Asheville, NC

Well, there certainly are a lot of hippies here.

I arrived in Asheville, NC yesterday afternoon, after having spent the night in Charlottesville, VA with a friend. The drive was nice, through rural areas and up into the mountains of Western North Carolina.

I've moved here to live with an old friend Xavi, with whom I played music when living in South Carolina. Xavi has lived here for a few years now, and has thus set up quite a nice network of friends, activities and the like. This being the case, I arrived to find the night already planned for me. We would enjoy a concert and then head on to a party hosted by a local musician and friend of Xavi.

We went to the show, and saw the Toubab Krewe, an instrumental group specializing in African rythms. They were good--the music was lively and well played, and the melodies were interesting. The crowd, packed with a dreadlocks and flowing dresses, smelled heavily of patchoulli oil. People danced to the sounds of the drums and guitars, waving their arms, closing their eyes, and immersing themselves in drugged trances.

We lasted through the first set and then, by common consensus, decided to go. The performance had been good, but enough was enough. At least that was my opinion.

And so we moved to the party, just a short drive from the venue. We entered into a nice, spacioius house. The lights were low and a fire burned quietly in the fireplace. A girl approached us, holding out a hat filled with small slips of paper, and invited us to put our names into the "kissing hat". I did so, signing Pancho (my Asheville sobriquet) and within a few minutes I heard a masculine voice asking, "Who's Pancho?"

I hid in the couch, and continued in my conversation with the young lady to whom I had been speaking.

The crowd was quite mixed, and not at first sight made up of a the archetypical Asheville hippie, for which I was grateful. They were, however, quite an interesting bunch, and the strange antics of the night made for quite an amusing time.

A few of the highlights:

1. While waiting on line for the bathroom, I happened to glance into the nearest bedroom. Inside, a massage table was set up. Candles burned and incense smoke waved through the air. A girl lay on the table, face down, naked but for her underwear. Around her, a group of people in varied states of dress massaged her entire body. Their twelve oily hands worked together as she lay silently. I looked at the guy next to me, asking, "Have you seen this?", thinking that he would be as surprised as me at the situation. He looked in, apparently unsurprised, and commented, "Oh, I want in on that."

2. Later in the evening, coming in from outside, where I had been playing music with the host, a rather talented guitarist and vocalist, I noticed an attentive group in the main room. I stepped in to see what held their interest. A girl sat in a chair before everyone, wearing a short dress and no underwear. She read strange poetry from a paper she held in front of her, her voice rising and falling, at times whispering and at times exclaiming in ecstatic fashion. The crowd watched in awe, making little "oooh" noises whenever they liked a particular line. Feeling strange, I escaped quickly.

3. After the poetry reading had finished, another girl came into the room, dancing strangely and looking quite happily drugged. She lay on the ground and two guys (previously seen in the massage parlor) lay next to her. Around the room, people chatted while sipping beers. Others danced or sat in couches.

The huddled, supine group of three began to undulate on the ground. One guy started to massage the girl and kiss her lips. The other kissed her stomach and massaged her legs and chest.

Everyone continued to chat as if nothing were happening. I sat there transfixed and wondering where the hell I was. Had I wandered inadvertently into a sex party? What was going on?

Soon enough, their show ended, the one guy stood up, unstraddling the girl, the other wandered away. Everything continued just as it had in the room, and I seemed to be the only person thinking that anything strange had happened.

All in all, quite an odd party, although thankfully I did meet some rather interesting, quite "normal" people that seemed perfectly happy to chat without engaging in spontaneous massage, poetic mutterings, or disrobing.

This morning began the job search, so things have got to get "serious" now. We'll see how it goes.

More soon.