Butt-Naked
Milly is butt-naked.
I like that phrase, butt-naked, ’cause adding butt to naked doesn’t really change the meaning of either word but somehow transforms them both into a heightened form of nudity, that yeah-I’m-naked-and-I-don’t-care feeling. It’s so free, so unabashed. We all arrive in this world butt-naked, but most people can’t ever figure out how to return to that mindset. Milly has.
Anyway, she’s butt-naked, and she’s dancing, too. She’s not a very good dancer, to be perfectly honest, but you have to admire how she commits to it. She saw this dance move on television a few days ago where the girl playing guitar threw her head back and screamed into the mic and she’s been imitating it ever since. I really do like having a little sister most of the time, but I don’t like her when she does this dance move, since it involves a lot of screaming. I told her yesterday that dancers don’t scream and she won’t be allowed into her ballet class at Mark Morris if she screams, which I immediately regretted because her eyes filled with tears, and then I got in trouble with Nana. Today she’s just dancing, not screaming, so maybe it was worth it.
Nana wasn’t really all that mad when I explained it all to him. He was pretty aggravated with Milly’s screaming too. Most people think that when I say Nana I’m talking about my grandmother, but Nana is just my dad. I was reading this book about a Spanish family one time and I saw the word Nana and I thought it really fit him. When I figured out my mistake, I was going to stop calling him that, but honestly it had really stuck by that point. Also he says it’s embarrassing so I kind of have to keep doing it. It’s not often that I find a way to embarrass Nana.
Right now I bet he can hear us. Milly may not be screaming, but we’re both wailing out the lyrics to “Groove is in the Heart” with gusto. This is the only song we can dance to, Milly and I, ’cause we don’t really understand how to work the CD player with its tangled hairbrush of wires so we have to use the television to play music when we’re on our own. There’s a VCR stuck in there from Milly’s preschool graduation, and the opening theme song is “Groove is in the Heart.” I don’t really understand why that would be the theme song for graduating preschool but I like the song so I don’t ask any questions. Normally we could ask Nana to work the CD player and put on one of his cool mixtapes, but Nana is upstairs doing boring work and we need to dance now.
The singer howls out the high notes and I try to match her pitch, but honestly I’m not that good at singing high so it kind of just sounds like a muffled shriek, long and loud. Nana is used to this by now so he doesn’t rush downstairs to check if I’m alright anymore. He can probably feel the bass pumping all the way in his office. My wail is bloodcurdling and passionate. Groove is in the HEEEAAART. Milly takes her chubby little fist and punches it into my side, but I cannot be dissuaded from pursuing this note. GROOVE IS IN THE HEEEEAAART.
Once I’m done, Milly shakes her naked cheeks in approval and we continue this sacred ritual, laughs perforating the air like bubbles popping. If someone walked into the room right now and saw us hurling our fragile bodies from left to right, smelled the perspiration coming off our pale skin, heard our screams and the thumping of the bass turned up way too high, they would likely scoff at us in our simplicity. But they’d be wrong about us. We’re not simple. They just wouldn’t understand: we have the groove in our hearts.
We don’t need them to understand, though. No matter what, we continue to dance, all smiles and sweat, butt-naked, as the song loops and begins again.
