Free The Year of Yes by Maria Dahvana Headley

prospective boyfriend, I thought that the boxing made up for it. It gave him a certain working-class appeal, a grounding in the physical that convinced me that he’d never try to knock me out with references to Rushdie.
    We went out to a sports bar (a sports bar! I rejoiced. It was so not my taste, and since I thought my taste had historically sucked, anything in opposition to it seemed like a great idea) and watched baseball. He had another friend with him, who was possibly there to evaluate me. I was wearing the wrong thing. Red dress. Far too sexy for a bar full of televisions and beer. I feared that my dress made me look desperate, and so I spent the entire evening tugging at it, trying to make it less bombshell and more windbreaker. Not possible. The Boxer said almost nothing to me the whole night, and I went home, feeling dweeby.
    When the Boxer called me later that week, and asked if I wanted to meet up that night, I was surprised, but pleased.
    “Meet me at six,” he said, and gave me an address on Broadway. Maybe he liked me after all. I could see myself liking him. He was intelligent, funny, and a gentleman! He hadn’t even tried to kiss me on the first date! I revised my opinions of him, and decided that he was just old-fashioned. Nothing wrong with old-fashioned.
    LATER THAT NIGHT, I walked down the street in search of our meeting place, expecting dinner, and maybe a play, given that we were roughly in the theater district. The neighborhood got less and less likely as I walked. I checked the address. Maybe I’d gotten something wrong. There was nothing on this corner. Nothing, that is, but something called Flashdancers, A Gentleman’s Club. I’d seen this place advertised on the tops of taxis, a busty blonde in four sequins and a smile, offering herself up to traffic. Despite the fact thatthe sign was neon, I deluded myself into thinking that “gentleman’s club” meant the sort of dark, oak-paneled bar where you might find F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway drinking expensive scotch and smoking tobacco peddled by cigarette girls. I didn’t think I could just walk in. Probably, I thought, I wasn’t even allowed. I walked up to the big, bald guy standing outside, and nervously asked him if I had the right address.
    “You wanna go inside?” He grinned at me. Gold tooth.
    “I’m supposed to meet someone. But is there a restaurant? I think I might be lost.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “We have an all-you-can-eat buffet.” He winked, in a friendly manner. I looked at a sign posted next to the door, advertising the buffet. I felt happier. This was good news. Maybe it was one of those secret New York places. There was a club downtown, for example, that you had to access through a tunnel that started in the storage room of a grocery store. The clammy, dark passageway was the epitome of creepy, but if you had enough faith to get through the vault door at the end, you hit paradise: an old speakeasy, with swing music, velvet couches, and great martinis. I couldn’t imagine that the Boxer would actually take me somewhere sleazy. We had to go to school together, after all, and it’d be too embarrassing. I peered into the dark hallway beyond the door, but couldn’t see anything.
    “Do you think he’s inside already?”
    “Shit, I don’t know. You wanna go in, or you wanna stay out?” The bouncer was looking impatient.
    “I guess I’ll go in.”
    “That’s twenty bucks.” He stuck out a palm as big as my face.
    I’d never been to a bar that had such a big cover charge before. I dug in my purse, but I only had eight dollars.
    “Only because you’re a chick. Get in before I change my mind,” said the bouncer, waving me in for free. I wadded my money into my purse and ducked through a curtain.
    AT THE END OF A SHORT HALLWAY I found a holiday inn dining room: metal chairs with wipe-clean burgundy upholstery, small fake-marble tables, and little fake-crystal vases with fake flowers in them. A steam table