Cynthia’s a bellydancer (and infinitely better — inherently so, from what I’ve seen — than she’ll ever let on). This makes all the guys at the bar delirious with envy, of course, because everyone knows that bellydancers are incredibly hot (true, at least for my wife, one of her friends, and two of the women in the instructional DVDs she owns), flexible (also true), and open to trying new and crazy things (not anymore true than for any other group, sadly).

What the guys don’t realize is that you have to listen to your bellydancing wife practice her zills. Which goes a little something like this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QktYqPajZBA&hl=en]

Watch that video for about thirty minutes straight and tell me you haven’t stabbed your eardrums out.

I never really knew much about bellydance until I met Cynthia — aside from the fact that all the girls I knew that took classes were not the ones I wanted to see bellydance. Though they certainly seemed to have the first half of that word down pat, most were overgrown goth girls (and not the kind you might fantasize about) who were willing to do anything to be a little more accepted. Again, though, not the ones you would fantasize about. Now I know, thanks to Cynthia and some of her friends, that there’s at least one semi-normal (it’s all relative, isn’t it?) and really attractive girl hidden behind ten of the overweight and desperate for attention.

And apparently, an aspiring porn-star or two:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46eZ4W5LoLI&hl=en]

I know that, as a bassist, bartender, and even web-guy, I, too, have often found myself sharing her advice:

“…because you always need a boa trick up your sleeve. Or between your legs.”

Cynthia tells me her name is Dolphina, because she was saved from a horrible boating accident by dolphins. So she changed her name to Dolphina.

Because otherwise, the dolphins would have been hurt, and would have stolen into her residence late one night to take their salty, high-pitched revenge on her ungrateful ass.

It all makes me think immediately of the guy who wrote about having sex with dolphins. And don’t click that link. I’m so not kidding. I laughed myself into a pants-wetting frenzy the first time I read it about five years ago, but I’m pretty sure that the text behind that link is also the reason I now feel compelled to set small fires randomly wherever I go. Also, I think I might have caught some weird strain of syphilis from it. E-Syphilis.

I really have no room to point, laugh, and make public remarks about the freaks in Cynthia’s field of interest. I’m currently serving time as a professional bartender, and god knows that’s a profession filled with stable, intelligent, calm people. I’m a musician, which says it all, but I’ll throw Tommy Lee’s name out there for the hell of it. And I suppose, since I’m not lumping her in with all dancers, I should get genre-specific: hole in the wall dive bar, rock band. But I like to think of myself as breaking the mold a bit, standing a little above my crowd. Much like Paris Hilton thinks of herself as talented, or how W. thinks of himself as a competent president.

Thank heavens for Sharon Kihara, and Rachel Brice, and Cynthia, and Diana, and the bellydancers that bring some level of respectability to their art form. And really, to Dolphina and her ilk, for bringing my wife so many good laughs.

Hey, Cyn — you know who else is a bellydancer now?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdG9zZznjUs&hl=en]