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Nerve.com - Austin City Limits
"I'm doing okay," said Heather.
"Who's your friend?" asked the woman, looking at me.
"He's just giving me a ride. I met him out on the Drag . . . "
We went into the kitchen where several people were cutting up vegetables at a wide table. Heather and I got separated and I ended up hanging out with Xed until dinner.
Xed had come here from New Orleans, where he'd been living on the street. Someone gave him a Zendik magazine and he hitchhiked here to join up.
"It's okay," he said. "A lot of work."
A woman named Fawn walked by and told him that, speaking of work, he should try doing some. He and I took some buckets of compost out to an enormous pile near the garden and as we mixed it together I asked Xed if he had a girlfriend.
"No, they don't really believe in that. You can have dates with different people if you want. It's, you know, to
break down all the bullshit."
The problem for Xed was that he was kind of young for this place, and the older guys got all the women. If you wanted to have a date with someone, and by that he meant have sex, you had to bring it up with the group first and they would discuss it. He liked this one girl, Sierra, but he didn't think the group would approve of the union.
Later on, at dinner, I met Sierra. She was very pretty and probably the woman closest to Xed's age. She was nice to Xed, but in the way an older sister would be. I sensed, also, that she had other options available.
I had wanted to sit next to Heather during dinner, but again we were separated. I wished that I hadn't shaved that morning, or even better, that I had managed to grow a beard before coming, because that was clearly the favored look. I felt like I was being regarded warily, and when I told people I was living in Austin they gave me looks of sympathy.
Dinner was a big communal affair where about sixty people — almost the entire tribe, I gathered — sat around a set of tables and afterward made announcements concerning chores and future activities. There was some kind of dance performance scheduled for that night, and Heather decided she wanted to stay to watch it. I wasn't sure if I was welcome, though.
After dinner, as I was helping with the dishes, an older woman approached me and introduced herself. Her name was Arol; she was Wulf's wife. Together they had founded the place in the 1980s.
Arol had a set of very intense eyes and somewhat mystical aura about her. She wore a thin headband with
a feather dangling from it and had a small tattoo under her eye. She kind of floated about as we spoke, moving from side to side.
"What brings you here?" she asked me.
"I'm just giving Heather a ride."
"But you are curious."
"Sure, yes."
"You are an artist."
"Not really."
"Don't be bullshit," she said. "You are an artist. Or you want to be."
"I work in a diner," I explained.
"Don't we all," said Arol.
And she walked away. Afterward, someone asked me what I had thought of "Arol's wisdom," and I said I wasn't sure. I guess I was a little flattered about the artist bit.
Heather was off in a corner talking with a tall, heavily tattooed fellow named Birch. At some point they disappeared, and that was the last I saw of her that night.
The Zendik Band had set up some instruments out in a barn, and most of the the tribe drifted over there to see the performance.
A heavy-set, dreadlocked girl named Raz saw that I was unsure what to do, and she took my hand.
"You'll enjoy this," she said, leading me over there.
In truth, I didn't enjoy the music much. It was a strange mixture of noise: screeching heavy metal and loopy New Age sounds. But the dancing was interesting. Several of the women danced about topless with fiery batons lit at both ends. This kind of fire dancing is fairly common now, but those Zendiks were the first I'd seen doing it back then. They said they picked it up down in Mexico.
Wulf Zendik showed up for the performance too. He had skipped dinner for some reason. He looked, I guess, just as you would think an old radical hippie poet who had founded his own tribe might look. He was kind of radiant, really, and wizard-like, with a long grey beard, a flowing robe and a jovial manner. He carried a carved wooden staff, too, and at one point he got up to dance with the fire dancers. Someone offered to light his staff on fire, but Arol said, "No, don't do that."
Raz filled me in on their relationship. Arol was perhaps twenty years younger than Wulf, who was in his 70s. Wulf's health was failing, but he still had a zesty sex drive. Several of the younger women had slept with him. Arol did not mind this. In fact, she had a younger boyfriend herself, and that relationship was about as close to monogamous as things got here on the farm.
"Arol doesn't like to share him," said Raz.
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