Yes Man Read online

  “Danny,” he’d say. “I know you’re there. How do I know you’re there? Because you’re always there. You’re not picking up because you’re scared I’ll invite you out, which I’m going to do anyway. We’ll be at the pub at eight. I look forward to receiving your standard text message, saying you can’t make it, and you’re sorry, and we should have fun. Bye.”

  And then I’d get all hoity-toity and text him, and write I’M NOT IN ACTUALLY. I’M OUT. BUT I CAN’T MAKE IT, SO I’M SORRY AND HAVE FUN. And then I’d realise that he’d left the message on my home phone, and that to have heard it I would have to have been in. And then I’d blush, and he’d text back and call me a wanker.

  But then one evening Ian had bumped into Hanne and shared his concerns. That Friday night she’d turned up unannounced at nine or ten o’clock, carrying a bottle of wine.

  “So what’s going on?” she said, using her hand to brush some stale rice off the sofa and taking a seat.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You. What’s happened to you?”

  Hanne filled some glasses, while I considered her question. I didn’t know what she meant. I checked myself in the mirror to see what could possibly have happened to me. Maybe someone had painted a tiger on my face or tied balloons to my ears.

  “Nothing’s happened to me, Hanne.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s true.”

  “Eh?”

  “What I mean, Dan, is that nothing’s happened to you. Nothing does, anymore, apparently. Your friends are worried. Where have you been for the past six months?”

  “Here,” I said, confused. “I’ve been right here!”

  “Precisely. You’ve been here. Where were you on Steve’s birthday?”

  “I was … busy!” I lied, trying desperately to remember what excuse I’d used that time. “I went to a women-and-war exhibition.”

  I never said they were good excuses.

  “Okay. And where were you when everyone else was at Tom’s stag night?”

  “Again, busy. I’m very busy, Hanne. Look at me.”

  I don’t know why I asked Hanne to look at me. It’s not as if I looked particularly busy. I was just a man standing up.

  “You’re no more busy than your friends. We’ve all got jobs, Dan, but we all find time to do other things, too. You’ve cut yourself off, and we’re concerned. You don’t have fun anymore.”

  “I do! I have loads of fan! And I have loads of fan new hobbies!”

  “Like what?”

  I struggled to find an answer. Of course I had fun! Surely I did! I just couldn’t think of any examples right now. Hanne had put me on the spot, that was all. But there must be something I enjoy doing.

  “I … enjoy toast,” I said.

  “You enjoy toast,” said Hanne, who, because she is Norwegian, likes to be matter-of-fact about things.

  “Yes, but not just toast,” I said defensively. “Other things, too.”

  “Like what?”

  My mind raced. What else was fun?

  “Theme parks.”

  “Right,” said Hanne. “So you’ve been eating toast and going to theme parks, have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “For six months.”

  “On and off.”

  “You hate theme parks,” she said. “So, which theme parks?”

  “What?”

  “Which theme parks have you been going to?”

  I think she may have been on to me. I looked around the room, desperate for inspiration.

  “Shelf … Adventure.”

  “Sorry?”

  I cleared my throat. “Shelf Adventure.”

  “Shelf Adventure?”

  “Yup.”

  Hanne took a sip of her wine. So did I. Of my wine, I mean, not hers. Taking a sip of her wine would have spoiled the atmosphere.

  “Any others?” she finally said. I could tell she thought she was going to enjoy catching me out. “Or was it just Shelf Adventure?”

  “So, you were making Shelf Adventure up too! I knew it!” said Ian.

  “Of course I was making Shelf Adventure up! How many adventures can you have with a shelf?”

  “I couldn’t find a thing about it on the Internet. Hanne knew you were lying too, you know.”

  “I guessed that she probably had,” I said.

  “And then what happened?”

  “Is this about us, Dan?” said Hanne, getting her stuff together in the hallway. “Because we split up?”

  I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything at all.

  “It just seems like you’re doing all the things that I would once have loved you to do … the job, the mortgage, the staying in more. You’re not doing this … for me, are you?”

  I smiled gently. “No, Hanne. Don’t worry.”

  “Because you know that now we’ve split up, you can do all the things that used to annoy me? You can come home drunk whenever you like, and you can do as many stupid boy projects as you want.”

  “It’s not about us, Hanne …”

  “Because you know that just because you’ve changed doesn’t mean we’re going to get back together, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  “Even if you did buy handwash for the bathroom.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And you can’t mend a relationship with a garlic crusher.”

  “Is that a Norwegian proverb?”

  “No. I’m referring to the new garlic crusher in your kitchen.”

  “I didn’t even know it was a garlic crusher. And no, I know you can’t mend a relationship with a garlic crusher. To be honest I don’t even know how you crush a garlic with one.”

  “Okay, then,” said Hanne, opening the door to leave. “But, listen. You should make more of an effort. It’s time you got back out there. It’s time you stopped making excuses and saying no to everyone. Because you’re not just saying no to your friends—you’re saying no to yourself.”

  I paused for a second to place the quote. “Dawson’s Creek?”

  “Yep,” said Hanne.

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  “Look, Dan,” said Ian. “Will you just tell me what this fucking bloke on the bus said to you, or should I make another appointment?”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you.”

  I put my pint down on the table and looked Ian in the eye. “He said: ‘Say yes more.’”

  I picked my pint up again and took a sip. I raised my eyebrows to show Ian he should be impressed, but for some reason he still appeared to be waiting for more. That’s the problem with the MTV generation. Never satisfied.

  “Is that it?” he said. “’Say yes more’?”

  “Yep,” I said, smiling. “That’s it.”

  The sentence had tripped off the man’s tongue like he’d been saying it all his life.

  “Say yes more,” he’d said.

  “Say yes more,” I’d repeated. Three little words of such power.

  “The people without passion are the ones who always say no,” he’d said moments before, and I’d turned, stunned, to listen.

  “But the happiest people are the ones who understand that good things occur when one allows them to.”

  And that was that.

  That was all it took to turn my life on its head. A few choice sentences from a complete and utter stranger. A stranger on a bus. And a bearded stranger, at that. This went against everything I held as true. If there was one lesson that had been drummed into me as a kid, it was never listen to a bearded stranger. I’ll be honest; it was a fairly odd moment for me. I felt like Danny, from the movie Karate Kid, sitting next to Mr. Miyage. One minute we’d been idly chatting about this, about that, and about what we’d done with our weeks, and the next this thin and bearded man had dropped a philosophical bombshell.

  I couldn’t work out whether it was just coincidence. Whether his words were really intended for me, whether they truly reflected on our conversation, or whether they were just
the throwaway ramblings of some bloke on a bus. If I’d been in another mood, I might just have laughed them off, or buried my head in my newspaper, or politely ignored them. But with my friends’ concerns, and everything that had happened—or, in a way, everything that hadn’t happened—the words took on a strange and important resonance.

  Say yes more.

  And that was when I had my revelatory moment.

  “That is the stupidest bloody thing I have ever bloody heard,” said Ian, ever the diplomat. “Some drunk bloke on a bus mutters something oblique, and you claim it’s changed your life? Bollocks. How come you never listen to me when I’m drunk?”

  “Because when you’re drunk, you usually talk about us buying a caravan and moving to Dorset.”

  “Oh, we should, though, just think of the …”

  “And anyway, he wasn’t drunk. We’d been talking about what we’d been up to in the week. He seemed very interested.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him I’d been staying in a lot. Not doing much. Having early nights.”

  “And that was all?”

  “Pretty much.”

  And it was. The simple fact of the matter was that this man would probably have had no idea of the impact of his words. I surely was just someone who wanted to make a decision, who deep down wanted to make a change. His words were just the catalyst that kick-started me into action. I wish I could claim that he was a shaman or some kind of spiritual figure, sent into my life at that time to push me over the edge. And as much as I’d like to believe that, the fact is he was probably just a bloke on a bus. Just like the next bloke you’ll sit next to on a bus. But chatty. And wise.

  “He doesn’t sound much like Jesus to me,” said Ian. “Apart from the beard.”

  “I never said he was Jesus!”

  “Or Buddha, for that matter. Buddha would’ve probably just smiled a lot. Or taken you to a nice restaurant. That’s the thing about Buddha; he knows how to have a good time.”

  “Ian, listen. It wasn’t Jesus. Or Buddha. It was just some bloke on a bus.”

  “So, why are you taking him so seriously?”

  “Because he was right. And you were right. And Hanne was right. But the thing is, none of you knows how right you were!”

  “So, what are you saying? Just that you’re going to start saying yes more? That’s hardly an announcement.”

  “I’m going to say yes to everything”

  “Everything? What do you mean, everything?”

  “I mean, I’m going to say yes to everything from now on.”

  Ian looked shocked. “When do you start?”

  “That’s just the thing,” I said, finishing my pint and looking him dead in the eye. “I already have.”

  Chapter 2 In Which Daniel Becomes Increasingly Excited

  This was it.

  This was bloody it.

  I didn’t know what “it” was yet, but by God it was this, and that was enough for me.

  It had been just ten minutes since the man on the bus had uttered his words of wisdom, and I was excited. And inspired. And slightly out-of-breath, because sometimes when I’m excited and inspired, I tend to try and leap up stairs, when, really, I should realise that I live on the fourth floor and such exertions do not become me.

  But my red face and now-dampened forehead didn’t matter, because the thing is, what the man on the bus had said to me had struck a chord. No, more than that. It made complete and utter sense. I know it sounds odd, and I know it might seem meaningless to you, but to me those three words had … done something. Triggered something. Meant something. It was like the man had known about me in a way I hadn’t even known about myself. Which is quite a disquieting idea unless it turns out that the thing you didn’t know about yourself was quite glamorous, like you were a matador or you once freed some slaves, in which case you’d be quite grateful to whoever pointed it out.

  But what he’d shown me about myself wasn’t glamorous. It was worrying. It was something I had to change. And luckily he’d shown me the way. He’d provided me with a moment of pure and happy clarity.

  I was smiling, now. Grinning as I walked through the door of my flat, flicked the kettle on, and reached for a mug. Had I been a more feminine man, I dare say I’d have probably skipped about a bit as well, although as I suspect I’d make quite a sensible feminine man, I would not have done this around boiling water, and I would certainly have put the mug down first.

  I paced the kitchen, thinking and rethinking the night’s events, and then, just before the click of the kettle, I realised something.

  I could see.

  Not just what was around me.

  But what I’d been doing wrong.

  And how I could turn it around.

  I could see exactly how my life should be.

  I was on the verge of something. But sometimes to look forward, you have to look back. So, I went and got my diary. And even though I suspected it would be the case, I was nevertheless shocked at what I saw.

  I saw nothing.

  Well, virtually nothing.

  Nothing apart from missed opportunities. And blank spaces. And things I’d scribbled out, or hadn’t gone to, or said I couldn’t make. Acres of white. Acres of white lies.

  I’d missed birthdays. I’d missed barbecues. I’d missed various parties. I’d missed dinner with friends, I’d missed nights down the pub, I’d missed Tom’s stag do. God, Tom’s stag do. I bet that had been legendary. I bet they’d all got together and painted his privates blue and handcuffed him to the buffet car of a train. Suddenly I wanted to do that. I wanted to paint a man’s privates blue and handcuff him to buffet cars!

  But not just that, I wanted to do all the things I’d missed out on. I wanted to turn the clock back and shout yes to all the things I’d mumbled no to. Not just the big nights or the main events or the frantic celebrations, but to the little things. The normal things. The things that sometimes matter the most.

  I scanned and rescanned my diary. Hanne had been right. Ian had been right. Everyone had been right … except me. As I flicked my way through the months that had flown by, I realised with horror that probably the most excitement I’d had was on April 18, when I’d gone to PC World to buy a new printer cartridge. Suddenly that didn’t seem like enough. I mean, yeah, at a push I could probably scrape a short anecdote out of it, but still … It was hardly one to save for the grandchildren, was it?

  And hang on—what grandchildren? I was already twenty-six, and there wasn’t even a hint of a grandchild down the pipeline! Who was I going to tell all my stories to when I was old? Who was I going to impress with my tales of short, uneventful walks to PC World, and me worrying that there wasn’t going to be the right kind of printer cartridge in stock, but it being all right because in the end there actually was?

  And who was going to give me grandchildren? Well, my kid, obviously, but who was going to give me one of those? Maybe I’d already missed out on the woman of my dreams! Maybe she’d been out there, waiting for me all this time, but she’d got bored and moved on? Maybe she’d been working in the buffet car the night they painted Tom’s privates blue! She certainly hadn’t been in PC World!

  My ambition had turned to panic. Who knew what I had already missed out on in life? Now I would never know what might have happened, who I might have met, what I might have done, where I might have ended up, how different life could have been. And my friends … how many connections had I lost? How many people would simply have gotten used to me not being there and given up on me?

  I was angry at myself. I had wasted half my year. Half a year gone. Thrown away. Swapped for toast and evenings in front of the telly. It was all here—or, rather, it wasn’t—in black and white, and blue and red. Every dull nonentry was a sharp slap in the face.

  I had to get back out there. I had to start living life rather than just living.

  And it was obvious how.

  Say yes more.

  I would s
ay yes more. Saying yes more would get me out of this rut. It would rekindle my love for life. It would bring back the old me. The me that had died a little the day I’d been dumped. I just needed a little kick-start. A little fun. A chance to live in a completely different way. I could treat it like an experiment. A study in my own behaviour. A study in positivity and opportunity and chance.

  This was serious. This went beyond what Hanne would have called a “stupid boy project,” because now … now I was dealing with a whole new way of life.

  My mind was racing. This could work. But how should I approach it? How would I say yes more?

  I decided I needed to tackle the problem quickly and efficiently. If I could spend just a day on this, surely that would be all I’d need? I’d go out to whatever was happening, hang out with whoever wanted to, and let life just lead the way. I’d surrender myself for twenty-four hours, answer everything with a yes, and let opportunity and chance boot me out of this midtwenties crisis.

  I started to get ready for bed.

  A day. Yes. A day. A day of relentless positivity. What harm could that do? A day of saying yes. Yes to anything. Anything and everything.

  A day of being a Yes Man.

  Yes.

  * * *

  “Hello, can I speak to Mr. Wallace, please?”

  “Yes!”

  “Hello, Mr. Wallace. I’m phoning from Mark 1 Double Glazing in London. Would you have a moment to talk about double glazing, sir?”

  “Yes!”

  “Have you ever thought about having your house or apartment equipped with double glaze at all?”

  “Yes!”

  “And have you been at all put off in the past by high prices?”

  “Yes, I have. Yes.”

  “Can I ask you, would you be interested in a free, no-obligation quote for double glaze on your property, Mr. Wallace?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay … Well, what we can do is, we can certainly send one of our representatives around to your place of residence. Is there a particular time or day that’s good for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh-huh … and … when would that be?”