

  “What?” said Griffin. “No. You didn’t really do that. You don’t even know this person.” Griffin had faith that I was a more cautious person than I actually was. He was one of my most treasured friends, in part because he always believed me to be better than my behavior.

  “She does things like that all the time,” Zak told him. “Welcome to my world.”

  “Wait. You gave him your phone number? I thought that was against the rules.”

  “I asked him out,” I said. I was stunned at my idiocy. Still, maybe I’d done something proactive against my sea of heartbreak.

  “Well, I wish some girl would stick a note in my door,” lamented Griffin.

  “I know what you mean,” said Zak. “Life isn’t really fair. Ergo bibamus.”

  Zak had taken beginning Latin. His favorite phrases were the ones that involved alcohol. Ergo bibamus: therefore, let us drink.

  “In vino veritas,” said Griffin, clearly in agreement with Zak.

  BUT DOGBOY DIDN’T CALL ME. I started surveilling his apartment. The building exuded illicit sex. In the mornings, you could fairly hear the cinderblocks moaning. Fascinating sounds echoed from the interior: loud music, power tool growls and, most important, screaming, both orgasmic a
nd defamatory.

  One afternoon, I saw a tall, honey-blonde woman standing outside of Dogboy’s place, lifting a kayak into the bed of a truck. She was wearing a white bikini top, and her muscles bulged like goldfish beneath her skin. It was November. Was she planning to kayak the East River?

  “Babe!” the kayaker yelled. “Come on! I’m gonna leave you!” No response from anything human, though the dog growled. The girl noticed me staring. She laughed.

  “Men,” she said. “He can’t even get dressed by himself.”

  “That’s a problem,” I agreed, pretending I’d been adjusting my shoe and not blatantly spying. I’d never had a man long enough to determine whether or not he would be unable to button his shirt if we were too long separated. All the men I’d known seemed perfectly self-sufficient, clothing-wise. If they failed to zip their pants, it was a choice.

  “Come and get me!” someone yelled from inside.

  “Shit. Must’ve left him tied to the bed,” she said, laughing, and then carried the kayak into the house. I stood there for a moment, amazed at the kind of personal information New Yorkers were willing to share with complete strangers. I glanced back when I hit the end of the block, and saw the naked top half of the girl lean out an upstairs window and close the blinds.

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I conducted an informal survey of the Neighborhood’s women. Next door to Dogboy’s house was a building full of punky bands. The stoop was almost always occupied by a fantastic-looking, mascara-streaked chick. Sometimes the women were drinking from flasks as they sat. Sometimes crying and eating donuts.

  They all knew Dogboy. Intimately.

  Verdicts were mixed on whether he was good or evil, but every girl said the man was skilled. Dogboy, it seemed, was the neighborhood witch doctor. He was the cure for whatever crippling love affair you’d just crawled out of. Either that, or he was a very appetizing poison.

  “Just listen, for a minute,” offered a girl named Kitty, cocking her head and blowing out a smoke ring. “What do you hear?”

  “Cars. Music. Jangling metal.” Kitty had no less than twenty piercings, and that was just on the parts of her body that were visible.

  “Huh-uh. Like, really listen.”

  A moment, and then a female moan. Faint, but rapturous.

  “That basically never stops,” said Kitty.

  “It has to stop sometime,” I said.

  “Nope. Twenty-four/seven, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Maybe it’s a porno on endless repeat.”

  “That moan a minute ago? Was Sabrina. She plays bass. Blue hair?”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s my roommate. Supposedly. Her boyfriend Ryan? Is inside our apartment right now, writing angry songs and trying to paper train their Yorkie. The Yorkie is his. Ryan’s been trying to convince Sabrina that lapdogs are ironic and masculine. But there’s nothing he can do. Dogboy has a pit bull. Ryan knows better than to try and stop her. She’ll get tired eventually, and then she’ll come home. They all do. I did.”

  “You went out with him, too?”

  “Yeah,” said Kitty, and looked dreamily out into space. “He’s a bastard, but he’s totally worth it. His dog’s name is Felonious Monk. And she’s a girl. I mean, how could I resist that?”

  Kitty blew another smoke ring. We watched it rise and then dissolve, as Sabrina’s screams echoed blissfully down India Street.

  BEEP. “HEY, MARIA? This is the guy whose door you stuck a note in the other day. Presuming you didn’t stick notes in more than one guy’s door, you probably know who I am. Come out dog walking with me tomorrow night. I’ll be outside my apartment at seven.” Beep.

  I skipped to my dresser and started looking for dog-walking attire. Something that I didn’t really possess. I was thinking maybe a Katharine Hepburn-esque safari suit. The dogs I’d grown up with hadn’t been walked. They’d been hitched to sleds, and then pulled us down the snow-covered highway. I therefore felt that city dogs were wusses. Either a safari suit, or a 1930s silk slip? Perfect for walking a wuss dog. I held it up.

  “Ugh,” said Vic. She’d heard the message, too.

  “What?” I said.

  “I guess that’s the kind of guy you want. Whatever. Get your heart broken again.”

  Vic and I had not really regained our solidarity. We went about our daily business, brushing past each other in the apartment and trying not to make eye contact. She’d made a brief exception during day three of my sobbing festival, and brought me ointment to put on my chapped nose. She was definitely still pissed at me, though. I again protested that I hadn’t known she was so interested in Pierre.

  “I wasn’t,” she said.

  “Then why are you mad?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then why are you not speaking to me?”

  “I am speaking to you. See? Speaking. Let the record show that you are going out with a dog walker. Just like I said you would.”

  “His dog’s name is Felonious Monk,” I said.

  “That’s supposed to make me think he’s cool?”

  She was right. He was a dog walker. I hadn’t thought of it that way. This dog walker, though, was the most famous man in my neighborhood. It was too bad that Vic was mad. If she’d been happy, we could have spied together on Dogboy’s house. I’d just have to wait for her to get over it. In my experience, it might take several months.

  Vic forgave me sooner than I’d thought she would, though, because that night we heard thwacking sounds coming from Zak’s room. Vic came out of her bedroom and stood in the living room, her ear cocked for a minute. Thwack. Thwack. Vic gave up her grudge and ran across the living room to my hut.

  “Hear that?”

  “How could I not?” I said.

  “Is it what I think it is?”

  “Spanking.”

  “Gross. So, so, so gross,” giggled Vic, and crawled into my bed.

  “It’s not gross,” I said. “It’s just kind of loud.”

  Zak’s new girlfriend, Malibu Barbie, was in his room with him. Malibu Barbie was not a stupid person. In fact, Malibu Barbie was a pleasant and intelligent person. But I was jealous, humiliatingly jealous, and when I learned that her Los Angeles plastic surgeon father had given her a teenage nose job, that was the end of any good feeling I’d had about her. She had yards of blonde curls, and Zak was wrapped around her manicured finger. Princeling One had been her boyfriend at some point, and they were a perfect match, gorgeous and commercially viable. They were poster children for NYU. Zak and I were the opposite half. We were prime examples of what happened if you went to an expensive school without anywhere near enough money. You ended up living in a hovel, working too many jobs, and not focusing on school at all. We were rotgut; Malibu Barbie and Princeling One were gin and tonic. Apparently, Malibu Barbie had been a very bad girl. The floor of our apartment shook. The walls of my hut vibrated. Vic giggled. The spanking went on for a long, long time.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Zak was in a stellar mood, though he had sacks beneath his eyes. Vic and I sat down at the kitchen table, and smiled at him.

  “What?” he said. “Good morning!”

  “Good morning,” we said.

  “Right, good morning. Why are you staring at me?”

  “Are we staring?” Vic asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think Zak’s paranoid.”

  “You guys are acting freakish.”

  “It’s a freakish house,” I said, “Don’t you think, Vic?”

  “I do.”

  “At least you’re smiling again,” Zak said, “but that smile is kind of scary. Wait.” He looked worriedly at the bathroom door. “Did the toilet explode again?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “No, nothing, no explosions,” said Vic, and then had to leave the table because she was laughing too hard to stay in her chair.

  “Is she high?” asked Zak. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that cheerful before. Wait. Is she getting laid?”

&nb
sp; “Is that why you’re in a good mood?” I asked, innocently.

  “Maybe,” said Zak. Clearly, he was totally unaware he’d been overheard. Ah well. I’d leave it, for the time being. For the right time. Maybe for when he was mocking me in front of Griffin.

  “Going on a date with Dogboy tonight,” I told Zak. He groaned.

  “He hits on everything that breathes, and some things that don’t,” said Zak. “His ego can be seen from outer space. I’m telling you.”

  “What’s your point?” I asked.

  “He’s what you always like,” he said. “He’s also what you always hate.”

  “He’s sexy,” I said.

  “He’s a jerk,” Zak said.

  “Sexy jerk,” I said, shrugging. “Sua cuique voluptas.”

  “You’re not allowed to use my Latin against me,” Zak said. I’d been flipping through his phrasebook. “Everyone has his own pleasures” seemed like a useful thing to know how to say. Even in a dead language.

  THAT NIGHT I WENT OUTSIDE IN the black nightgown, high heels, and a parka. The wrong attire for almost any public appearance, particularly in December, but I was determined to impress Dogboy. He was walking Felonious Monk down India Street. Windows were opening, and skinny, cuckolded hipster boys were peering forlornly out. Their tattooed and pierced hipster girlfriends were emerging from doorways up and down the block, drawn like mutts to filet mignon.

  “About time. Hold the dog for a sec,” Dogboy told me, handing me Felonious’s leash and disappearing into the bodega. Felonious stomped her dainty pit bull feet. Her friendly was the friendly of an ex-girlfriend who’s well aware that your man will never get over her.

  Señor Chupa and a couple members of his old man posse strolled by on the other side of the street. Señor Chupa’s shirt tonight was pink and ruffled, his hat at a rakish angle. He tipped it in my direction and did a little shuffle dance. The posse imitated. I could hear their finger-snapping song carrying across traffic, and so I mimed a little applause for them. What else was there to do? They were my personal Greek chorus.