“Strange how?”
“Well, it was very uneventful. And then it wasn’t. But now it … is again. But I like it that way. I’m just tired, Hanne.”
She wrinkled her nose, struggling to follow my babbling.
“I never thought I’d say this, but … it sounds like you need to get yourself another stupid boy-project,” she said, and I considered the irony. “You know you’re allowed to now? You can do whatever you want. You’re free! You know … You could count all the hairs on your legs again. It’s been ages since you did that. You could see if you’ve got any new ones. Photograph them. That kind of thing.”
I nodded. That sounded okay.
“I’ll be fine, Hanne. Anyway. How’s Seb?”
“He’s good. He’s still a little confused as to why you joined us for dinner that night.”
“He asked! I felt I had to say yes!”
“Oh, sure, you had to. And I suppose you’d have said yes if Seb had asked you to jump off a cliff, would you?”
I opted not to answer that one.
“There’s … another reason I wanted to meet up with you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Well … there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Eh?”
“A girl I know.”
Oh, no.
“Hanne, I’m fine….”
“You said you were bored!”
“I didn’t say I was bored. I just said things were uneventful.”
“Look, do this for me. Just have a drink with her. What have you got to lose?”
“Hanne, ex-girlfriends aren’t supposed to set their ex-boyfriends up on dates.”
“Danny, ex-boyfriends aren’t supposed to sponsor small African kids for their ex-girlfriends. And yet they do. All the time. It’s really very common.”
I blushed a little. “But I don’t want to.” I sounded like a child and I knew it.
“Oh, go on. Live a little. You seemed like you’d got back into the swing of things until just recently. You seemed like you were really enjoying yourself.”
“I was.”
“So have a drink with Kristen. Just a drink. I think you’ll get on brilliantly. And you’ll feel better for it.”
Maybe Hanne was right. I mean, obviously, I’d have to say yes, but on another level it might be good for me. I knew the situation I was in. And I knew the solution too. Get over it. And how do you get over something like that? You get on with life. You don’t look back. You look forward.
“Fine. I’ll have a drink with Kristen. I’ll give her a call.”
Hanne smiled an oddly satisfied smile and wrote the number down on a napkin.
“That’s great,” she said. “That’s really great. And listen … tell me to get lost if you think I’m being too nosey, but … I was talking to Ian, and … well, don’t get annoyed, but I think maybe you should see someone.”
“Well, obviously you do. That’s why you’re trying to set me up with your mate.”
“No. I mean, see someone. A psychologist. A psychiatrist. A counsellor. Just … someone”
Oh.
“What the hell did you tell Hanne?” I said to Ian.
“What?”
“Did you tell her I was saying yes to everything?”
“Of course not! Why?”
“Because she wants me to see someone! A psychiatrist or something!”
“I think, to be fair, she may want you to see someone, because she doesn’t know about your Yes thing. She must just think you’re mental, that’s all.”
“I’m not mental!” I said, probably a bit too loudly.
“Keep your voice down,” said Ian. “Shouting Tm not mental!’ only makes you sound more mental. And anyway, think about how it looks to her … You live for months in your flat in some kind of cocooned depression, then suddenly you’re out every day and night, you buy a weird car, you seem on top of the world, and then bang!—you’re all depressed again. It’s like schizophrenia! Or the beginnings of a midlife crisis! No wonder she wants you to see someone. You’ve got to snap out of this. It’s been weeks since you got back from Edinburgh. You’re in danger of undoing all our good work.”
“Our good work?”
“Look, you have to get a grip. Jesus, think about what saying yes has done for you. Think about all the good things that have happened, if there are any. And then learn from it and put it to bed, if you have to.”
“Put it to bed?”
“Yeah. I’ll let you off the punishment. You can stop right now, and that’ll be that. No repercussions. Just you. Cheered up.”
I thought about what Ian had said. And I thought about what I’d achieved so far. Life had been more fun. I’d met some interesting people, I’d done some new things, and, all in all, Yes had been a minor success. But that had been in the early days, when the consequences hadn’t seemed to matter so much. Now, I was in a lull. I wanted life to be normal again. We were only just coming up to October, for God’s sake. October! If I was going to do this properly and stick to my Yes Manifesto, there was still a long way to go. An impossibly long way. Could I really only be halfway through? I felt like crying. I felt like grabbing someone—anyone—and teling them the whole story, start to finish … but I already knew I didn’t like the way the story finished. Not if it ended like this. Hanne had said she wanted me to see someone. Maybe she was right. She wouldn’t have said something like that if it wasn’t important.
I lay in bed that night, thinking and thinking and thinking. Did I stop now? Or did I see it through? In what direction should I take my life?
I needed a sign.
The next morning my phone rang. I answered it. The person didn’t hang up.
And I had the sign that I so badly needed.
“I need a bottle of champagne, please. Cheapest you’ve got.”
“How much are you looking to spend, sir?”
“Um … a fiver?”
“We’ve got two pounds off Dom Perignon at the moment, at twenty-six pounds and eighty-eight pence, if you’re interested?”
I relished the moment.
“Yes!” I said.
“Would you like to buy a cooler with that?”
“Yes!” I said. “Yes—whatever you like!”
“What are we celebrating?” said Ian, standing at the door. “And why are you grinning like that?”
“We are celebrating some shocking news,” I said, pushing past him. “And a new beginning.”
“What news?”
“My promotion,” I said.
“Your promotion?!”
“My promotion.”
“But you’re never at work!”
I ignored Ian’s childish comment and found two mugs in his cupboard.
“Blimey. Dom Perignon … feeling flash, are you?”
“Not really. I wanted the cheap stuff, but the man suggested this.”
“Why have you brought a corkscrew?”
“It was on offer.”
“So …”
“Yep. ‘Just when I thought I was out, Yes pulled me back in.’”
I poured the champagne, and Ian opened his packet of nuts.
“So what’s the job?”
“Well… it’s in a small department over at TV Centre—tiny, really—working up new ideas, finding new talent, developing stuff, that sort of thing.”
“What’s your job title?”
I took a deep breath and told him. “Head of Development.”
I was beaming. Absolutely beaming.
“Head of Development!?” said Ian. “What? You? A head of something? That’s ridiculousl”
“I know. But if it makes you feel better, there’s literally no one beneath me. It’s like being made Head of Stationery just because I’ve got my own pencil.”
Ian shook his head.
“As far as I can tell,” he said, “you’ve just got an executive-level promotion at the BBC, the most respected broadcaster in the world, essentially on the basis that you say y
es a lot.”
We clinked mugs.
“Yes,” I said.
“So you’re still going to say yes?”
“Yes!”
What Ian didn’t realise was what this really signified.
There was a reason for this. I knew it. It had come just at the right time—just when I was doubting the validity of what I was doing and considering another change in life. A change to the sensible. To the more predictable. To the more comfortable. And it had confirmed to me that that choice was right.
An optimist would say that Yes had given me another big chance, and I should stick with it. I would have said the same a month or two earlier. And it’s true—saying yes to that first meeting had set off a chain of events that had somehow led me to buying a bottle of champagne and toasting a new start. But a realist would see what this really meant.
I realised now all too clearly that you can’t live life as a total optimist. I saw the underlying reason for this promotion. The secret reason. It was there to encourage me to say good-bye to my stupid, carefree ways. To say good-bye to living life like it was all about fun and frolicks and adventure. At some point you have to grow up, move on. Hanne had always told me that. And now I’d realised it for myself. Jason had been right that night at the party. Responsibility comes to us all. Life can’t just be about fun. We have to sacrifice our freedom sometimes, so that we can progress. I would e-mail Jason once again. I would thank him for the lesson. Who’d have thought it? The Challenger won after all. No was best.
And what do I mean by “No was best?” I mean No is power. No says, “I’m in charge.” Think about how many times you’ve said yes in the past year, and how many times you would’ve liked to have said no instead. Maybe being able to say no is the one thing that keeps us sane. Some people go through their whole lives saying yes over and over again—yes to things they don’t want to do but feel obliged to; yes to things that allow other people to take advantage of them, just because that’s the way things are, the way things have always been. Some people need to learn how to say no. Because every time they say yes, they say no to themselves.
All those Yes moments, when I ’d done something I didn’t necessarily want to do, all those Yes moments that hadn’t led anywhere, hadn’t done anything … what if Fd said no to those? It would’ve meant I could have said yes to things I did want to do…. Saying no gives you access to a process of elimination that can lead to a better life. If I could say No to the part of me that wasted his time doing things he knows he shouldn’t, I could say yes to the part of me that wanted to move on.
I explained all this to Ian, and he ended up agreeing with me.
“I suppose you’re right. I suppose this is the first good thing that’s happened to you since you started saying yes. I mean, you won and then lost that money, which I’ve always said is worse than never winning it at all. You’ve loved and lost, which I don’t think is better than never having loved, actually. You thought you were going to be a telly presenter, but that hasn’t materialised, either, which is more disappointing than never thinking it. You owe thousands of pounds on credit cards you shouldn’t have applied for. You are constantly phoned up by strangers who hang up as soon as you answer. You bought a car you don’t need and got a haircut which was last fashionable in 1985. In Hungary. Your inventions don’t work. Your …”
Suddenly I was a little offended. “Actually the inventions are pretty good. Maybe not the spoon one, but the Incredible Automatic Self-Rewinding Video Box is sound.”
“Your design worked by placing a magnet on the inside of the box. It would wipe the tape as it rewound. It’s basic science. Anyway in a few years videos will be obsolete, and no one will even use them.”
My God … things were even worse than I’d imagined. I’d banked on that rewinder being my nest egg. But the only way to deal with it was to treat it like a lesson. So I left Ian that night feeling positive about pessimism. These things happen for a reason. Thank heavens I’d seen the sign. Maybe there is a grand plan after all.
I suddenly thought of the man on the bus, and then, slowly, of Maitreya. It sounds outlandish to say it, but maybe there was something in all that. Maybe Maitreya really was the man on the bus, the man who’d kick-started this whole thing. Maybe I really was being looked after by some higher power. A higher power who wanted me to grow up. Suddenly anything seemed possible.
The thing was Yes had started off as a way of getting back into an old, carefree life. Turns out it was a way of making me realise the errors of that life. It represented the end of an extended adolescence. And surely … that was a good thing?
So I would do this. I would get this Yes thing out of the way. I would do it, and then move on. I would start the new job in January. And then I would put a stop to this chapter of my life—not just the Yes chapter, but everything like it.
But it was important to succeed. I never wanted to think I’d moved on because I’d failed.
For now I got on with the work at hand, knowing for sure that this would be the last stupid thing I ever did. I had a clear run ahead of me. This would be easier than ever.
But less than one week later, I received another package.
Chapter 16 In Which Daniel Is Tempted by Evil
The Challenger was back, and I was a furious man.
I’d sorted this out! I’d already sorted this out!
The fact that Jason had lulled me into a false sense of security, and then slapped me in the face with yet another package did nothing but infuriate me. My decision to continue the way of Yes as a good-bye to my stupid, carefree past was a noble and pure one—and all he was doing now was sullying it. Spoiling it. Making it more about him than me. This was supposed to be self-help, a personal odyssey. This wasn’t supposed to be a game of cat and mouse with me as the mouse.
I was thundering out of Oxford Circus Tube toward the Yorkshire Grey, my face a picture of concentrated anger. I needed, once again, to speak with Ian.
“Buy a Big Issue, mate?” said a man, standing outside of Boots.
I turned to face him as I strode past.
“No!”
Yes. That’s right. No.
The really infuriating thing was, once again, the Challenger had upped the stakes. What made it all the more painful was that it was all my fault. I’d e-mailed Jason to tell him about my new frame of mind, that he’d been right all along. That I’d realised the true danger of Yes and the true power of No. And now … now he’d sent me this.
A man asked me for spare change as I walked past McDonald’s. I had no time, but I had the correct answer: I barked a no as quickly and sharply as possible. He looked slightly shocked, but I didn’t care. I had to get to the Grey.
As I burst through the doors of the pub, I saw Ian, sitting by the fireplace in the corner. I paused by the bar to compose myself.
“What can I get you?” asked the girl behind the bar.
I maintained perfect eye contact with Ian as I said, “Nothing, thank you. I do not want a drink.”
lan’s eyes widened. He had heard my answer. He knew something was very, very wrong.
I sat down next to him, and he didn’t say a thing, just stared at me.
I reached into my pocket and took out a letter. On it was one typewritten line. I put it on the table and slid it toward him.
He leaned forward and read aloud.
I saw this and thought of you.
He looked at me again, shrugged, and did that little shake of the head people do when they don’t know what’s going on.
“Who sent you that?” he said.
“Guess,” I said.
But he knew. He knew exactly who had sent it. “But what does it mean? What did they send?” I unzipped my jacket and revealed a bright, blue T-shirt. On it were three simple words:
JUST SAY NO
Ian looked at me in horror.
He recognised the slogan from the old antidrugs campaigns of the eighties … the ones you’d usually get underneath a
picture of a crack-addled teenager or next to a beautifully crafted charcoal portrait of a man with a tiny dog on his shoulder. But he also knew what its meaning would be to me …
“No!”
I nodded silently.
“You look surprised,” I said.
“I thought they’d decided to stop all that!”
“Me too.”
“So what do you think it means?” he said.
“It means I should just say no.”
“Instead of yes?”
“Well, that’s the problem. Do I say yes to just saying no, or do I just say no to saying no? Do I make a stand and say no, or is that exactly what they want?”
“Or does it mean you should just say no to just saying yes?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“But if you just start saying no when once you would have just said yes,” said Ian desperately, “you’ll have failed! That goes against everything the Yes Manifesto stands for! I should know! I’ve got it stuck to my fridge! I can’t make a cup of tea without being reminded of your plight!”
“But if I just say no to saying no, I’ll still be saying yes to just saying no, because I’ll have just said no. Maybe I can just say no to just saying no, thereby cancelling it out.”
“That’s a no-no.”
“A double no, yes.”
“No. A no-no in that you can’t just say no to saying no. You’ll still just have to say yes to just saying no, otherwise you’ll have said no!”
“So I should just say no from now on, and wait until the Challenger sends me a T-shirt saying, Okay, you can just say yes again now’? It’s not going to happen!”
I was starting to wish I’d ordered a drink, and looked at lan’s beer longingly. Ian caught me looking.
“Pint?”
I sighed. “No.”
Twenty minutes of intense crisis talks later, we had a solution of sorts.
It was a fair and worthy solution to an unusual and tricky problem. I clearly had to do what the Challenger said … especially now that Ian was so heavily involved. But part of me couldn’t help but wonder if Ian was now in cahoots with Jason. Yes, Jason would have taught me a lesson by messing with my life, but who really stood to benefit? Whose punishment would I have to ultimately undergo? Just where was Jason getting his information? How would he know I was going through with his demands? I decided to sit on my worries for now and see how it all panned out before making any untoward accusations.
Yes Man Page 27