The Year of Yes (25 page)

“Whose car?” I asked, and fiddled with the stereo.

“Landlady,” he said. Ira had always had a weird ability to charm those in authority.

“What are we doing?”

“Sitting in a Pontiac, babe, in a parking lot, in Boise, Idaho, U.S.A., the World. The Universe. The Mind of God,” he said, quoting
Our Town.
We’d both been in it in high school. His character had been called Belligerent Man.

Then he held my face in his hands and kissed me.

Consider the previous seven years some sort of warped foreplay.

“I don’t want anything to get on your landlady’s upholstery,” I said, as we took off our clothes. “That’d be rude.”

Ira considered. “Babe, I never really liked this shirt anyway,” he said, and spread it, like Sir Walter Raleigh’s cape, across the backseat.

Outside, the snow built up on the glass, but inside it was summer. We were in a shopping mall parking lot in Idaho. All the other cars were gone. It was the middle of the winter, it was the middle of the night. On the car radio, “O Holy Night” was playing, and at first we laughed, but then we sang.

THREE WEEKS INTO THE NEW YEAR, the Actor finally called me back. As though our history was made of rainbows and candy hearts, I said, “Hi there, stranger! What’s up?”

“Hey,” he said, uncomfortably. Clearly, he was calling to defuse me. I was a ticking valentine. Nine million messages later, he was probably being chewed out by the women at his voicemail service.

“How
are
you?” I asked. Lighthearted. Bright. The Happiest Girl in the World.

“I’m great.”

“I was wondering something,” I said, knowing better than to ask what I was asking.

“Okay,” said the Actor, through the gritted teeth that came of doing the right thing.

I closed my eyes and imagined him as I wanted to remember him, sitting in the bar down the block from his apartment, before I’d gone home with him. He’d been telling me the secrets of his soul, or at least telling me things that had sounded true. I wanted to believe they had been, that the miscommunication had happened later, that he’d loved me, for those few hours before the sun rose, as much as I’d loved him.

“I had a wonderful time with you, the last time I saw you. Remember?” I said.

“I remember,” he said. His voice sounded kind, but miserable.

“And so, I need you to tell me that you don’t want to be with me. I want to be with you. You knew that already. So, if you could just tell me, if you definitely don’t want me?”

He’d been avoiding me for weeks. I was putting my heart on a chopping block and handing him a machete.

“I don’t want to date you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“What was that night to you?” I sounded angry, but I had no right to be.

“It was. I was thinking, it was a great, an
amazing
night with Maria, you know? Just a night? Do you know what I mean?” he pleaded.

And I did. I knew. I’d been him, so many times I’d lost count. He wasn’t breaking my heart because he wanted to break my heart. He was breaking my heart because there was no other option.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Zak happened upon me sobbing in a corner, pitifully eating a jar of artichoke hearts with my fingers. “Why are you eating that?” he asked, with obvious trepidation.

“Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart,” I said to him, quoting a bit of Stephen Crane’s morbid verse. I tried to smile.

“It’s not your heart, darlin’, it’s antipasti,” he corrected.

Later, he slid a benevolent note under the edge of my hut.

“Pssst, you’re beautiful and everyone knows it,” the note said. There had been a time when I would have killed to have such a note from Zak, but now it was only a Band-Aid on top of hari-kari. I wanted to hide in my bed forever.

But, I still had to pay my rent. Which meant I had to go to work, which meant I had to leave the house. I had to walk down India Street to get to the subway. As soon as I did, dark circles beneath my eyes, my rainboots sloshing with tears, I met Dogboy.

In Which our Heroine meets Dogboy…

FROM THE BEGINNING, ZAK DID NOT approve of the man at the end of India Street. “I’ve seen that guy,” he muttered, darkly. “He thinks he’s testosterone incarnate.”

“Only because he is,” I said. “You can’t tell me he’s not sexy. Well, you can. But then I’ll know you’re jealous.”

Zak grimaced. He didn’t like the thought that any other man could have more testosterone than he did. Zak wasn’t alone.

All the men in Greenpoint and the surrounding areas loathed Dogboy. Living near him was the equivalent of being Don Juan’s neighbor. Every time Dogboy stood on his stoop, stretching in the sun, male self-esteem dropped with the velocity of Wile E. Coyote off a cliff. Dogboy was very Roadrunner, sprinting away, chirping, utterly unbruised by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Meanwhile, the men of the neighborhood were peeling themselves up from under anvils.

Pierre, when Dogboy was mentioned, wrinkled up his nose and said, “That guy’s an asshole.” Pierre had started dating one of the girls who lived next door to Dogboy, and so had firsthand knowledge of his Lothario ways. I didn’t care. So what if the guy dated a lot? So did I. So what if the guy was devoid of feelings? So was I. Or at least, I wanted to be. That had to count for something.

WHEN I GOT MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Dogboy, I was trudging down the street, dressed in a 1920s men’s tuxedo shirt I’d had since I was fourteen, baggy black wool tux pants, and combat boots. No lipstick. The ensemble, which I reserved for moments of deepest mourning, was meant to broadcast my disinterest in men. It was an Andrea Dworkin of outfits, a Steinem of suits. It sidled from my dresser when I was depressed, wriggling its wormlike fingers, convincing me that it was a good idea to look as shitty as I felt.

He was walking in my direction. He winked. I stopped. How dare he wink at me?

“Morning,” he said, grinning the kind of grin that makes panties fall to the floor.

I had no response to that. I was still in the throes of withdrawal from the Actor, trembling and quaking, night sweating, hallucinations of intimacy. I couldn’t be expected to take compliments. The guy looked like Steve McQueen, and knew it. His blond head was shaven, and he had piercing blue eyes. He was wearing a ripped-up T-shirt, which was tight over his chest and biceps. It’d been a while since I’d been this close to a man so exceedingly well built, aside from the Actor, whose nakedness I was trying hard not to think about. Six-pack, instead of beer gut? A brindled pit bull danced beside him, yipping occasionally, obviously expecting breakfast.

Dogboy kept walking. I watched him unlock his door. It was rusty red metal, and industrial. There was an open grate on the front. He was whistling. He turned his head and
openly checked me out. How could he be checking me out? I looked like the misbegotten daughter of Kurt Cobain and Jay Gatsby.

“Hi,” I said, belatedly.

“Later,” he said, disappearing into his building. The pit bull followed him.

I stood in the street for a moment, shaking my head to clear it.

The fact that not even a guy this desirable could make me forget the Actor told me that there was something seriously wrong with both my heart and my head. I was twenty-one years old, but I felt eight hundred. I needed to stop feeling like Ophelia, which meant that I had to stop falling for Hamlets. While plenty of my stories seemed to end with bodies littering the stage, I preferred the ones that concluded with a big fat Happily Ever After. I ran to the train, intent on flipping my heart onto a new purpose.

AT WORK, INSTEAD OF DOING ANYTHING that I was supposed to be doing, I sat down to compose a list of the Actor’s flaws, thinking that maybe I could meditate on them until I was cured.

Not Even a Very Good Actor.
This despite the fact that I’d dragged Griffin and Zak to not one, not two, but
three
performances of a play that the Actor had written, and was
starring in. That wasn’t even the sad part. The sad part was that he was:

Not Really a Good Writer, Either.
Not terrible, but still. For the purposes of this list, it would have been much better if he were officially illiterate. But he wasn’t. He was smart and articulate, and mildly fixated on the plays of Edward Albee. Like I wasn’t.

Dorkiest Headshots in the World,
posted on his bedroom wall. Slicked-back hair. Tight black T-shirt. Half leer. Arms bent to better display biceps.

Short.
Never mind that I, too, was short. Never mind that anyone over five foot six towered over me. I’d seen him in his apartment, attempting to reach a midheight shelf in the kitchen, and having to climb onto the counter, his bony little knees poking out of his saggy little boxer shorts to reveal his bony little ass. I clung to this image.

Skinny.
In an I-eat-only-wheatgrass-juice kind of way. He’d been climbing onto the counter, incidentally, in order to fetch a glass for his breakfast of Vitamin-C powder.

Unskilled/Unwilling.
Tendency to prefer nonpenetrative intercourse, i.e., me giving him a blow job, and he patting me on the head. This gave the whole thing a sort of pre-women’s lib feeling, which, at the time, I was too enamored to acknowledge. No doubt, this problem had more to do with number 7 than with chauvinism, though.

Homosexual.
Or, if not gay, ignorant of the finer points of female anatomy, which was, in itself, inexcusable for a straight man pushing thirty.

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.

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 and 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.