I admit I have a phobia of intrusive people in restaurants. Not loud drunks at the next table or the bickering couple in the booth behind me, but specifically wandering mariachi bands, waiters who slide into the booth next to me when they take my order, and belly dancers. I just want to eat my food, drink my adult beverage, and indulge in conversation with my dinner companions. Unfortunately I love exotic food, and with that love, I often pay the price of a little dinner theater that can cut into or completely halt conversation. I particularly love Middle Eastern food and have learned not to go on a Friday or Saturday night to a Middle Eastern restaurant.
I went this past Friday night to a Middle Eastern restaurant.
It was Belly Dancer Night.
The dancer was beautiful--Middle Eastern Barbie--not exactly normal entertainment when one is on a date.
And the music was loud.
Really loud.
Lean-forward-and-shout-at-your date loud.
But it was hilarious--a techno-traditional fusion with a little Arabic rap thrown in for occasional street cred, and who knew that Evanescence was traditional belly dance fare?
But my date kept smiling and laughing and so did I. He said that he loved it when a film director halts the action and throws in a dance number, like the director feels that the characters and audience should have a little fun--Goddard's little line dance in Band of Outsiders or Tarantino's jack rabbit twist in Pulp Fiction.
The belly dancer somehow fit into the milieu, and in the midst of the evening, I remained strangely phobia-free. I had this wonderful feeling that if my life was a movie, this was the musical interlude--weird, surreal, loud, fun--what should have been uncomfortable was somehow not.
Maybe it was the company.
3 comments:
Nathan and I went to Logan's Road House in Tupelo after going to a movie one night a few summers back, and our waitress--who couldn't have been seventeen--slid into the booth with us. By me, actually. It was incredibly awkward, as she tried to be Little Miss Flirt (like we were at Hooters and not Logan's Road House), and this awkwardness was compounded by her lecherous manager, who stopped by the table to make sure she was "takin' good care of [us] guys."
A nod's as good as a wink to a blind man.
I share your phobia; I didn't realize you had that particular one. Mine is fixated primarily on birthday songs, though. The very thought of a chorus of waiters or waitresses chanting "Happy Birthday" to me makes my guts into balloon animals.
I promise never to have waiters sing to you, especially if they make you put on a sombrero (Beware La Cabana!).
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