at the very least, they could have given us forks

Should I have felt that bad that I didn’t stuff dollar bills into my friend’s panties? I don’t think so.

I do not begrudge people their obsessions. Obsessions are important. They give us 12purpose and keep us from concentrating on things that might really matter. Why pay the bills when you can watch Love Actually for the 10,000 time and make sure that whoever is in earshot knows about the continuity problems with Hugh Grant’s tie in sc. 24?

And I have plenty of obsessions of my own. I refuse to listen to popular music. I like only show tunes and I sing and dance in my car in a way that indicates that I, like babies, believe that people can’t see me if I’m not paying attention to them. Much to my husband’s chagrin, I like Renaissance Festivals. Oh sure, it bugs me that the faires cram about 500 years of history into a bizarre mishmash of free sex, warlocks and busty shop vendors. But the Ren Fest kids were the ones in college who didn’t mind my eccentricities, so I will always owe them a debt of gratitude.

I think my cat’s old man chin is the most adorable thing in the universe. And I demand that people relate to me. Open up to me and tell me things that they would normally never tell anyone else. I can usually make it happen if I really put my mind to it. But generally in the end, it does neither of us any real good and I end up annonymisng their comments into a screenplay or piece of sketch comedy.

I don’t expect people to relate to my obsessions and I tend to let others have theirs without much interference.

So when my friend Heather started telling me about her belly dancing exploits, I asked the appropriate questions and quietly resolved to never see her dance.

It’s not that I wasn’t interested. I was. In the way that I was interested in my brother in law’s thesis until he wouldn’t shut up about the details of the sexual development of drosophila melanogaster. An appropriate response to my question of “so Chris, what’s your thesis about?” would have been “oh, I’m researching fruit flies and what protein makes their sexual organs develop.” Instead, Chris spent the next 45 minutes pretending like I knew what the hell telomerase inhibitors were. Our meal came, I stared over it, glassy eyed until he stopped speaking and the blood began trickling out of my ears.

Heather came to me by way of my husband. She was a friend of his for years before I met him and friends they stayed. He had gone to a belly dancing event and decided that it was one of the most pointless endeavors of his life. I was impressed that he went and the fact that this all American boy willingly paid $25 to sit at a tiny table and watch a belly dancing showcase probably got him laid by me more than once. If nothing else, it proved that he was loyal…or gay. But I was pretty sure by that point that he did in fact like girls.

Though with my dating history, it wouldn’t have been too far off. Over two sequential three year periods, I was in love with two boys. Both named Jeffrey. Both sang bass. Both gay. I was drawn to their sensitiveness. The fact that they would cry in public. Their mutual love of Sondheim. All this I did with wild abandon, oblivious to the obvious. Straight boys don’t know who Sondheim is.
So when I met Matt, there was something wonderfully refreshing about his crassness. His like of beer and football. And mostly, the fact that he wanted to have sex with me and not with either of the Jeffreys.

Over time, that appreciation grew into love and we got married. And being the anti social girl I am, I had no friends of my own and that left plenty of room for his to move in to my life.

It took a while for me to warm to Heather. She and my husband had shared a few nights together. Nothing meaningful, I’m told. Strictly fun. Both of them were seeing other people anyway. And both of those other people were sleeping around on them. So really, there was something quite poetic about all of it.

And once Matt and I became something real, Heather backed off. I was told there were times when she acted out her jealousy. But that was before I met her. And long before Matt and I got married. After it was clear where we were headed, Heather was nothing but wonderful to the both of us.

Despite being terribly lonely for girlfriends, I avoided Heather. Maybe it was the fact that we never talked about the days when she was shagging my husband. Maybe it was because she was too much like me. More quiet than not which doesn’t always make for lively conversation. Maybe it was the fact that though I liked her very much, I didn’t feel like we had too much in common. Or maybe it was a sadness I saw in her. The sadness that made her stay with a man who regularly cheated on her. Who put unreasonable demands on her. Who lived in her house in a separate room where he fucked Spanish speaking girls and told Heather that he would never commit to her unless she learned his native language. Both of them knowing—her deep down, him on the surface—that her proficiency in Spanish wasn’t the problem. They were never going to be an item, but she gave him her virginity, let him live rent free in her home and told everyone that an engagement was pending.

But whatever the reason, it became less and less important as I became more and more lonely. I moved to LA with a boyfriend. The relationship might have worked out had he not turned out to be a bigot. And had I turned out not to be black. But his friends were my only friends and so when our relationship was over, so was my company.

I tried to get close to other groups, but I never quite fit in. I was too liberal for my church friends. Too eccentric for my non-writer friends. Too goofy for my writer friends. And too far away from my old friends who lived in New York and held jobs that were much more important writing cartoons.

When I met Matt, his friends became my acquaintances, but there were no real bonds. Even between me and his friend who so desperately wanted just one night with me. He and I actually had things in common. He was a writer, able to be sensitive and had a lot of angst. He was a nice enough guy, but his constant hitting on me in front of his fiancé made me uncomfortable.

Every now and again, I would think of Heather. And finally, I started calling. It took a little while, as is the case with all new relationships, to work out the kinks. To get over the awkwardness. And for her to learn to work around my stubbornness. For example, I will not go to Matey’s. No, Bec, not even to say hello. Why? Because simply put, I hate Matey’s.
Matey’s is a karaoke bar. And I am way too prideful to stand up in front of a bunch of drunk people and sing mediocrately to a midi version of Where the Boys Are. I’ve been three times and each time is worse than the one before. By the end of the night, drunk strangers are screaming incoherently into microphones and the white DJ is way too comfortable singing the uncensored version of “Golddigger.”

But Heather is nicer than I am, so she goes to Matey’s. I do not. And I feel that she feels snubbed.

Likewise, I forget that she’s arranged a happy hour to which I am invited. But I am fiercely jealous of my own time. So I do not go to happy hour and again, I feel that Bec feels snubbed.

Enter Anna and Mike. A wonderful couple that Matt and I befriend at my manager’s house. They’re our age, married, perfect. We decide to have them over. And just in case it’s weird, we invite other people to dilute the living room. But everyone is out of town. Only Heather arrives and somehow, she gets left out of most of the conversation. It’s not entirely our fault. Heather is quite like me and truthfully, it’s Matt and Mike who are doing most of the talking. And Anna and I have more in common than Heather and I do. Anna and I worked for the same company for three years. The only real thing Heather and I have in common is Matt. And that’s just awkward to bring up in mixed company.

So, for a third time, I’ve snubbed Heather so I resolve to make an effort to correct that.

The belly dance event was at a restaurant in Hollywood. A short drive from my job, so it was an easy plan to scoot over the hill after work and enjoy the show. It was billed as a belly dance showcase with a family style meal. I asked Heather if I could enjoy the family style meal alone—Matt wouldn’t be going. Heather said she’s put me at her friend Sarah’s table. I was disappointed that I would have to make small talk. I was hoping for a quiet table out of the way where I could brood and maybe sneak out early.

I looked up Sarah on Heather’s myspace page. She billed herself as “that Goth chick.” So upon entering the restaurant, I looked for someone who might fight that description. When that didn’t work, I looked for the girl who was the exact opposite of that description and I immediately found Sarah’s table where sat Sarah, Karen and Tim.

I’m not sure what about herself led Sarah to call herself Goth. I’m sure that maybe in high school, she was what one thinks of when one thinks of Goth. Maybe her hair was dyed black and her nails were painted dark and her skin was more ashen and her bright bouncy curls were blow-dried out straight and her cute skirt and blouse were oversized and dreary and her smile was a frown. A world hating, soul destroying, iconoclastic frown.

But that night at Babouch, Sarah looked exactly like what she was: a teacher. She had pretty brown hair that was pulled back into a cute bun, happy makeup and even though she was pretty heavy, she carried herself well, looked comfortable and made it clear she was glad to meet me.

I’d never been to a belly dance showcase before. But I assumed there would be some sort of stage whereupon the dancers would dance. And we would enjoy our family style meal at tables that sat in front of the stage. I imagined the girls in costumes like I had seen in books—veils, sheer sleeves, puffy pants or big skirts with big bunches of jewels, sequins and other noisy trinkets at the hips. What would happen would remind me more of a brightly lit strip club than something I would label a “belly dance showcase.”

The first thing I noticed after realizing that just to be sure, I should look up the current popular definition of “goth,” was that there was no stage. And the eight or ten tables in the restaurant were awfully close together for group dancing. I inquired after these things. My table told me that they were dance solos and that they love coming out to watch Heather dance. In fact, they had just seen her dance on Melrose the week before.

Again, not that I begrudge folks their obsessions, but this evening was going to set me back about $40 and several hours of my time. I’m not saying I wouldn’t come see my friend belly dance twice in two weeks. But I’m guessing I would have had other plans at least one of those nights.

After the appetizers, the showcase began. Each dancer would come out, dance to two songs, then shimmy away.

Immediately, I was disturbed.

The first dancer was in pants. Now, I have no education in the art of Middle Eastern and Arabian dance, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t wear hotpants. And definitely not bright turquoise hot pants. The girl weighed maybe 89 pounds and there was something way too juvenile about her to justify such a costume. She wiggled her way over to a giant of a man. Not fat at all, just big. He was probably 6’5”, 225 and had hands the size of the whole chicken that was plopped down on our table for us to eat without the benefit of utensils.

The man pulled out a $10 and waved it tentatively at the girl. Her body language seemed to indicate that she wasn’t going to take it. She would wiggle up to him, then wiggle away, but never take the money. I tried to stifle a laugh. I thought the guy was a total asshole for treating this girl like a stripper. She finally took the money—I assumed to make the man feel less awkward—and wiggled away. But before her set was done two or three other tables followed suit and put money into her bikini line. And after she was done, she came back out in a robe and sat in his lap and kissed him on the mouth. Either the two were an item or there was a lot more from where that ten came from.

I thought surely this was some sort of fluke and that it wouldn’t happen again. And it certainly wouldn’t happen with my quiet, innocent, not overtly sexual friend, Heather. But it did. The other three people at my table excitedly jumped up to shove dollar bills between her tight costume and her gyrating hips while she smiled, flirted and taunted. I decided that I didn’t know Heather well enough at all to participate in something I thought was reserved for stag parties and dark rooms where the men put condoms on before they enter just in case they get too excited.

Already feeling woefully uncomfortable with the idea that my friend was hoping I would treat her like a common stripper, was the placement of the tables in relation to the dancers’ private parts.

The tables were low, plush affairs, designed to make the patron feel like they were not on the busy, polluted corner of Hollywood and La Brea, but in a Moroccan temple. The men in their djellabas were meant to invoke the same feeling. But the traditional outfits obviously came in standard sizes and were not tailored to look like these people cared a whit about how they looked.

The seating arrangement was easy to relax in until a dancer came to your table. To look straight ahead would be to stare at her pubic mound, but looking them in the eyes didn’t seem right either. So began an uncomfortable dance of shifting positions and moving one’s head to figure out exactly where to look. You wanted to look at the belly as that what was ostensibly featured in a belly dance, but even then, with the belly inches from your face, it was less beautiful and more voyeuristic.

As the night went on, my emotions ranged from uncomfortable to curious to generally unsupportive. I wondered if that meant I was just a huge bitch. After all, the three other people at my table—including one seemingly normal guy—were having a blast. The smaller of the two girls was even planning on taking the class and one day dancing at Babouch just like Heather. Why then were neither Matt nor I impressed by this display? Why in fact, were we put off by the thing?

There was something desperate about the situation. It’s not that the girls weren’t pretty and I’m sure they were all lovely girlfriends, wives, daughters and friends. But they reminded me of our drill team in high school. The sixty or so girls who so desperately wanted to be cheerleaders, but pretended that being a Tigerette was just as prestigious and meant they were just as popular. They marched proudly into the stadium on their toes and you had to know just how and when to look to catch the jealous, furtive glances they threw at the cheerleaders—the girls who were really pretty. The girls who actually measured up.

There’s something empowering about the belly dancing. It’s about being sexual without being sexy. It’s about creating desire rather than owning it. And in that way, it makes everyone feel like they’re sitting at the cool table. The guys were hooting and hollering at the clearly plus sized dancer with her fat roll proudly unhidden and flopping about as they were at the girl who did have a great body. Maybe the first woman wouldn’t have been kicked out of someone’s bed, but she wouldn’t have been invited in, either. And still, she held their eyes, she earned their praise.

The belly dancing is an equalizer. Even if we all know that outside of the walls of the Babouch, none of this created equality holds a candle to reality.

As I let these thoughts sink into my head, I felt sorrier and sorrier for the girls and couldn’t wait to go home and tell my husband that I finally know what he was talking about and yes, it’s all very sad and strange.

But then I turned my thoughts inward. Why do I care so much about whether or not these girls could have been on the homecoming court? By reducing them to what they looked like in their sequins, I became the girls that I hated in school. The ones who were pretty and popular. You think the Tigerettes were a social step down? What about marching band? We never stood a chance. And we hid behind musical talents and state level competition and acted as if those things to a 16-year-old were just as fulfilling as being kissed on prom night.

And I wondered if I might not be full of pity, but terribly jealous. After all, these girls weren’t afraid to get in front of a crowd with their imperfect bodies and plucky smiles. They weren’t afraid to shake their money makers and they assumed that people wouldn’t laugh. And that strangers would happily touch their skin to wedge the dollar where it should go. I have no such confidence. I won’t strip tease for my friends. On the surface, that sounds all right, but it’s nothing more than false modesty and a healthy dose of self loathing.

I refuse to be in front of people unless I am 100 percent rehearsed. Not only with my own performance, but my rehearsal includes finding out every possible detail about every person who will be there. I have to know how to play them. I have to know how to make them listen. My natural self isn’t good enough and I have to know what costume to put on before I throw myself to the lions.

These girls had the balls to celebrate themselves. The only time I allow myself such an indulgence is when I’m alone and there’s no one there to look at me the way I looked at Heather and her friends at Babouch.