Review Mode: "Yes" Isn't Always the Right Answer

Like when your date asks if they can play jazz guitar at you

Welcome to Review Mode, a biweekly newsletter where I mark up my social interactions, mining my, like, medical-grade self-monitoring for your reading pleasure.

I try to be a pretty open, amenable person, ready to accept to any gifts the universe has to offer or whatever, but I think I need to get better at recognizing when something pretty clearly doesn’t sound like a good time.

If I do manage to be an open-minded person, it’s only because I try so hard to be. By nature, I’m an untrusting coward. The thing is — this is embarrassing for me to admit — seeing the Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man (2008) at an impressionable age left a big mark on me. The film has a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes. It would probably be the first answer that would spring to mind if you asked me, “Quick! What’s a mediocre movie?”

It follows Carrey as Carl Allen, a depressive guy who’s always turning down invitations and moping around at home. One day, he gets dragged to a cultish seminar about the power of saying yes, and through some contrived mechanism, he ends up having to say yes to all offers and experiences that come his way. Get this — his life becomes more fulfilling.

When I was watching it, a middle schooler constantly inhibited by a fog of anxiety and fear, I internalized that shit. I was like “Look how much fun Jim Carrey is having flying airplanes and making out with Zooey Deschanel.” Today, I’m not great at seeking out adventures, but when an opportunity for a new experience falls into my lap, and there’s no immediate physical or emotional danger, I try to lean into my curiosity and go for it.

The problem is, in the following interaction, I underestimated the emotional danger present. Having jazz guitar played at you on a date can cause real psychological harm.

So, I was on a second date with this guy we’ll call Brent. Brent’s kind of an outlier in my dating pool in that he seems like the kind of guy things come easily to. Tall, good-looking, confident, wears expensive cologne. Sure, he’s got his stuff he struggles with, but he’s no underdog. He can get away with stuff that the less handsome among us can’t.

We were at Brent’s apartment, unless it’s my parents reading this, in which case we were in a public place where only appropriate things can happen. A Guitar Center. We were in a Guitar Center. We’d just finished uhh shopping for guitars, and we were in sort of a lull.

Brent asked if he could play the guitar piece he was working on for me. That’s key — he asked permission. So, everything that follows is completely consensual. It’s why this is not an anecdote about a bad thing that someone else did to me. It’s one about me being bad at recognizing and advocating for my interests.

I repeated the question back to him, not quite believing that I’d heard him right. That should’ve been the cue to myself that this was not a situation I wanted to be in. Incredulity isn’t often the reaction people have to something that sounds normal and cool.

Obviously, it occurred to me in the moment that having guitar played at you by a guy on a date is a famously not very fun situation. It’s one that’s been much discussed and widely ridiculed. I’ve seen Barbie. I’ve heard the “Anyway, here’s Wonderwall” jokes.

Hell, there were moments when I was younger when I put other people in similar situations, and I’m embarrassed by those to this day. So, I know full well that playing guitar at people is a widely-acknowledged faux pas.

But still, I think on some level, I kind of thought I was built different? Or maybe that other people were just too judgmental? Like, I’d never had someone play jazz guitar at me, so how could I be sure it wouldn’t be fun?

I’d looked this guy up after our first date and found a video of him playing, and honestly, to the extent that a white guy jazz guitar hobbyist can be good at it, he was good. And hey, I like live music. So I thought maybe it would turn out to be kind of a nice time. Relaxing.

Nope.

Turns out it’s different, when you’re in a vulnerable, intimate situation, having music played at you while you just kinda sit there. When you’re watching a YouTube video, you’re in control. You can click out after 15 seconds. Not so much when you’re having guitar played at you in person at close range while sitting on the guy’s bed a chair at Guitar Center.

What I’m about to say is gonna sound dramatic, and it’s probably super problematic, but it’s the only analogy I’ve been able to come up with that captures the emotional experience. Being relegated to audience member in such an intimate context — even consensually — made me feel as used and depersonalized as times when I’ve had minor sexual boundaries violated. It sent me right out of my body. It made me feel interchangeable, like I could’ve been any mirror he was holding up to himself.

Also, I think it’s relevant context that he and I had both been clear about the fact that this date was never going to lead to a serious relationship. Maybe, if I was falling in love with someone, seeing them do the thing that they felt deeply passionate about would be awesome and beautiful. I don’t know.

As it was, it sort of felt like, “Hey, if you’re gonna use me, could you at least do it in a way that’s fun for me too?”

After a bit, I did interrupt his playing to stop him. I tried to phrase it gently and take accountability, but unsurprisingly, it still clearly really hurt him. I’m not sure what the kindest way to stop him would’ve been, but I can’t imagine there’s any great way to do it.

So then I’m sitting there feeling used, and he’s sitting there feeling ashamed and possibly a bit resentful. And now I no longer get to go on dates with a hot guy who looks like he would’ve bullied me in high school¹. All cause I didn’t say no to an experience that, in retrospect, obviously wasn’t going to be a good time.

In Yes Man, Carl’s Act 3 turning point comes when he takes a stand and says no to his ex-wife’s advances, even though he thinks he’ll be punished by the universe for doing so. Several hijinks later, he learns that it’s okay to say no sometimes. Then he kisses Zooey Deschanel some more.

Do you realize how dumb it makes me feel that I made a painful mistake that could’ve been prevented if I’d just had a more nuanced understanding of the film Yes Man???

The Lesson That I Should but Probably Won’t Learn from This: If your response to an ask is “did that guy really just ask that??” then maybe “no” or even “let me think about it” is an okay answer.

Carson’s Life Updates

• Speaking of mid-tier movies from the ‘00s, I watched the 2003 film Down with Love with a couple friends (the very funny Max Gross and Micah Eames), and my takeaway from it was that we need more movies with pretty men who love being pretty. Bring preening back!

  

  Ewan McGregor in the role of “pretty”

• The next Friendly’s (the gay show in Brooklyn I cohost with Max Higgins) is on 2/18 — stacked lineup. Charlene Kaye, Jo Sunday, Max Gross, Riylan Mills. Tix here.

• Over the weekend, I learned after doing a set that Bob Odenkirk was in the audience — thank god I didn’t know that beforehand. I took a very bad selfie with him. I’m not gonna share it, since that would be gauche, but know that it’s blurry and backlit, and while I’m smiling wide, he kind of looks like a bemused turtle.

The Boilerplate

Carson Olshansky (still they/them, despite the haters) is a Brooklyn-based comedian and writer. If you don’t already, you can follow them at @carsonolshansky on Instagram and TikTok and at @carson-olshansky on YouTube.

1. If my desire to do this evinces some very obvious trauma response, that’s fine. It’s relatively low on my list of neuroses to work through.