It was a Saturday night and Duval Street was busy. Half way along and something was causing a bottleneck; a throng was stopped and blocking the sidewalk. Even the street was choked with slowed pedicabs, with drivers craning, and they have seen it all. I had to see. I elbowed my way through to find at the center of the circle of the commotion was a single small girl dancing inside a hula hoop. But by dancing I mean mesmerically. The little hula dancer had some moves, seemingly creating a tunnel around herself, supple as ribbon as she trained the hoop from the end of one finger, and pulsating the fast moving hoop all the way down to near her ankles and with a bend to her knees she had it traveling north again. Hips moving in a continuous O.

Seated close by, and wholly ignored, was a skinny shirtless man on a type of horn that he held with both hands but its stem carried on longer than his whole body and resting on the dirty cement sidewalk it pitched up at the end in a cornucopia of haunting sounds.

Her hair was multicolored and twisted into wide dreadlocks, pulled back into a stiff ponytail. Her clothes were tropical gypsy replete with a sheer scarf sewn with a hundred golden coins, so that they shook and sparkled like electric plumage. She was so sexy she emptied the mind and filled the heart. As she danced her face remained serene like a confident child.

She played up to the passing motorbikes and they nearly toppled. She out-performed herself for the big trucks and the windows rolled down and admirers hung out. Grown men yearned to take her home, make her whole. She nearly caused traffic accidents. When she did these moves her guy on the horn followed her with his eyes meanwhile his mouth stayed stuck on his instrument. His music was sublime and the little hula girl had evidently danced to it a trillion times, they shared a tangible communication and even with her attention diverted he could reel her back, so that they were moving together, like a snake charmer and his happy pet.

Repeatedly I dropped money in their tip jar, an upturned top hat. I could not walk away; rather I did not want to.

Occasionally obscuring my view were posses of brides and their maids, and then groups of grooms with their stags, usually someone carrying a naked blow-up doll, and most everyone smoking the local hand-rolled Cuban seed cigars. Men and women and some well trained pets puffed the cigars. The sweet heavy smoke mixed in with the hot still air and car fumes. The unctuous smell took me back as scents have the power to do, to a time long ago, sparking memories of when children were encouraged to believe in dreams and fairy tales, like the adventures of the dancing gypsy girl.