I got out of line and followed my nose to a nearby display where I was deluged by sweet aromas that rose from long thin sticks and cone-shaped cylinders on brass dishes. They had names like Tutti-Fruitti, Strawberry, Cinnamon, Jasmine. . . Coconut. I picked up a slender stick of Coconut and closed my eyes as I inhaled its aroma. 

Coconut had been Yusef's favorite. Its aroma permeated his sparsely furnished ground floor apartment on North Avenue. A blue light marked his entranceway and a lava lamp entranced the casual visitor to his living room.  For a long time, I was one of those visitors, though I never considered myself casual. I told myself that I was there for educational purposes.  Among my friends, it was common knowledge that Yusef could read minds. I disagreed and set out to prove that he couldn't; or, if he could, learn how he did it. Along the way, I learned other things that proved far more valuable.

In 1971, Yusef's digs were considered hip, and God how I wanted to be hip. I was 25 years old, with a brand new degree from the University of Maryland's graduate school of information services. In other words, I was a librarian. During the year I earned that degree, I knew people who sniffed cocaine, and swallowed Qualuudes. The intellectual, scholarly types to whom I gravitated mostly smoked marijuana through fancy glass pipes, served it in brownies, or puffed it in fat, hand-rolled joints. They thought it was groovy and mind expanding. I was drawn to them, but apprehensive about participating in their expeditions.

I never understood why anybody smoked pot. It never induced euphoria in me, as everybody said it would. I got contact-high, and, I smoked it straight - but I always felt as if I were choking to death: it burned my eyes, made my nose run, irritated my throat and made ne cough. There was nothing pleasurable about it. The time I took Qualadues, I kept asking when was it going to be over. I didn't like the way the drug made me feel disconnected and out of control. Control was the one thing I needed to survive. My mother's death just prior to my high school graduation had left me totally responsible for myself. The old boot strap theory had gotten me through college and a year of employment at a college library before earning a graduate degree. When I landed a Civil Service appointment at Baltimore City Hall, I wasn't willing to risk my job because of a drug bust. So, I drifted away from my circle of friends who smoked pot and burned incense to mask its odor.

Then I met Yusef. Yusef didn't smoke marijuana, but he burned lots of incense. He said it reminded him of his years in India, where he had lived while studying with a swami. Yusef's small, dark eyes had first mesmerized me at a friend's party. She called it love at first sight, but it was more like fascination. Yusef's eyes seemed to speak to me, though I could not understand their language.

Yusef was a man of indeterminate age — he could have been twice my 25 years or anywhere in between. He was 5'10" tall, and his smooth, dark skin seemed to have no pores. He was also devoid of hair — everywhere — and it did not seem to be the result of shaving. His two front teeth were missing and he smiled unabashedly, as if the gaping holes were a badge of honor. He told me his teeth had been knocked out when he was a teenager and a replacement bridge had been washed out to sea as he swam in the waters off the California coast. He took that as a sign that for him, front teeth were not necessary.

Yusef was a quiet, gentle man who listened intently as you spoke and seemed to draw the contents of your heart out through your mouth. Because he listened so patiently and remembered everything told to him, people assumed he could read minds. What I found most fascinating about him was the fact that he read nothing — not books, not magazines, not newspapers. To me, an aspiring novelist who had loved books my entire life, this was unfathomable. Yusef lived wholly in the here and now.  Possessions meant nothing to him. He was ready to give away anything he owned. He had no preference for any foods or drink or clothes.  For him, life was an activity of the mind that utilized the body only for fulfillment. Despite his lack of formal education, he was quite learned. An astute observer of humanity, people from all levels and walks of life were drawn to him. With no formal credentials, he worked, quite successfully as a psychiatric therapist's assistant in group counseling sessions. I never saw him at work, but I could imagine him staring around a circle of reluctant soul-searchers and willing them to speak — with his eyes.

He certainly made me speak. Some nights we lay awake talking until dawn overpowered the edges of the black shades that hung at his windows. At least, I talked. Now that I think about it, though Yusef answered any question I asked him, he told me very little about himself. In spite of myself, I loved him. He always listened to me, and never made judgements about what I thought.

I made Yusef a colorful dashiki that he often wore when he played the conga drums at a small, jazz club in downtown Baltimore. He seemed to be in a trance when he played — his eyes closed, his body bent lovingly over the drums, and his bald head swaying rhythmically in the spotlight. Sometimes his bald pate reflected the beam so intensely that it was hard to watch him. But still, you didn't want to look a way. That's how Yusef was, he always grabbed your attention and held it, whether his eyes were open or closed.

Sometimes, the intensity of emotions he aroused in me frightened me — much the way drugs did.  "You two are soul-mates," my girlfriend said. "You ought to just go ahead and get married when spring comes. I'll make the cake and you can have the ceremony in my back yard."

I couldn't tell my friend that I had no intention of marrying Yusef. His bohemian lifestyle did not suite me. I was an up-tight, middle-class social climber, masquerading as a liberal free-spirit. However, I was certain Yusef knew it, even though he never broached the subject. 

Yusef wore several silver bangles around each of his thick brown wrists. When he returned from a brief winter trip to Jamaica, he presented me with a pair of intricately twined silver bracelets. "I had these made especially for you," he said as he squeezed the serpentine bracelet around my wrist. I thanked him profusely, but could hardly wait until I got outside to my car and could free my arm of his gift. My apprehension was palpable. I felt as if the bracelet carried some magic power. The power to draw me into the orbit of his life and never let me escape. I always bathed in the waters of life, got up, dried off and went about my business — reinventing myself upon the strength of each encounter. I feared that Yusef held the power to alter the course of my life. I had to get away before it was too late.