Still a broken toy.
But getting better.
At work the girls have this habit.
Whenever they get a weird idea they ask me how they can do it.
"Gila I want to learn to ride a motorcycle, do you know where?"
"Gila, I want to dye my hair purple, do you know how?"
"Gila we want to take belly-dancing lessons..."
So I told them about Arabesque academy around the corner from work.
"Great", they said.
"When are you taking us?"
We went last night.
My enormous hips did me credit as they swung with nary a need for encouragement.
Manipulating your pelvis is easy when there's so much bum to push around.
Rhythmically gyrating is easy too, even double-time, when all it takes is a push to get started and then my hips do it on their own, these great big soft perpetual motion machines that I carry around in my pants.
I still can't coordinate steps for the life of me, and right towards the end long after my thighs had quit protesting and my brain had turned to focus-less mush, was when we tried chaining our steps together.
Step-twist-twist-drag-armflutter-step-twist-twist-drag-armflutter...
Thanks to the overwhelming patience of my singing teacher's lessons in rythm I almost managed to follow along with the dancing rythm, but getting my feet to advance in the right oder...
Difficult.
And then there's the music.
*sigh*
I have a few issues remaining.
If it were egyptian belly dancing, or hindu story-dances -- I would be instantly enthralled and my credit card would have been out on the table.
And I enjoyed the class, and the muscle-strain, and the movement and the techniques and the volumes that I learned about my body in two short hours.
The music, however, whenever she turned it on, made my skin run towards my spine.
It was the music of every fistfight in Israel, of every harassment in Paris 18eme.
It was the music that flooded from dingy cafes on Pte de Clignancourt moments before some broken man tried to grab for my ass, or beg for a blowjob from Blondie.
And intellectually it pisses me off.
Intellectually Baghdad was the greatest city, Baghdad the master of cryptanalysis, that did more for the science than even PGP.
Intellectually 1001 Arabian nights filled my dreams with veils and golden jangles, taught me lessons of belief and kindness and pride and generosity morality that no television show could ever approach.
Intellectually the arabic historian PhD that runs the school is my hero and I want to sit at his feet for hours and discover the streets of silk merchants and learned men.
In my gut whenever I saw him look at the fat blonde girl that way I felt queasy inside.
Which makes dancing difficult.
Sharon wants to go back, and I think I will too a few times, for as long as my abilities hold out. The soreness in my thighs is worth it.
When the dance-steps get too complicated for my uncoordinated feet, I will be relieved to quit.
Because every time the strains of yesterday's music float through my head interspersed with the long chain of mozart that is always there --
I am frightened and alone and backed into a corner again.
You've never seen me with both black eyes.
It isn't pretty.