Hips don't lie

One dark and stormy night at a Greek restaurant in Burnaby, the writer sat, nibbling at pita bread, chatting amiably with the five other newswomen who had gathered to gossip, enjoy a meal, share some laughs.
Giggling, moaning about men, bosses, co-workers and pregnancy (not the writer’s, rest assured), the women barely noticed the slight Greek pop music playing through tinny speakers.
But wait!
Suddenly, as a flash of lightning punctuates a really scary movie, the volume soared, the lights dimmed, and all at once the women turned to see what had caused the fuss.
No! It couldn’t be!
But it was, it really, really was.
Glancing to the left, to the main dining area, the women caught a flash of blue, and then, before they knew what happened, the shining blueness turned.
This was not an apparition, not a dazzling genie here to grant their demands.
This was a shocking beast, more ferocious than Robert Deniro in Raging Bull, more frightening than Queen Latifah in Chicago.
A male belly dancer.
“No!” they shouted.
“Yes!” his hips seemed to reply.
“Egads!” The women shouted in unison, knowing the exclamation would only bring the beast closer didn’t help to contain their shock.
Upon spying the women he approached, mistaking their cry of alarm for a shout of pleasure, misunderstanding their looks of astonishment for appreciative glances.
Sequins glimmering, oiled body glistening in the candle light, hips swaying back, forth, jutting with each slap of the finger cymbal he carried as his weapon, he grew ever nearer.
Closer he got until the stench of his cologne overpowered, until the reek of hairspray and cosmetics made the women nearly cough up the recently ingested hummus.
“Don’t make eye contact,” the writer whispered to her colleagues. “Just look away.”
“I hate white rabbits, I hate white rabbits, I hate white rabbits,” was being mumbled by the woman to the writer’s right.
But, like videos portraying pregnant ladies dressed up as clowns and high on hallucinogens, the women couldn’t look away, no matter the consequence.
Just then, the writer glanced up in time to see the beast, the bangle-bedecked man place himself behind the chair of the woman directly across the table, and with a few quick slaps of the cymbals, he juts his hips into her chair, forcing her head forward, once, twice, three times — NO MORE!
He stops, spent, turns away, and from beneath fake lashes, the writer can see his eyes dart about the room, looking for the next victim.
There are so many to choose from. Will you be next?