LITMIR.BIZ

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rung. Somewhere, lightning struck. In our kitchen, Vic and Zak were rendered speechless. “No” had been my theme song, my mantra, my favorite word. A whole year without no?

      “Yes,” I said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

      “Whoa,” said Zak. “I so wish all girls were like you.”

      “Where do you think we live?” said Vic. “You’re going to date dog walkers.”

      “If a man is good with animals, he might be good with me.”

      Zak eyed me, clearly considering some sort of comeback, then thought better of it and went back to his caffeine.

      “I’m going to leave that alone,” he said. “Say thank you. You owe me.”

      “Thank you, that’s very kind,” I said.

      “Dog walkers from New Jersey,” said Vic.

      “Parts of New Jersey are attractive.”

      “Dog walkers from New Jersey who keep severed heads in their freezers.”

      “Not all serial killers are from Jersey,” I told her. Many were from the Northwest, where I was from. I felt safer in New York, frankly.

      “I could be missing really cool people, just because I don’t think they’re cool enough for me,” I continued. “Maybe I’m meant to be with a taxi driver.”

       Vic looked skeptical.

      “You’ll only date the hot ones. And you’ll end up with the same guys you always date. Actors. Writers. It’s your destiny. They like you, you like them. Stop complaining.”

      “I cannot fucking wait to see what you bring home,” said Zak. “If you really do this,” he added. “Because you won’t.”

      “I will,” I said.

      “Swear,” he said.

      “On my future happiness, on all matters of the heart, on true love, and on satisfaction. If I don’t say yes, let me die alone,” I said, and stuck out my hand. Zak nodded in approval of my melodrama. We shook.

      “Oh my God,” said Zak. “This is fucking great.”

      “Big fun,” said Vic. “Just don’t give our number to any more weirdos.”

      She had a point. In the past, I’d been somewhat too generous with our phone number. Victoria had tried to tutor me in the brush-off, but it did no good. I’d end up cringing in the corner, as Vic answered the phone and told whoever was on the other end that I had food poisoning/schizophrenia/moved back to Idaho/died tragically.

      “I won’t give anyone our number,” I said, suspecting that I was lying already.

      “And are you planning to sleep with all of them?” Vic made no bones about the fact that she believed that if a girl slept with more than nine guys total, she was automatically a slut. She called this the Double-Digit Rule. By her definition, I might as well have invested in a few pairs of platform vinyl boots and some Lycra hot pants, because I was past the point of no return. I, on the other hand, believed in dividing the number of men by the number of years on the market.

      Looked at that way, my number was minuscule.

      “Obviously not,” I said.

      “Really,” said Zak, raising one eyebrow.

      “Why would I sleep with someone I didn’t like?” Never mind that I’d done it before. Hadn’t everyone? Sometimes you just didn’t know you didn’t like someone until it was too late.

      “Antonio, Judah…” Vic started to count on her fingers. “Martyrman for two years!” I headed her off.

      “Yes to conversation, yes to dinner, yes maybe to a movie, yes to a bar. That’s it. No other guaranteed affirmatives.” Big White Cat nipped my ankle. He liked to sit in strange men’s laps. So did I. It was a problem. Obviously, though, sleeping with everyone I went out with would be a colossally dumb thing to do.

      Vic and Zak were still looking skeptical, but I was resolved.

      I felt intrepid, like an explorer setting forth into the frozen wilderness with a few snorting sled dogs, a parka, and some pemmican. Revise. No pemmican. Unless there was such a thing as vegetarian pemmican. Revise again. Dating was supposed to be the opposite of the Arctic. My adventurer’s uniform, then, would include a push-up bra, a pair of stiletto heels, and some lipstick. Not too difficult. This was my usual uniform anyway. I couldn’t help it. I liked being a girl. And provisions? I turned to Zak.

      “Where’s my hardtack?”

      Zak looked at me blankly.

      “I so have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

      “For my adventure.” Zak hadn’t read as much Jack London as I had, apparently, but I would have thought he’d have read some Joseph Conrad. I decided not to think about Conrad. Heart of Darkness was an inappropriate reference for this, my Year of Yes.

      Zak grinned in understanding, and handed me a pen.

      “Eat your words,” he said. “Live on love.”

      “Funny,” I said. “Woman cannot live on love alone.”

      “If anyone could,” he said, “it’d be you.”

      I was excited. I was ready. I was going to force open my heart and make myself willing. It wasn’t that I was lowering my standards. Just the opposite. I was expanding my faith in humanity. I was going to say yes, not just to a different kind of man, but to a different kind of life.

       Mister Handyman, Bring Me a Dream

      In Which Our Heroine Plays Cowboys and Native Colombians…

      MY FIRST DAY OF YES WAS, in my brain anyway, going to involve me going to the West Village and planting myself at a sidewalk café, where I’d pose nonchalantly in a cleavageenhancing white sundress, my dark red tresses tossing in a balmy breeze, and a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude in my perfectly manicured hand. Ideal Man Number One, preferably in possession of a pair of piercing blue eyes and some endearing, but nonemotionally disabled shyness, would approach. He would be straight, despite our location in the West Village. He’d sit down at the table next to me, steal a few glances, and then, overcome, he’d rummage through his worn, leather bookbag until he found a scrap of paper. Make that a scrap of paper with a few lines of Rilke already written on it. He’d scribble a note and get the waiter to bring it to me with my cappuccino. I wasn’t dictating what it should say, but whatever it was, it’d be Pulitzer-worthy. I’d flip the slip of paper over, write the word “yes” on it, and send it back over. He’d smile at me. I’d smile back. My teeth, by some miracle, would be free of lipstick. He’d move to my table, we’d both be smitten, and we’d live happily ever after. Or, at least, for the rest of the night, which would, by the way, not require any rudimentary lesson in female anatomy from me.

       Things did not work out quite the way I’d planned.

      There were several initial difficulties with my scenario. Some of them, like the fact that it was thirty degrees outside, I could do nothing about. I could, however, address the fact that my hair was not red. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Skin a strange shade of sagebrush. I was, overall, the color of drought. My entire childhood had been spent being mistaken for a tiny, transient farm worker. Since moving to New York, I’d been taken for Puerto Rican, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, and Colombian. I’d been Israeli, Armenian, Italian, and Turkish. In actuality, my ancestry was appallingly blue-blooded. William Bradford had sailed in on the Mayflower in 1620, become the governor of the Plymouth Colony, and begat a variety of diminishingly Puritanical descendants until, a few hundred years later, his bloodline reached its nadir with me. Had I wanted to, I could’ve joined the Mayflower

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