By Liz Prato and Yuvi Zalkow
CW: Sex harassment and abuse
Once upon a time (a few months ago, or something like that), there were two friends named Yuvi and Liz, who unknowingly embarked on similar writing projects. They can no longer remember exactly which scandal(s) sparked their ideas (so many choose from!), but both writing projects fit the broad category of Men Behaving Badly.
And to be honest, “writing project” isn’t a super accurate description of their projects. It was more like “fucking around with schematics” or “drawing shit with arrows.” Yuvi had a lot of experience Fucking Around with Schematics and Drawing Shit with Arrows: he regularly creates videos and presentations, both for work & for fun (or to avoid doing work). Liz, on the other hand, has virtually no techno creative skills, and almost always calls Yuvi when she needs help with anything more advanced than opening a Word doc. However, in this case, she decided to bravely forge ahead on her own.
When Liz had achieved something sort of closely resembling what she kind of wanted (she originally called it a “Are a You a Scumbag? A Decision Tree”), she realized its enormous shortcomings, and sent it to Yuvi, asking his opinion.
His response was “Ha! This is kinda sorta similar to something I wrote up six months ago but failed to send out into the world.”
Yuvi’s schematic was called “FAQ for a Married Politician Thinking About Sexting Someone.”
It turned out Liz’s schematic wasn’t a true decision tree, and Yuvi’s wasn’t a FAQ but was actually a decision tree. But that’s not the point, so much as these two friends, independent of each other, were thinking about the bad behavior of certain men and why, exactly, they find it SO HARD to make the right decisions. Liz and Yuvi wanted to help. So, now, they introduce to the world: whatever the hell these things are.
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Yuvi Zalkow’s (he/him/his) forthcoming novel, I Only Cry with Emoticons (Red Hen Press, June 2022), is about a tech guy struggling to disconnect from his devices and to connect with the people in his life. His debut novel, A Brilliant Novel in the Works (about a guy named Yuvi who can’t write a novel) is available wherever self-conscious books are sold. In addition to writing novels, Yuvi writes stories and essays, creates poorly-animated videos, and develops neurotic apps for iOS devices. Yuvi tends to be obsessed with creativity, failure, shame, and chronic pain, and also does technical writing on the side. Except that it is “the side” that takes up all business hours and pays better than contributor’s copies. yuvizalkow.com
Liz Prato’s (she/hers) newest essay collection, Kids in America: A Gen X Reckoning (SFWP, June 2022), reveals a generation deeply affected by terrorism, racial inequality, rape culture, and mental illness when none of these issues were openly discussed. (It also has a pretty long essay about Beverely Hills, 90210.) Liz is also the author of Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege: Essays on Hawai‘i (Overcup Press), a 2019 New York Times Top Summer Read and finalist for the Oregon Book Award; and Baby’s on Fire: Stories. Her work was named a Notable selection in Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing 2018, and has appeared in numerous publications. She is Editor at Large for Forest Avenue Press, and is an eternal seeker of aloha. lizprato.com
