The Snake Charmer

I walked into a local Taqueria yesterday and spotted a man I recognized. A white guy with a long gray beard and yellow foot-high turban, he's hard not to spot. He lives near us in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I remember seeing him twenty years ago when we both dropped our kids off at the elementary school. His turban was blue then. More recently he sold a car to a friend..

This doesn’t sit well with me. 

In my experience, turbaned men are snake charmers, or magic carpet riders or genies, or all three.

Not car salesmen. 

I waved to him and when I turned to find a table he motioned me over.

“Have a seat,” he said. 

I wasn’t sure. I had ordered the chili verde  and I thought he was probably a vegetarian. I didn’t want to apologize for my order when it arrived. Plus, I don’t really like to eat with people who aren’t eating. The remnants of his lunch were on the tray next to him.

He looked right into my eyes.

“Tell me what’s going on in your life.”

Never one to turn down an opportunity to talk about myself, I settled in.

His face was so open, so guileless that I skipped the small talk. Told him about performing. About my passion for storytelling. About producing a new venue.

“We’ve got some storytellers at The Crest,” he said.

He said “The Crest” as if it was a known place. I know nothing about The Crest, but guessed that he lived there and that it was in the mountains and had panoramic views and perhaps other turbaned people.

 “One of them goes into schools to help kids understand bullying. He went to this one school and one of the kids—the bully—talked about how his best friend had been killed. And how he was so angry he just wanted to make other kids as sad as he was. The kid he bullied spoke. He said his family moved a lot and he was always the new kid and always bullied. He talked about how scared he was to come to school every day. Another kid spoke about how he had seen the new kid pushed around and hadn’t done anything about it. And he was sorry. The storyteller wove a story about three friends who were kind even when they were sad and who were brave even when they were afraid and who spoke up so that they wouldn't be sorry."
The story moved me.

He looked me in the eye again. “Storytelling is very important,” he said.

And because of his turban, his words seemed prophetic, weighty. 

I asked him what was going on in his life.

He told me about an herbal supplement he had created specifically for women.

“It contains a plant based form of estrogen that mimics the hormone released in a woman’s body when she’s pregnant. That hormone is part of what creates that beautiful glow, that vitality.”

I got a little nervous at this point. I was immediately suspicious of a supplement that tricks premenopausal woman into thinking they were pregnant. And in my two pregnancies combined, I had experienced perhaps four months total of intermittent glowy-ness.

Also, I was slightly offended that he’d made assumptions about the current state of my hormones.

I nodded and listened. It occurred to me that he might do a lot of meditation on The Crest. And that he might have cultivated the ability to read minds. I tried to clear mine of negative thoughts and nodded some more.

“Karuna and Sativa are testing it for me.”

I knew these women. Beautiful, vibrant practitioners of yoga and Buddhism. Facebook friends of mine, they adore him. Pictures of him are always popping up on their posts.

“Great!” I said, thinking that perhaps I was my own worst enemy. 

 He gathered his things to leave.

“I have to pick up a mouse for a snake,” he said.

At first I thought this was a veiled reference to needing to pee, but he explained.

“Dandy Lion is staying at The Crest. She’s an ecstatic dancer who works with snakes. I told her I’d pick up a mouse while I was in town. They give it to you in a paper bag and I didn’t want to leave it my motorcycle trunk while I ate. It seemed wrong—a mouse in a bag.”

A mouse in a bag in a tiny trunk.

That wouldn’t sit well with me either. 

"You should come tell stories at The Crest some time. Get a group together. We have wonderful gatherings."

"Oh, sure. That would be fun." 

I wasn't sure. We stared at each other for a moment. 

"How do I reach you?"

He gave me his number. 

Later I told my husband about the invitation.

"That was nice. Will you go?"

I'm still not sure. Maybe. Maybe I'll go and tell this one.

I imagine a bonfire at the top of a mountain. I stand before the man and his friends who laugh and razz him when I get to the part about the hormone supplement. After I'm done they add more wood to the fire and Dandy Lion rises up from the circle, a boa constrictor coiled around her waist, looped over her shoulders. Her well-oiled body reflects the flicker of flames that split like refracted light as she dances, throwing back her head in ecstasy.