Be Straight with Me Read online

  I’m in a tight red dress with a green ribbon tied under my chest.

  You’re in a pink and green neon jacket and Santa hat.

  I’m straddling your lap, admiring your eyes,

  maniacally rubbing the stubble on your cheeks.

  I laugh at a beer can that rolls down the stairs,

  and then you lean into me and say,

  “I think you’re so beautiful. Did you know that?

  I’ll never stop giving you shit for being a dumbass,

  but you are honestly so attractive

  and such a fucking cool person.”

  My heart, already on steroids from the Molly, flutters.

  I grab the Santa hat off your head and pull it onto my own.

  “Well,” I begin, “I’ll admit you are seriously

  the funniest person I have ever met. And you

  have fucking beautiful, mesmerizing eyes.”

  You stare back at me with such intensity,

  widening your eyes and tilting your head

  like an animal, and we can’t stop cackling.

  I haven’t felt this happy since

  I was a little kid,

  when all the scary stuff

  was just pretend.

  And now,

  winning praise from you

  gives me a reason

  to start liking myself again.

  OVER CHRISTMAS BREAK

  My family always spends the holidays

  at my grandparents’ house near Boston,

  coincidentally, just one town over from

  where you grew up.

  “You must be Susie Q!” you bellow

  as you walk through the door

  and give my mom a much bigger, warmer hug

  than you give me.

  I roll my eyes as you chat like old pals.

  Then as we walk down the driveway,

  you turn to me with a big smile on your face.

  “No offense, Dalton, but it really makes

  no sense that you’re her daughter.

  She is so warm and pleasant.”

  I shove you, and we get in the car, and you laugh,

  “I felt like Straight Max from high school

  meeting a girl’s parents for the first time.”

  We drive through the winding streets

  of my grandparents’ neighborhood.

  Christmas lights twinkle on the fences

  and bushes of almost every front yard.

  When we walk into your house,

  your family is shouting emphatically

  about the episode of The West Wing

  flashing across the plasma, and

  they debate whether I look more like

  Claire Danes or one of your sister’s friends.

  Then I’m sitting on your bed

  giggling at photos in your yearbooks.

  This reminds you to dig through

  the bottom drawer of your desk.

  You pull out a notebook, and

  I fall back in gasps.

  Written in Wite-Out across the black cover

  are the words “Christian Journal”

  and your name underneath.

  I can hardly contain myself as I flip through the pages.

  “Your handwriting is so girly! This is not real.”

  “Oh, but it is.”

  Like every kid who’s ever written in a journal,

  Little Max is

  bored, silly, and purely honest—

  only, instead of “Dear Diary”

  your entries begin with “Dear God.”

  And even though I’m laughing uncontrollably

  as I read, there is no doubt that my

  admiration and compassion

  for you are swelling with each flipped page.

  When I come to the entry dated 9/11/01,

  my giggles subside, and

  I look up from the journal at you,

  sitting in your desk chair,

  and I see you as a fourth grader:

  Little Max doesn’t understand exactly why

  he has to write to a god who can never

  know his true feelings,

  or why those planes crashed into those buildings,

  but he’s trying to do what he’s told is right.

  I stare at you for a moment as a transitive sort

  of sadness for Little Max sinks in.

  When I was a kid, I hated going to church.

  I hated wearing uncomfortable, ugly dress pants.

  I hated sitting in the dusty, drab, windowless classrooms

  watching weird preachy episodes of VeggieTales.

  But most of all,

  I hated the disturbing Bible stories we had to read

  about children being sacrificed,

  and babies being cut in half,

  and people being forced into furnaces.

  As we come to understand that Santa Claus

  doesn’t eat the cookies we leave out for him

  and that leprechauns don’t hide their gold

  at the ends of rainbows, we’re also told

  that there used to be humans who

  could bend water and rise from the dead.

  Later, Pete comes over, and we sit in a circle

  of folding lawn chairs in the shed,

  and you and Pete recount detailed stories

  of rebelling against your strict Catholic school rules.

  And then we laugh all over again

  about the traumas of adolescence

  because laughing is all we have left

  to make sad memories

  worth remembering.

  At the end of the night, when you drive me

  back to my grandparents’ house,

  I feel bubbly and warm

  and very pleasantly surprised

  with how seamlessly we mix into each other’s lives

  outside of school.

  I smile to myself as I walk up the front steps,

  grateful for my closeness with you—like we’ve

  been friends for years instead of months.

  REFLECTIONS: I’M A LITTLE KID WHO LOVES

  sparkly rocks in the stream

  and smashing them to pieces

  with the hammer from Dad’s workbench.

  My American Girl doll, Josefina Montoya.

  Playing dress-up and house with Cate from next door.

  Climbing trees and building forts in the woods.

  LEGOs, and Game Boy, and Nintendo 64.

  Hand-me-downs from my sister, Laura.

  Hand-me-downs from my brother, Andrew.

  Singing Celine Dion songs as loud as I can.

  Making up knock-knock jokes in the sandbox.

  Barbies, sports, and lots of attention.

  MAX AND EMILY WORLD

  We’re back on campus in January.

  When it’s just us, we like to go to Ross Dining Hall.

  “It’s dead in here,” you say as you walk

  toward the stacked plates.

  I sit down at an empty, gray particle-board table

  and sip coffee from a white porcelain mug.

  The high ceiling is patterned with glares

  of late afternoon sunlight that reflect

  off the veneered hardwood floors.

  Dishware and silverware clink softly,

  and the few other people in the massive hall

  make it feel especially cavernous.

  Three girls with tennis rackets share a plate of French fries

  at a round table near the big west-facing windows;

  a
n older man who looks like a professor cuts into a grapefruit

  at a long table by the ice cream station;

  and a gangly upperclassman wearing a coconut husk hat

  stares intently into his laptop over near the doors.

  “What’d you get?” I ask as you sit down

  across from me with two red plastic bowls.

  “Black bean burger.”

  We sit in silence for a minute or so,

  you biting into your black bean burger

  and reading an abandoned copy

  of the Middlebury Campus

  while I finish my coffee.

  “What?” you ask through a mouthful.

  I’m studying you cutting off little bites

  of the patty in one bowl and then

  dipping them in ketchup in the other bowl.

  A smirk climbs up my face.

  There’s a dab of ketchup

  in your dark blond beard.

  We are both stoned

  and probably reek of pot.

  I sing the words

  to the tune of “Blackbird” by the Beatles:

  “Black bean burger . . .”

  You take a sip from one of your two glasses of milk—

  you always fill at least two glasses of 2% milk—

  and finish the lyric:

  “Black bean burger in the dead of Ross!”

  I coo back, “Take these broken beans and make a burger . . .”

  We sing alternating lyrics

  of our stoned rendition of the classic tune,

  laughing in spurts through the rest of the meal,

  completely oblivious to our fellow diners.

  Perhaps they’re annoyed,

  or bewildered,

  or amused.

  But none of it touches us

  in Max and Emily World.

  REFLECTIONS: FIRST KISS

  Eighth grade.

  Halloween.

  It’s a truth or dare—

  Whitney tells Greg

  and Greg tells Drew

  and then we all go trick-or-treating.

  (All my other girl friends

  have already kissed boys.)

  My heart is pounding

  and my hands are shaking

  as Drew walks me through the night

  behind an evergreen tree

  in the side yard of a house

  on Fox Den Road.

  I’m Raggedy Ann.

  Drew’s a soccer player.

  He turns to face me.

  Is it too dark

  to see each other’s lips?

  The next thing I know,

  we’re hand in sweaty hand,

  walking back to our friends in the street.

  The following day, I have to ask Whitney

  whether she’s sure

  I had my first kiss.

  Her funny look confirms it.

  But . . .

  where did the memory go?

  For the next week and a half,

  I’m trying to put the pieces

  of my first kiss

  back together.

  But all I have

  are leftover scraps of cloth,

  button eyes,

  and some old red yarn.

  If I can’t remember,

  does it still count?

  THE ENTERTAINMENT

  We’re waiting in the common room for Luke—

  a teammate of yours on the swim team,

  a senior. We’re waiting to buy pot,

  but he’s not back from his night class.

  He tells us to hang here.

  A soft buzz from the fluorescent ceiling lights

  hums over the bumping of a bass on the floor above us.

  “I’m bored. Entertain me,” you say,

  shaking the big messy bun

  of blonde tangles on my head.

  “How?” I say, uninterested,

  not looking up from my phone

  as I casually readjust my hair.

  “I don’t know. Let’s make out.”

  I glance up at you and snicker.

  “Come on,” you sneer,

  “don’t be a prude.

  Make out with me.”

  You lean over and grab my phone out of my hands.

  “I haven’t kissed anyone in a while,” you say,

  “I need to make sure I’m still good.”

  “Were you ever?” I tease.

  You give me a look that

  challenges my entire existence,

  then pull me by my arm

  on top of you

  as you lie back on the futon.

  I awkwardly half-resist,

  then look down to find

  that our faces are now

  uncomfortably close.

  You raise an eyebrow; I roll my eyes.

  But before I have another second to protest,

  you close the gap between our mouths,

  and I mechanically follow your tongue’s lead,

  trying not to let my arms wrap

  instinctively around you.

  It feels like what I would imagine

  an actor experiences

  during a kissing scene:

  not so much skill required

  to act out the movements

  as to stay in character.

  We kiss for no more than thirty seconds

  before the door opens, then slams in the foyer.

  I jump away from you, and you sit back up,

  smirking triumphantly.

  Luke appears from around the corner

  and starts complaining about his class.

  I glance over to you. You’re still

  eyeing me deviously.

  “Fuck you,” I mouth to you.

  We make our purchase and

  say goodbye to Luke,

  and I start down the steps

  still wholly unsure

  whether I feel angry and violated,

  annoyed and used,

  or flattered and withholding.

  You lightly but intentionally jostle me

  as you go by, two-stepping down the stairs,

  and as you hop off the bottom step,

  you shout back to me over your shoulder,

  “You didn’t exactly stop me!”

  . . . And I guess you’re right.

  LATER THAT NIGHT

  We just finished watching the finale

  of The Real World on my laptop, and

  we’re lying side by side on my bed.

  I follow your gaze to the cluster

  of glow-in-the-dark stars stuck

  on the ceiling overhead.

  The weak hue of mint green struggles

  to gleam through the dim.

  Your eyes are trained like

  you’re waiting for one of them to fall.

  When you turn back down to me,

  I detect the tortured shadow of pain

  in your eyes.

  You tilt your head back up to the ceiling,

  let out a heavy sigh, and force a brief smile.

  You ask me, “Do you think I turned you

  into a weed monster?”

  I hesitate, unsure how to answer the question.

  “Emily.” You look alarmed now,

  like there’s something urgent

  you need to tell me but you don’t know how.

  You take my wrist,

  place my hand on your pants.

  I let out a nervous laugh,

  and we speak with our eyes:
<
br />   What is going on? What is happening?

  “I’m not really sure what’s

  happening right now, Emily.

  But I think . . . I don’t know.

  I kind of liked making out earlier.

  That might be it.”

  I try to allow my brain to process this,

  projecting backward and forward

  through our friendship as you continue.

  “It was just . . . like . . .

  really weirdly good.

  Can we try it again?”

  You ask me this as calmly and casually

  as one good friend asks another for a simple favor,

  no hints of pleading or pressure in your voice.

  I feel oddly at ease.

  You move your face closer to mine.

  Pause.

  This time, you look into my eyes to confirm,

  and I meet you partway.

  We kiss like we did in Luke’s suite.

  But this time, I move my body willingly

  on top of yours when you pull for it.

  The world around us stops,

  or disappears,

  or never existed

  to begin with

  while our bodies

  find each other.

  Our lips and tongues move

  with the same magnetic friction

  of our personalities—

  both sides working feverishly

  to challenge and dominate the other.

  You slip your hands under my shirt.

  Around my lower back.

  You grind my hips down against you

  as I bite your lower lip.

  The heavy heat bursts like flames

  through my mind, burning away any inhibition,

  leaving only carnal impulse.

  I let out a deep sigh as you rock

  my waist back and forth, and you moan

  into my ear, moving me harder and faster.

  We’re fully clothed,

  in sweatpants and T-shirts,

  horizontal on my twin bed,

  tongues pressing against each other,

  when the friction between us

  pushes

  me

  over

  the

  climactic edge.

  I attempt

  to muffle

  the sounds

  and breaths

  heaving

  out of my

  body

  as you tighten

  your arms around my torso,

  hold my head against your chest.

  You lie still

  and stroke my hair

  as I gasp for air on top of you

  and settle in the afterglow.

  Without moving

  or looking up at you,

  I inhale deeply, whispering a quiet

  “What . . .” on the exhale.