Be Straight with Me

by Emily Dalton

  Your giant eyes gleam through the dark,

  searching my face,

  hoping, I can tell,

  not to find it looking serious.

  I titter nervously, still clinging to optimism

  as you take my hand and keep us walking along.

  You say, “I kind of figured we’re

  gonna be together forever, so

  might as well be young and hot now,

  while we still can.”

  young and hot while we still can

  Before I’ve got time to process

  your forward-thinking backward reasoning,

  you whisk me away

  into another conversation

  and dance us all the way home.

  The real world often feels

  like it’s crashing down on me

  in one way or another.

  But tonight, it’s

  my preciously remodeled version

  of Max and Emily World

  that has suddenly grown

  painfully heavy.

  The next time we see each other

  will be in Munich at Oktoberfest in a few weeks.

  And it sucks to wonder

  whether we shouldn’t have booked

  that hotel room together

  back in the middle of the summer.

  REFLECTIONS: FIRST BOYFRIEND

  Seventh grade just started.

  Timmy and I have never actually

  talked to each other in person.

  But we talk on instant messenger

  every day.

  And sometimes,

  we even talk for hours,

  late into the night

  when I should totally

  be sleeping.

  But I just can’t

  say “bye” to him.

  After a month,

  we put each other’s initials

  in our AIM profiles.

  Then we go to the movies,

  and he holds my hand the entire time.

  Another month later,

  he says he loves me.

  And I say it back

  over instant messenger.

  HIGHLIGHTS OF OKTOBERFEST

  Watching countless people stand atop

  long biergarten tables and attempt

  the full-stein chug.

  Posing for an Italian photographer

  who squirms around on the ground

  for the perfect angles.

  One of Joanna’s friends from high school

  falling asleep while standing in line.

  An endless supply of rotisserie chicken platters.

  You flirting in German with a middle-aged woman

  who insists on reapplying her deep-red lipstick

  before planting a kiss on your cheek.

  Joanna peeing under one of the tables

  in the tent because the bathrooms might

  as well be mosh pits.

  Hot German boys in lederhosen challenging

  Joanna and me to drink beer from our shoes—

  which we do, a worn leather boot tipped up

  to Joanna’s lips and one dirty old Converse up to mine.

  Constant music, singing, and dancing.

  And a shattering of language barriers

  because everyone speaks the jubilantly unifying

  language of beer.

  LEAVING OKTOBERFEST

  At the end of the weekend,

  when it’s time to depart the festival grounds,

  you, Joanna, and I follow the dreary

  mass exodus to the Munich bus station.

  We pass by an American woman in her fifties or sixties

  with a Midwestern accent and a mean scowl,

  pumping a sign about Jesus into the air

  and shouting about everyone’s sins.

  “He is all-powerful! He will punish you!

  Jesus Christ our Lord, our one eternal Lord!

  He will see that all sinners burn in hell!”

  You can’t resist.

  You frolic over to the patch of cement

  she occupies and start to yell

  with her,

  at her,

  and over her,

  much to her palpable distaste.

  “God bless us! Everyone!” you shout.

  “May peace be with you, and also with you,

  and with you, too! My God is an awesome god!

  He reigns from heaven above!

  Jesus loves me! This I know! Don’t you know?”

  “Sinner! You’re a sinner!” she barks at you.

  “What if GOD was one of us?” you yodel.

  “Just a SLOB like one of us?”

  “All of you! SINNERS!” she shrieks.

  Her gaze falls on Joanna and me, standing off to the side.

  “You are NOT God’s children!”

  “Smite me, Lord! I’m sinning!” you shriek.

  Then you toss your German flag scarf

  around her back and lasso her into a dance.

  She swats you away with her sign,

  uninterested in dancing with a bibulous devil.

  I wish I could laugh

  or join in your counter-heckles,

  but we have to leave each other soon,

  and we’re not just carefree friends

  doing stupid shit anymore.

  I grab you by the arm and drag you away,

  the woman shouting after us, waving her sign in the air.

  As we continue on toward the exit,

  you spring about in front of us,

  shouting “May the Lord be with you!”

  to everyone we pass.

  “What did you say?”

  The guy is tall,

  American, late-twenties, and has

  a long dirty blond ponytail.

  He approaches you with a sinister look.

  “May the Lord be with you!”

  you offer again enthusiastically.

  But when you start to frolic away,

  the guy grabs you by the shoulder.

  “You have something to say to my friend?

  Say it to my face.” He gestures to his three friends,

  but even they are backing off a little.

  You sober up a bit, sensing danger.

  “Dude, I was kidding. I wasn’t talking to your friend.”

  Joanna and I watch nervously

  as the guy interrogates you.

  “Oh, I think you were talking to him.

  Say it—say it to my face,” he grunts.

  “Come on, say it to my face, fairy!”

  Now he’s tightening his hold on your shoulder,

  and something snaps inside of me.

  I bolt forward. “He wasn’t talking to you, dude—

  so get the fuck away!”

  I step in between you and push

  ponytail boy away.

  He attempts to curve around me, reaching for you,

  and again, a protective instinct kicks in.

  Without thinking, I push him again,

  this time pressing the palm of my hand

  against his face.

  “Fuck OFF, dude!”

  He stumbles back and looks up at me in disgust.

  If I’ve ever tried to kill

  with my feminine gaze,

  it’s right now.

  “Oh yeah, let a GIRL fight for you, PUSSY!”

  he yells after us as we hurry away.

  I can’t resist turning around

  to get the last word.

  I give him the finger.
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  “Go fix your PONYTAIL, honey!”

  He’s still shouting as we quicken

  our pace to distance ourselves.

  Then moments later, he’s out of sight,

  and the three of us burst into laughter,

  recounting the look on his face when I

  pressed my palm into it.

  And even as you and I are about to part ways,

  a jolt of adrenaline lifts my spirits.

  On the bus back to Prague, I try to hold on

  to the good parts of the weekend,

  but my mind wanders skeptically

  around that last interaction—with ponytail boy.

  What a perfect opportunity it was for me

  to play the woman card in my split-second reasoning—

  I’m a woman, and he’s a man.

  I can get away with putting my hands on him,

  and there is no way he will dare

  to penetrate my gender shield.

  But then, what if I had been a man?

  What if I had been a gay man?

  Trying to jump in and protect you . . .

  And now I’m all confused,

  asking myself whether I was using my gender

  to show you what you can’t get from a man,

  or whether you were using my gender

  to show men what they can’t take from you.

  As Joanna sleeps soundly in the seat next to me,

  I stare blankly out the bus window,

  thinking about everything

  but seeing nothing

  but white smoke

  and the darkness of your sigh,

  and the white smoke fades, and we’re

  on the hotel balcony last night,

  and you’re asking me how I’m

  going to deal with you

  still being attracted to guys.

  “But that’s what being in love is—” I say,

  “not acting on the side attraction. Right?”

  “I don’t know, Em . . .

  I think love

  can be

  a lot

  of different things

  for different people.”

  REFLECTIONS: SECOND BOYFRIEND

  At the beginning of tenth grade,

  my neighbor brings his friend Franklin

  camping with our families on Labor Day weekend.

  I’ve seen Franklin at school before;

  he’s in the grade above me.

  Sitting around the campfire,

  he makes a witty joke and plays

  a really good song on his phone by a band

  I’ve never heard of.

  His glasses are kind of nerdy,

  but I think he’s cute.

  A month later, we’re dating,

  and a few months after that,

  we’re so in love.

  I think I’m going to marry him.

  YOU VISIT ME IN PRAGUE

  “But seriously. I need your body. How can I have it?”

  I love hearing you say these words,

  but I also hate how much I love it.

  We stand in the shower kissing,

  our bodies pressed together.

  I hesitate before kneeling down—

  something I’ve never done with you.

  Up until now, you’ve always been the one doing things to me.

  You stop me.

  “Your soft, lady touch kind of just tickles.”

  I’m trying not to look upset

  as I stand up,

  tilt my head back under the water,

  and smooth my hair away from my face.

  THE DAY BEFORE YOU GO BACK TO BERLIN

  The afternoon sky turns a bright gray

  as we sit on a bench underneath

  the Žižkov TV Tower.

  I stare up the length of the three

  chrome trunks of the tower—

  originally built to intercept

  anti-communist radio transmissions.

  For years after the fall of communism,

  it stood there like a misplaced toy rocket ship

  dropped in the middle of a baroque diorama.

  Then, in 2001, an artist named David Černý

  was asked to improve its appearance.

  He sculpted giant black fiberglass babies

  and fixed them on the tower as if

  they were crawling up and down it.

  I’ve been looking forward to bringing you here,

  to the Žižkov Tower,

  because it’s such a bizarre-looking structure

  in this senseless shrug of city—

  not to mention “diaper” is one of your favorite words.

  I think you will find it

  just as fascinatingly weird

  as I do.

  But when I point out the massive babies,

  you merely snort and make

  some disinterested remark

  about how they look more

  like ants than babies.

  I’m noticing lately that

  you’re not gazing at me as often,

  not cuddling into my side;

  you’re being a bit less hand-holdy,

  which is fine; that happens.

  . . . I googled it once back in high school

  when I started to feel bored

  with my third boyfriend, Ryan.

  I clicked through article after article

  looking for a logical explanation,

  until—aha!

  The honeymoon phase has to end

  so that the couple can start focusing

  on procreating and taking care of children . . .

  Just a few days ago, when you arrived,

  we made love in the shower, and then you

  held me in my bottom bunk bed, whispering

  cute jokes about our future children.

  “They’re all going to have red hair.”

  “Nooo,” I groaned.

  “Yes. We’re going to lead a tribe

  of little gingers with blue eyes.

  You’ll be a business-diaper

  and bring home the bacon,

  and I’ll be the fun stay-at-home dad.”

  “Why do I have to be the business-diaper?”

  You scoff, “Because you’re not good with kids . . .

  . . . and I’m not tough enough to be a business-diap.”

  And now I’m wondering whether you feel inadequate, too . . .

  I know I can’t always give you what you need—

  but I also know how hard it was

  for you to hide who you were

  for so many years, then finally

  feel open and proud . . .

  and then fall in love with me

  a girl

  and how much harder that must make it

  for you, straddling your shame-filled past

  and our unpredictable love.

  Beneath the tower, tension builds

  as you scold me

  for doing too many party drugs

  with the “frat boys” in my abroad program

  who live on the third floor.

  I stare into the bare butt

  of the lowest baby,

  part of me envying the simplicity

  of crawling around on all fours,

  just innocently exploring the world,

  and part of me trying to decide

  how to react to what my gay

  pseudoboyfriend has just implied.

  You don’t say it outright, but

  you’re suggesting that
/>   if I do too many drugs,

  my uterus won’t be healthy enough

  to bear your child.

  I’m probably the only lover

  you’ll ever have

  who can give you one of your own.

  REFLECTIONS: SECOND BOYFRIEND, CONTINUED

  It’s late in the spring of tenth grade

  and I’m practicing baton handoffs at track practice when

  one of the older girls sees Franklin

  waving to me from the parking lot.

  I tell her that he’s my boyfriend.

  She looks confused and says:

  “Oh, I always thought he was gay!”

  I laugh, but I’m confused, because

  sure, he’s a little dorky, but he’s obviously not gay.

  The gay kids at our high school

  are all friends with each other;

  they’re artsy, or emo,

  and in the school plays.

  In this mostly white upper-class suburb

  in Connecticut, the kids who openly defy

  the “good” stereotypes—Jock, Smart, Pretty—

  are assigned the “bad” stereotypes:

  Weird, Nerd, Gay.

  United by their oddness.

  Outsiders together.

  I wave back to Franklin.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE YOU GO BACK TO BERLIN

  We walk through the gardens

  and courtyards of Pražský hrad—

  Prague Castle—at one in the morning.

  The rain has stopped, and

  the fog hangs thick and green

  in the spotlights that

  beam up the castle walls.

  We sit next to each other

  on the wide, damp steps

  and stare out into the mist

  falling over the Vltava River.

  You’re telling me that you think

  you need to be with boys again.

  You wait for me to say something.

  I look up at you, tears threatening my eyes.

  You continue, “I don’t think I’m

  going to be able to know what

  I really want until I’m old.

  Like, twenty-eight.”

  Twenty-eight.

  I stare into your eyes,

  wishing I had never met you,

  angry at you, angry at myself

  for believing I could

  keep you

  straight.

  The next morning, I watch your bus

  disappear around the corner,

  and I continue to stand there,

  staring off into empty space.

  Seven years till twenty-eight . . .

  a lot of empty space.

  REFLECTIONS: THIRD BOYFRIEND

  A week after I dump Franklin,

  Ryan and I meet at a house party