schweblog

It is Saturday night. There is an outline of the French Thought paper due Wednesday. Chris isn’t even sure she understands the basic tenets of existentialism. We have a problem. Immediately, we depart. This is important. We are important. I weave in and out of traffic. I curse under my breath at the person in the right lane that doesn’t turn right at the stoplight. We are on the move. This is an emergency. This is urgent. We are on a mission.

Borders has some potential prospects for a decent book or two, but nothing truly groundbreaking or worthwhile. We speed off to Barnes & Noble. We go to the philosophy section. Our search if fruitless. We go to leave the store. But what is this? Music blaring out of a cheap little stereo, distorted sound. And jingling. And skin. And…hot damn!…belly dancers. Suddenly, everything isn’t so urgent. Sure, there are a few books back at Borders and sure, it might be closing soon, but there are hips and undulations and belly buttons and cleavage. And, most importantly, belly dancing.

We stand around in a crowd of 20 or 30 people haphazardly arranged in the Barnes & Noble music section that is clearly not meant to be a venue for this sort of performance. In spite of the crappy sound and artificial staging, it is good. A girl in black steps up and gyrates hypnotically, her hips particularly pronounced against her thin frame. She can kneel down and bend back so far that her head fits the floor. Life is suddenly good. Our mission forgotten, Chris and I enjoy the show.

More belly dancing ensues, pink outfits and purple and silver. I’m realizing that cellulite actually makes it better; I see a woman whose stomach is clearly stretched from child-bearing. Her stomach moves with her and it is beautiful. This is woman in her element. This isn’t a rap video. This isn’t Vogue magazine. This isn’t America’s Next Top Model. These are real women doing real things and it is fabulous and better than whatever else you could possibly wish for. You cannot know how good it is until you get there. It is grand.

But then a woman in black comes up, in her 40s. She’s a nice lady with a nice body for someone her age. Thing is, she doesn’t get that trance-like look in her eyes as she dances and moves and steps. Instead she makes eye contact with the audience. And smiles brightly. And she reminds me of my mom. It gets weird, but I want to give her another chance–I know she’s not my mom. She’s not my mom. I repeat it to myself–she’s not your mom. Clearly. Idiot. Dear God she’s making eye contact with me…and…there it is…the nice smile. I quickly divert my gaze and applaud when she’s done, even though I’m relieved it’s over and done with. It is awkward. I know it. She probably does, too.

Belly dancing and real women are fabulous. Confident older women are fabulous. But eye contact and smiling to strangers that are young enough to be your children isn’t allowed when you’re belly dancing. These are things that they should teach all belly dancers. There are cosmic laws and this is one of them, something that should be scrawled on the side of every belly dancing studio in the world–it should become the universal mantra, passed from generation to generation like a sacred fried chicken recipe. Grandmothers will whisper to their lanky young granddaughters, “When you get older and belly dance, do not make eye contact with young men in the audience that could be your sons. And if you do, do not smile.” Then the grandmother would click her tongue disapprovingly, ingraining the memory in the young girl’s mind forever. The incident didn’t ruin my experience, but it overshadowed the flexible girl in black and the talented girl in silver and the girl in pink with the neat outfit.

I need to start a list with the cosmic laws of the universe. It would be my great contribution to humanity and I would scrawl it on stone tablets and present it to the sinful, ignorant masses. The belly dancing/older women/eye contact/smile rule would easily be number one or two.