Bakersfield Bukowski meets belly girls - By N.L. Belardes

Saturday night I was supposed to hang out with a couple of friends who ended up dogging me for who-knows-who or what’s-his-sign. It was one of those “I’m getting ready” and “So and so is in the bathtub” speeches, followed by, “we’ll catch up with you later” kind of yaya whatever promises. Another friend was off for tea and crumpets. Another in Palm Springs getting eyebrows waxed. My fellow blogger in crime was off to pick up parents from the airport. Even the director of The War Days was off to Universal Studios and such. You know how that all goes. It’s the life of a novelist to be cranky and isolated. It’s how I spend holidays. The War Days director and his cohort gone. Both my parents long dead and buried. I’m just the poor bastard writer fully in drunken self pity on those days crying over why Santa stopped eating his milk and cookies on Christmas Blissmas night so long ago. I think novelists revel in such pitiful behavior and then try to write these grandiose statements in sweeping narrative form. Anyway, I wandered downtown, walked from the Oleander Arts Collective onto the great big streets of Bakersfield, fully in a Buck City Bukowski mood for sure.

I wound my way across bright sunlit streets, wondering if the sun was ever going to dip beneath the horizon into the icy Pacific. Lucky sun. So I finally made my way to Kosmos Restaurant where a whole bunch of glittering sunshine caught my eye. Inside, there were many beautiful women, all in ceremonial dancing garb, and as golden and glittering as jewel-encrusted crowns.

Inside sat Shantell from 2-out-of-3 Chord Whore. She had told me to boogie on down, and so I did, even though I had thought about just sitting at home and surfing movie trailers until my eyes popped... ploink-ploink.

But here I was in this exotic place of tribal girls and belly dancing ladies. There were shaking tummies, swaying hips, curled lips, wandering eyes and fingertips moving like Polynesian waves beckoning me to a sparkling sea. The music and artistry was beautiful and it was more than pleasant to see such joy on faces that seemed happy to feel so free.











Thanks to Shantell and Heather for getting me to walk on down to see such beauty. Of course when I left I just sauntered back home in the darkness, back in my Bakersfield Bukowski mood, back to my dark house and mood in the Oleander Arts Collective, back to where I could sit and ponder the echo of such music still surfacing, still moving...

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Sunday, July 24, 2005. You can leave your response.