Yes Man

by Wallace, Danny

  We were a small and happy group, and I felt incredibly welcome. There was such warmth in the air. Warmth toward me but also an overwhelming warmth toward Marc. It seemed to me that he was one of those people you meet in life who have an almost magnetic optimism. Nothing ever seemed like too much trouble for Marc. He loved life, and life seemed to love him right back. Maybe he seemed so comfortable in his own skin because he knew what was important to him—and right up there at the top of the list was friends.

  But I wanted to know more about what saying yes meant to him.

  “Marc … could I ask you something about, you know, si a todo?” I said. “How has it affected …”

  But Marc wasn’t listening.

  “Danny!” he said. “An egg!”

  Eh?

  “Here—take this …”

  Marc suddenly produced an egg. By which I mean he took one out of his pocket—not that he sat down and laid one.

  “An egg?” I said.

  “Here! For you!”

  And then he slammed it onto the table, rolled it, and peeled off its shell in one elaborate movement.

  “An egg for you!”

  I didn’t quite know what to say. It’s not often men I’ve just met take eggs out of their pockets and peel them for me.

  “Si a todo,” he said. “Take the egg!”

  “Take the egg?”

  “Take the egg!”

  I could only imagine that this was some kind of proud Spanish tradition, and to refuse a boiled egg when it is both peeled and offered would be a major racial slur. I took the egg and raised it at the girl behind the bar.

  “I am taking the egg!” I said, and then popped it in my mouth.

  “So, is this a Spanish tradition?” I asked Jonas, the German, between chews.

  “No,” he said. “Sometimes Marc just likes to eat an egg.”

  “Come on!” said Marc. “We continue on … si a todo, Danny, we go somewhere else, now … a party for a new club, I have invitations for us both …”

  “Great!” I said. A party! An exclusive nightclub opening, in a hip and slick city! I was filled with a new hope. Surely this was what being a Yes Man was all about. Marc knew it, and now so did I.

  “Come on, we go now …”

  And so Marc and I left the others at the bar and set off in search of this brand-new party. For once it wasn’t me chasing a Yes…. I was saying yes to someone else’s Yes. It was like Yes squared!

  “Hey, Marc,” I said as we walked through a precinct and around a man on Rollerblades who appeared to be doing tai-chi. “Could I talk to you a bit now about saying yes, because I’ve been saying it for some months now, and while it’s been great, there have also been downsides. I’ve done things I should never have done, and—”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, saying yes has been great. But certain things have happened. And”—I thought of Lizzie, and then of Kristen, but pushed the thoughts aside again—“I just want to make sure I’m doing this properly. I mean, did you ever …”

  “Here we are! The club!”

  Marc approached a bouncer and pointed at me and said something. The bouncer nodded, and we were ushered straight in.

  I had been desperate to talk to Marc and seek his advice. But almost as soon as we’d entered the club, I’d ended up speaking to a friend of a friend of his friend, who seemed determined to tell me every last detail of her life.

  “My ex-boyfriend,” she said as my eyes darted round the room, trying to find Marc again, “he went to London in the summer.”

  “Oh, did he?” I said.

  I couldn’t see Marc anywhere. Just acres of suited, booted, ultra smart and trendy Spaniards in Barcelona’s newest—and most velvety—club.

  “Yes. He liked London very much.”

  “Good,” I said.

  A man in a black suit with his shirt unbuttoned to the waist walked past me. He stopped at a mirror to check himself out. I think he was wearing foundation.

  “My ex, he is a liar,” said the girl, and my ears pricked up.

  “A liar?” I said.

  “Yes. A liar,” she said.

  She didn’t seem at all sad about it, but I felt bad for her.

  “God,” I said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  The man was still checking himself out in the mirror. He seemed to be really enjoying the view.

  “Why you say you are sorry?” said the girl.

  “Well … it’s not good to be a liar.”

  “It’s good!” she said, a little offended. “He was liar, famous Spanish liar!”

  “He was a famous Spanish liar?”

  “Yes. A criminal liar.”

  The man in the mirror had been joined by his friend, this one with the most elaborately crafted facial hair I have ever seen and who had now also locked eyes with himself in the mirror.

  “He was a famous Spanish criminal liar? Are you sure that’s good?”

  Both men nodded at themselves, then at each other, and wandered off, probably to find another mirror.

  “My ex was a liar in the best court in Spain!”

  “Oh,” I said, realising what she’d meant. “A lawyer?”

  “Yes. Liar. What did you say?”

  “I said lawyer.’ I thought you said ‘liar.’”

  “What is different?”

  A more cynical man than I would say she probably had a point.

  “Danny! Si a todo!” shouted Marc, when he was back by my side. He had two glasses of champagne in his hand, and he now appeared to be wearing a cravatte. He handed me a glass, and then slapped me on the back. I laughed. I really, really liked Marc. I found it hard to explain. After all, we’d only just met. But it seemed like he had a passion for life that up until now I’d been trying to force. It just seemed to come naturally to him.

  “Come, sit up there,” he said, pointing to a raised area near the dance floor. A few people sat there, sipping drinks and looking like the Barcelona elite. The man with the elaborate facial hair was staring into his glass, probably trying to catch a glimpse of himself in an ice cube.

  “I will,” I said. “And perhaps then you could talk to me about being a Yes Man …”

  I was keen to bond with Marc. Not just as friends—but as Yes Men.

  “Sure, sure, we will,” he said. “But remember—this is only the beginning! We have plenty of time!”

  It didn’t feel like the right moment to remind Marc that I’d be returning home to London the very next day, so I took my drink over to the raised area, and took a seat. Marc made it halfway, but was whisked away by a glamourous woman who seemed to want to speak to him. A moment after I sat down, I was joined by a gentleman in a shiny, sequinned suit.

  “Hola,” he said.

  “Hola,” I said, and then there we sat, neither of us speaking, both of us staring at the dance floor, which was slowly filling up.

  I decided I shouldn’t be too fixated on asking Marc about his experiences of Yes. After all, I was seeing it firsthand, right now, and here in Barcelona. For Marc, saying yes wasn’t as technical and regimented as I’d made it. It was just a general attitude of positivity and freedom, of going with the flow and of seeing what happens.

  Some kind of announcement came over the speaker system, but as it was in Spanish, I couldn’t make it out. Whatever it was, it must have been encouraging people to get down onto the dance floor and have a bit of a dance, because as soon as it finished, the five or six people sitting on the raised area with me got up and headed toward it. Only myself and the man in the shiny suit remained, and we looked at each other and smiled. I felt bad, though—what was I missing out on? Had I ignored a direct instruction? Had I missed a Yes moment? Where was Marc to translate? I looked out over at the dance floor, but couldn’t see him. It was suddenly crowded. No one was dancing, though. They were all just standing there, chatting. I stood up to get a better view, and so did the man in the shiny suit next to me. He leaned over and said something to me in Spanish, an
d I masked the fact that I didn’t understand it by just smiling. He said it again, and I shrugged and smiled. And then, suddenly, and quite without warning, I lit up.

  A spotlight had swung around and was trained on the raised area. Some music kicked in. It got louder, and there was a cheer. What the hell was going on here? I went to tap the man in the shiny suit on the shoulder, but to my horror noticed he had just whipped out a microphone. Oh, good God. This man was a singer. A singer in a shiny suit. A singer, standing on a raised area, in front of a dance floor packed with specially invited guests. A singer, who had just started to sing a Spanish pop song while I—a hugely embarrassed-looking bystander—shared a stage with him.

  I immediately tried to get off the raised area and into the crowd in front of me, but the man in the shiny suit had moved forward, effectively blocking off the stairs. Unless I physically tried to move him aside, I was stuck. I looked behind me. There was just a wall. I had no way out. I had no way out!

  So, I did the only thing I could. I sheepishly sat back down on my chair and pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing. I stared at my feet and prayed that the song would be over soon. Once, I managed to look up, only to see a vast sea of people staring at me like I was some kind of freak of nature or part of the show that they just didn’t understand. Soon, people started taking photographs. In the corner of my eye, I noticed a news crew. I had no idea who this man singing this song was, but he was clearly someone a little more famous in Spain than he is in Britain. I realised with mounting horror, that any and all footage of this bloke’s opening song would feature a bright red man with glasses sitting quietly in the background wishing to God he spoke Spanish and could have understood what can only have been a request for anyone who wasn’t a Spanish pop star to leave the stage!

  The song went on for an absolute age. It was longer than any song I have ever heard in my entire life. But it was probably the instrumental section that was worst. At least the singer could do a little dance while that was on—but me? I could only sit there. I glanced up once again and noticed that most of the people in the front row were fixated not on the celebrity gyrating in front of them—but on his backing group. Me.

  I tried to affect a casual air now, tapping along in time with the music, like in some bizarre and very wrong way I was supposed to be there, and finally, thankfully, the song came to an abrupt and welcome end. The crowd went mad. The flashbulbs flashed all over the place, thus ensuring my embarrassing bit part in the history of this club was recorded forever, someone somewhere screamed, and one man shouted for an encore. The man in the shiny suit took a bow, raised his hand to the crowd, and backed away, casting me a suspicious look as he exited stage right. The spotlight faded, some different music started up, and I slowly and carefully stood up and tried to walk off the stage with as much dignity as a man who’d accidentally gatecrashed an important gig could muster.

  “Danny!” said Marc, suddenly behind me. “Come on! I have just received a phone call…. A friend has invited us for a drink! A beautiful house! High on the hills! You will see all of Barcelona! Come, now, we go!”

  Half an hour later I was standing on the balcony of the renowned Spanish artist called Gaspar, surveying all of Barcelona beneath me. I knew Gaspar was renowned because there was a shiny leaflet on his couch that said as much, and I knew he was Spanish because he had a huge glass of wine in each hand.

  Marc and I looked out over a beautiful city while Gaspar fixed us some olives. It was an altogether quite random moment. Another example of where Yes had taken me, when I had just let it.

  “Danny …,” said Gaspar, a bearded and important-looking man. “I feel I have met you before….”

  “Do you?” I said. “I’ve never actually been to Barcelona before.”

  “Maybe in London? I was in London very recently. But we did not meet, I think …”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Somewhere in the house—a grand, airy house—a phone rang, and Gaspar excused himself.

  “Marc,” I said, and he made his little chirping sound in response. “I find it incredible that I’m here. You know? I mean, I know that on paper, I’m just at some bloke’s house in Spain. But at the same time, I feel like it’s fate that brought me here. Because all I did was let things happen … and here I am.”

  “You have to let things happen,” said Marc. “The world knows what it is doing. Si a todo is a very powerful expression.”

  “But what does it mean to you? Because I think that although we both say yes a lot, you do it slightly differently.”

  “For me, it is an attitude. People look at me strangely when I say si a todo. They say, you would say yes to war as well? To terrorismo? To bad things? Well, no. I like to live by a more positive way…. I don’t say no to war. I say yes to peace.”

  The words were familiar. Very familiar.

  “That’s exactly what some other people said to me recently,” I said. “I met some peace protestors in London, by chance. They wanted me to help them chalk for peace … and when I did, that’s what they said. ‘Yes to Peace’ instead of ‘No to War.’”

  “La casualidad no existe, Danny!” said Marc. “The world knows what it is doing.”

  Just then Gaspar walked back onto the balcony.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I am preparing for a big exhibition. New ideas. No one has seen them before, and I am getting things ready. That was a friend of mine calling. A Portugese artist who lives in England.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Whereabouts?”

  “He lives in Bath.”

  I was shocked.

  “That’s where I grew up,” I said. “My parents live there.”

  Marc made his little chirping noise.

  “Coincidence does not exist! La casualidad no existe!”

  “How strange!” said Gaspar. “But also … this is strange too. After I talked to him about my trip to England, I remembered where I know you from.”

  He stood a little bit closer to me.

  “I saw you on television.”

  Oh. God. I knew exactly where as well. In the background of the nine o’clock news as I sat behind a man in a shiny suit as he sang a Spanish pop song. But then he looked concerned, like he was straining to remember something …

  “You were doing … ah, what was it? Like this …”

  Gaspar started making a poking motion.

  Oh my God.

  Gaspar had seen me on Richard & Judy!

  “But … how?”

  “I was in London. I had a TV in my hotel.”

  “But that was only the other day!”

  “Yes!”

  Holy bloody Mary.

  Marc started to laugh and laugh and laugh.

  “La casualidad no existe!” he said. “There are connections everywhere! Sometimes we are brought to certain points, and we do not know why….”

  I was amazed, and I thought of Samten. This was a ridiculous coincidence. And this wasn’t some bloke off the street in London who’d seen me do my first-ever piece of TV presenting. This was a world-renowned artist—in Spain! A man whose house I was in only because of another man, who I would never have met had a sound recordist on a show I should never have been on (were it not for a party I probably never should have gone to), not told me about him. I mean, what were the odds?

  “It is incredible what can happen,” said Marc, “when you allow it to….”

  I stood there on a balcony under a million stars.

  The following morning I had a few hours to kill, and I started by killing one of them in an Internet café on La Ramblas—the most touristy of all Barcelona’s roads. I wanted to tell someone—anyone—about the events of the night before. I wanted to e-mail Ricky and thank him for telling me about Marc.

  I had been genuinely inspired by my short time with Marc. He was someone brave enough to just let things happen. To roll with the punches. To go where the wind took him. And he’d changed my attitude, somewhat. I slowly realised that I had b
een treating Yeses like they were against me. That they were challenges to be overcome. That they were things I could fail. In actual fact they were just part of life. And if I treated them like Marc did, they would become life.

  It seemed to me that perhaps Maitreya was a red herring. It seemed to me that we could meet enlightened beings every day, if we just looked out for them. The ordinary could be magical.

  There was another reason for coming to the Internet café. There was something I needed to check out. Something I’d seen in a magazine. Something I had decided to let happen …

  I’d found the magazine in the lobby of the hotel that morning. It was a general lifestyle magazine with all that that entails—fashion, music, sport, travel … the usual. I’d flicked through it, taking no real interest, but there’d been one thing in it that really struck me. One sentence that I’d needed to translate, and then check out. And once I’d checked it out, needed to act upon …

  I’d be meeting Marc at a restaurant just down the road to say good-bye and thank him—and to give him a gift as well. A special one.

  I bought a can of Coke and sat down at a screen, logged in, and headed for my e-mail. I had a few waiting for me, but one name leapt out at me straight away.

  Lizzie.

  Hey, you …]

  Guess what? I’m coming to London. I’ll be there on December 2, for nine days, for work … this might be a little cheeky, but … can I stay at your place? Tell me to get lost, if not. But it would be great to see you …

  L

  It was the best news I could have hoped for. December 2. Ten days away.

  Amazing. Just look at what life does when you let it.

  I was understandably buoyant when I met up with Marc.

  “Hola, hombre,” he said, and we walked through the streets at pace again. “Come, I show you some of the city that you didn’t see….”

  And even though it didn’t seem like we had time, we squeezed it in. Marc bumped into more friends, of course, and said si every time they told him about another event he had to come to.

  “They have a party next week,” he said after meeting one friend. “He has a house to paint, I help him,” after meeting another friend.