Still Dancing

Still Dancing Kristina Emick At fourteen, I tap danced in the garage. I was no good at tap; I wanted all the sounds ofGinger Rogers, but had only toe, heel, drag, toe, heel, drag. My ears adored the sharp click ofthe steel tap on cement. Circling the garage, I talked to myselfand daydreamed I was Kristy McNichol. I wanted to be nicknamed Peaches, like her character on Family. I wanted to run dramatically into my bedroom and slam the door. I wanted older brothers. I wanted to live in California. My body didn't know what to do with the language of those clacking shoes. I walked slowly—toe, heel, drag—hypnotized by my black patent leather feet. I would never be discovered or special, I thought; I would always be swallowed by my gray and brown Midwestern town, by my lumbering body, by my own laziness. I thought I was fat. A girl down the street was always calling: "You want a hamburger with that shake?" Even though I suspected she was jealous because Glen Kesterson liked me and not her, I nevertheless took her comment for fact. My butt did stick out. I asked my mother for confirmation. "No, honey. You're very cute. I don't want you to get a complex." My dad teased my mom about her butt—"How about getting this big thing out of the way?" he would say as he elbowed his way to the sink—and both she and I took his comments as insults. "She knows I'm only teasing," he said. One night I was shopping at Marianne's in the mall. I was hot in the dressing room, trying on piles ofpants. None fit right. I couldn't fit into the size I had been wearing. I started crying and sweating. I stared at my red face in the mirror. Sometimes my mother looked at herself in mirrors the same way: disgusted, hateful, terrified by the hopelessness ofever being perfect or simply better. My body was flesh I didn't want. 92 Kristina Emick93 In the late '70s, kids like me wanted to learn the hustle. Polyester print shirts with collars the size of moray eels—that's what was mighty mighty when I was between child and teenager. These were the years before I lost the baby fat, before I had a sense ofstyle (we were K-Mart shoppers), before I stopped getting half-hearted haircuts at the Ohio State Beauty School, before I learned not to talk to my schoolmates about God. These were the years when I burned for the first time with self-consciousness about my body. I begged my mother for a training bra though I had nothing to train. I didn't want anyone seeing my boobs. One day in the eighth grade, Roger Lilly grabbed Patti Hatem's boob in the library. Patti didn't even blush. She told him to knock it offin the same voice she might use on one ofher older brothers. He did. I was sitting at the table with them, and I laughed because that's what you do in the eighth grade when something embarrassing happens . Later, I cornered Patti by her locker and asked ifshe believed inJesus. Charlie Bear's, the most popular disco on the southeast side of Columbus, featured "under 18" dancing on Sunday nights. I went with my friendTammy Oyler, who had an older sister to teach her the latest moves. I had no such luck. Her sister was seventeen and one of the girls who would boogie on the main dance floor, under the mirror ball and over the flashing floor lights. Her hair was perfectly bleached and blown, her bellbottoms embroidered up the leg with daffodils and mushrooms. Her blouse had butterfly sleeves, which swirled when she twirled. She was one who might enter to win a dance contest, with a foxy, mustached man as her lead. I could buy the butterfly shirt at K-Mart. I could apply the eyeliner (more or less). I could listen to Donna Summer and Kool & the Gang and the Carwash soundtrack and dance in my room with the lights off. But at Charlie...