I had a high school English teacher named Mr. Turk, who insisted that the best sentences in the world were just two words. Subject and verb. He said our class had proven too dense to understand prepositions. "We define the limitations of experience with action," he said. So he had us practice one afternoon, on a single piece of paper, writing these two-word sentences, which he considered elemental. Irreplaceable, even. "Two words," he said. I worked.

I do. I insist. You will. She flew.

I thought it was a pointless exercise. I was seventeen; we all were, more or less. In a year, some of us would have jobs. Within two years, one of the boys in the room would be dead. (He died.) But I persisted, because the exercise was incredibly easy. At one point, someone raised his hand and asked, "What about a one-word sentence? Wouldn't that be even more pure?"

Turk allowed that it might. "What would that word be?" he asked.

"Yes," the kid said. "Just 'Yes.' Like 'Yes,' period. Wouldn't 'Yes' make the best sentence ever?"

Mr. Turk pursed his lips. "No," he said. And then he said nothing else.

I've never been a guy who can figure out puzzles. Tell me a riddle, I'll ask for the answer. But I understood this one right away. He wasn't saying, "No, that answer is wrong." He was saying, "No." The purest sentence isn't "Yes," with all its affirming possibilities; it is the loud door-slam of "No." He was proving that much. The kid argued. Though there were people who thought he was being cruel, Mr. Turk just kept saying, "No."

Yes suggests pleasure. It wants something. Salesmen train themselves to use yes at the beginning of a sentence, no matter what, which is why when you say it enough, the word yes starts to feel like a con.

But no is cold and heavy. It puts an end to things. In that way, it is a word of control. Its very use suggests a speaker who actually knows something, who won't bend, who won't give in to what you want simply because you want it. No says the case has not been made.

Cops use it. Operators use it. Good teachers, too. I'd always wanted to be a guy who simply said no. So that's what I did for a month. Whenever I didn't want to do something, I didn't hesitate, didn't explain. I just said no.

I didn't say it more often than usual -- this was not a diet. I was just going to say no. Not "Hell no." Or "No way." Or "Nope. Sorry." Just "No." I was going to change this one behavior, my own tendency to elaborate, to explain, to set the record straight when turning people down, when risking the disappointment of others, just to see what it changed in the equation of influence.

I'm a parent, so it wasn't hard to imagine saying no to my children. Trouble is, I'd fallen into a pattern of explaining like some soft TV father every time I said it. I wanted them to understand. I wanted to be fair. So I tended to explain. To my eighteen-year-old, I might have said: "No, Gus, you can't have a drink. I don't like the law, but the drinking age is twenty-one. When I was a kid, it was eighteen, so I know you can handle it. But that really had its good side and its bad side. Believe me. In the end, I think I have to say no." Fucking Alan Thicke.

But when he really did ask if he and a couple of buddies could have a few beers at my house, I just said no. No follow-up, no prevarication, no buddying up for a sympathy injection. Clarity. That's the first lesson: A simple no grants clarity. It makes your agenda transparent. It asserts what you want as clearly and fairly as any sort of affirmation, but there's no risk of muddying your message.

Waiters. Shuttle-bus drivers. Flight attendants. I began to see how many meaningless questions came my way through the service industry. By asking questions -- Did I want a take-home box? Fresh ground pepper? Could they take that bag for me? -- they were saliently asserting that the conventions of their typical service were somehow favors they might grant me. The problem wasn't my answer, it was their questions. In their own way, these endless questions were an attempt to dominate the transaction, to make it be about them and not me.

My nos gave me control. No. No. No.

At the video store, returning a movie, the kid who had recommended it asked if I'd liked it. No. He waited a beat, then two. "I gotta comp that then," he said, without a pause. "Sorry, man. How about Derailed? You like Jennifer Aniston?" No. He put his hand to his chin, thinking. Now he was working for me. Same week, at the car wash, where the idiot attendant always runs me through every choice before letting me choose the cheapest wash, I gunned him down at every turn. Deluxe? No. Super Wash? No. Wash 'n' Wax? No. I wasn't pushing back or acting annoyed. I just wasn't wasting time. The pointlessness of this sort of daily transaction dropped away. My mind felt clean. Meanwhile, he was reconsidering his own behavior. The simple no had cleaned up the transaction. He nodded, message received. "You just like a basic wash," he said, sliding my debit card. "I remember." He hasn't forgotten since.

I even refined my delivery: a level affect, a calm demeanor, an internalized respect for the job, but nothing else. I just fell into a smaller me, shooting for a nice, even voice on my single-syllable response. For a while it felt like a costume, as I'm usually a talker. I like the schmooze, and I've always been able to talk my way in. But that stuff was still available. I just wasn't explaining or apologizing, nor was I expressing anything tacit. No annoyance. No anger. But no false appreciation, either. It stripped me a little. Less artifice. I'd even say it gave me the upper hand more often than I expected.

Late in the year at the college where I teach, students approach teachers with a million questions, each born of their own anxiety. They want independent studies. They want special permission to get into my class. Could I read this thesis by the next night? Could they get extra credit? Once again, I said yes when I determined I could or when I wanted to. But when I gave a question some thought and decided it shouldn't happen, I simply said no. I never offered an apology or rationale. It pissed many of them off mightily, I could see -- and I understood that those were the ones who felt that I worked for them, that I was more their houseboy than their teacher. But most welcomed the clarity and direction. Two days before the end of the semester, a kid from my class approached me. I'd told him his grade range; he was worried about it, though he should not have been. Was there anything else he could do to raise his grade? he asked.

These are moments of truth for me. I knew the answer, but I wanted him to feel better, too. Before, I might have scrounged around to give him some hope. Now that just seemed silly. He was passing, his work was done. I rolled the answer around in my brain and looked at him. As I did, I began to see what he was worried about -- his other classes. He wanted to raise my grade to pull up his average. I could see he actually needed some help.

"No," I said, thumbs in pockets, briefcase hanging from my fingers. His reaction was swift and without drama. I looked up at the trees. "Do you want to get some coffee?" I said.

"To talk about the grade?"

"No," I said.

"To drink some coffee?" he asked.

"We can talk about your other classes," I said. "See where you stand."

He looked relieved, grateful. I asked if he drank coffee. He said no. We went anyway, as there was work to be done.

Problem is, of course, it feels rude to say no. I didn't like saying no to my girlfriend, because she has at least some right to the inside of my mind. Saying no just locked her out. First time I did it, she was asking about a movie to rent, and she looked a little hurt. The second time, when we were discussing her daughter's band concert, she squinted at me. The third time we were driving by a restaurant we both like from time to time, and I said no when she asked if I wanted to grab a bite there.

At times like this, with people I love, the no just felt empty and a little incomplete. At the stoplight, she leaned over and spoke: "I think I want to be left out of this little experiment."

But I wanted her in. I didn't see how it could work without her.

"No," I said.

And she shook her head and said nothing. She grabbed me, put her hands to my cheeks, and pressed in. "No," she said. She wasn't repeating after me. She was saying what she would not bear. She was using the clearest word of all to tell me what she didn't want. This was her form of clarity. And it was clear. As I'd learned, that kind of thing can change minds.

"Okay," I said, putting my arm around her, pulling her in. "No more. I promise." Then I turned, and we went back to the restaurant. We ate.

Published in the May 2008 issue

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