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For Maria Dahvana Headley, that meant embarking on her Year of Yes — dating every guy that asked her out.
In total she dated 150 men, including a street person who thought he was Jimi Hendrix, a millionaire who still lived with his mom and a 70-year-old eccentric who didn’t speak a word of English.
In the end, it was worth it because she also met The One — and he wasn’t at all as she’d imagined he’d be.
"I’d had two years of bad dates. My taste was bad because I was so picky so I decided to reverse that and not be picky at all," says the now 28-year-old author, who chronicles her dating adventures in her new book, The Year of Yes (Hyperion).
“I’m an impatient person. People said to me, ‘You’re only 20. How could you be so impatient?’ I just wanted to find love,” says Headley, who is now 28.
Saying a big, fat “no” to the world, and all of its men had only netted her a big zero. It was time to start saying “yes.”
The Marsing, Idaho, transplant didn’t have any difficulty meeting people in New York City.
Her rule was, she would go out with them provided they weren’t drunk, obviously violent or drugged out.
There was the software millionaire she met in a checkout line, who still lived with his mother.
“We were having coffee at Starbucks. He pounced on me and licked my eyeball.
That date went on longer than it should have, but he was so weird I was terribly curious,” she laughs.
There was the homeless guy, a mime who proposed to her with hand gestures and the 70-year-old who only spoke Spanish.
And then, there was Robert Schenkkan, the Pulitzer Prize winner she met at a playwrights’ conference.
“I was enamoured by him, but he was married, 25 years older and had two kids,” says Headley.
“I thought, I would love to meet someone just like him without his baggage.”
Little did she know, baggage or not, she’d just met her future husband.
Eight months later, Schenkkan called her from Seattle and told her he was getting divorced. They planned a visit, and from the first night they spent together she knew he was The One.
Two years later she moved to Seattle, and shortly after, they were married.
Headley says her extreme measures taught her to be more open-minded.
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