Yes Means Yes

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Speaking of big mistakes made in California, the Governor signed a law regulating sexual conduct at the university. Affirmative assent must be given, and never assumed the law states, on college campuses, although not elsewhere. This opens up the widest possible grammatical interpretations. 

Affirmative assent must be verbal, but must it also be oral?  There is a difference as you all know. 

And there is a crucial difference between “Yes you can” and “Yes you may.” Horny sophomores missing that fine point might find themselves in jail.

And No always means No, but does it mean No Not Now, or does it mean No Not Ever? This is a point of law that awaits adjudication. Bring on the lawyers.

There is a kind of progress here. We no longer have meddlesome priests dictating morality. No black-robed zealots screaming damnation. No clique of pinch-faced clerics inhibiting our natural desires. We are free of the Church, at last.

Unfortunately, that leaves the secular chieftains in charge. The poor college students – piling up massive debts while making painstaking bureaucratic distinctions at a Saturday night drinking brawl.  It will be a feast for the lawyers.

Personally, I avoid college campuses. I do not take these people seriously to any degree. 

Losing My Touch

That wasn’t even funny – what I just wrote. I’m losing my touch.

No, no, just let me try again. First, I know nothing about campus life in the year 2014, and if they say they have a problem, and if they say this is how they will deal with it, then who am I to go against them.

In other words, I have no knowledge about the nature of sexual congress among the young people. I only know they are tormented, passionate, idealistic and troubled. I only wish them the best, and I hope it can be wonderful for them.

But yes is such a word! Yes is such a big important and powerful word! Yes is a most American word. Yes is who we are and what we do. Yes is Walt Whitman and the broad expanses of Kansas. Yes is Kurt Vonnegut saying Yes in spite of everything and everybody saying No. Yes is Oprah Winfrey and her trite confessions of self-esteem, but it is Yes, still Yes. Yes is winter in Chicago. Yes is the blues in New Orleans and Yes is the rain in Oregon.

Yes means Yes, most emphatically and most completely Yes, most consciously and most deliberately Yes, and Yes forever and always Yes. 

Molly Bloom Said Yes

“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

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