parasitegirl | You are entering Bol Bol’s world.

Thursday the 1^st I slept in…as much as I ever do these days. I had intended to do more work on Anaan’s costume and my own dancing and drilling, but that was before the package arrived. I spent most of the morning tailoring a new-to-me vintage dress with awesome navy and black swirls until it fit me perfectly. My priorities.

I was resting on my day off as best I could, because that night I would be kicking off three nights of gigs and the following morning I would be reporting to my first day of my third year at city hall.

Thursday night’s gig would be at Bol Bol, a Persian restaurant out in Koenji. I came to the attention of Bol Bol’s owner, Bol Bol, when I took Inx and friends out to see KIKI dance last December. After the dance-a-long he wanted my card and sent over raki for me to drink. The following day I mailed KIKI to make sure dancing there would be cool with her and that my minimum rate wouldn’t be undercutting her. She was happy to have me dance there in the future and happy with my rate.

Koenji is not a place I’d want to dance every week, as it is simply too far from my home, but I figured it might be a nice place for occasional gigs and the fact that it is Persian would give me permission to stray from my straight-up Turkish sets and enjoy some sword/Egyptian/fusion moments.

Bol Bol called me last week to see if I was free Thursday because there was a party that would probably want a dancer. I checked on the time (8ish) and the set length (30? Bullshit. 25 at best…not enough room in the average J restaurant to make 30 minutes a good idea). I explained that I usually perform Turkish styles and wouldn’t have much time to change the set, he said Turkish would be great. He asked about price and engaged in the usual unsuccessful haggling…which felt more like a cultural formality than anything I need worry about.

I didn’t think to ask about the party. I should have.

Thursday, early evening, I slipped on my groovy print dress and made up my show face. I tend towards dramatic eyes and eyeliner and understated lips much of the time (for restaurants…stages require you make your lips known) which goes with my love of 60’s/70’s print dresses. I packed a very bellydancerish gold-bedlah and full skirts…the sort that the GP knows well. I added a Romani song to the set I’ve been using for Istanbul to add time, and headed out to Koenji.

Most of the time a restaurant party means an office night out or a birthday with male and female Japanese customers. It’s what I had assumed and usually if there is something special about the group an owner mentions it. I don’t usually ask many questions at the Turkish restaurants because, well, I know what to do if there are some surprise Turks. I’ve learned to ask about Ramses (because if any place is likely to have Egyptian customers, it is them)…and I thought asking about my music choices was enough for Bol Bol.

Then I stepped into the small restaurant and saw every table filled with men in suits. Persian businessmen coming together to socialize. Two of them, younger guys, were playing music on a large drum and what looked like a kanun but could have been a Persian stringed instrument I don’t know. There was beer, hookahs, and smoke. I don’t know much about Bye-Bye Birdie…but a blurry vision of the Elk Lodge scene sprung to mind…one dancing Mary Tyler Moore and many men in fezes. They reminded me of a 60’s mens' lodge and I was dressed for it.

I realize that I think of smoky rooms full of men in suits doing social networking business as a thing of the past, Elk Lodge scenes and such, but that they aren’t. I think of them as the part of the past because, as a woman, they aren’t a world I see in the present. It’s not a world open to me and my ovaries.

Bol Bol apologized…that it might take a while before it was dancing time…food hadn’t been served yet. Would I like a beer?

That didn’t seem like a good idea, so I opted for tea. Over the next two hours I drank three cups of tea. I sat at the back table and cursed the fact that I’d forgotten my iPhone when I left for the gig. I couldn’t wander the neighborhood and wait for a call, I couldn’t go online…I didn’t mind as much as I might normally, because there was live music…and then poetry…and the general sense of being someplace private watching cultural exchanges I might not normally see…but in a language I do not know. Then I realized they would be introducing each other and giving speeches one by one.

I worried that my set, really geared towards throwing a mini party in a GP attended Turkish restaurant, might be too genki…that I should have thrown in some slower songs so they could socialize and observe over drinks like Turkish regulars at Ancyra like to. I worried about the dance-a-long…which featured music I don’t care for but is easy for newbies to hear the beat on..I worried they wouldn’t get up to dance with me.

The two waitresses were the only other women, one I knew from the BD scene and she was all cute and full of jumpy glee because she likes me as a performer.

There was no point to getting angry. I know Bol Bol couldn’t speed things up…and it was my first time there. A few members of the gathering had come over to introduce themselves and tell me they looked forward to the dancing, this was the sort of crowd containing people who might book me for other gatherings if they were happy. The one I exchanged cards with is a manager over at the Imperial Hotel in Ginza…which would be a nice connection to have.

The hotel manager was the one who sat near me and amused me and was obviously the joker of the crowd. He gestured at all in the place and explained them away as “his brothers”…when one of his brothers tried to get me to drink beer he was quick to explain (I think) that I was the dancer and not there for any salubrious purposes and wouldn’t be drinking or smoking…like them…and the young man apologized. The manager drank and drank and asked me to forgive him, it was his first night drinking…same routine with the food…”have not eaten in days! Forgive me!” NOMNOM NOM.

Eventually it was time for me to get changed. There was a changing space! Not a toilet! Inside the restaurant!

The men had discussed my country of origin while I was out, so they greeted my first moves with “ We love America!” and occasionally would shout out a love for Obama. The joker got people to tip me and ran around the room encouraging such actions and winking that he expected his 30% cut of the action at the end of the night. I was tired, hot, and a little overwhelmed. I was not at my best but I was as good as I needed to be and they were happy.

I need not have worried that they would not get up. I’ve moved up the dance-a-long earlier in my restaurant set for Istanbul but I quickly realized that drunken Persians were not as easy to return to seats as slightly tipsy Japanese women. Once up they volunteered friends, forced other people up, and never sat back down. I remembered being on a bus to my hotel in Instabul after Sema had gotten me a table at Istanbul In and made the managers take care of me. The bus organizer who wouldn’t let me walk back to my place sat with me towards the end of the ride and explained that the Persians bouncing around in the seats behind me were normal. The Persians make it a party bus and don’t want the party top ever stop, he told me. I remembered.

Bol Bol and the men were sad that I couldn’t stay for food…but by then it was near 11PM, I was and hour and change away from home and I started the next work year the following morning. I made my way out after being wrangled by a few men who wanted to thank me more formally and smile, drunkenly, at me.

I grabbed an ice cream bar at a 7-11 and caught my train. Due to sever winds, the trains were delayed and I rolled into my apartment around 1am…spent.