"Right in his Belly!"


Sunday, March 27, 2011

BELLY du JOUR

I'm a male belly-dancer. It's an ancient and respectable art, back in the country where my parents' parents came from. But not here in high school America. If you don't think "male belly-dancer" is a greeen light to get yourself beat up a lot, you don't know much about teen-age boys. All through high school I had a target on my back. Or, to be accurate, right on my belly.

It was mostly the same three or four guys. Sometimes one of them would catch me, sometimes two, sometimes all four. Didn't matter, I always got beat up. They had a way of catching me and provoking me just when I was most vulnerable. And always, always they did it when some pretty girls were there to witness my humiliation.

Maybe it was their own tough-sexy girlfriends, or else it was some one of the pretty nerd-girls I longed to impress and romance. Or it was my two girl friends, female friends, Lisa and Karen. I was their pal, but we had a constant flirtation.

Or it was the actual belly-dancers, female. The most supple, sensual, desirable girls I knew, the ones from the good families among my congregation.

The actual "fight" lasted only one punch: I'd lunge forward angrily and push my fist toward his face. I had no speed or skill. And he would simply block or dodge my blow and counterpunch with a fist to my belly.

I go completely to pieces. I let out a soft-bellied OOUPH!, and my body folds into itself. Belly aching. Staggering away from him, turning. Loud suffering. Weak and winded. Then dropping to my knees, helpless. Shocked, obliterated, destroyed by a bellypunch. What a wimp! And in front of all these girls.

Doubled over or down on my knees, clearly beaten. Then it was up to him, or them, if it ended at that and he walked away contemptuously. Or whether they hauled me up for a total belly beating.

Once they did actually rip my shirt off me and keep it, not give it back after they beat me. They took a big marker pen from one of their girlfriends' purses and wrote "punch my belly" in big letters across my chest, and sent me off to walk home that way, shirtless. I was with Lisa and Karen.