Bellydance class

So i returned after a week of joyful friendship, noise, bustle, love and reverting-to-childhood chez mes parents.
Returning home for a week had been a last minute decision, but a very good one, since i had a couple of the best weeks i've had since September, despite getting run down with a lingering infection. Exhausted and with grey hoops under my eyes, panting at the slightest exertion, i was nevertheless radiant with joy.
Landing in France made my face droop on both sides. Nantes is the most dull city i have ever seen. Maybe i should get to know it better before i pass such harsh judgment though. From what i saw, i was little impressed. Tall off-white, architectually-hideous buildings lowering in the grey mist-rain. I was glad to get on the train, but resentful to get off at the tiny little station platform of my nowhere-town.
I swooshed back into town in a jangling frenzy of gypsy skirt. A few days in manchester had opened my eyes to the dreariness of the dress here. I have seen very few alternative people, which is to say that most people strive to present themselves to the world as madame or monsieur normal, and the result is a grey faceless mass of people. Of course, it is up to me, with my "insightful" blog, to find the glittering jewel in the mass of sand, to unearth the freakish qualities lurking repressed under the calm-water surface and present it to you, as a meaningless case-study.
I felt hideous coming back into town in my gypsy skirt, my face speckled with rain. I walked down the grey main road and everything was miserably familiar. The skirt was no longer reminicent of a-thousand-and-one-nights oriental mystery, but in fact made me think of the heavy baggy skirts maman used to wear when she was pregnant, farts seeping unnoticed into the mass of excess material. I felt even more weighed down and hopeless.
Then i decided to fight against glumness. To take opportunities, not to sit around speculating cynically about what might be done, if one had more panache and energy. This new outlook is so far going well, but any slight relapse into my old ways might send me into a fit of remorseful sobbing, we shall have to wait and see.
Today at bellydance class, i half longed to talk to the people around me, but was prevented by some inner block. The most simple block being the realisation that i had nothing that i sincerely wanted to say to any of them. The second was the language barrier walling me in to my own skin, the third being the other women, who were all older than me, and therefore terrifying.
The class involved wiggling about in organised lines in front of a wall-mirror. The instructor is an arabic-looking woman with bleach blonde hair and a divine stomach. Maybe it's my slight belly-fetish that compels me to belly dancing? Also it amuses me that it's such a women-only event. If rugby is a testosterone scented sport, bellydancing reeks of estrogen. Perhaps it's all that focus on the belly, the baby-carrying belly. Looking at the large rounded woman-shaped bellies around me i was reminded of my womanlylessness. Around me jangling coin belts preceded the thrust of well rounded hips which protruded from bodies like teapot handles. My own figure was more like an androgynous worm wriggling imperceptibly in it's final death throws. I tried not to lose hope though, although my mind, caged in with it's thoughts kept turning over self-pitying thoughts about how miserable it is to be a foreigner- to not understand what people are saying and to feel humiliated on a daily basis.
At the end of the class, i smiled at a particular girl and gave her a shy wave, she smiled back with her weird teeth. From the first class, me and this girl have been catching each others eyes in the large mirror. My intuition told me straight away that she was a lesbian, and a non-sexual fascination drew me to her. Every lesson we'll peek at each other shyly in the mirror, but we have yet to really exchange words.