Baby Bella Dancer

My first belly dance class

I had totally thought that inviting you along to watch me at my first belly dance class would be something I did in the DanceStory Section of Tinkerings, my SFW art, nature and elements publication.

Then I remembered. Oh, yeah…

Considering who I was when I walked into that class, my first toe-dips into belly dancing really were like eating a yummy dessert as a reward for getting through DYE JOB.

Continued from:
—THE LURE OF BELLY DANCE
DYE JOB - How A Fringe Bra & Coin Belt Saved My Life:
—Part 1: PINK, GOLD, BERRY BLUSH
—Part 2: PAINT IT BLACK
—Part 3: WINE, BLOOD-RED, TEAL
—Part 4: PURPLE, BLACK & BLUE

---

Dance-Monkey see…Dance-Monkey do..

October 1992
19 years old

She is so amazing! She is the most stunning woman I have ever met in person. Her name is Hala, and the way she dances? I mean, just the way she walks and gestures and smiles is so...

Well, I don't know what it is.

But I want to learn that even more than I want to learn belly dancing—and I want to learn that super badly! I don't know how to describe her because, where I come from, women like her only exist in movies. She's like Wonder Woman, Paula Abdul, and Cleopatra, all rolled into one.

Thick waves of coffee-hued hair pour down to the middle of her back. Blonde streaks outline the waves like whitecaps on dark, crashing surf. These are no subtle highlights. They're not even frosting. They are bold and brilliant—the kind of highlights I've only seen onscreen or on wild-child rockers in the record store downtown. I for sure never saw that kind of hair on anybody from my teensy hometown.

Hala's eyes are the same deep brown as her hair, luminous and almond-shaped, lined with long lashes and more bold lines—black eyeliner that sweeps across the curves of her eyelids into pin-sharp points.

My eyes are brown and almond-shaped, too. The few people who have ever shown me how to do makeup all have big, round blue eyes.

If I did my eyeliner like Hala’s, could my eyes ever look that amazing?

The rest of her makeup is as dramatic as any music video star's, yet they are all garish clowns compared to her. She’s painted her face in tones that match her natural coloring, calling more attention to her intrinsic beauty, rather than to the face-paint itself.

Her body is another masterpiece, this time painted in the highlights and shadows of musculature. Beneath the harsh work lights of the high school stage where she teaches this belly dance class, her skin still glows like it's been kissed by the sun, even though we’re heading into winter. Miles of it show beyond her black sports bra and her black spandex shorts.

Hala is a workout queen. Not only did she say so (she teaches fitness through the community college, in addition to this class), but her strength and athleticism shout it at first glance.

Yet it's so much more than the power and tone of her muscles that I want to emulate. Her glow has little to do with makeup or skin. Something radiates from within her, and it is this quality that captivates me even more than her physical beauty or the luscious moves she's showing us.

She calls instructions over the music emanating from the boombox behind her, and over the sneaker-squeaks or whistle-laden sounds of high schoolers practicing basketball in the gym on the other side of the velvet stage curtain. Her voice is rich and deep, but it is not just her heavy accent that is so foreign, so captivating to me.

It's the way she speaks, as though holding nothing back. There's no aggression or force to it. She simply...speaks what's on her mind. And she asks what she wants to know. Directly. With no hidden inflection.

She speaks the way I would if I wasn’t so afraid of getting called “mean” or “rude” or “harsh” or “conceited.” Can’t do that if you want to remain Minnesota Nice, don’tcha know.

Standing in this belly dance class, listening to Arab music and the instructions of a commanding, vibrant Lebanese woman, I wonder just how much patience I have to continue squashing myself into this iron maiden that is Minnesota Nice.

There is certainly no high-pitched "feminine" affectation in Hala’s voice—all the “tee-hee” and fake smiles I can’t stand. All the circuitous verbal dances that baffle me, or the beating-around-bushes, as if we’re expected to apologize for breathing the air somebody else might have wanted to breathe.

I hate that crap.

Hala does none of it.

She laughs robustly from her belly, up through her throat, and out through her whole being. It sparkles her eyes. It tosses her hair, but not in that artificial “are they watching me?” way. Her daring locks sway naturally when she throws her head back — in a laugh, in a gushy move inspired by the orchestral strings of the music, or when she glances at us to check our progress.

We eighteen-to-thirty-somes follow her in a circle, stepping and twisting one hip forward, then the other. There are six of us in the class. As the new arrival today, I have been given the spot directly behind our teacher.

Over her bike shorts, Hala wears a turquoise scarf thick with gold coins. They shiver and pop with her every movement—some of the moves Renee was showing off in the mirror that day when she came to pick up the Halloween costume my roommate had sewn for her. Renee is the one who told me about this class after taking it over the summer.

Now seeing the moves done by the one who taught her, I’m blown away. Hala’s range of motion and precision has been acquired over a lifetime of dancing this way, inherited from countless other lifetimes in her heritage.

Upon our introduction, my new teacher told me that she had never performed onstage until moving to the United States. She said it simply isn’t something a respectable woman does in her homeland. "This is the way the women of my country dance. In the kitchen, at a party. This is just the way we move."

Now that I'm following behind her, eyes riveted on that chinking, tinkling scarf, I know instinctually: my body was born to the wrong kitchen-dances. My personality may not have been—I've never reacted well to the sort of restrictions and stigma she described—but this was how I was born to move!

Hadn't Laurie assured me of that as we sat on the theater steps together, awaiting our turn to rehearse that Polynesian dance for Twelfth Night?

“You have wonderful hips,” she said. “It’s like they were made for it.”

Well, it turns out Laurie was right.

I've missed more than half the classes in this three-month session already, but it doesn't seem to matter. I follow our teacher around and around like a puppy’s tail at last set free to wag without hindrance.

I spent my entire freshman year in Ballet last year, tormented over my inadequate angles of flexibility and my ox-clod harrumphing. Even this semester in Modern Dance, I never feel like I truly…get it. Then again, I’m learning Modern from my Ballet teacher, so there’s way more of that influence than there is from some of the earliest pioneers that I find so fascinating. We only watched a few clips of them rather than exploring their movement styles. I still feel like a bulldozing ox in Modern class.

Not here. Learning Hala's way of expressing music is like surfacing after being too long underwater.

The music itself is enchanting. I have never heard this kind of music, except maybe in those couple James Bond belly dancer clips I can't fully remember. But I've never been exposed to percussion like this. It's so intricate and clear. Like a fountain or waterfall, occasionally raindrops, rather than the relentless, heavy pound of rock music. Even when the strings and strange, high-pitched horns drop out, leaving only the percussion, these drums practically sing.

That's when Hala's coins really get going!

She lifts and drops her hips — BOOM! And oh, her shimmy — whrrrrrrr! And the intricate pops and twists of those coins — boom-boom, chickka-chickka-swish-pop-pop!

It's not only the coins that vibrate. It's the weighty musculature of her thighs and butt. She is very toned, but she is also very curvy. She is all woman, with zero shame about it.

She is so glorious I can't take my eyes off her. All I can do is follow her commands and try to mimic her every move.

I shift my weight back onto one foot to get my own butt and thigh bouncing up and down. The same kind of reverberation shudders through me. Not as big, because I'm scrawnier than Hala is, especially after dropping all that weight last spring. My moves don't have her range of motion or well-honed power, but I can feel it even in the smallest steps of this dance.

Flesh wiggling. Thighs jiggling. Butt bouncing…

Only sluts shake their asses.

Only sluts bare their midriffs.

Sluts have to sit at the front of the bus.

Thunder-thighs.

We thought you liked having your ass grabbed. I mean, you liked it when HE grabbed it.

BOOM-badda-BOOM-badda—

I force my attention back onto Hala's coin belt.

In contrast to what I’ve always heard about belly dance, I would never call the way she moves slutty. Sure, it's flirty. It's definitely sexy. But there's also a sort of innocence to it, compared to MTV, and so many other acts of seduction and sexiness I've ever witnessed. Those are overt acts. Slathering, panting, bedroom-hungry-eyes and lip-licking invitation, like turning on the camera during that moment before the actual act.

I’d always heard that belly dance was basically stripping without getting nude, but now upon witnessing it up close, I see that it is something else.

This is the glance. The invitation where you just...know. Or rather...you suspect. It's more about the question. The curiosity, and the invitation into finding out, rather than the grind of flesh-on-flesh, with sweat and breath mingling in the dark and—

My heart cracks again at that image.

For a half-hour, I had forgotten.

He doesn't want me anymore. He wants HER. Elissa. The good girl. The wait-until-marriage-kind of girl. The worthy-of-marriage kind. Not the kind who really does lick lips and give hungry-eyes in the bedroom.

Like me.

C’mon, baby. I want you to pretend you’re the prostitute I pay for sex. See, my wife is at home, too far into her pregnancy, and I don’t wanna risk hurting the baby-fetus—

Ugh. Gross. I can’t help but shudder every time those words infiltrate my mind.

Baby-fetus…
Baby-fetus…
Baby-fetus…

Was he already with her when he wanted to start role-playing that with me? Did he literally have his good-girl waiting for him, and he just used me to get his rocks off because she wouldn’t give it up until marriage? Why would anybody want to marry the kind of girl who shakes her butt and lets her thighs jiggle in her dancer leggings and—

Crack-crack!

I blink hard at the loud clap of Hala's hands. She shoos us off for a water break.

As I take a much needed swig from my water bottle and wipe my sweaty forehead with the back of my forearm, I can't help wondering what Martin would think if he saw me dancing like this. He never saw me perform onstage. I only danced for him in private, and he definitely liked that. I suspect he might like this even more.

Then again, probably not in the way that would remind him how he had once said he loved me and wanted to marry me.

Me, not her.

But no, it would probably only remind him of the way he "still can't help wanting me" when I come to help him with his Algebra homework — stupid. As though having sex with him would ever remind him that he’d once loved me, not just lusted after me. As though sucking his dick would ever win him—

"You're doing very well."

I glance up at Hala. Her smile echoes her words, inciting a flush from my cheeks. "Thanks," I say, thrilled that she noticed what I had felt while dancing, but couldn't be sure if it was all in my imagining. "I love it already."

"Good. You are a natural. I can see this already."

My pulse thrums. My heart swells. Hearing her reiterate what Laurie had seen in me when we did the Polynesian moves, I can see it already in this first class: Yes. I want this. I will be coming back next week, and the week after that and the week after that, and you know what?

If Martin would write me off as nothing but the prostitute he wants to use and not even pay, then he can suck my dick! He can suck my left tit and kiss my ass. If he doesn’t see how awesome I am—good girl or bad, someone who is both and neither, virgin or not—then he never deserved my sensual, love-infused slut-dancing any more than he deserves to see this!

There’s something deep and powerful going on here. It reminds me of everything I ever wanted from sex. From kissing and flirting. From looking into somebody’s eyes and wearing something pretty. Something cute. Something hot. All of that means something to me, no matter if it means just as much to them or not. This is just another piece.

But it’s something else, too.

Something just for me.

Maybe someday I’ll share it with a guy in private as a different kind of sexy-dance. But right now, that’s not why I want this.

Just like I know I’ll be coming back next week, I also know what I'll be doing whenever I have no homework or other classes. It'll be me in elementary school all over again, stealing those fifteen minutes in the living room of an empty house every morning before school. It'll be me in the backyard all through junior high and high school, teaching myself back-walkovers and making choreographies.

But this time, I won't be wearing a shorty-short cheerleading skirt. I'll be wearing coins on my hips, and I'll be shaking them as fast and as thunderously as the music tells me I need to.

🔥 RAWR! 🔥

UP NEXT: A TOMBOY’S FIRST TENTATIVE SPARKLE - my first belly dance costume. (You’ll have to head back over to for my SFW publication, Tinkerings of an Elemental Alchemist for that one though.)

© 2021 Hartebeast

Bonus humor - why I didn’t show my face in that coin belt video:

---

RELATED POSTS:

That time I did belly dance for the pleasure of a guy I wanted:

Oh, you wanna start at the beginning? You wanna learn about why having my hair dyed black for that Twelfth Night play had such an impact on me, and how my discovery of belly dance literally saved my life? It starts here:

Or if you’d like to read about me:

• Stealing those fifteen minutes to pretend I was a Solid Gold Dancer every morning before school

• Ox-Clod harrumphing in Ballet

• Swirling yards of fabric around like Loie Fuller

• Learning Modern Dance

• Taking the suggestion to learn belly dancing because I caught onto Polynesian so quickly during Twelfth Night. (Yes. You read that correctly. Polynesian dancers in a Shakespearean play, I bleep you not.)

You can find all that in the DANCESTORY Section of Tinkerings, or start at the first tale and follow the links to read them in order.