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Yes: I agree with Maddie while we wait for the L. I should say yes this year instead of no. No, Maddie says, you need to learn to say no.
This is tonight’s theme. And maybe the theme for this year or for forever. I keep saying yes. Yes to the next place. Yes to putting my card down. Yes to dinner. Yes to walking. Yes to multiple social events in the span of a few hours. At Ponyboy in Greenpoint, we meet up with Christian and Krysten. Someone asks what everyone’s red flags are. That is, the red flag you give off. I’ve had this conversation before but forgot my original answer. Then I remember. It’s that I can’t say no. We get a text that our table is ready at the next place.
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No: Morals, just ethics. Two friends agree on that. We talk about how there’s no such thing as bad taste in people. Of course there are bad patterns that you can’t help but be attracted to that you have to learn to break for yourself. But bad taste in people is impossible because there may not be such a thing as bad people.
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Yes: My phone is almost dead, but you can meet us at Forgetmenot. It will take thirty minutes to get there, but it will be worth whatever distance to get out of Midtown. I don’t use turn-by-turn navigation to get to the subway. I’m beginning to know intuitively. On the sidewalk, when we all meet up, Krysten reminds us it’s only been twenty four hours since we’ve last seen each other. I’m bad at math. When the last day ended and when this one started. It starts to not matter. Shortly after we go inside, the others go back outside to smoke. I watch them through the gold foil streamer adorned windows. The conversation muted between glass. I don’t feel left out as I watch their skinny cigarettes burn down to nubs, the signal we’ll all be together again soon. Minute, hour, day becoming the same length.
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No: I can’t fight my fantasies. I say in the Uber I’m in love with anyone who has ever seen me. Though I have no idea what that means. I’m overcome with love. I say things I don’t remember saying. I say I need to stop talking soon.
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Yes: I’ll try anything once. Saturday is full of firsts. I write down everything I’ll do that day so I don’t forget a step. At a punk show, I join Maddie in the mosh pit. I’m scared for a second, holding my breath like I did the night before as I listened to the Queen of the Night sing her aria in The Magic Flute. Now my body gets pushed between sweaty teenagers and adults throwing their elbows. When someone falls, there are arms that lift them back up within an instant. A few times my feet stop touching the ground.
After several sets, I meet up with a few friends to go to Basement. Everyone else has tickets, so I’m left to wait outside. I don’t mind. There are other people waiting who are desperate to get inside, cutting the line, evading the barrier and trying side doors only to be bounced. I’m not registering faces in the line, but talking to everyone. Trying to hold onto the last bit of morale in the cold. I’ll leave my new friends as soon as I get indoors.
Inside there are no faces at all. Christian tells me before we get separated I won’t be able to see anyone. He’s not wrong. I didn’t bring sunglasses, though each person I’m with lends me theirs for bursts until I give them back. I know the relief that comes with more darkness. I think of a passage in Georges Simenon’s Three Bedrooms in Manhattan: “Why, despite the blinding brightness, did everything look gray? It was as if the painfully sharp lights were helpless to dispel all the darkness the people had brought in from the night outside.”
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No: Why is it so hard to say no? In lesser words, it’s a way to say I’m not interested. The nicest and shortest way to say please leave me alone. I know saying no isn’t a cruelty, but everything in me tells me otherwise.
While getting air at the punk show, a man comes up to me on the sidewalk. He begins talking at me. I let him, mostly answering in single words to his questions. Sometimes I just like to let people monologue. This doesn’t look like your first punk show, he tells me, before saying my outfit reminds him of an American Girl doll. I tell him I don’t think he’s ever seen an American Girl doll. He calls me nervous because I cross my arms to keep myself warm. I’ve never been less nervous. He tells me he isn’t working yet because his parents want to take him to St. Barts for a month. You know how there are lower or upper middle class people, he asks, why isn’t there like lower rich? Because my parents are like, lower rich. I say to him, so they’re just rich. He changes the subject.
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Yes: Nietzsche’s wrote in January 1882 new year resolution was to be only a yes-sayer. He was a Libra after all.
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No: It isn’t ok, I want to tell the schoolgirl who tries to trip me while I’m running through Clinton Hill. A look of regret crosses her face before her friends start laughing. It isn’t ok, I want to tell the man on Myrtle Avenue who makes a comment about the way my body looks while I run. But I keep moving, hoping the most self-respectful thing to do is to move on.
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Yes: Someone explains, there are uppers and downers, and ketamine is sideways. I lose my body in a crowd of people who seem to move in sync. That’s the only thing to do right now. Move. Otherwise, don’t get separated from my friends, which I do. Strangers begin to kiss each other. I’ve lost track of time. Crushed water cups and beer cans scuttle across the floor. The strobes are pulsing red, then shimmering blue. I close my eyes. I’m not scared, but I know I need to find a kind face. Eventually I do. Relief returns me to my body. At five, I remember to check the time. It’s time to go. The morning light is still taking its time to arrive. The full moon looks the same as it did when I went underground several hours before.
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Yes: This is a once in a lifetime moment, a man tells another man in the crowd at Baby’s All Right on New Year’s Eve. You don’t meet someone everyday. I believe him, although he’s not talking to me. Sometimes I think that if someone is speaking close enough to you, you’re included in the conversation. We’re shoved together before the clock changes to midnight. Someone has just dumped half of their martini inches from my shoes. It doesn’t matter. My feet are wet anyways from the rain we’ve just escaped from. This is midnight, this will be 2023. Subject to the accidents of strangers. I turn to the two men whose conversation I want to know the end of, but they’ve stopped talking and started kissing instead. I guess this is how the future is made. Believing this single moment is a lifetime in itself.
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No: Another man asks me if he’s bothering me, then if I’m waiting for friends. The answer is yes to both, but I only say no to one. Some people aren’t capable of being alone in public, I realize. I also realize I’m not one of them. Later on the sidewalk I see him again and he asks if I’m cold. No. What I am is too approachable, a friend tells me. And it’s true. I wonder what I can do to change my face. Maybe the first step is to stop dressing like an American Girl doll.
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Yes: Between the first and second day of the year, I walk seventeen miles. From the Upper West, 81st to 34th on one day, and from East 89th to 34th the next day. I tell myself, just a few more blocks then I’ll get the train. The sky looks the same both days. Speckled gray. I start to sweat in the unseasonal warmth so I slow down. I listen to the same song on repeat, weaving between well-dressed couples and children whose strollers probably cost equivalent to a month’s rent.
On the second day of 2023, I meet Charlotte at the Guggenheim for the Alex Katz “Gathering” exhibit. John Early and Kate Berlant consider a night scape. We play it cool. The spiral ramp makes me a little nauseated. We spend a few minutes in front of “Conversations with Friends.” I wonder out loud how much it cost to put the portrait on the cover of the Rooney novel. I can’t help but feel jaded about the financial side of publishing. Numbers are scandalous, open secrets. How huge of an advance former Iowa classmates received for unpublished drafts. How little friends in publishing are paid. The forty-eight thousand dollar New York salary the HarperCollins HR person asked me if I would accept if offered the administrative position I was interviewing for last year. After a few rounds and agonizing over the bad fantasy, I said no, withdrew my application. I run into a friend at Grand Street a week after visiting the Guggenheim. She was there around the same time I was. We talk briefly about the Sally Rooney painting. She left publishing a few years ago. Before I fully get the question out—do you miss it—she answers no with a relieved laugh.
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Yes: Some nights I just have to walk in circles. I make a circle with my body. It’s pleasurable, this unwillingness to move logically. Then other nights I make a straight line, running down President Street, out of breath, just wanting to be there already.
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No: I don’t know where I’m going. I think of Kay in Three Bedrooms in Manhattan, walking her new lover in circles, taking him to the wrong place until she finds the place she wanted to be all night. I take us out of our way towards Chinatown. The streets are quiet. The night before I go to the wrong location of a restaurant where I’m supposed to meet Maddie before the opera. There won’t be time to eat together, but I need to go west to get to the Met. I decide against the subway. I can walk faster. I jog intermittently in my heels. I can’t help but laugh at my own unfounded confidence in geography, something I’m notoriously bad at. It’s a winding path down 59th across the park. Every dark puddle I hop over, I imagine would lead to a deeper body of water if I stepped through it.
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Yes: Maybe this is the way to learn to say no. To keep saying yes anyway. Simenon again: Was he going to say yes or no? He didn’t know anymore.
It’s been a weird year, a friend says on Saturday. I count in my head, trying to remember the calendar. How many days have passed since the calendar turned. The day will change again while I am awake for almost twenty-four hours. This year has been a year in a span of one week. I say yes.