by Violet Blue
The teacher, Ginny, was good—I’ll gladly give her the credit. Experienced as she was, she knew how to patiently lead a bunch of wobbly, uncoordinated newbies. And not one of us did anything perfectly the first time, so I didn’t feel like a complete lout. She also had a knack for spotting the one thing each of us did really well and making sure we heard her compliment it.
“Kayla, you’ve really got that hip pop down!” she said. “You’ve got the perfect figure for that movement. It took me months to look that good.”
Hey, maybe my big hips were good for something besides bumping doors open.
Ginny wasn’t utterly skinny, either, which made me less self-conscious. Oh, she had toned arms and grace to die for, but she had a poochy little tummy that she didn’t bother to hide. Instead, she wore a tight-cropped top and a flowing skirt that tucked under the soft flesh, exposing it.
Yet, when she did one of those amazing ab rolls, I could see the muscles moving beneath the softness that nothing short of liposuction could have done away with, and it was all incredibly sensual.
“I’ve seen rail-thin women do this well,” Dee confided to me. “But if anything, they have to work harder.”
As if to prove this, the skinniest woman in the class, a young thing with the blonde, tanned look of a surfer and a pierced navel that called attention to her ripped abs, was the first one to quit.
Dee was both right and wrong about it not being exercise. The dance studio would get hot and sticky, and “sweating like a pig” was, I felt, an apt description for the way I felt after class. And oh, the day after the first class, I thought I’d never be able to get out of bed—my legs and arms and tummy and everywhere else felt as if I was being tortured with hot pokers when I so much as breathed.
At the same time, though, it was fun. Like aerobics, but with a greater purpose. The first time I went through a series of steps without actually thinking about them, I felt giddy from the rush of success. Muscle memory, whatever, I didn’t care; it just made me happy.
In truth, whether or not Cosmopolitans were actually involved, I’d always liked to dance. My parents have a hideously embarrassing home movie of me at age eight, my hair fluffed out like Madonna in her fluffiest phase and god-awful turquoise leg warmers around my ankles, twirling around the living room to Debbie Gibson. Jennifer Beals I wasn’t (and never would be), but I liked the way music encouraged my body to move, even if I had to threaten my parents upon pain of death never to show those movies.
Music. Bottom line, music is what changed everything about belly dance class for me.
The first few weeks, Ginny used a CD player for musical accompaniment. It was easier that way, apparently, to pick the right beat for whatever our newbie bodies were badly attempting to pull off. It also meant live musicians wouldn’t be bored out of their gourds, playing the same two bars of music over and over for a bunch of very confused women. But once we started to get used to the whole idea, once we started to be able to follow instructions and dance reasonably past two bars of music, Ginny brought in the musicians.
My first impulse was to run.
It was one thing to wriggle about looking like a fool with a bunch of women looking just as foolish. It was quite another to do it in front of trained musicians who knew what the moves were supposed to look like.
Musicians who included men. Damn it.
I’d gone from hiding at the back of class to easing my way toward the front. (So I could see myself in the mirror—yes, I was actually willing to look at my dumpy body because I found myself actually caring about whether I was doing the movements right.) Now I was forced to scuttle back a row in an attempt to hide myself in the group.
The men wouldn’t be looking at me anyway, right?
That, however, didn’t stop me from looking at them. Jason’s callousness notwithstanding, I had a healthy appreciation for men, especially sexy ones.
And, oh, one of the drummers was really yummy.
Sandor reminded me a little of Naveen Andrews, the actor who plays Sayid on Lost: the swarthy smooth skin, the close-cropped beard and mustache, the black curly hair that he wore loose to his shoulders. He was slender, but muscles played beneath his skin as he played, and his hands were a practiced blur over the drum.
I’m ashamed to admit that once or twice I forgot to pay attention to my dancing because I was staring at him and quietly drooling.
I was getting wet in another place, too.
For the viewer, it’s obvious how belly dancing is sexy. It’s less obvious how it’s sensual for the dancer herself. There’s something about the rhythms that crawl under your skin, beat with your blood, the way good sex gets your heart beating. The motions are designed to entice, but they’re also incredibly empowering. The dancer is the one who’s in control. The dancer is the one who, just by the placement of her hands, says Look at me.
Saying Look at me was not something I was comfortable doing in real life. Even before Jason had performed the slam dunk on my ego, I’d been a little shy, a little self-conscious about the weight I’d put on in recent years. The more I danced, though, the more I understood how to say Look at me. I had a persona when I danced. When I danced, I wasn’t just pudgy Kayla the media relations director. I was a dancer. A dancer whose movements suggested all manner of sensual pleasure—on her own terms.
Spring danced into summer to the music of oud and miz-mar. So far, I’d missed only one class. (I really did have to work late that night.) Dee had been right: Belly dancing was addictive. The rhythms, the movements, the melodies. I found myself humming in the shower, doing hip drops while waiting in line at the grocery store, spending far too much money on CDs of Arabic music.
I knew dancing had become an obsession when I went to the studio on a non–class night to practice a particularly difficult move I was trying to master, a combination that merged a three-point turn, a series of hip drops, and a little chest pop that looked adorable when Ginny did it but just wasn’t working for me.
I wasn’t quite up to wearing just a little bra, sparkly beads or no, but compromised on a choli, a more covering crop top, along with baggy emerald-green harem pants. It left my midriff bared. I was slowly getting used to that. I had started to see a little definition in my abs, even. My hips, alas, remained stubbornly chubby, but now I did wear a fringed scarf around them so I could better see if I was doing the movements correctly.
I’d cleared it with Ginny that another instructor wouldn’t be using the room that night. So when I walked in, I expected to be alone with the mirror. I absolutely didn’t expect to find Sandor there, his drums already set up.
He smiled, dazzlingly white against his caramel-colored skin. “Good evening, Kayla. I’m surprised to see you—pleased, but surprised.” His dark eyes sparkled as if he really was happy to see me and not just being polite.
To say I was flustered would be an understatement. “I thought… Ginny had said no one used the studio tonight. I thought I could…” My voice trailed off. “…practice?” I managed to squeak.
“I as well. My roommate is a law student and he needed quiet tonight to study so I cannot drum at home.” I’d never heard Sandor talk that much in class and his voice, deep and honeyed, fascinated me. His English was almost too perfect, with the formality of someone who’d learned it in school in a country where formality still mattered. The slight accent he retained was charming.
“Well, I’ll just leave you to it.” My voice was squeaking again, worse than before.
He laughed. “Nonsense! I drum so women can dance to my music. Why shouldn’t we practice together?”
Why not? I could think of all kinds of reasons, starting with the fact that he was a professional musician and I was a rank beginner, and ending with the fact that I had wasted a few pleasant hours over the past month masturbating to thoughts of him. But I wasn’t about to tell him the latter, and when I tried the “I’m not worthy” angle, he just laughed again.
“Why do you think I play for Ginny’s c
lass? I like playing for new dancers and introducing them to the music I love so much.”
At this I had to smile. “It’s working on me. Middle Eastern music is so…” I hesitated. The word that came to mind was passionate but I couldn’t get it out, not looking at Sandor, not remembering all the things I’d imagined doing with him. I settled on “so earthy and alive. Like a heartbeat.”
“Then we will warm you up with an ayyoub. That is the one closest to the beating of a heart.”
It was also one of the easiest for a beginner to follow, a simple 2/4, but he was kind enough not to mention that.
I stretched out briefly to a slow pulsing beat. At first, used to his presence in class, I was able to relax. But as I bent over to loosen up the backs of my legs, I swore I could feel Sandor staring at me, or more specifically, at my butt.
Probably in fascinated horror was my first, instinctive thought. I’d never checked the rear view of my poufy-pants–covered butt in this position, but it might be pretty appalling.
When I straightened up and glanced over at him, though, he didn’t look especially appalled.
In fact, he gave me a flirtatious smile and a wink.
Probably he flirted with all the dancers he worked with, or for all I knew, with all women between age eighteen and the grave. Some men just flirted as naturally as they breathed. But that didn’t stop me from grinning back at him and tilting my head in a way I’d picked up in class, a cute teasing gesture from Egyptian cabaret-style dance.
He picked up the pace of the drumming a little and I began to dance, not trying the complex new move yet, but running through a series of basics: hip circles, hip lifts, chest lifts, and drops.
It felt very different doing it with his eyes on me. He watched sometimes in class, sure, but there were twelve of us plus Ginny to divide his attention, as well as interactions with the other musicians. The times I’d realized he was looking at me, it hadn’t seemed personal.
Now it did.
The rhythm flowed out of his hands uninterrupted, but he never looked down. He never took his eyes off me. You’d think he actually found me worth watching, a real dancer giving a fabulous performance instead of a beginner running through exercises.
Finally, I stopped moving, put my hands on my hips and glared at him. “Cut it out!”
“Cut what out, Kayla?” To his credit, he made an attempt at looking innocent, which failed.
“Staring at me. It makes me self-conscious.”
“How will you ever cope with an audience if one man unnerves you?”
I chuckled at the notion of me dancing at a nightclub in a body-baring, glittery costume, the way Ginny did.
Out of habit, I almost popped out with some self-deprecating remark about no one wanting to see a fat chick dance. But I didn’t. For one, it would make me sound pathetic in front of a hot man, and that was no good.
For another, old habits or not, I wasn’t feeling quite as self-deprecating as I used to. Between the dancing and the fact I was eating better without Jason’s pizza-and-beer addiction to tempt me, I was now hourglass-shaped and moving toward fit instead of round and squishy. Sure, it was a larger hourglass than I hoped it someday might be, but what I saw in the mirror of late looked halfway decent even to my own overly critical eye.
The “dancing ladies” were helping with my new attitude as well. As I watched one of my new friends dance, I’d see some moment when the music moved her and she looked beautiful whether or not her body was spectacular.
If it was true for them, it must be true for me too.
And Sandor’s flirting tonight was definitely helping me to believe it. It may be shallow, but it’s true: Attention from a gorgeous man does boost the old self-esteem.
So I squashed the instinct to put myself down and said, “I’m not really interested in performing—I’m just having fun learning.”
“I can tell. You light up when you dance, even just doing the drills. I love watching you—you look so beautiful.”
“Sandor, you are such a sweet-talker! I’ve been dancing for nine weeks and still trip over my own feet half the time, my clothes clash tonight, and I’ve got a butt the size of all outdoors. But thank you.”
“You need to see yourself through my eyes. Let me show you.”
One of his drums had a carrying strap. He stood up and slung it across his body so he could play while moving around, as I’d seen him do for Ginny at a performance.
He moved behind me and broke into a strong, sensual rhythm. I couldn’t conjure its name, but my hips remembered it and started twitching, swaying back and forth to the beat. At first I felt self-conscious, but the music was too inviting to resist. I raised my arms in my best approximation of the elegant curve Ginny taught us, corrected my posture, and let my hips do their thing, snapping and shimmying and circling as the spirit and the music moved me. My fringe swayed back and forth prettily—in time to Sandor’s beat, I was pleased to realize. (I was still at the stage where that wasn’t a given.)
“Look at your face, Kayla. See how joyful you look—how beautiful!”
Usually, when I danced in front of a mirror, I watched my form—or, despite my progress toward having something like self-esteem, zeroed in critically on my belly or my butt.
This time, I did as Sandor instructed and looked at my face.
Was that really me? I wasn’t exactly a Hollywood vision. My hair was disheveled, and the makeup I’d put on before work was faded. But the smile, the rosy, healthy glow, the sparkle in my eyes—I really did look joyful.
And a lot closer to beautiful than I normally thought of myself. Maybe even sexy. It wasn’t a word I usually associated with myself, but if I saw someone else looking as I did right now, I might think, She’s pretty hot. Awful outfit, but pretty hot.
And with that in mind, I tried a move that Ginny had taught us a couple of weeks ago. I started shimmying my shoulders, then leaned back toward Sandor, still shimmying. I wasn’t sure I was doing the move right, but it seemed to have the desired effect. That is, Sandor’s reflection in the mirror grinned happily, and I felt sexier and more daring than I had in a long time.
“That’s the attitude!” he said, and I basked in his approval.
He changed the rhythm to something a little slower and slinkier. At the same time, he angled to the side and leaned in toward me, so our bodies touched without the drum getting in the way. I liked that it was his side I was touching. It seemed safer, enticing without being slutty.
“Listen to my drum,” he whispered. “It’s telling you how beautiful you are.” His voice was like honey, thick and sweet and flowing over me, a sensuous addition to the already alluring music. I could feel the heat from his body.
This was music for undulations and body waves, and that definitely fit the mood. I began a side-to-side undulation, torso first, the hips following.
“Habibi!” Sandor exclaimed, which, I’d learned, means something like “Oh, baby!” in Arabic.
And I looked in the mirror. Normally I didn’t think this move looked good on me. But tonight something was different. I seemed more elongated, snakier, sexier. Practice had undoubtedly done its part to make things look smoother. But it was more that I finally had the right attitude. My face wasn’t scrunched up with concentration. My body was relaxed, fluid. I looked like I was feeling sensual and having a good time.
It didn’t hurt the fun-and-sensual aspect that I was undulating against Sandor. “Ginny had had us try it against a wall at first to help us learn not to twist,” I said. “I should tell her doing it against a cute guy works better. I’m sure we could get volunteers.”
“I’d happily volunteer, as long as I could work with you. I love watching you move, but feeling you move is even better.”
My breath caught in my throat. I realized just how aroused I was. It had come over me while I was dancing. Now I became aware of the hard nipples pressing against the soft stretch velour of my choli, of the way all my blood seemed to be pooled in my pe
lvis, giving new weight to my movements, of the heat between my legs.
I glanced down. It was a little difficult to be sure, looking at an angle and around the drum, but it appeared that Sandor was enjoying himself just as much as I was.
We’d moved beyond casual flirting here into far more interesting territory. Sandor was still drumming and I was still dancing, but now it was definitely a mating ritual.
Sandor altered the drumbeat again, to something pulsating and distinctly sexual. It didn’t sound like anything he’d ever played in class. It sounded as if he was pulling it out of somewhere, creating it just for me.
I danced a little while longer, letting the sound slip under my skin. Then I turned to face him. I wanted to kiss him, press myself against him, feel him hard against me. I wanted to do more than that: to liberate his cock, stroke it, suck it.
But even the new, more confident me wasn’t ready to be that bold. So instead I moved to his music, undulating and shimmying so I was brushing against him half the time, closer than Ginny would have approved. (Or maybe she’d have applauded under the circumstances.)
And then I leaned in and kissed him quickly, a glancing, playful kiss that was far less than what I really wanted. That way, I figured, I could pretend it was all just silliness if I was misreading the whole situation.
He stopped drumming and tucked the drum around behind him. Then he put his arms around me and pulled me in for a real kiss.
By real, I mean I could feel areas inside my mouth that I’d never known were sensitive coming to life as his tongue flicked over them.
By real, I mean I temporarily lost higher brain function.
By real, I mean that by the time we came up for air, it was clear that we weren’t stopping at a kiss.
“Does the door lock?” Sandor asked me, sounding as breathless and distracted as I felt.
“Shouldn’t we…”
“We could, but not at my place. I promised my roommate a night of quiet, and I don’t think this will be quiet.”