Sham Man is a fictional novel/spec TV series based on a true story (er, true for whom is another story). Here's the backstory.

 

So after a long search, I find this very old Yaqui Indian healer in Northern Mexico who tells me and my Mexican attorney/translator that he is the real-life Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda's 1960-70s popular series of non-fiction books (1).

 

Uh-huh...

 

"DJ" (as I like to call him) shrugs  --

"All I know is that little shit was always hanging around here.”

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Despite interviewing DJ five times between 2007-2009, he repeatedly refused to come forward as Castaneda's Don Juan, insisting --

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“I am not riding in on his coattails.  He rode in on mine.”

 

Complicating things, Castaneda himself never revealed the true identity of Don Juan, which almost cost him his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA. Of course, everyone loves a mystery, but it only further begs the question --  who's the real sham man? 

 

DJ seems determined to take the story of their relationship to his grave, just as Castaneda, who died of excruciating liver cancer in1998, took his with him. (Watch those 'power plants,' people, very hard on your liver which btw, you need to metabolize pain killers.) 

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From what little I could gather, the two men had a complicated relationship.  DJ once angrily threw me out of a Yaqui Deer ceremony in front of  elders for being "just like Castaneda." (I probably deserved it.)  

 

Another time, he dismissed Castaneda as a "pinche loco" (crazy fucker) but immediately followed with a heartfelt  --  

 

“God rest his soul.”

 

More surprisingly,  DJ claimed he had no idea where Castaneda got his "flying around on broomsticks stories," and that his extravagant fabulism had made him a "pariah in my own (Yaqui) community." 

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He did, however, confirm the existence of Castaneda's "dreaming double", a sort of out-of-body projection like the Tibetan Buddhists' Tulpa, which DJ more aptly called El Otro Yo (Other Me), noting they were real but often "naughty." 

 

Uh-huh... Well, think about it -- we all have repressed Otro Yo’s, deeply personal shadow selves that usually only surface in dreams, fantasies and fictions of all kinds (including lies). What if one of them got the upper hand? Who's the real sham man?

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But back to Castaneda and DJ's relationship, I'm sorry to say I never got the full story, which is as it should be since stories always depend on who's telling them and what skin they have in the game.

 

Which brings me to my own anonymity --

 

How Castanedian, si?  DJ-esque?  Mea culpa for now. "Sin Nombre" seems a fitting pseudonym since I'm a "no-name' writer who's only published a few short stories in literary journals, albeit good ones, some time ago.

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But hey, sketchy is the name of the game in Castaneda's Don Juanian world. I'm just pulling threads to see where they all lead and playfully taking it all a step further with my own anonymity.

 

Probably some of you already have a good guess who DJ is but I urge you all to do your own due diligence, understanding it's the journey that counts, not what you find in the end (2).

 

In closing, whatever happens or doesn't happen with Sham Man, I'll never forget my time with DJ, the man and the myth. I wonder if he would even remember me at his advanced age, except perhaps as another little shit always hanging around (er, if the shoe fits).

 

And while far be it from me to sort out DJ's traditional Yaqui teachings from what Castaneda brought to the mix, in the end, does it really matter which is which?

 

Life is a mash up. Sham Man is my contribution. Take or leave it.

 

It is what it is.

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Welcome to my secret world.

-- Sin Nombre,  November 2021

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Thanks  to Chris Twomey for my title, Sham Man ( play on 'shaman') from a 1994 article he wrote about the great ethnobotanist and psychonaut, Terence McKenna entitled "Words with the Sham Man," originally published in Eye Weekly. 

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1. This is confusing but here goes: Castaneda insisted to his death that Don Juan Matus was a real person and that his Don Juan books were non-fiction; the man I interviewed (DJ) who claimed to be Castaneda's Don Juan, was/is an actual living person, still alive as of this writing; my Don Juanian character Don Anon (from "anonymous") is a wholly fictional character. (See Disclaimer below). 

 

2. As for my own due diligence, I have a xerox of DJ's "official" Mexican ID  stating his remarkable age, which looked legit; professional photographs of him, audio recordings of our interviews and credible witnesses to all of them including a Mexican attorney. 

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DISCLAIMER:

Sham Man is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. 

 

The author or author's representative do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or other cause.

 

       All rights reserved.

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