Now, let me say that belly dancing is for sure a thing to see. Some of these women can move their hips like they’re disconnected from any other part of their bodies. I don’t begin to know how you do that. It’s possible that a man just plain can’t do it. I know nobody wants to see me try. And they had on the music you might expect—Arabian nights and so on—and some you might not—hip hop beats, salsa.
But as I was sitting there it did start to get blurry; once you see a few bellies shake, you’ve more or less had the experience. And I didn’t know any of these women up to that point. And a lot of them were not what you would call naturals. I’ll admit my mind wandered. I thought for a little while about how this was probably empowering for some of the ladies, and then I wondered about how long a show like this would have gone on in ancient Greece. Probably they went until the man in charge decided who he was going to take to bed, or tent, or whatever. Being as I wasn’t in charge, my mind wandered further, and soon enough I was thinking in lines of code, and on a Friday night.
I did come back down to earth again and again, especially at the beginnings and ends of dance numbers. Clapping sharpens the senses. And also sometimes in the middles. I looked at the ladies’ faces some of the time. You could tell that one of the things they had been rehearsing was smiling—there was a lot of smiling all around. Some of it was frozen into something scared silly—those were the women who seemed to be wanting to watch their feet the whole time, to make sure they got it right—and some of it was solid professional, especially the teachers, who you could spot from a mile off. Their smiles looked like something you’d see on a movie screen. And then, too, there were the ladies who couldn’t contain their excitement; those ones were up there grinning like it was their wedding night. I had a hard time taking those faces in for some reason. Sometimes I looked at my lap instead.
What really stays with me, though, is the woman who couldn’t keep the sword on her head. That was a thing that came back around in a few dances—ladies balancing scimitars on their heads while they danced. Not on the point, but horizontal, on the edge. Like I say, with the good ones, they can move their hips and keep the rest of their body stone still, and that’s how the swords stayed up. But this woman, there was something about her belly. It took me a minute, and then I realized that she wasn’t fat—she was pregnant. Far along pregnant. And she was off-balance from the start. She just couldn’t get the thing level, couldn’t find its center of gravity, and the scimitar tipped this way and that way until she just had to hold it on. Her smile was more like gritted teeth—gritted hard enough to crack them. I looked away from her, too.
When the lights came back up I think my main feeling, the only part of me that wasn’t mostly sleepy, was shame. I felt like I had snuck into that theater and watched a bunch of heavy and bony women show me something I wasn’t supposed to see. Some of them even came out during the break to get hugs from their families, to kiss their husbands and babies, and up close their makeup was thick, and the whole place was just a collection of family reunions. And so I went out to the men’s room and washed my face, and that man said, “They’re really something, aren’t they?” and I knew I had to go. Go before I saw my wife up there with everyone else, doing that dance.
Still—I didn’t feel good, even outside. I found the car and sat in it for a while and knew that Tawnya would be hurt. I knew I should get back in there before I missed her dance. And I knew she was going on pretty soon after the intermission, and I knew when enough time had passed that it was too late to get out of the car. That’s when I turned the key and drove back to the apartment, where I spent the next couple of hours, thinking. A text came in from Tawnya after ten o’clock: Where are you? I’m looking all around for you. I texted back, only saying, Home—I’m sorry, and got a bunch of question marks in response.