Yes Man (36 page)

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.

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.

So the solution was: I would spend
one day
just saying no. That’s how this whole Yes thing had started—one day of utter positivity. I would do the same with negativity. I would spend today saying no to everything—
anything
and everything. And I would show the Challenger the way of the righteous.

So, with confidence I stepped out of the Yorkshire Grey with a whole new adventure to get stuck into. I knew it wouldn’t make me feel as good as my Yes adventure once had, but I knew it was part of the deal. Sure, I couldn’t say I’d enjoy it, and yeah, so it would grate on me, but …

“Excuse me, sir …”

It was a man with a green bib on.

“I was wondering if you’d have two minutes to talk about Help the Aged?”

I smiled.

“No.”

Hey.

That felt …
good
.

I was sitting alone at home, almost cackling.

Why had I never realised just how good it felt to say no before?

I’d arrived home and immediately opened the rest of that morning’s mail—the mail I’d forgotten about as soon as I’d found the new package. I saw that the people at American Express wanted to offer me a new credit card. I wrote them a postcard, saying no. I specifically didn’t do as the ad said by not ringing up to ask where my nearest WeightWatchers meeting was. I got the invite for Paul Lewis’ stag weekend and howled with joy as I wrote back and said I couldn’t be there to watch him and his army pals destroying barges and levelling whole towns with their raucous, witless behaviour (then I scribbled that out and wrote a more polite version—I’m not an idiot). I didn’t buy the “five greatest albums you really must own,” I declined the offer of a free no-obligation quote from Kitchens Direct, and I shouted a cheery “no!” when the advert on cable TV said, “Isn’t it about time you learnt to cook pasta like the professionals?”

Something was happening to me here. Something strange. I was really enjoying myself.

A text message came through from Hanne.

I HAVE AN EXTRA TICKET FOR DAMIEN RICE TONIGHT, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COME.

Damien Rice! I
love
Damien Rice! I gleefully texted back.

NO!

Minutes later Hanne did the same.

RUDE.

Rude. Yeah. But I didn’t care. Because I was the No Man. And this was
just
what I needed.

It was like the Dark Side had taken over.

The Challenger had reared his Darth Vader-like head once again, but this
time he had turned me. A battle between good and evil had started to rage inside me. Well, not
evil
, exactly. More like
grumpy
. Yeah, that was it: A battle between good and grumpy had engulfed me. No was suddenly
good
. No was
great
. I
felt
that now. But could I let it take over? It was tempting. What if I just extended the period of No-ness? I’d done it with the Yes side of things…. It’d be only fair. Did I want to go back to the Good Side at midnight tonight, or did I want to see where a healthy dose of negativity could take me? Sure, it was dangerous, and no, it wouldn’t be much use in January, when I started the new job, but the thought was intriguing. Obviously, I didn’t want life to be exactly the way it had been before, but that had been when I hadn’t been in control. Now, the world of No wouldn’t control
me … I
was in charge! After all, I knew how to use the word properly now. I knew how to handle it. And I could give up any time I wanted.

Ian had thought maybe I was overreacting to the Challenger’s demands. He said I was blowing it out of all proportion, letting him get the better of me and turning him into an evil genius figure, when actually it was probably just someone I knew, winding me up without realising the effects.

Evil genius
, I thought.
Probably just someone I knew …

Interesting choice of words, Ian. Ever been to Liverpool?

I continued to suspect it was Jason. No—not suspect.
Knew
. This was a man I’d seen as an enemy but should now treat as an ally after all he’d done for me. I’d made him furious by denying his way of life was healthy, and so now he’d made me taste it. And it was good. I would e-mail him again…. E-mail him for the third time. E-mail him to tell him that soon I would be like him. Soon I would walk among the rest of the No-bodies. Soon I would reclaim my No. Soon I would run with the Dark Side.

I was excited. I switched on the telly just in time to hear Graham Norton say, “Join me after the break …” So I shouted, “No, Graham Norton, I will
not!”
and switched the telly off again.

This was
brilliant!

That evening I stayed in. Nothing could tempt me out. Each option I came up with in my head was greeted with a pure and resounding no. Great. This was great. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

I stared out of the window for a while, watching the trains go by and the people off on their nights out. When the advert for Domino’s Pizza came on the radio, and the voice of Tony Hawks suggested I try their new two-for-one
combo value meal deal, I just switched off the radio, and tried not to think about how hungry I was.