Gawky by Margot Leitman Read Free Book Online Page A

reflection in the oven door. The isolation of just the pelvic area being visible in the oven door made the dance extra erotic, like a peep show where I was both the star and the audience. My unneutered dog, sensing the air of sex in the room, would join in on the action by humping my rejected Popple.
    One afternoon, while staring at my midsection in the oven and practicing the “Roni” snap over and over again, judging if I hadcompletely mastered the art of looking at my own “dick” or if I needed more work on the pelvis-swirl part, I looked up and saw my older brother standing in the doorway. He was watching me with horror. I had no idea how long he had been there, but I knew he had seen enough.
    â€œMargot, what are you doing?” he asked, staring at me with disgust and a slight twinge of fear.
    What was I doing ? Well, I was thrusting my hips and staring at my denim-clad crotch in the oven door. I could say I was just dancing, but how would I explain why I was looking down my pants? My dancing certainly had progressed from juvenile grinding to Chaka Khan’s “I Feel for You” to controlled eroticism for which I am still thankful for the oven door. But how could I explain this type of personal progress to my teenage brother? Lucky for me, he didn’t have his “borrowed” camcorder out, capturing this disaster for all eternity. Still, surely he had seen the “Roni” video—maybe if I just laid it all out there, he would understand. I mean, everyone watched MTV all the time, right? Except I had never actually seen Greg watch MTV; he was always too busy reading, doing his schoolwork, or building his VHS collection of classic movies taped off the Turner Classic Movies channel.
    Finally I just told him the truth. “I’m practicing my ‘Roni’ dance.” And in lieu of asking further questions, my brother walked away, shaking his head but letting it go. Maybe he had never seen the video for “Roni” and didn’t understand. Or maybe he had seen the video for “Roni” and needed no further explanation. I didn’t care; I just prayed he wouldn’t tell my parents or his friends. Maybe my little green stone cross had the power to make this prayer actually work.
    Soon after, I bought Bobby’s album Don’t Be Cruel on cassette at Nickels so I could listen to “Roni” at my leisure, now doing the dance in the privacy of my bedroom, rewinding it over and over again, twisting and grinding to the best song ever. I didn’t care that this was not a hit song for Bobby Brown. For me, it was #1.
    To a twelve-year-old girl, everything about Bobby Brown embodied sex. His moves, his lips, his lyrics. He even performed that infamous, hungry Madonna “Express Yourself” crawl before Madonna herself did it. I was amazed by how a simple, one-camera, cheaply made live video of one young sexy man singing a so-so song could evoke such a strong chemical reaction. Judging by the quality of the video, I was sure it was taped on one of those camcorders you had to strap to your chest along with the VCR—you know, the original “portable” camcorders that the proudest dads invested in only to be outdated five minutes later by something that was actually portable? Amanda’s family had one of those, and I was always jealous of their ability to record the happier moments of life and rewatch them later to revel in how amazingly well everything was going for them.
    Bobby also had a good life in my mind. He was touring the country singing hot songs and filming it all. He was almost subtle in his seduction, not like those manufactured man-girls from Milli Vanilli, who I believed were an insult to my womanhood. I thought Bobby was about as sexy as it could get. There would never be a hotter man; there would never be a hotter song; never would I ever again feel the way Bobby Brown made me feel. After years of having trouble