by Emily Dalton
beneath the exhilaration
of a new shade.
YOUR FRIENDS LIKE TO ASK
“How do you solve a problem like Max Willard?”
What is it about
your love for German and Maria von Trapp?
Your affinity for the bizarre phonics
of a language that compels you to shout things like
“Das ist Quatsch!” and “schwieriges Leben” at random?
Your knowledge of dance-club culture in Berlin?
Your fixation on a country
still healing from its tragic history
of identity-suppression
and shame?
I’ll never tell you that sometimes,
when Jo and I sit with you and your friends
in the dining hall, or pregame with you
on the sixth floor of Milliken,
I confess to myself
that you fascinate me
with your shaggy, unkempt hair,
your grungy fashion sense,
and your posse of hot straight guy friends with whom you
shotgun beers and
smoke pot and
play Xbox.
(You have so many straight guy friends,
I think you must like to torture yourself.)
AND I DON’T LIKE TO ADMIT IT, BUT
you’re funny,
and I admire your
shameless ability to speak your mind,
and I marvel and laugh at your nonsense
when you say things like:
“So who breastfeeds who around here?”
“Pinch my nips and call me a poodle!”
“Daddy’s got a new pair of jeans!”
Or when you break an awkward silence with
“So what’s everyone being for Halloween?”
. . . in the middle of April.
I’m having trouble determining whether
you fascinate me because I’m scared of you
or I’m scared of you because you fascinate me.
But also
I think I’m coming to realize
this is all just your way
of commanding order over the chaos,
keeping people at arm’s length, and
holding your wildest cards
close to your chest.
Because how can anyone ever judge you
if they have no idea what you’re saying?
REFLECTIONS: FOURTH GRADE
At soccer practice
Nicole and Kelsey and Lynn
talk about boys and kissing.
Will a boy ever want to kiss me?
Do I ever want to kiss a boy?
HALLOWEEN
You’ve known Joanna and me long enough now
to be well aware
that we are not the kind of girlfriends
who make out with each other.
Joanna and I are Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.
I’m Harry in a big furry dog costume.
Joanna is Lloyd, dressed like a limo driver.
You’re wearing a short red wig
over your dirty blond hair
and a deep shade of red lipstick that
makes your Cheshire grin pop
amidst your dark stubble.
You deepen your voice,
mocking the tone of a drunk jock.
“You ladies look pretty sexy in those costumes.
Dare you to make out.”
I shiver off the burn of another shot of Jack Daniel’s.
Joanna and I look to one another and roll our eyes.
We both know you could care less
about watching two girls make out.
“Why not?” you say.
“Is it because Dalton’s a bad kisser?”
You smirk at me. I give you the finger.
“I’m probably a better kisser than you, Willard.”
You stifle a laugh,
and I want to smack you.
“I just don’t see you as the good kisser type,” you say.
“I’m sure you’re decent in your own way, though.”
Now I’m really about to slap you, but Joanna intervenes.
“If you’re both so good at it,
then I dare you two to make out!”
I expect you to mirror my disgust,
but a different expression comes over your face.
An expression of challenge.
I see that
this is not just your average make-out dare;
this is a duel of skill,
a showdown of sex appeal.
Here I can show you once and for all
I’m not just some oblivious bimbo.
I match your competitive glare
and utter one contemptuous, bored word of consent.
“Fine.”
The next thing I know, we’re horizontal
against my pillows, arms around each other,
accepting Joanna’s deflected dare in full force.
Then, just as quickly as it seemed to happen,
it’s over.
I sit up, fix the hood of my dog suit,
casually wipe your lipstick off my mouth.
You stand with a disinterested look on your face,
then go to the mirror on my desk.
“Did that mess up my lipstick?” you mumble to yourself.
Joanna lets out a burst of laughter.
“What was that?!” she shrieks.
We glance at one another, shrugging.
“Not bad,” you say.
“I guess,” I reply.
“Do you guys need me to leave?”
Joanna asks, still laughing at us
as we clink shot glasses
and throw our heads back in a gulp.
Then you crank the volume
on a Benny Benassi remix
and start dancing,
and the moment has passed.
REFLECTIONS: SECOND GRADE
Do I have a pretty face?
Is my hair long enough?
What do the pretty girls do?
Watch them closely . . .
JOANNA GETS A BOYFRIEND
Jo’s new boyfriend has lots of money
and a fancy car and his own room.
Now there’s an empty bed
across from mine
almost every night.
One evening in November,
as Jo’s gathering her overnight bag,
you ask whether you can sleep in her bed—
you’d rather not make the long walk
back to the German House.
Jo suggests that it’s really up to me.
I shrug over my homework,
wondering whether this means
you and I are actually friends.
Am I annoyed you assume I won’t mind?
Or flattered
you’re willing to spend
time alone with me?
The next morning, you tell me
I was talking in my sleep,
saying “Wow!” over and over.
Curious what was so impressive,
you tried to talk back until
you realized I was just dreaming.
You imitate my sleep-talking,
and we’re both hysterically laughing,
and then I have this weird feeling like
I don’t want to leave for class.
Each night after this,
we lie on opposite sides of the room,
you in Jo’s bed, me in mine,
gigg
ling back and forth through the dark
until we fall asleep.
We grow close, like siblings
in twin beds.
One morning, as I’m putting on makeup before class,
you roll over and ask, in a voice hoarse from sleep:
“Why do you have to wear that stuff all the time?”
“I don’t have to . . . I just like to . . .” I respond.
“Look at me.”
“What?”
“Just look at me for a second. Let me see,” you insist.
When I look at you,
you roll onto your back,
close your eyes,
and pull the covers up.
“I think you look better without makeup,”
you say beneath the covers.
“And I’m not just saying that so you’ll
turn the light off and let me sleep.”
No one—especially no male—could actually think
I look better without my dark eye makeup.
It’s like something my mom would say . . .
OKAY
On Sunday night after Thanksgiving break,
we’re back on campus.
You point to the oversized get-well card hanging
over my bed. It’s not new, but you haven’t asked
me about it until now. So I tell you
about the time I wished
I was dead,
months before, in the summer,
during the bloody post-op complications
of a tonsillectomy gone terribly wrong.
I’ve never voiced this before.
Not since the night I said it out loud,
hunched over in the backseat
on the way to Hartford Hospital.
It was my third post-op bleed in less than a week.
As my father sped
through every red light in our path
and the crimson of blood-soaked tissues
grew deeper and darker inside the bucket on my lap,
I croaked out the words, to no one in particular,
“I want to die.”
I kept my head down so the blood
wouldn’t seep down the back of my throat
and drown me in it.
The blood congealed into chunks in my teeth
as the ER doctors cauterized the open wounds.
The scene was so gruesome that
my dad and sister had to leave the room;
they thought they might vomit.
I didn’t want to drown in my own blood.
But I did want to die.
You listen quietly
as I open up to you.
Then, you don’t ask me whether I’m okay;
you remind me that I am.
And you climb out of Joanna’s bed
and lean down
to hug my horizontal body.
It’s not one of those robotic
going-through-the-motions
types of hugs. It’s real.
So real that I almost cry.
Then you’re letting go
and crossing back through
the darkness to Joanna’s bed.
And I really do feel okay.
REFLECTIONS: THIRD GRADE
At recess, a girl in my class
asks me about my sneakers
and tells me that
“They only have Sambas in the boys’ section.”
So, can I still wear my favorite shoes . . .
. . . even though they’re meant for boys?
GIRL TALK
We’re partying at the Bunker—
the old concrete building on the edge of campus,
once a dining hall, now notorious
for its epic dance parties—
when I first spot George Dale.
He’s wearing these white leather bejeweled
cowboy boots (in an ironic way, I presume),
and I just have to ask him about them.
He’s cute and funny, and, oh,
he lives in the same building as me . . .
We have a series of drunk sleepovers
interspersed with a few unplanned,
slightly awkward meals in the dining hall.
One morning, you come into the room
to get Miss Cleo, and I’m under the covers
with George, and you make a stupid face
and ask, “Are you guys naked?”
By winter, George starts
to distance himself from me.
And even though you tell me not to,
I confront him drunkenly
at an off-campus party.
I get an explanation that makes
zero sense. I want to scream
and find you
and leave this stupid party.
But you might have already left,
and you’re not texting me back.
The following afternoon,
I come into my room
and you’re already there,
sitting on the flowery rug.
(Is it weird that there’s
something I really love about
how comfortable you are
hanging out in my room
alone, as if it’s yours?)
I heave a sigh about that stupid freshman, George Dale.
“He thinks I smoke too much pot!
He thinks I’m too big of a stoner!”
You’re laughing,
and now I’m trying not to laugh
as you point out that George Dale smokes
just as much as I do.
“He said it’s different ’cause I’m a girl.
He said it’s weird that I’m a girl
who smokes more than he does.”
You snort, and you’re right.
I don’t even like him that much,
and, yes, he is kind of hot, but
he’s also kind of a freak . . .
which is why it pisses me off so much!
In the beginning, he was like,
“Oh, Emily, you’re so cool;
you’re so different from other girls,”
and then, “Oh, you’re not
a normal-enough girl.”
You tell me to get over it.
I know you’re right, but whatever.
“Did you really think he was hot, though?” I ask.
You shrug. “I would say he was cute, but . . .
he’s also not really my type.”
I think back to the story you told Joanna and me
about going on a college visit in high school
and hooking up with the captain of the lacrosse team
in a locker room.
But George Dale is shorter than you.
You’re into the big, tall, strong lax bros.
Not the George Dale lax bros.
And now I’m rolling my eyes.
And I’m laughing.
And I couldn’t care less about
stupid
freshman
George Dale.
BOY TALK
It’s December, the semester is almost over,
and I’m studying your face,
wondering whether you feel sad.
I’ve yet to see you legitimately sad,
so I don’t really know what to look for.
We’re sitting across from each other
in the private study lounge
down the hall from my room.
Your expression remains fairly neutral as you
vent to me about Chris—
&nb
sp; who was so big and muscular,
the hottest guy you will ever be with.
You sigh. And I ask whether you’ve been
watching the rest of the new Real World.
You tell me Chris got in a fight
with some random guy
at a club on the last episode,
as casually as you tell me that
he practically cheated on you
in front of your face.
For a moment, I imagine you sitting alone
in your room back in the German House,
smoking pot and watching clips
of your ex-boyfriend partying,
and I feel a deep pang
of sadness for you.
I’ve heard a few details
of your coming-out story,
but I’ve never talked
directly about it with you.
You tell me how you grew up
in a very Catholic household
outside of Boston. You wrote
in a prayer journal every day
in elementary school, and you
went to an all-boys Catholic high school.
You dated girls.
At the end of your senior year,
you gave a speech at a graduation event
and came out to all of the people who
watched you grow up as someone else,
much to the chagrin
of your high school girlfriends
and your very Catholic parents.
When you’re finished telling me all this,
you turn to look out the window, and
my eyes fall back to the open books
and loose papers on the table between us.
I stare at the same page of
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
for the next ten minutes,
imagining what you went through
and hoping with all my heart
that one day you’ll end up
with someone who will make you happy—
someone you deserve.
FINALS WEEK
Everyone’s still cramming for finals,
but you and I have the rest of the week to waste.
We take some Molly in my room, just the two of us,
then dance on top of tables at a swim team party.
Soon we’re rolling especially hard,
and we seek refuge in the stairwell.
The thunderous bassline of an A-Trak remix
of “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
bumps over shouts and laughter.
Empty beer cans are littered everywhere.
A sticky layer of spilled drinks covers the linoleum.
But you and I could care less,
sitting on the stairs together,
unable to stop laughing.
