by Emily Dalton
new.
FIELD NOTES
It’s one of those freakishly warm days
in the middle of February
when you have to pause for a moment
to process what you’re feeling against your skin.
All winter long, when chunks of icy snow
scraped from frozen windshields
melted in my boots
or the air was so brutally cold
that it was impossible to think straight,
I pined for a day like this—
bright sun and warm air,
stepping outdoors
and hardly noticing
a change in temperature.
In a flannel shirt, jeans, and a winter hat,
I feel heavily overdressed
and sweaty after fifteen minutes of
walking through the woods.
I cross the brook behind the house
on dark, slick stones,
then head up the leaf-covered hill
to where the woods open up
into a huge field.
As I stand at its edge,
I can feel my body remembering how to function
in the warmth.
As I walk the perimeter of the field,
I wonder what Max is doing—
where he is, whom he’s with,
whether he’s happy.
Words from the letter he wrote to me
a year ago come to mind.
I never want to lose touch
or not know what’s going on
in each other’s lives.
Yet here we are.
Here I am.
REFLECTIONS: THE LAST TIME I SAW MAX
I’m sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park.
It’s the end of September,
but it’s warm, and a bunch of young guys
are splashing around in the big fountain near the Arch;
little kids are blowing bubbles
and dancing around with their nannies;
college students are sprawled across colorful blankets
in the patches of grass,
holding books above their faces
or napping on each other.
Max is quiet as he sits down next to me.
He seems to understand that I’m having a moment.
We watch as an old man and an old lady
take their time standing up from a bench across from us,
gathering their hats and canes
and situating themselves to continue walking.
We watch as a young muscular man rollerblades by,
wearing nothing but a bikini top and ripped jean shorts,
blasting techno music from speakers in his backpack.
Without turning to me, Max breaks the silence.
“So . . . what are you going to be for Halloween?”
The old icebreaker sits between us for a moment.
“Don’t think I’ll be dressing up this year,” I reply.
He knows I’m leaving the city to write
and brings up Shane’s writing,
telling me again
how much I would like it.
I ask him what Shane thinks
of our past together.
“I don’t know. I think he sees it as
part of my extended coming-out story.”
His words feel painfully dismissive,
as though he’s saying our entire relationship
was a mistake.
I finally turn to look at him.
“Is that what you think we were?”
He swallows and breathes in,
and when he finally speaks,
I can hear the pain in his voice.
“Shane just doesn’t understand, Em.
He doesn’t know what it was like
for me to be in love
with a woman
for so long.”
Even though Max is wearing sunglasses,
I can see that tears are forming in his eyes.
And at last, I can see that
I don’t need him
to tell me what we were
because I already know.
We were the joke
that made us laugh until we cried.
Valentine’s Day diapers,
black bean burgers,
and turnips thrown at freshmen;
Halloween dares, late night spliffs,
and poorly planned threesomes;
a fair fight with Ponyboy,
a journal entry to God,
and a little black fly
buzzing in my ear.
We were slamming doors
and breaking promises;
we were experimenting and dreaming
and trusting the unknown.
We were in Max and Emily World
learning about life and love and
teaching each other
how to become ourselves.
We were a mistake.
And some of the most beautiful
things in life come
from mistakes.
FIELD NOTES, CONTINUED
At the far corner of the field,
near the foundation of a house that burned down years ago,
I pause for a moment to face the February sky
and soak in the sunlight.
I sit on a pile of crumbling brick
that was once a hearth.
As the shadows grow longer
in the late-afternoon sun,
more words from Max’s letter
blaze through my mind.
If we don’t end up together,
I am always going to imagine
what my life would have been like with you.
I know it would be amazing;
I know you would make me happy.
I don’t know where Max is,
or whom he is with,
or whether he’s happy.
I have no idea what our life would be like
if we were together; maybe it would be amazing
and we’d make each other happy,
but it’s just as likely that it would be disastrous
and we’d make each other miserable.
I suppose finding a soul mate really can go either way.
Before rising again to carry on
through the dead grass and melting snow,
I shed a layer of flannel and pull off my hat.
Then I stand up and turn around
to take in the full panoramic view.
Alone in this field
I’m struck by the notion that this is my place
in time and space.
It’s as though I’ve been here all along
waiting for myself.
Hey, what you doing here?
SURPRISE BEGINNING
As spring arrives to thaw the ground
and awaken dormant roots,
my aimless drafting
starts to feel less aimless.
I think back to my last days on the campus
where this story began
and watch an archived YouTube video
of the commencement address Diana Nyad gave
at my graduation from Middlebury.
Much to my surprise, she ends her speech
by quoting the final lines of “The Summer Day”
by Mary Oliver:
Tell me,
Oliver begins,
And what follows is a question that,
in its directness,
begs a vulnerability
and a self-confidence
that, until now,
have eluded me.
Like an echo through the darkness,
the question lingers,
waiting . . .
And for the first time,
I’m not looking to someone else
for the answer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Jay Parini, for teaching me why poetry matters and how to write about what I care about; to Connor Eck, for believing in my story, even in its roughest of drafts, and for guiding me through it when I couldn’t find my way alone; and to Melissa Rhodes Zahorsky, for reading, understanding, and then expertly refining Be Straight with Me.
Thank you to my family, for loving me even when I am hard to love: to Dad, for gifting me with my first and most magical memories of storytelling; to Mom, for allowing me the space and freedom to turn my mistakes into something beautiful; to Dooey, for pushing me to be realistic and challenging me to succeed; to Amy, for being my first real reader and my most valuable critic; to Auds and Ev, for reminding me to look for the beauty and excitement in everyday life; and to Gee, for seeing me, hearing me, protecting me, and inspiring me since page one.
And
thank you
to you,
who I called “Max”
in this book,
for being
straight with me
when I couldn’t
be straight with myself.
Enjoy Be Straight with Me as an audiobook, wherever audiobooks are sold.
Emily E. Dalton
grew up in rural northern Connecticut and studied writing at Middlebury College in Vermont. At the age of 25, after three years of living in New York City, she quit her job, moved home, and turned her focus back to writing. While working part time as a blacksmith’s apprentice, she slowly transformed her senior thesis into the first draft of Be Straight with Me.
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