Archives for category: Friendship

JUDGING THE BOOK BY ITS COVER

July 2, 2015 //
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Lifting Of The Fig Leaf

Haresh Shah

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Zahir takes me by the hand.

‘Let me introduce you to some of the people here.’ I am one of the hundred some invited guests at Zahir and Bernadette Kazmi’s annual pre-Ramadan shenanigan at their spacious home in Chicago suburb of Oakbrook. Outside it’s raining cats and dogs and yet it has not deterred any of their friends and the families from showing up in droves. Only damper it has put on the event is that all of his beautiful oriental rugs are covered with large bed sheets and installed outside the house is a tent sized awning, shrouding the open sky.

The first person he introduces me is a tall and lanky Pakistani friend, whose name I promptly forget as soon as it is said.

‘Haresh used to be an editor at Playboy.’ Zahir can’t help but throw in. I think he gets a kick out of watching the reaction on the people’s faces. If not exactly ignoring, I try to slough it off with a hollow laugh.

‘But that was long time ago. And don’t forget I also worked for Time and Life and a whole bunch of other magazines in Prague!’

‘Yes, but you were with Playboy for the longest time!’

True.

‘Playboy?’ The tall and lanky man rolls his eyes with a knowing smile. ‘It must have been fun working for them?’

‘Yeah, it was wonderful!’ I concur.

‘Are you still with them?’

‘No, I left them some time ago and now I am retired!’

‘How can you ever leave Playboy?’

‘Just the way you do any other job!’

‘If I ever worked for them, I would never leave.’ He is alluding to the fun part of what he imagines I did. Like, young, beautiful and naked women prancing around.

‘But I did!’ My answer has him jerk his head and render him speechless.

The next person Zahir introduces me is a distinguish looking black gentleman – Joe. His reaction to my association with Playboy is muted but not without wonderment.

Towards the end of the evening when I am contemplating calling it a day, I sit down next to Joe at the table placed by the end of the awning – a stray raindrop thumping on us. ‘Thought I rest my butt and talk to you for a while before taking off.’ Sitting on the other side of him is his wife, Yvonne.’

Joe looks about my age, perhaps a couple of years younger. He too has similar back problems. Like two old geezers, we compare notes and get our mutual health problems out of the way.

‘So what was it like working for Playboy?’

‘No different than any other job. I loved it.’

‘How do  you feel about the contents of the magazine?’

‘You mean the nudes?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Well, to start with, I have also worked for Time, Life and Sports Illustrated and Fortune, as well have done a bunch of women’s titles and have been editor-in-chief of Serial, a show business magazine in Prague. In my opinion, Playboy is one of the best magazines there is in the world!’

I notice a bit of apprehension cross his face as he asks:

‘What makes it one of the best?’

‘The sheer excellence of its editorial content, and the professionalism and the care with which the magazine is put together.’

‘What about the nudes?’

‘If  you are judging it for the nudes, have  you ever given a thought to the fact that of an average 200 page issue, the nudes occupy only 36 some pages?’

‘How can it be?’ I imagine him thinking, because all he remembers are the nudes. Joe seems intrigued. So I continue.

‘What do you think rest of the pages are filled with?’ I give him a pointed look. And then answer it myself.

‘For the rest of the pages, Playboy competes for the same writers and the contributors as does The New Yorker.’

‘But isn’t New Yorker a serious literary magazine?’

‘Yes it is. And so is Playboy.’ As I say that, I am thinking of what Hefner (Hugh M.) once said to a bevy of Playmates during one of their reunions at his Los Angeles mansion: if not for you, I would be a literary magazine! ‘As a matter of fact, both of them are excellent general interest magazines.’ I add.

‘You mean also likes of Harpers and Atlantic?’

‘Precisely! Albeit more lifestyle and sexually oriented. And geared mainly towards men.’

‘Are you Muslim?’ asks Joe out of the clear blue sky. Stands to reason, because the majority of guests are.

‘No!’

‘Than what are you? A Hindu?’

‘Yes!’

‘I am surprised because I have never met a Hindu so nice.’ And then he goes on to tell me how his experience with Hindus has been not so positive. Strange, because that is certainly not so. We have our quirks, but by and large the Indians, Hindus or Muslims have a very good reputation in the USA. I tell him about Maria – the 93 year old Polish lady who I often run into on Division Street, up the street from St. Mary’s medical building, always raving about her Indian doctor, who she tells me treats her free of charge and how nice he has always been. And how majority of Indian doctors in the country are well regarded and respected.

‘I guess I am prejudiced because of my own experience of them. I will pay more attention the next time’

He also has some misconceptions about the animosity between Hindus and Muslims – the petty wars between them he has watched on TV or has read about. He is surprised at me saying that in spite of bit of fireworks and the sectarian violence, a few border disputes, Hindus and Muslims in India live in harmony. That I for one, grew up right next to the pre-dominantly Muslim neighborhood of Bhindi Bazar in Mumbai. That Zahir, a Muslim and I are as good  friends as anyone else baffles him.

He is astonished when I tell him that after Indonesia, India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. As of 2014 census, to Indonesia’s 209 million, India has 176 million Muslims to Pakistan’s 167 million. That the Bollywood is dominated mainly by Muslims and majority of our idols like Shahrukh Khan are Muslims, and are most beloved on the sub-continent. That even though up until very recently Hindu Marriage Act prohibited Hindus from polygamy, India’s Muslims were allowed to have up to four wives, justified under the fundamental right for those who practice Islam. I totally forget to mention that during the short history of independence, of the total of thirteen, India had four Muslim presidents.

By now I have managed to totally confuse poor Joe. And I tell him how proud I was of the country of my birth when CNN sponsored debate between India and Pakistan that took place in Mumbai early in the 2000s, moderated by their star anchor Wolf Blitzer, that three of the five panelists on the Indian team were Muslims.

‘This is all new to me. Let me find my daughters, I want them to hear this. They are somewhere around her.’ With what I am saying, I am shattering Joe’s deeply rooted convictions.

And Joe disappears in the crowd. I strike up a conversation with his wife Yvonne, up until then the onlooker. I find out that they have been married for like 45 years, still happily together – albeit with the usual ups and downs of any coupledom.

Soon Joe reappears with his two stunningly beautiful gems of daughters. Appropriately named Amber and Crystal. Earlier I had noticed Amber around the buffet table. A beautifully sculpted angular face and shining cinnamon color skin, her dark hair pulled up, tall, she could have passed as an artist’s muse. I presumed her to be the older of the two. But the younger looking Crystal at 42 looks like she is in her early thirties. She is darker – the color and the texture of dark chocolate and has the shoulder length billowing hair framing her round face.

‘I want you girls to listen to this gentleman. He used to work for Playboy!’

‘Playboy?’ Exclaims Amber. She twists her nose in a disdainful gesture.

‘You obviously have never read the magazine?’ I ask pointedly.

‘What is there to read?’

I give them the same spiel as how only 36 some pages of the magazine are the nudes.’ And I tell her about the in-depth articles, fiction and the interviews. I mention Gabriel García Márquez, which draws a blank.

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Categories Friendship, Hindus, India, Memoire, Muslims, Nudity, Playboy

THE DELICATE BALANCE

May 7, 2015 //
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Flying Free Like A Hawk

Haresh Shah

ballance
“You’re doing a good job if you manage to piss us off fifty percent of the time, and piss our partners off another fifty.” Our boss Bill Stokkan would often tell his managers, usually during one of his pontification sessions. More true of his international divisional heads who had not only to deal with the products but also with the cultural nuances of the people from several countries. In my case, it also worked to my advantage that I was not an American born American. Especially the people I worked with from the non-European and Asian countries felt that I understood them better just because I was born and grew up in India. That I brought a different sensitivity to our working together. Equally so with my American management, because by then I had spent as many years in the West. As difficult as it could be sometimes, I had developed a close rapport with the people on both ends and had earned their confidence and the respect.

Even more so for our Yastaka Sasaki, who handled Playboy account for our Tokyo rep Ray Falk. Not only was his job to interpret the language portion of our communications with the editors and executives at our Japanese partners Shueisha, but also of making sure that what one of us said or wanted didn’t upset the sensitive cultural differences. Sasaki, as everyone called him, spoke fluent English. Almost instantly, he had earned my respect and if not exactly having become close friends, us two had established a certain honesty and trust into each other that went beyond simply working together. Those five days we spent together crisscrossing Japan sealed our bond which never weakened till the very end.

The last I saw of Sasaki was at my home in Evanston, October of 1993. Officially, I had already departed Playboy, but had invited for one last hurrah the group that had come to Chicago to partake in that year’s International Publishing conference. Turned out to be so much fun that it had to be repeated at the tail end of the conference. No more cigars, bemoaned Jeremy Gordin, the editor-in-chief of about to be launched South African edition. I had cooked Indian food and had caterers supply the rest. Everyone was spread out across several rooms of my house. I remember Sasaki and I, along with the Japanese editor-in-chief, the suave Suzuhito Imai sitting around the glass topped breakfast table in the corner, Jan (Heemskerk) standing by the kitchen counter and looking on. As Jan remembers it, placed in the middle of the table is a bowl full of fire red and deep green ultra dynamite Thai chili peppers. Sasaki picks up the red one and is about to take a bite.

‘Be careful, it will kill you!’ I warn.

‘I don’t think so. I am used to eating hot food.’

‘Yeah, but this is not hot food. This is the killer Thai pepper.’

‘Don’t worry, I can handle it.’

Our hands on our chests and our breathing momentarily suspended, we watch him bite off a chunk bigger than even I ever would dare. As if pierced by a sharp arrow, suddenly his face turns red and then contorted shriveled up fig. Tears begin to roll down his eyes. He runs to the sink, but it’s too late. Like three sadists, Jan and Imai and I laugh our butts off. I told you so. I want to say, but I spare him that bit of insult to his injury.

Beyond that, we may have stayed in touch for a while, but nothing in particular that I remember. Six years later I am living in Prague and am now editor-in-chief of successful Serial magazine, which as the name suggests, is focused on the popular television series. Suddenly, not the prime time, but the Sunday morning cartoon series Pokémon is all the rage on the Czech television. We decide to do cover story on the show. But as with other shows, the information and the images available through the local television network is limited to the press material, which everyone else too has. But I want to do an in-depth, but entertaining and informative feature on the show. I am specifically interested in the character’s creator, the elusive, Satoshi Tajiri. There is not much known about him and there isn’t a single photo of him available to accompany the text. Sasaki somehow manages to send me an old black and white shot of the man. We have a local artist do a color illustration of him.

Sasaki is pleased and amused at us re-connecting: and I thought you had faded away in the sunset after Playboy! And here you are, well and alive and no less than are editor-in-chief of a successful magazine in beautiful Prague! I can’t help but sense a certain amount of pride he must have felt at my well being post-Playboy. I obviously feel flattered and pleased at the fact that how pleased he sounds at his Shah-san not having disappeared behind the clouds of the past.

Barely little over a year has passed when I receive a mail from Mary (Nastos) in Chicago. It brings the sad news of Sasaki’s passing on March 20th, 2002. A shock to say the least. I immediately write to his wife Miki and to Ray Falk. Even though I remembered having briefly met Miki once, her husbands’ death prompts long email correspondence between us two. In the correspondence, she describes in poignant details the last days and the last moments of his life and death. In-between the lines I could see how much love there must have been between the two. And yet, their relationship could not have been without ups and downs, in which unbeknown to me, they must have been divorced. The response that came from Ray Falk reporting on the funeral service for the man who had joined him right out of college and worked for him practically till the end, ends with: Mr. Sasaki’s wife who used to work in our office remarried her former husband before his death—-to ease his days—-a wonderful gesture.

As I re-read Miki’s e-mails sent to me soon following his death, there is more than just a wonderful gesture. There is genuine love and an enviable closeness.

In January of 2001, Sasaki is diagnosed with the cancer of esophagus. He is subjected to six weeks long chemo and radio therapies, which helps kill the bad cells along his esophagus. He goes on camping and fishing trips over the Golden Week in April-May holidays. Miki and him take another trip to the mountain lake in June. He suffers a relapse in July. The cancer has metastasized to his liver in multiple areas.

The real battle begins. He submits himself to a new drug in its first phase of the clinical trial. He continues to work and manages his day-to-day life. Going out to eat, going to the movies. And most importantly continues indulging in his passion of fly fishing. With some hopeful moments here and there, on February 28th, 2002, he is told he only has a month left to live. The decision is made to admit him to St. Luka’s International Hospital to receive palliative care to ease his pain instead of seeking a cure. He is moved to the hospice ward on March 7th. The last days of his life ticking off. And yet he fights tooth and nail. When not sedated, he is able to eat soft food, drink juices and water, suck on the ice cubes and go to the bathroom on his own. No needles or tubes sticking in or out of his body.

Flanking his bed are Miki and his childhood friend Ted Teshima, with whom he went to the elementary school in his hometown of Kobe. Only thirty minutes to go, he asks Ted to give him a back rub. Sensing that the end is very near, Ted calls Sasaki’s younger brother Yasuhiro in Kobe. And also calls a close colleague Mike Dauer, while Miki and Ted hold his hands on the either side of the bed and thank him for all he has given them and to wishing him the peaceful journey, his brother and Mike fill his ears with their soothing voices. Tears are rolling down Sasaki’s eyes as he slowly and peacefully retreats in the beyond. It’s Wednesday, March 20th, 2002, the time 19:15. His earthly journey has lasted for 45 years, 3 months and 1 day.

The funeral follows. He is cremated and he came back home in a small box in my arms, writes Miki. Months later in August, Miki along with her uncle and Yastaka’s friend Mike travel to  lake Nikko, where Yastaka and Miki used to go fishing. They scatter some of his ashes around one of his favorite spots in the river. At other time, Miki and Mike spend hours fishing at a smaller lake nearby, and sprinkle more of his ashes. They don’t catch any fish. They begin to raw back to the shore. There is a hawk hovering up above their heads. Just as they are about to reach the shore, they watch the bird dive down to the surface of the water very close to them and snatch up a big fish in its claw and fly away. Stunned, Mike and Miki decide the hawk is a better fisherman.

On a different stretch the next day when Miki is fishing alone, she notices another hawk lingering up above and then suddenly diving into the river in front of her, passing just above her head, the bird catches a brook trout and off flies up, up and away. It must have been Yastaka. Thinks Miki. The thought of him turning into a hawk and flying freely in the skies of Nikko from the mountain to mountain and to the lake to the river is really soothing and nice to me.

Fittingly, Ray Falk wrote to his friends in his brief report about Sasaki’s funeral. The picture of Sasaki at the funeral featured a big fish—-Lake fish were his favorite. There was a fishing rod near the coffin and a guitar at the other end.

Shah-san, I remember my husband talked about you sometimes. Very recently (like early February). The episode that I remember well that he told me was the trip that you and my husband went to Kanazawa city in northern Japan many years ago. You two had no interest what-so-ever to the touristic spots like the very famous historic Japanese garden which most tourists usually visit when they go to Kanazawa, but you two headed straight to the local market where they sell all the fish and vegies and interesting stuff. Shah-san loves market hopping anywhere he goes, that’s what he said, if I remember correctly, reminisces Miki.

In response to my mail to Ray Falk, he writes back:

Dear Haresh,

Thanks for your interest in Y. Sasaki!

If you had not left PLAYBOY, this might not have happened. He was a great Haresh Shah fan and would have listened to your advice on life and living.

That’s a heavy cross to bear, but flattering nevertheless.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Other Profiles

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

SEX EDUCATION À LA JAPONAISE

DEVIL IN THE PARADISE

DESIGNING IN HIS DREAMS

THE DUTCH TREAT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

On Friday, May 22, 2015

TO HELL AND BACK

When I was fired for the second and the last time from Playboy, included in my severance package was a stint with one of the most expensive outplacement firms. Not knowing exactly what the hell they did for you, I plunged into it head first, to the extent that I must have been the only executive to have a unique distinction of being fired by an outplacement firm. And the rage that erupted. Thinking of it still gives me shivers 🙂

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Categories Friendship, Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Yastaka Sasaki

LA PLAYMATE MEXICANA

February 5, 2015 //
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The Reverse Migration To El Sur

Haresh Shah
fiercelatina

Had she submitted today, a polaroid wearing only a tan and mascara, just to see if I could make the cut, she certainly would have been considered seriously and most probably made it as Playmate of the Month in the U.S. Playboy. In the year 2015, with the dramatically altered demographics and with the both political parties wooing the ever growing Latino population, what could be better than to have a born in Glendale, California of Mexican parents, a natural beauty, raven haired, five feet tall with voluptuous hourglass figure, the dark brown eyes, seductively and invitingly looking back at you? At 24, she is in her prime and has already been a part of a study program at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and has earned her B.A. in Theatre Arts from Whittier College. A perfect fusion of beauty and the brain – an ideal girl next door.

But thirty five years ago her chances of being approved were slim to none. Even to the casual observer it would be obvious that the basic attributes of the majority of the published Playmates up until then could be summed up with Blonde, Blue Eyes, Big Boobs. Not that there were no exceptions. Once in a while an ethnic Playmate would sneak in, by and large, Playboy’s Eliza Doolittles shared the above three attributes. The girl next door, turned into My Fair Lady in the image of Henry Higgins of Playboy empire’s Hugh M. Hefner himself. And yet, when an exotic beauty showed up at one of the magazine’s studios, the photo editors couldn’t resist the urge to try her – just in case. She could turn out to be the one of those few and far in-between. Often times, after the initial internal voting, she wouldn’t even be presented to the MAN! Most of them would end up in their slush files, never to be looked at again.

Editors felt not so good about having to reject someone outright – someone who could have been a promising candidate. By then they would have also known the girl and may even have liked her at personal level. But not much they could do. There were other limitations: a sign tacked on the cork wall of Chicago based Playmate editor Janice Moses said: BUT WE ONLY NEED TWELVE A YEAR! Alluding to the fact that hundreds of girls presented themselves at Playboy’s door steps in hopes of maybe, just maybe being picked to become the next month’s Playmate. Perhaps even Playmate of the Year. But now with the Foreign Editions having firmly established themselves, they had an option for such an exotic beauty, especially the  ones with foreign ethnic backgrounds.

One of the first such candidates to land on my desktop was a pile of 35 mm slides of Elda Mareea Lopez, sent to me from our Los Angeles studio chief, Marilyn Grabowski. The brief hand written  note on the inter-office pink memo paper said: perhaps you can use her. I think she is gorgeous and is absolutely delightful in person. Judging from those hundred or so frames, she certainly is gorgeous. And when I first meet her, she is beyond being delightful. She is down home muy simpatica!

What strikes me oddly intriguing about her even before I put the Lupe to her slides is the way she has spelt her middle name in the Playmate Data Sheet. She has spelt it Mareea instead of usual Maria. I guess, she is looking for her very own identity, distinguishing herself from practically every female of the Latin origin with virgin Mary squeezed in somewhere in to their names.

To Marilyn’s perhaps you can use her, I immediately think, she could be our first Mexican Playmate! Now they won’t have any excuse not to have one. It’s been almost three years that we have been on the tails of our Mexican publishers about the need for us to have some authentic Mexican Playmates, which would allow us to promote the edition in a way we couldn’t by inviting American Playmates to the south of the border. Finally we are able to convince Ricardo Ampudia, how important it is to have a local girl next door Playmate to grace the pages of our Mexican edition.

Over a weekend while both Al Debat – our Chicago based departmental manager and also a professional photographer and I were in Mexico City, Ricardo tells us that he has just the right  Playmate candidate. Al and I agree to a quick test shoot and take it from there. Ricardo invites us to his house for breakfast on a Saturday morning and we are to do the shoot in his garden. Al and I together shoot eight rolls of films.

Ricardo’s backyard is fairly private with tall and dense bushes. It is a well tended garden with gleaming tropical plants and colorful flowers. The grass is lush and well manicured. The sun is shining bright and it’s warm, but being February not too warm to be hot and humid. The name of the girl he introduces us is Blanca. She is probably in her early twenties with the body that’s fresh and well proportioned and vibrant. She is pretty and she is naturally blonde of the original Spanish stock. And she is far from being shy. Especially considering that she is surrounded by not just the two of us – as it usually would be, but by several people milling around.

The whole tabloid looks like a scene set for a comedy waiting for the curtain to rise. There are two maids constantly walking in and out crossing the grounds, bringing us fresh juices and refreshments. There is the gardener pretending to tend and trim the floras. His teenage son is trying his best not to look at the naked Blanca prancing around, and yet he can’t help but steal a glance whenever he thinks nobody is watching. Fortunately, Blanca seems comfortable in her bare skin. As adorable and beautiful as she is as a young girl, both Al and I think she would one day turn into drop dead gorgeous. She is natural, almost animal like in the way she moves so unconsciously and happily humming to herself. Her smiles are contagious and seductive. She is more like a cuddly pet who you want to hold close and hug. And she is game for anything you ask her to do and pose so naturally without any inhibitions. She is the kind who would do anything to please you and be pleased by it herself. Neither Al nor I spoke any Spanish at the time, so we couldn’t communicate one on one – but we do. Our non-verbal or interpreted communication works just fine. At some point, you can’t help but feel parental and protective of her. That night I write in my journal: Wish you always could stay as happy. Keep singing and smiling.

As unprofessional and as unplanned as the shooting, it is fun. We spend a very pleasant weekend day. Now I am trying to think whatever happened to that shoot and Blanca? I am just  imagining. She probably changed her mind. Or ran into the trouble with her parents. Or Ricardo decided against it. But most likely because not too long after, the magazine changed hands. She just got lost in the shuffle. With the new publishers, I would start all over again, pushing for local Playmates. They would always agree with me, but give me the same excuse: but we can’t find anyone qualified enough willing to pose in the nude, you know how conservative our society is?. By then I knew Mexico well and also spoke Spanish, and knew better how it would be easier to take to bed one of the society girls, but almost impossible to convince them to pose in the nude.

But now we had an option in Elda. Not that she didn’t have any family concerns. But as she herself tells it: I had already been very independent. My mother I’m sure was surprised and being a good Catholic woman had her doubts, and was perhaps privately fervently saying prayers for my soul, yet she accepted it without protest. My father at one point said, “Mija, it’s not a bad magazine”. He seemed calm about it, but again, privately not so sure. 

Excited, I pick up the phone and call Eduardo Gongorra – our new publisher in Mexico City.

‘I’ve found ourselves a Mexican Playmate!’

And other than the obvious, I go on to tell him how I envision it happening. We can build a story around her Mexican heritage and have her reverse migrate through her photos and the presence in flesh and blood in Mexico. We could stage a promotional event for the invited VIPs and the media. Present her as our first Mexican Playmate. That Playboy’s  test shoot was good enough for us to use and would cost us nothing. All we needed was to shoot the cover and the centerfold, which I could produce in Chicago, have her photographed by our star photographer Pompeo Posar.

Soon as I hang up, I call Los Angeles. I introduce myself and tell Elda what I was thinking. She sounds so sweet and absolutely delighted. During the conversation, I find out that she doesn’t speak much Spanish. That creates bit of a problem. But I am too far gone with the idea and in the meanwhile, so is Eduardo. We agree, we would build her story around her being the USA born full blooded Mexican. After several phone calls between Mexico City and Los Angeles, I invite her to Chicago, and schedule the cover and the centerfold shoots.

Everything goes according to the plan. With big fanfare the first Mexican Playmate travels from Los Angeles to Mexico City. She is received warmly and enthusiastically. She is presented to the invited guests at Hotel Camino Real, standing in the front of the bigger than life size image of her in the backdrop is the April 1981 cover of CABALLERO con lo mejor de Playboy – as the magazine was then called. As it turns out, our fears were unfounded. If not fluent, Elda did have some command of the language – that mixed with English, she does just fine.

She feels pampered and loved in the Mother Land. They host a dinner  in her honor, it was a good feeling. And Elda joins the ranks of a very few Playmates, she gets to write her own text to accompany her layout. Even though she didn’t make it in to the pages of the mother edition in el Norte, she got a real taste of the world of Playboy. Thanks to her appearance in the Mexican edition: I met Hef, silk pajamas and all. He was gracious, kind and hospitable. The home and grounds were lovely. I had many a fun time at the mansion! Happy ending!

But this is a Mexican story, so it doesn’t end there. Soon, perhaps also because of all the press coverage generated brouhaha, the authorities decree that name of a magazine cannot be a  common noun. Never mind that Caballero has been around and officially registered for a dozen some years even before joining forces with Playboy – the name long been officially banned in the country.

Panicked, Eduardo calls. But in a country like Mexico, you don’t just walk away from the table just because the rules of the game have arbitrarily changed mid stream by the powers that be. You try to beat them at their own game. Eduardo needs an immediate approval from Chicago to change the name of the magazine from Caballero to Signore, which also means gentleman, but in Italian – not to confuse with Spanish Señor. So Signore it becomes overnight and so it remains up until June 1984, when the authorities finally relent and allow the magazine to be called Playboy.  We re-re-launch, this time with the Mexican born and grown starlet/singer Elizabeth Aguilar as the Playmate.

In the meanwhile, to lend the magazine authentic continuity, Elda makes an encore appearance in May 1982 on the cover of Signore. Now at 58, she looks stunning as ever, not a girl any more but a very attractive grown woman. Over a telephone conversation, I compliment her on her well preserved looks: you still could drive some honest man to cheat on his wife. To which, I got a chuckle out of her with funny! Because it’s the subject very close to her heart in that she has written an entire book titled The (In) Fidelity Factor – Points to Ponder Before You Cheat. But like the good old German saying goes, spass muss sein – fun must  exist. The most important is: We have remained close friends over the decades and have become shoulders for each other to cry on.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, February 13, 2015

FRIENDLY SKIES NO MORE

Not only because what I did for a living required extensive amount of flying around the world, but even otherwise I love to fly. The excitement and the adventure of it, the feeling of being totally disconnected from the world, being able to kick back and relax. And being pampered – not only in the First and the Business Classes, but all across the cabins. And airports were the civilized places from where to leave and arrive at. Sadly, no more. And I can’t help but feel soooo nostalgic about those truly good old days!

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Categories Friendship, Memoire, Mexico, Playboy, Playmates, Profile

THE TRAVELING AGENT EXTRA-ORDINAIRE

January 13, 2015 //
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Too Good For His Own Good

Haresh Shah

travelagent
I am sitting in the Lufthansa city office in the center of Barcelona across from the petite German blonde staring at her computer screen while leafing through my four-booklets-thick-stapled- together ticket. She is tap taping her keyboard accessing my original itinerary and then checking it against my neatly handwritten used and the remaining ticket coupons. She looks confused and she looks amazed. One thing she doesn’t look is sure of herself. I have been on the road now for almost three weeks and have practically been around the world with my original itinerary that reads: March 25, 1979, Chicago-Los Angeles-Santa Barbara-Los Angeles-Sydney-Melbourne-Sydney-Bombay-Rome-Zürich-Barcelona-Munich-Düsseldorf-Frankfurt-London-Chicago. April 12, 1979.

I am on the final lag of my journey and am there to re-route my flight back to Chicago via Munich and Frankfurt instead of via Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, London. Normally a simple switchover. But that’s not the problem. It’s no restrictions ticket valid for twelve months.

I watch the blonde shake her head and murmur something to herself.

‘Who wrote this ticket?’

‘Why? My traveling agent in Chicago, Satya (Dev), who is also a friend.’

‘This is really fantastic. But a bit complicated and I need to figure out how he came to the fare base he did. It’s gonna take me a while. Can you leave the ticket with me for a while?’

What Satya had actually done was this: Instead of the real and the obvious Sydney as the turning point of my around the world flight path, to calculate the fare, he had me turning around in Jakarta, Indonesia, a fictitious turning point. Totally legit, and by doing so, he was able to reduce the total fare by as much as a thousand bucks. Cheating himself out of at least $150.- in commission. Something didn’t matter to me and the accountants at Playboy certainly wouldn’t have cared. And the reason he had me return to Chicago from London was because by writing the ticket on the British Airlines stock, he would add to his volume with them and therefore get an extra percentage or two commission from them. Knowing well that I hated the idea of connecting in the congested chaos of London’s Heathrow Airport. But I agreed to do it as a small favor to him. You can always switch to Lufthansa or KLM when in Europe, he would say, the two of my most favorites on the trans-Atlantic route.

‘Your traveling agent must be brilliant. We couldn’t have figured out the fare the way he did.’ The blonde tells me.

●●●

Playboy had in-house traveling desk represented by a woman from the local traveling agency by the name of, I think Mary. The only time the in-house agency had to issue my ticket was a three way Chicago-Munich-Chicago-Munich ticket when I was first hired by the company and promptly shipped off to Europe. Beyond that, I was handed a corporate TWA Air Travel and an American Express cards. By the time I was brought to the corporate offices to work and live in Chicago, six years later, I had mastered ins and outs of how airlines worked. I always booked my own flights directly from the airlines and picked up the tickets at the airports just before boarding the plane. While still living in Santa Barbara, I would book my flights over the phone and take a bike ride to the little airport only a stone’s throw away from my home and pick up my ticket from the young man I will call Joe, at the United counter. He was quite pleasant and we would have good visits. It was a one man operation in which Joe did everything – checking you in, loading and unloading the baggage, taking your flight coupon and whatever else that needed to be done.

But when my itineraries began to get longer and a bit complicated, once with a friendly frown he hinted, why don’t you have one of the local traveling agents issue your tickets? It wouldn’t cost you anything and I am sure they certainly would appreciate your business.

Enter voluptuous Debbie Kaufman and the Professional Travel. I would still book my flights and Debbie was quite happy to issue my tickets. But then I relented and let Debby also book the flights. Carolyn and I even had her over for an Indian dinner one night.

When we moved to Chicago, the house rule was to book our flights and hotels through Mary. But I was so used to and in tune with the international travel that I plain ignored this rule. Also because by then Satya had approached me. He and I were never close friends, but we were classmates from the first through the fourth grades – growing up in Borivali, a northern suburb of Bombay with no running water and no electricity. Beyond that, over the years, we would run into each other sporadically, while I was still in India and later during my visits back home. And then one day I get a call from him in Santa Barbara. He too had made his tracks to the United States and was now living in Chicago working for a traveling agency. Eventually he would open his own Blue Skies Travel. I began to give him my business.

Curiously, no one ever questioned my taking care of my own traveling needs. I think Mary once brought it up, but then realizing that I was better at the international routing and the flights than she ever could be – and when I pointed out to her that I had gotten a better deal for the same flights she had booked for my boss Lee (Hall) on the Varig flight to São Paulo, she must have decided to leave me alone. So Satya became my de facto personal traveling agent.

For Satya, the intricacies of the airfares and routes had become an obsession and a challenge. Finding all sorts of options became for him like computer games. Sometimes he would hold me on the phone for quite some time, and every couple of minutes come up with different fares and different itineraries. Mind you, this was before the arrival of the internet and before the fares were ruled by algorithms.

But he was more than the finder of better fares and the itineraries. He was an old fashioned traveling agent who also took care of your visas and other necessary paperwork. Would often show up at the airport to see you safely off. In those days, there were only the First and the Economy classes. So the upgrading from the Business to the First didn’t come into the picture. But when he hand delivered the tickets, he would show up with a variety of airline goodies. An Aerolineas Argentinas backpack, Lufthansa’s weekender sturdy little suitcase and the matching garment bag, KLM’s large ticket sized genuine leather wallet, Pan Am’s classic flight bag, Japan Airline’s poster sized framed world map with the round clocks mounted on the top, showing four time zones across the globe.

More importantly, he would build you up so much with the airline that at every connection the computer would flash the letters VIP right next to your reservation. Not because the business Satya brought to them would have amounted much to their bottom lines, but he had brilliantly managed to establish congenial personal relationships with many of the Chicago based airlines sales people, especially with the foreign owned airlines with small offices in the city.

Always impeccably dressed in his navy blue three piece suite and shiny shoes, he would show up with a big smile on his face and often treat them to Indian meals at one of the Indian restaurants in town. And he was good at dropping names. In the beginning, Haresh Shah wouldn’t have meant much to them, but he would build up my status at Playboy and spin the stories of how we knew each other practically since we were still in the diapers. And perhaps even drop a hint that in theory he could talk the company’s other executives that traveled abroad frequently into begin flying their airlines. Over a period of time, he did indeed started getting business from my then boss Bill Stokkan. Through Satya I got to know and meet many of the sales people as well and at least with Lufthansa and KLM I had become an instantly recognized name among the city and the airport staff.

So much so that I was almost always upgraded. Once when Lufthansa wasn’t able to bump me up, the station chief Herbert apologized profusely with: Extremely sorry Mr. Shah. The flight is fully booked, But wait before boarding. Just in case someone doesn’t show up. As I wait at the mobbed gate, I sense someone approaching me with, You must be Mr. Shah. Standing in front of me is a very tall and distinguish north German looking man. Perhaps seeing a question mark on my face, he continues.

‘I am Werner Kellerhals, the regional manager for Lufthansa.’

I had never met the man, but remember his name being mentioned by Satya. We exchange pleasantries. Clasped in one of my hands is the blue boarding card. I notice that his card is red for the First Class.

‘Can I have your boarding card for a sec Mr. Shah?’ And he gently snatches it away from my hand and walks over to the check-in counter. Soon he returns and hands me a red boarding card and the one in his hand is blue.

‘No Mr. Kellerhals, I really appreciate it, but I just can’t…’

He cuts me off.

‘No I insist. You’re one of our best customers and paying for your seat, while I am traveling gratis!’

Once when I arrived in Rio, they announced my name on the PA system to be met by Varig’s PR lady just to say Welcome to Brazil Mr. Shah. Other time I was traveling with Anjuli on the United and connecting in Miami on our way to Brazil. I hear my name announced just as we were deplaning. Waiting at the gate was the United’s station rep to welcome and escort us to their Red Carpet Lounge. As we are walking through the airport, he hastily tells me that we have upgraded you and Ms. Shah-Johnson to the First – hope it’s alright with you? Once we’re seated in the lounge, Anjuli breaks out in a smile, No, it’s not alright. She is all of twelve years old and this is all too exciting for her. Incredible! And I had paid for Anjuli’s ticket with my mileage.

Of course, he was able to do this also because I traveled extensively and paid full First/Business class fares. But even so… He walked that extra mile for you.

I remember the time when Christie (Hefner) and I flew back together from Taipei to Chicago. By then they had long introduced Business Class and the company policy dictated that we travel Business. Christie to her credit wouldn’t make an exception for herself. On her outbound flight from Chicago, she was upgraded, and was told by the travel desk that so we would be on our way back. Before we approach the check in, she takes my ticket and rushes to the counter. The girl behind the computer screen checks in our baggage and hands her two Business Class boarding passes. Christie looks at them and handing back to the agent tells her we are supposed to be upgraded.

The girl punches a few keys on her computer: ‘Nothing here says about upgrading!’

‘Did you look at Christie Hefner?’

‘Yes. Nothing.’ This would have been unthinkable in the States or perhaps even in Europe. But the young Chinese girl behind the counter has absolutely no clue who Christie Hefner is! I could imagine how humiliated Christie must feel. So I step up with let me talk to her! Christie steps back. Almost whispering, I ask the girl,

‘Don’t you know who she is?’

‘Who?’

‘Christie Hefner, the President of Playboy Enterprises. She is here to promote Taiwanese Playboy, haven’t you seen her on the news or read about her?’ It draws a blank on her face.

‘I am sorry.’ She answers.

‘Okay. Look. If this would help!’ And I pull out the upgrade certificate issued by the United, something Satya made it his business to acquire and deliver to me along with my ticket. I was holding it back, thinking why waste it if Christie had been guaranteed an upgrade for us?

The girl scrutinizes the upgrade certificate and plugs it into the computer and prints out another boarding pass and hands it to me. She has upgraded me to the First.

‘No. You have to upgrade both of us.’

‘Yeah, but you only have one certificate!’

‘I am sorry, you don’t understand. She is my boss, I can get fired!’

The girl is still not sure and I don’t see her yielding. Not to make further fuss, I give her back the both boarding passes.

‘If you can upgrade only one of us, then upgrade her!’

I see a confusion and conflict cloud her face. She picks up the phone to call someone – probably her supervisor. After letting the phone ring for a while, she puts back the receiver. Resigned, she relents and issues the second boarding card now with both of us upgraded!

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Other Profiles

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THE KING OF COCKTAILS

THE TRADER OF EVERY PORT

Next Friday, January 23, 2015

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS

As glamorous as the life at Playboy could be, you would never imagine the kind of hazards lurk behind such publications. The most recent example being the cold blooded massacre at the French publication Charlie Hebdo.

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Categories Friendship, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Travel

THE TRADER OF EVERY PORT

December 4, 2014 //
1

Always Ready For A New Business

Haresh Shah

chickenbiz2

Must have been early 1990 when landed on my desk is an impressive corporate brochure of Autraco Holdings based in Vienna, Austria. In the cover letter signed by its CEO Rolf Dolina, he expresses his desire to want to publish Playboy magazine in Czechoslovakia. But we are already in negotiations with Vladimír Tichý of the Gennex Corporation, the publishers of magazines, books, films and video that included the Czech language edition of ComputerWorld. That in itself wouldn’t have stopped me from entertaining another option, especially because the Autraco Holdings boasts of its wide reach in the former eastern European countries that include Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The countries where they are sole distributors of Memorex USA, Honda automobiles and Fuji films. Enclosed with the letter are some issues of the Czech language version of Germany’s Burda Moden, widely distributed and hugely popular women’s magazine – similar to the Simplicity patterns in the United States. The magazine he was publishing with Hana Wagenhofer – his Prague based business partner in several joint ventures. And it is mainly for Hanna that he is so keen on doing Playboy. It would give her a stronger presence on the Czech publishing scene.

From the look of it, the corporation seems to be financially healthy and thriving, with dozens of entities spread over ten European nations. Looks more like a department store of consumer products, up until then deprived to the communist block. Also included in their portfolio are Palmer’s and Elizabeth Arden fashion and beauty products. A far cry from really creating a high quality magazine. But I realize that for any successful entrepreneur like Rolf Dolina, everything is a “product”, as it is for our group President William Stokkan. I remember when International Publishing was absorbed by Bill’s Licensing and Merchandizing division, me often chiding him that magazines don’t have customers, they have readers. He would smirk and say, whatever! And yet, smart enough to know the difference.

For the businessmen aspiring to be publishers, the thinking must go; They can find some good translators, sign up with a printing company and distributors and voila! Other details are just logistics. That is, until they meet me do they realize that you can’t make a successful local edition of any magazine just by translating the content. Unlike other products, it doesn’t come pre-produced. That they really need to create it issue by an issue of their own, month after month, for which they need an entire editorial staff, advertising and distribution arms.

Ditto, the small independent publishers. Even though they do have some idea of what sort of infra-structure making of a magazine takes. And still they think soon as they put Playboy logo on the cover, it should fly off the newsstands like the pigeons off Piazza San Marcos in Venice. Suddenly it would become their flagship and above all they would be known as the publishers of the local edition of Playboy – Hugh M. Hefner reincarnate of their countries.

Up until the opening up of the previously closed markets of the eastern Europe, Playboy had signed up with the major local publishers, some even larger corporations than PEI in Chicago. Once the agreement was signed, they would have a team devoted exclusively to Playboy, and one more title would be absorbed into their wider network of other publications. Not so with the emerging markets such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland – the first of the three viable eastern European markets. There are no established publishers for us to hook up with. There is no tradition of free journalism. The people with some professional knowledge of the media had emerged from the state’s propaganda machinery who worked within the stringent constraints of communism. The field is wide open to anyone who wants to explore. Suddenly there are small time hustlers with BIG ideas. Some of them, serious contenders, others without a clue.

And then there are the Western entrepreneurs – the expats returning home and some like Rolf Dolina, well established businessmen across the driving distances of the Eastern borders. Rolf is already doing business in several of those countries and is the go getter – the kind who grabs an opportunity when he sees one. And he knows how to make and cultivate contacts. He is a quick study and learns ropes incredibly fast. Never mind the product. In India, they would call him sub bunder ka vepari – the trader of every port. He is smart, shrewd and calculating, not to mention, charming. Making money is his passion and of many business cards he carries, the one of them is an illustration of the rooster just having settled his hen in the process of laying eggs, turning around and chasing another chick before she gets away. The tag line at the bottom says: always ready for a new business.

You can’t help but respect their daring and tenacity. Even so, the first thing I do is to try to dissuade them, because as Jorge Fontevecchia of Editorial Perfil in Argentina once put it: only to your enemies do you suggest publishing as a business. Another argument I make is that asking for Playboy’s hand is like wanting to marry a rich man’s totally spoiled daughter and it takes more than money to keep her in the style she is used and aspires to. I have gotten some laughs out of it, but you can’t dissuade someone who has hopelessly fallen in love with the idea.

In such cases I try my best to avoid meeting face-to-face with such prospects. What if I end up liking him or her? But when he sets his heart on something, Rolf is not that easily dissuaded and he is not the kind to give up that easily. After some months of fax correspondence Rolf seems to have understood that doing a serious magazine was a different ball game altogether. Not too long after, he calls my office in Chicago and casually mentions that he is in Florida, and wouldn’t mind flying to Chicago and talk with me personally. During his visit, we have a pleasant Indian lunch at my favorite of the time, Bombay Palace. Even though I had forgotten all about it, Rolf still fondly remembers that meal.

A month earlier, I had hosted the Czech team in Chicago and over that beautiful fall week sat down with them at my home around the dining table and taken them through the nuts and bolts of making of Playboy magazine – with as Ivan (Chocholouš) still remembers, Beethoven’s Symphony #9 playing in the background. Ivan couldn’t help but ask: whether there was any significance behind me playing that particular music? Not really. But it gave me an idea to use it as an example for what I was just then trying to communicate. I was taking them through the making of Playboy, page by page, and one of the things I always want to hammer into the minds of a new team is the concept of pacing.

To make it simple, you don’t place a cartoon behind a cartoon, non-fiction doesn’t follow another non-fiction, ditto the pictorials. You can’t have every illustration as a two page spread or a single page opening. The magazine, like a symphony has to have a certain rhythm which segues from one note to another. The fan of classical music, Ivan immediately understood it, something he still brings up in conversations. At the end of our weeklong orientation and the brain storming, we had agreed on the next steps. For them to go home and begin to put together the first few issues. I would take several trips to Prague and work with them and we would shoot for the early 1991 launch.

●●●

Well before the Berlin Wall crumbled on November 9, 1989, Hungary was already wiggling out of the tight ropes of the Soviet Union. Popping up were many young entrepreneurs and starting up private businesses. Among them, Dezsö Futász, the suave and dynamic publisher of the Hungarian edition of Scientific America and ComputerWorld.

Approached me on his behalf were the Hungarian expats and venture capitalists, John and Eva Breyer of Invent Corporation, based in Hillsborough, California. The breathtaking story of their escape across the border into Austria and on to the United States during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in itself would make for an incredible and thrilling love story. But for the time being, I would stick to the story of Playboy’s arrival in the eastern Europe.

After the initial exchange of information, my boss Bill and I met in my office with Eva and Dezsö in the early spring of 1989. Over the next several months we work on the details of launching of Playboy’s first edition behind the Iron Curtain. As we had just began to put together the pages of the first issue of the Hungarian edition, I remember how our entire team had put everything away and rushed over to the Kossuth Lajos tér to join the jubilant crowd gathered outside Hungary’s Parliament Building to witness the historic moment of Matyas Szuros, Hungary`s acting president declaring Hungary to be an independent nation.

It was Monday, October 23, 1989. Sixteen days ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The exuberant crowd and the joy that rippled through us took me back forty two years to the night of August 15, 1947 to Bori Bunder in Bombay, and to the jubilant crowds celebrating India’s independence from the British. I still can feel the exhilaration and the thrill of that night. Seven years old, perched on the shoulders of an adult, I was surrounded by an euphoria with beating of the drums, screams of joy, chanting – the fireworks lighting up the sky and the Indo-Gothic façade of the Victoria Terminus lit up like a bride was something I still cherish like a distant dream that’s still well and alive in my memory. The Hungarian edition of Playboy launches on November 28, 1989, nineteen days after the people began to carry bits and pieces of the Berlin wall home as souvenirs.

It’s almost a year later that I am sitting with Rolf Dolina in Chicago’s Bombay Palace restaurant. It is clear to me that he is smitten with the idea of publishing a Playboy in the eastern Europe, where his businesses reign supreme. I tell Rolf about how far along we already were with the Czech edition. Nothing I could do.

But I am thinking, perhaps he can team up with Dezsö in Hungary. A whole year in publishing Playboy there, the economy and the weaning optimism of the country is setting in and the magazine is not doing as well as anticipated. Though it has already established itself as the class in itself against which others are measured. They are struggling. What the magazine needs is some infusion of cash and someone like Rolf’s expertise and the business acumen.

Over the next month or so I speak with Dezsö, Eva and Rolf, resulting in Dezsö, his partner Andras Toro, Rolf and I meeting in Budapest. Rolf is willing to land helping hand in Hungary, but his heart is still set on Czechoslovakia. Dezsö is connected with Vladimír Tichý in Prague through their common thread of ComputerWorld. The next day, Dezsö and I drive to Prague and meet with Vladimír and his right hand man Ivan Chocholouš. A day later, Rolf drives in from Vienna and the three of them reach an accord. Rolf gets to help Dezsö as well as gets to participate in Czechoslovakia. Eventually he would buy out Vladimír. Mission accomplished!

When we launch the Czechoslovakian edition on April 25, 1991, I am on the stage of Lucerna  Palace with Playmate Christy Thom (February 1991) by my side, announcing the arrival of the Czech Playboy. Standing on the side are: the publisher Vladimír Tichý and the co-publisher Hana Wagenhofer, while Rolf is hobnobbing in the crowd, feeling like a million dollars, smug and with a big smile on his face. Like the German Playmate Barbara Corser (July 1975) once said to me: Haresh, if you want something bad enough, you somehow manage to get it.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, December 12, 2014

THE ARABIAN NIGHT

Of the multitude of PR events sponsored by Playboy across the world, Playboy Germany’s 20th anniversary’s BIG BANG party sticks out the most in my memory. And then there was a low key event just a year before.

 

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Categories Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe, Entrepreneurs, Friendship, Hungary, Playboy, Profile

UNDERNEATH HER CLOTHES

November 26, 2014 //
0

There Is An Endless Story

Haresh Shah

nudievan2
One of the first times I met with Patrick Magaud is him walking into the offices of the French editor-in-chief Patrick Eynaud at Euredif headquarters located in a highrise in the thick of Paris’ Quartier Chinois. Accompanying him is not only a stunningly beautiful photo model but also a baby tiger on a leash being lead in by Patrick as if this adorable little cub were his pet dog. Not an unusual sight in the French editorial offices to find a dog snoozing under one of the editor’s desks or cats curled up at their feet. But a tiger? Well, because it’s Patrick.

Patrick is an idea man. The man who is perpetually excited about life. A daring one at that. He is known for pulling off stunts – the kind no one else would even dream of. Like the one he would tell me about over a dinner once we got to know each other better. He tells me about how once he rented a mini van, packed it with his photographic gear, an assistant by his side and a couple of gorgeous females, already unrobed, styled and made up and ready to jump in and out of action and proudly and provocatively pose in the front of the Paris streets and the landmark monuments.  Such as walking in the middle of  Champs–Élysées with Arc de Triumphe in the background, biking topless around Café de Flores with a couple of baguettes sticking out of the career, prancing at the foot of the mighty Eiffel Tower, two of hem flaunting their wares from a Ferris wheel rotating in the Tuileries, jet skiing in the river Seine, frolicking at the curve of the iconic restaurant Fouquet’s.

Patrick and his assistant already poised with their cameras at ready and voila, he would start shooting as the model tries to blend in with the scenery. The traffic coming to standstill, pedestrians breaking their strides doing a double take and the café crowd shaking their heads in amazement. Suddenly, they would hear the shrill screaming of sirens and the twirling blue flashes of the flag lights closing in on them. Everyone would be sucked back inside the gateway van standing in the middle of the street  with its motor running. The doors slammed, tires screeching and they would be on their way before the gendarme catch up with them. Ensconced back in the van, everyone is laughing and feeling mighty smug at the feat they together have pulled off. As the sirens fade, Patrick and his assistant are already unloading the films from their cameras and tucking them away in their gear bags, loading new films.

Their next destination? Père Lachaise Cemetery. The model Nathalie’s naked body is painted black – the color of tarnished bronze. Soon as the van stops, she climbs out and runs to the the grave of the 19th century poet Victor Noir and promptly mounts his life size horizontal  statue with her legs wide apart and her crotch rubbing against his sculpted bulge of shiny copper.  No, she is not just acting ecstatic, but as Patrick would recount later, during the shoot Nathalie really got turned on, leaving behind the residue of her feminine scent on the poor Noir. Over the period of time, the statue has become a symbol of fertility of sorts like that of Shiva’s erect lingam, (Living Dangerously, Playboy, May 1990, also collected in the book Exhibition in Paris) http://www.amazon.com/Exhibition-Paris-Patrick-Magaud/dp/0932733018

And then he takes one of his models – of course au naturell up on a helicopter ride, hovering at low altitude, the whole Paris looking upwards with their necks craned while he is floating aboard a balloon at the parallel height and shooting her sight-seeing.

If not as daring, following the success of Playboy pictorial about The Women of Russia – shot by Alexander Borodulin (Mission: Implausible, Playboy February 1990), while talking about other such pictorials, the photo editor Jeff Cohen  and Patrick utter almost simultaneously – Cuba. The island verboten to us poor Americans. A bit of a problem. But Patrick is not the kind to shy away from them. Through the Cuban counsel in Paris, he works towards acquiring permission to do just that, The Girls of Cuba (Cuba Libre, Playboy March 1991). Equally as adventurous, Jeff finds a way to make it to the island via Mexico – his passport bearing no proof of him swilling Cuba libres under the nose and the protection of the people of Fidel Castro. Considering the political situation and restrictions, they come back home with the images of some tantalizing island beauties – among them, Idolka de Erbiti. Patrick promptly falls in love with her, and does something he has avoided doing so far. Marry Idolka and bring her back to the city of lights.

But when he can, Patrick is not satisfied just shooting glamorous nudes. What turns him on and gets his creative juices flowing are the extreme fantasies and making them come to life in his photography. On that day he has shown up with the beauty and the beast to propose a pictorial with the girl and the tiger cub frolicking. What was there not to agree?

Patrick and I hit of off almost right away and soon he would take me along to show real Paris. It is Patrick who takes me to the Paris off the beaten tracks. For the first time I get a taste of Moroccan and North African food and savor how delicious the humble couscous could be. He takes me to small and inexpensive bistros in the neighborhoods that are far away from the center. Often we would be accompanied by some of his friends and his beautiful models. What he shows me is the different Paris than what I have been exposed to so far, and I am loving it. Those soirées bring us closer and the more I get to know him, more I am amazed at how impish and child like he is. His face wears a continuous mischievousness in that he is amazed at everything that is life. Sometimes I feel that he is living as if every day were the last day of his life.

What I know of Patrick is that strictly speaking he is not your run of the mill French man. He is of Arabic descent. You can see that on his square but angular face. Even his accent is slightly lilting compared to the way others speak French. Could have even come from Algeria, as did the existential philosopher Albert Camus. Living in the moment. Existing to the fullest in the world capital of the existentialism. So we find a lot in common to talk about.

But what we talk about the most are girls. Our experiences with them and the misadventures. Like two adolescents still in awe of the mystery that every woman is. And how we absolutely love and adore them. And we talk about sex. Not your day-to-day variety, but the fantasy of it.

‘You know what turns me on more than even having sex itself?’

‘What?’

‘The thought of it. The imagination. The fantasy.’

And then he tells me of one of his most yearned for fantasies coming true.

We have had a long day. I was shooting multiple models all day long and we’re all tired and also hungry. The group of us is sitting around a large round table at a restaurant. When you’re shooting and busy doing your work, no matter how beautiful they are, how you may have developed a crush on one of them, you can’t just conjure up a fantasy of undressing her, because you have seen her totally naked all day long. But it’s when she is fully dressed and is sitting next to you is when your imagination gets wild. Chantal was her name. She is sitting next to me. My assistant and the crew are busy talking, eating, drinking, laughing and just unwinding from the hard day’s work. There are about eight girls, but the only one on my mind is Chantal. I don’t have to imagine what she looks like underneath her clothes. But I had had a long time fantasy, something I hadn’t tried out so far, but as we have a few glasses of wine and I am liking Chantal more and more, and she seems to like me too. But that’s not unusual for a model to fall for her photographer, at least in the moment. But I am thinking to myself, maybe I can try out with Chantal what I have hesitated doing so far. She notices that there is a momentary lull in our conversation and I have gone quiet, as if lost in deep thoughts.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Oh, nothing special. Just thoughts!’

‘Come on, you look quite serious.’

‘Well, I am thinking… never mind, it’s silly.’

‘I want to hear it.’

‘Promise you won’t laugh if I told you!’

‘I promise.’

‘Okay, what I am thinking of is – actually It’s an old fantasy.’ And I stop. I feel her gaze irretrievably fixed on me

‘All right. I hope you don’t freak out with what I am about to ask you.’

‘Come on. Don’t torture me. I am a big girl.’

‘Okay. What I am thinking of is, what I would love you to do is to excuse yourself and go to the bathroom, take your panties off and bring them back to me. I will slip them into my pants pocket and I am the only one around this table who would know that you’re naked underneath your skirt!’

Chantal looks at me, a bit amazed but not exactly shocked.

‘Is that it?’

‘Yeah. Would you do it for me?’

She doesn’t answer, just smirks and after a minute or so, excuses herself and kicks her chair back and I watch her walk over to the bathroom. When she comes back, she discreetly hands her crumpled panties over to me under the table and I tuck them in to my pocket.

‘Haresh, let me tell you, I have never felt as excited and as aroused up until then and since as when I was in the possession of those panties, her sitting next to me and only me and her knowing that she is bare underneath her skirt, and there are all these other girls and my assistant sitting around, and hoards of other diners of the restaurant, nobody else but only I know! You have no idea how incredible turn on it was!!’

And he smiles. And the distant dreamy look he has on his face communicates the rest.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, December 5, 2014

THE TRADER OF EVERY PORT

Even before the Berlin Wall came down and even before the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the pot of capitalism had began to simmer in many of the former Soviet block countries. Hungary was the first to come out with its own Playboy edition in that November of 1989. Followed by Czechoslovakia a year and a half later. No small thanks to the the vision and the daring of  the independent minded entrepreneurs. Here is the story of one of them.

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Categories France, Friendship, Patrick Magaud, Photographer, Playboy, Profile, Sexual Famtasy

THE KING OF COCKTAILS

May 22, 2014 //
0

The Beginning Of The Longest Cocktail Party

Haresh Shah

bottlecity3

Dieter (Stark) is tickled pink. He s standing behind the kitchen island, swinging the stainless steel cocktail shaker back and forth in his hands. Equally as handsome, he looks like Tom Cruise would behind the bar years later in his movie Cocktail. Surveying the scene and the mood of the night. He is feeling absolutely no pain. His face wears a glow of amazement at the mission accomplished as he looks down at all those bottles of booze lined up in front of him like miniature Chicago skyline. Most of them are half gallon bottles of just arrived Kentucky Bourbon, Scotch Whiskeys, Bombay Gin, Bacardi Rum, Absolut Vodka. There are smaller ones of the mixers containing of red and white Martinis, Crème de Menthe, Grenadine, Tonic water. Open cartons of orange juice, some Coke and 7-up bottles stand ready to be poured in whatever cocktail he would end up concocting. He must feel like a kid let loose in the liquid candy store. Innumerable possibilities, the night not long enough!

●●●

Dieter and I worked together as repro photographers for Burda Verlag in Offenburg, Germany. My early days living and working in the town of Offenburg in southern Germany were some of the loneliest. It didn’t help that I spoke no German yet and the little bit that I did, I misunderstood more than did I understand. I must give credit to the people I worked with in doing their best to communicate with me. But by and large, I was lost like a babe in the woods in that provincial south western German town that boasts of being the gateway to the picturesque Black Forest.

More than me, Dieter, who came from the town of Bad Dürkheim along the German Weinstrasse, some 87 miles (140 kilometers) north west of Offenburg, was like a fish out of water. The job was good. Burda was an excellent company to work for, but what would a young single man away from home do there after work? He hated Offenburg and called the town Apfenburg – the monkey town and often made fun of their dialect and accent. He hated the simple mindedness of the people whose lifelong ambitions he would sum up in three short sentences – auto kaufen, haus bauen und lotto gewinnen – buy a car, build a house and win lottery. I wouldn’t have known the difference and didn’t have any pre-conceived ideas about the place or the people. I was happy just to be out of London living and working on the continent. For practical purposes, both of us were outsiders and that’s what must have attracted him to me.

In the department full of camaraderie, lots of laughs and beer drinking, Dieter remained aloof and removed from such activities. Tall, his curly blonde hair cut short, easy going, soft spoken, Dieter believed in working hard, but not too hard. There was something very child like the way he spoke with his perpetually pouted lips. He could talk without really opening his mouth. Until you got used to his manner of speaking, you would think he was talking to you like one would to a toddler. In my case, it must have also been something to do with my lack of fluency in German and he wanted to make sure I understood what he said and punctuated his speech with the local gel? more often than did others.

Though he never learned to speak English, my German was getting better every day and we would somehow manage to communicate. He must have also taken liking for me, in that we would meet outside of work and he would regularly give me ride home in his flashy metallic gold Opel Record Sports Coupe to the village of Schutterwald, a six kilometer stretch. He maintained a small room in Offenburg, but come Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, depending on the shift we worked, he would be gone and spend the weekend with his girlfriend Uschi and allow his mother to pamper her only child. This left me to my own devices over the weekends – in other words an extended loneliness which I spent solo walking the streets of Offenburg or the forest, even the local cemetery – which was quite peaceful.

One of my fondest memories of our early friendship is his taking me along to Bad Dürkheim’s traditional Weinfest, known as Wurstmarkt – literally the sausage market. I got to meet with his widowed mother Annemarie and his girlfriend Uschi. His father apparently never returned from the war and was listed as missing up until they closed the books on December 31,1945, informing the family that he had died.

Around the same time as I left to come to the States, he got himself transferred to Munich. We stayed in touch on and off which had trickled down to once a year Christmas cards. Who knew that within short five years I would be knocking at his door? Not only we would end up living and working in the same city but that he worked for the repro house Weissenberger, who did lots of reproduction for Playboy and other Munich based magazines of our partners Bauer Verlag. And within the matter of months, his company moved from their original Leopoldstrasse location several block away to Augustenstrasse 10, right across the courtyard from Playboy offices in the front. Small world?

It took me a while, but when I finally located Dieter a couple of months after I had already been living in Munich, he realized how lonely I must have felt during the Christmas holidays. Suddenly he was there for me. Dieter took me along with him, his girlfriend Monika (Kunfalvi) and his Indian friend Kamal (Chanana) to everywhere they went over the weekends. Sometimes I found myself being picked up for breakfast and came home just to sleep.

My Buick arrived separately a couple of days earlier. When Dieter sets his eyes on it for the first time, he goes in his typical wry humor pout: Jetzt Du hast von zwei autos Park Platz we genommen. Now you have taken away two parking spots. In consideration of living in a big city, Dieter had gotten rid of his Opel Sports and bought himself a Volkswagen Bug. And when my stuff from Chicago arrived and he was helping me unpack, his eyes lit up like fireflies when he saw coming out of a couple of boxes half gallon bottles of the premium booze only partially consumed. All left overs from the going away party I had thrown for my Chicago friends just two days before the movers showed up.

In theory, the movers weren’t even supposed to pack them, it is illegal to transport alcohol across the ocean as a part of your household stuff. I had no time to give it all away to my Chicago friends, so I offered the four of them to take those bottles home with them. They politely declined. Considering that there was so much of it, they took pity on me. If someone asks, we don’t know about it. And let’s hope that the German customs isn’t as witless. Lo and behold, they didn’t even attempt to open the container, let alone any of the boxes inside. Seeing that I could practically open a small bar with all that liquor that was piling up on the counter, his face lights up.

‘I got an idea. Let’s throw a party. Moni, Kamal and I will invite all our good friends. You can invite some people from your work. We will have some beer and wine just in case, but I am sure they would all want to drink American cocktails – because they are “in” right now, but they are so very expensive here and you can order them only in exclusive places like Harry’s Bar. It will be a big hit.’

But the problem is, cocktails need ice. In Germany, not something you can run down to a nearby gas station or convenience store and pick up a bag or two. Dieter scratches his head and then snaps his fingers: “Jim”. His friend who once worked for the restaurant chain Mövenpick. Jim comes with a big bag of ice acquired from his bartender buddies.

Voila! It costs me ire of my landlady and the dirty looks from my ehrenwertes – honorable neighbors. Thus hastening my looking for another apartment, which landed me at Johanclanzestrasse 49. And suddenly I acquired all the friends I possibly could.

Some boxes still unopened, we set up my state of the art Fisher Quadrophonic sound system, spread out all the booze and my TWA set of cocktail glasses on the kitchen island – I pull out my Time Life book of Wines and Liquors which came with a small spiral bound booklet containing recipes for all the American cocktails – starting with basic Dry Martini to Manhattan to Whiskey Sour and Rob Roy. Dieter takes over the job of the bartender. Follows the recipes for a while, but for not too long. Now the Chicago skylined counter top looks more like a chemical lab than an in-house bar. He starts mixing them ad-lib, tastes them and then holds the mixing glass against the light to watch the kaleidoscope of colors they would create. Absolutely infatuated, he would try his concoction with different quantities of liquor the colors and the ice cubes.

The guests must have loved whatever concoction he is creating for them. The party is now in full swing and everybody is having good time. Every now and then when I am in the vicinity of Dieter, he would go guck mal Haresh, ist es nicht super? Probier mal doch! – look Haresh, isn’t that super? Here, try it! And then he would let out a hilarious laugh. And then stare at the swirling glass like an alchemist would at a test tube in awe of the clouds and colors and the taste he he has just created. I have never seen Dieter this giddy. He is having time of his life. And so am I.

The night is still young. It’s inching towards eleven and the party has just began to swing with the music and the dancing in the living room. There are people swarming every room and every corner of the apartment, experiencing various stages of happiness. Surrounded by all those people, mostly the friends of Dieter-Kamal-Monika trio and soon to be mine – suddenly I don’t feel lonely. From Playboy, I have invited Rainer and Renate (Wörtmann), and the photographer Jan Parik, who comes with his wife and some of his cool friends. Rainer is amazed at the fact that I have barely arrived in Munich and how quickly I have made so many friends?

As the night begins to wind down, there are still quite a few people scattered around the apartment while some of us are dancing in the living room. Jerry Butler is singing, Never gonna give you up. And I am dancing intimately with Hella, Dieter’s friends’ friends’ friend. We’re swaying ever so slowly in the middle of the floor and kissing, The lighting in the living room is already subdued, but Dieter decides to facilitate even more Hella and me getting into each other. He announces to the crowd: the host wants lights dimmed. Now we are left with only the light pouring in from the street and from the foyer. Dieter is thinking: What can be better for Haresh than for him to have a home town honey? Thanks Dieter! As it turns out, I never see Hella again, but in the real existential sense, that night we lived for the moment – the moment I still remember. As if in the spirit of the Munich fasching – and the carnival of Köln, both of which I would experience soon enough, during which one of the most oft played songs goes like:

Du darfst mich lieben für drei tolle tage      

Du muss mich küssen das ist deine pflicht    

Du kannst mir alles alles schöne sagen        

Nur nach dem name frag mich bitte bitte nicht        

(You may love me for three mad days

You must kiss me – it’s your obligation!

You can say all sorts of beautiful things to me

But please, please don’t ask my name!)

In fact I soon forgot what she looked like or what her last name was, and would certainly not recognize her if I were to run into her today. But Dieter had succeeded far beyond his expectations in throwing the party so I could make some friends in what would be my home for some time to come.

Thus began what I would term to be The Longest Cocktail Party. When it finally and abruptly ended two and a half years later, one afternoon when we sat in a beer garden with his visiting mother, feeling sorry for me, she exclaimed! Poor Haresh! He no longer has a job!

‘Mach dir keine sorgen Mutti. Haresh will soon land back on his feet!’ I couldn’t have said it better.

I am still touched by Dieter’s confidence and faith in me. I linger in Munich for five more months that ended with another big bash at my place. The movers once again packed me up – the remaining bottles of good German wines and all and took the container full of my personal belongings to the local storage until I finally figured out where I would end up living. I fill up my Buick with all that I would need until such a time and drive away to Paris and on to the French port of Cherbourg and drive up the ramp of the QE II. The Queen would bring me back to New York and to the United States.

As during my first departure, and my hiatus of three years in Santa Barbara, Dieter and I would stay in touch. True to his prediction, in not too far of a future I would land back on my feet. And before long, come back to Munich a couple of times a year to work with the Playboy people and of course meet up with Dieter and Kamal and his latest squeeze Irmi (Irmengard Rüttinger), whom he would eventually marry.

The evening I still remember very fondly is the time we went to the Oktoberfest, and how happy drunk we all were. I remember having dinner with him and Irmi at their home. Not too long after that, I got a letter from Irmi that my friend Dieter, after having struggled with the abdominal cancer, chemotherapy and surgery, had passed away on September 21, 1984 – at the age of 40. It all happened quick within two short months.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, May 30, 2014

THE 75th PLAYBOY STORY

SAILING THE QUEEN

Once the initial shock and the feeling of insecurity wore off, it dawned on me, why was I in such a hurry to return to the States and begin looking for a job without giving myself a little break and regroup before I found something worth while to commit to? Why not first enjoy all that the beautiful city of Munich had to offer and then instead of rushing back on a nine hour flight, why not take my time and sail across the Atlantic?

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Categories Friendship, Germany, Memoire, Playboy, Profile

THREE CHEATING HEARTS

May 15, 2014 //
0

Falling Like Dominos

Haresh Shah

threehearts

The plan is for just the two of us to go out for dinner. Leave the business behind and talk men talk without women tugging at our arms. For me, whenever I am in Munich, it would be Susi as my forever companion. Normally Günter would have brought along his wife Hilda. Our usual double date every visit. For tonight, I am thinking of maybe us two having dinner at my early favorite neighborhood kneipe, Georgen Stuben on Prinz Regentenstrasse and afterwards maybe hit a couple of Schwabing locals like Tangente, Giesela’s and Domicil. Go down the memory lane, re-live the nostalgic days of my not so distant life in Munich.

But first, we’ve got to talk some business. Günter is one of the senior editors at the German Playboy. He has spent time in America as well, so we have got that too in common. We have spent lot of time together and have shared hundreds of silly laughs.

The first McDonald’s in Germany opened in Munich scant ten months before my arrival there in October of 1972. Just in time for Munich’s 1972 Summer Olympics. It must have taken a while for the national Life like illustrated Stern magazine to notice this American invasion, prompting them to run a cover story with the blurb screamingly calling Big Mac der Schmackloss Hackfleish – the tasteless minced meat. Günter and I couldn’t agree more, especially considering the humble German fricadel, a tasty meat ball the shape of a hamburger patty, made of the minced meat, eaten lukewarm with a hard shell brötchen – a bread roll and blob of yellow mustard on side. Lekker.
But that didn’t stop Günter and me to frequent the local MacDonald’s, conveniently located on my way home on Lindwurmstrasse. Often we would feel nostalgic about America and go grab a Big Mac or McChicken menus with some beer. Yup, you could actually have beer at McD’s in Europe. In Prague you also have a choice of white or red wine. And we would talk about the Stern story and how horrified the editors must have been along with a large amount of German population vis-à-vis the arrival of the Yankee Golden Arch. We would agree that fricadel was great, but once in a while, nothing would do but a juicy Big Mac. We would come to the conclusion that it must be Ronald McDonald’s secret sauce. We would often get carried away with our wild imagination of the Big Mac’s sex appeal, calling it a furburger instead, and acting out asking for them to be easy on onions – the silly childish stuff. I really am looking forward to spending this evening alone with Günter.

‘How if we first go to my hotel, have a couple of drinks in the lobby bar, then have dinner at Georgen Stuben and then following that hit a couple of joints in Schwabing, just like god old days?’ I suggest.

‘Sounds like a plan.’ He responds, but lacking in his voice is his usual exuberance and enthusiasm.

We drift away talking something else while I notice a certain amount of uneasiness on his face as he switches his butt back and forth in his chair.

‘The thing is, something else has come up since we made the plans!’ Looking nervous, he finally spills it out.

‘Like what?’

‘I got two press passes to tonight’s Paul McCartney concert.’

‘Wow! Paul McCartney live?’

‘I thought we would have a quick drink. Go to the concert and then get a late night bite at some place.’

‘That sounds super!’

‘It does, doesn’t it? I was very much looking forward to it.’

‘But…?’

First I see a bit of shrinkage with some wrinkles suddenly appearing on Günter’s face and then watch him take a deep breath and let go. That irons out his wrinkles and the smoothness of his face returns.’

‘The thing is, there is this woman!’

‘What woman?’

‘Her name is Ursula. Uschi.’ I wait for him to elaborate. ‘We see each other on and off.’

‘You mean…?’

‘Yup. Seitensprung!’ And we both break out laughing, remembering the fun we’ve had years earlier defining and re-defining the expression. Literally, it means a sideway leap. Simply put; straying or cheating in a relationship. Have a fleeting affair on side. Hoping no one notices it and then leap right back in the line. No harm done!

I am not happy about it, but I understand. An opportunity of a quick clandestine bums always trumps an evening out with a friend. But why tonight of all nights? The crossing in my mind of the expression bums makes me want to burst out laughing. Because it’s one of those other German words – literally it means, to bump! bounce! bang! Or normally used to run into something or someone. But it also means…

And I remembered another one of the editors during the early days: Carmen Jung using it and then telling me what it really meant in answer to my simple question.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘A steady one? No. But I do have someone I have bumsverhältnis with…recently it was perfectly defined in Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis movie, Friends with Benefits. And then she goes on to elaborate, how perfectly it works for her. That they have each other, and yet they are free.

‘I wouldn’t do this to a good buddy like you. But she called me a while ago whether we could have a rendezvous tonight that her husband had to take a sudden trip to Hamburg.’

‘I still don’t say anything. The expression on my face has a question mark.

‘And?’

‘And Hilda knows I am having dinner with you. You see?’ I certainly do. What could be more convenient?

But I still don’t want to see it. I notice a certain dismay on his face and then watch him slide open his desk drawer and pull out the two strips of the tickets and hand them to me. Printed on them is Paul McCartney & Wings. Not a bad trade off.

‘I guess.’ I say. Since I am busy for the next two evenings of my stay in Munich, I won’t be able to re-schedule another dinner with Günter this trip. But the next time around? After all, how often you get all access press passes to Paul McCartney concert?

‘I am sure, you and Susi will have fun at the concert.’

I am sure that Susi would be ecstatic. But wouldn’t it be great also if Barbara were free that evening? A thought crosses my mind. But out of sheer protocol and the guilt I would otherwise feel, I call Susi from Günter’s phone, wishing that she wouldn’t be around to answer it. And she isn’t.

‘I’ll try to call her again from the hotel.’ I say.

It’s half past five when I leave Playboy offices in New Perlach, wishing Günter nice evening with his seitensprung with his squeeze, Uschi.

I catch the S-Bahn back to the hotel and immediately call Barbara. She’s already home from work and answers her phone on the first ring.

‘I would love to!’ I can hear the excitement in her voice. Takes me back to the days when we both lived in California.

‘Let me hang up. We don’t have much time. I just got home and need to change and freshen up. Where are you staying? I’ll pick you up at 7:30.’

Her little BMW pulls up in Grand Hotel Continental’s driveway. The concert is at the Olympia Halle. Normally I don’t really care for such large venues packed with thousands of people. But though our press passes have no reserved seats, they allow us an easy access to everywhere except the back stage. We spend the entire evening in the arena – which is the open area right in the front of the stage and dance the night away as if in a small and cramped smoke filled venue of Schwabing or on Ripperbahn in Hamburg where the Beatles first began. Instead, on the stage are Paul & Linda McCartney and Denny Lane and rest of the Wings belting out their Band on the Run repertoire interspersed with some Beatles classics.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, May 23, 2014

MAKING FRIENDS

One of the fringe benefits of me working for Playboy in the job that I did, was an opportunity to meet the most interesting and creative people from around the world, many of them have become lifelong friends. More importantly, it allowed me to maintain those friendships by not fading into out of sight, out of mind state. Because I had no geographical barriers. It also allowed me to re-kindle non-Playboy relationships. Among them Dieter (Stark), whom I had originally met and worked with at Burda in Offenburg.

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Categories Friendship, Memoire, Playboy, Relationships, Romance, Women

FOR THE LOVE OF MARY JANE

May 8, 2014 //
0

Beautiful..Ye High..Ye Wide..

Haresh Shah

weedlove2

Bonnie and David are a cool couple. They are naturally mellow, but often made mellower by the pot induced blissfulness beaming on their faces. I run into them about a year after I arrived in Goleta at one of those shrouded-in-the-cloud-of-smoke filled parties which seemed to be a norm than an exception.

This is southern California in the mid-1970s. A typical tabloid would be, when you entered the hosts’ home, you would be greeted not only with their warm and welcoming smiles and exuberance, but also a large table overflowing with salad bowl full of fresh marijuana, surrounded by the rolling paper, matches and other pot related paraphernalia. Just like Mark and Ann, Bonnie and David too have adopted me and I often hang out with them. Bonnie is a seamstress and makes most of her own clothes. She also designs funky outfits for other people and is quite in demand with young and pretty surfer chicks. David works in incense filled book shop downtown Santa Barbara, that specializes in the counter-culture, psychedelic, transcendental and alternative pseudo spiritual literature by the East and the Western authors such as Krishnamurthy, Carlos Castaneda, J.J.R. Tolkien, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Herman Hess. Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda are standard fares. The store also sells Indian necklaces and bracelets, silk scarves, patuli and other fragrant oils, beads and a variety of knickknacks that give the subculture its identity.

They live in a small house tucked away in the thick of an orange grove. Quite secluded, a long driveway carved out of the shrubbery lead you to the house. It’s like an oasis. A serene little island on land. I have spent many afternoons and breezy evenings sitting out on their front porch drinking beer with David. Often Bonnie would cook one of her what I called a mishmash cuisine kind of dinners. No matter what she throws in together, those meals are always delicious, deserving of a bottle or two of California wines and then David and I would follow them up with equally as good cigars.

Behind their cottage is a green house, almost as large as the cottage, where Bonnie grows seasonal vegetables. But most of the green house is used to grow some unadulterated organic weed. Mostly for their own consumption, but they also generously spread the wealth and share some with close friends, and the rest would be for sale. For Bonnie and David, growing and smoking the pot is not as much an addiction as it’s a spiritual ritual. To get into a certain state of consciousness that is more meditative than merely getting high. They are reverential of their beautiful shiny green marijuana leaves, like most Hindus are of their household Tulsi plants, to which they humbly bow and worship first thing in the morning. The reason they want their good friend Haresh to experience that level of consciousness and would often try to seduce me into joining them in their smoking ritual, which I would politely decline.

Not that I am against it in principal or otherwise, just that it’s one of those things that never turned me on. Having come from India, I am not ignorant of bhang, charas and ganja. In fact once a year, every Janmaashtami – on Lord Krishna’s birthday, my father would have one of our domestic helps put the fresh green leaves of marijuana to a grinding stone, turn it into a little green ball looking like wasabi and drop it into the boiling milk already mixed with sliced pistachios and almonds, saffron and sugar and brew it into a potent potions of bhang – cooled down and served chilled, tasting like a refreshing glass of pistachio almond milkshake. I may have tried it once or twice, but mainly it was meant to be consumed by his grown up male friends, while us kids and women drank thandai, equally as tasty, albeit sans spiked with the little green ball.

I arrived in the US in 1968, at the height of the pot culture, and if not everywhere, it was still around at some of the parties I went to in Pittsburg and Chicago – my first two homes in America. Especially during the years I hung out with Karen (Abbott) watching passively her and others getting high earned me the reputation of being a square. Smoking it put me in a kind of depressive pensive haze, which I didn’t care for. Once I went to a party in Santa Barbara with Bonnie and David and gave it a real go and puffed on the specially prepared chillum by the host, containing little brown crystals of dynamic hash. I left the party with my head feeling light and fogy. While driving my date home that night, what should have been a five minutes’ ride, felt as if I were driving for an hour. Ditto, getting back home after I dropped her off. It scared me to think how one can lose the sense of time so completely. But for everyone else, that was the point, wasn’t it?

●●●

Bonnie sounds upset and disconcerted. Devastated even. And above all she sounds angry. She’s not her bubbly self, shamelessly flirting with me and me flirting back with I love you this much to my I love you thiiiis much and her coming back with I love you thiiiiiiiis much. Something we used to do with our arms stretching littler bit farther with I love yous while David would sit there shaking his head.

‘When you kids gonna grow up?’

‘Never!’ We would answer in unison.

But tonight she doesn’t sound like herself at all. I am now living in Chicago and talking to her over the phone.

‘You sound like you’re in a funky mood! Something’s the matter?’

‘Don’t ask me. Ask your friend!’ She snaps, sounding angry.

So I ask to talk with David.

‘He’s not here.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s in jail!’

‘What?’

‘Yeah. You heard it right. But you can still talk to him.’

Apparently David has indeed ended up behind the bars. Albeit in a minimum security prison from where he is allowed to check out in the morning and go to his job at the bookstore, and check back in every evening.

I call the Santa Barbara county jail at the number Bonnie has just given me.

‘What the fuck!’ I begin and pause. ‘What are you doing in the slammer?’

‘I got caught.’

‘They can’t put you away for selling bit of a pot in California.’

‘I happened to have a lot! I’m afraid.’

‘Fuck!’

‘Yup. What can I say? I guess I just got greedy and lost my bearings. The bastards just don’t have sense of humor, like they used to.’

I hear a slight snicker in the background and know exactly what he is alluding to. The whole scenario of some years ago rushes through my mind in a fast running video clip.

One beautiful afternoon, having finished my chapter for the day, I climb on my Azuki and at the tail end of my bike ride, I decide to stop by for a beer at Bonnie and David. Soon as I turn the corner and their cottage zooms into the line of my vision, my bike stops in its track. Shocked, I pause to focus on what looks like two fuzzy images, like the ones in a 3D photograph looked at without the special glasses. I see the porch, and artificially imposed upon it an image of David – stretched out helplessly on an outdoor lounge chair.

Closer I get, clearer I see. His face is all bruised and patched up. His lips have turned into squashed raspberries, his eyes sunken inside their sockets and the rim around them all swollen. His arms are bandaged.

‘What the fuck!’ I don’t say it out loud, but David knows what I am thinking.

‘Those fucking mother fucking sons of bitches!!’ I don’t believe the string of expletives coming out of the gentle mouth of David. He is normally not prone to utter such profanities.

‘What happened?’

‘What happened? Just look at what they have done to our little paradise!’

The doors of the greenhouse behind their cottage are ajar, almost yanked off their hinges. Inside, it looks helter-skelter as if hit by a wild tornado. The clay pots are turned upside down, shattered into pieces, the soil pulled out of the ground, fragments of the leaves, the branches and the roots are strewn all over. I get the picture.

‘What kind of fucking brutes you have to be to do that?’ David asks. As livid as he is, he is on the verge of breaking down and cry. All that hard work and the tender loving care both of them had given to nurture their beloved garden of paradise.

‘There were four of them. They rode in on their bikes.’ That answers those wide single tire tracks I had noticed and wondered about on my way in.

One of the neighbors down the main road had seen them leaving with loud roars and the loot they carried away with them. From the descriptions of their bikes, David knew immediately who they could be. Boiling with raging fury, he calls up his brother Randy. They get into Randy’s pick up and catch up with the “fuckers”. Fortunately, Bonnie is still at work.

Their truck coming from the opposite direction blocks the bikers. The four riders jump off their bikes. David and Randy jump out of the cabin of the truck. They go at each other like wild horses let loose. Soon they hear sirens. Cops line them all up.

‘What the fuck’s going on here? You kids gone crazy or something?’

‘They ripped off my pot man!’ David is jumping up and down in his fury.

‘What pot?’

‘From our green house. My wife and I spent so much time in lovingly growing and taking care of them, and these fuckers just yanked them off. Our beautiful, beautiful plants.’

The cops look at the mangled and hastily thrown together bundles on the backs of their bikes.

‘That ain’t nothing. They have no respect for marijuana. What you see is all yanked, pulled and butchered.’

‘Looks like those babies must have been beautiful!’

‘Beautiful? You have no idea.’

‘Yeah? How?’ The cops seem to get into it.

‘Yeah. Green as can be.’ David’s hand gestures seem to be painting a large splash of bright green on a canvas and with his arms wide open and then raised, he goes, ‘ye high and ye wide, man!!’ Momentarily he has even forgotten that how beat up him and Randy and all the four kids are. Badly bruised and dripping blood and in need of some quick first aid.

As interesting and amazing the cops find the situation, one of them goes: ‘You don’t want to report this kids, do you?’ At the question, everyone realizes that irrespective of who’s in the right and who’s not, they all stand to be justifiably arrested and locked up.

But this is southern California.

‘Let’s just get you all to the emergency room and get patched up.’

No such luck this time around.

But ever optimistic, I hear David continue. He tells me how it’s not all that bad, considering they found a shit load of pot in the trunk of his Volvo. Caught red handed just before he was about to unload it. Taking into account his squeaky clean record and the fact that he held a regular job, was respectably married and otherwise was a nice guy, the judge handed out a sentence that was kind and considerate. My call had caught him mopping floors. He still had a few chores left to do. His duties also included cleaning toilets and bathrooms.

David is taking it in his strides. He knows that Bonnie is mighty pissed.

‘What can I say? I guess I fucked up really good time time around!’

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, May 16, 2014

THREE CHEATING HEARTS

However in love or committed you’re to someone special, there are moments when your heart wants to be with someone else. A light hearted look at what the Germans so cleverly call seitensprung – a sideway leap.

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Categories California, Friendship, Marijuana, Memoire, Playboy

IN THE DEPTH OF HIS EYES

March 13, 2014 //
1

The Spanish Civil War Looped Into A Gaze

Haresh Shah

cognac_revise_2

Sebastian Martinez is my first encounter with Spain. We have never met before, but he seems to have recognized me instantly as I emerge from the customs’ sliding doors of Barcelona’s yet old but functional airport. It’s the summer of 1978, scant two some years after Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s death. The air is still thick with the repressive regime of Franco that lasted for almost forty years. Trampled and suppressed during his ruthless decades, supported full heartedly and under the stringent conservative principals of the Catholic Church, it would have been impossible to even dream of the existence of an edition of the “derelict” Playboy in Spain. But the times they do a change!

By now I speak good Spanish. Sebastian welcomes me with bien venido a España, as much to welcome me as to test my Spanish. I answer with plain gracias. He has been told by Lee (Hall)  that I speak the language fluently. But Sebastian is not the one to take anyone’s word for it. It takes him a couple of days and me speaking in Spanish with the people he introduces me to, does he admit that I indeed do. If with a bit of a soft lilt in the way the Mexicans speak it. I myself have a hard time getting used to Spanish Spanish or the way it’s spoken by the Catalans. I find Mexican Spanish sweeter. Well! Sebastian might question my taste as he does everything. In this case, it would be the way British dismay at the way they demolish their language across the pond in America. He is the most skeptical person I have known. He would never accept anything on its face value.

Sebastian would be my counterpart in Spain and therefore I would be his charge. As different as we are, we get along famously. Based on his pre-conceptions of the Americans and a bit of an exposure with some of them, he has this European stereotypical and cynical view of them. It helps that I am an American born in India. Years later, still in our Playboy days, the best compliment anyone could have given me turns out to be my super skeptical friend Sebastian Martinez. You’re the human face of Playboy.

He is as secretive about his private life as he is skeptical in his day-to-day dealings. I feel lucky to be taken in by him and know this much – he is married to Berit, a Swede, and they have a young daughter Maria – four or five years of age. They live in a modest two bedroom apartment in the center of the city. I don’t know anything about his parents and whether he has any siblings. I think he is the only child. Over a period of years that we worked together, I would be a frequent dinner guest at his home and later at his weekend cottage a couple of hours drive from Barcelona. And he would be ours during his visits to Chicago. The two or three times he comes to Chicago, I try my best to expose him to the American life and the people that run contrary to his preconceived image and the opinion of the country. At times he is impressed. Others not so much.

Beyond that, I can say Sebastian is a true bon vivant. He has good taste in food and wines. Even though he makes fun of me sprinkling generously the best sea food paella in the world with Tabasco, like the most Americans he has seen dousing everything in ketchup – he forgives me my – this one horrendous sin. So do the maître de and the old time waiters at the restaurant Quo Vadis, tucked away in a dark alley behind the wide strip of the famous pedestrian zone of  Ramblas. For in all other things culinary and otherwise, I am an ideal open minded American, who is willing to and tries everything. Be it drinking Jerez from a streaming beak held up above your head at an angle, drinking cognac over teeth crushed pomegranate seeds and the juice lining inside of your mouth to enjoy eating basic bar foods, such as tortas de papas, Spanish ham, the different varieties of sausages and a whole slew of  tapas served at the counter.

We’re a good pair at and away from work. Normally of the stern demeanor and a permanent frown on his face, his eyes squinting behind his rimless glasses, you never know what he might be thinking. Does he feel happy? Unhappy? Indifferent? Anyone’s guess is as good as mine.

Not that I ever try to dig deeper into his personal life or into his past, but as guarded as he always is; when and if the subject comes up, he would answer: it’s not that interesting! And then you see his eyes suddenly go still and sad, fogging up the inside of his glasses and assume a distant look as if staring in infinity – somewhere far far away. I don’t think he is aware of it. Seems he is turned off momentarily. And then, as if suddenly waking up from a deep sleep and realizing the silence that has fallen between himself and the person he is talking to, he emerges from the frozen frame of his face and shakes his head. Like someone with apnea having stopped breathing for a moment and then springing back to life. You notice the lower part of his body shudder a bit. He removes his glasses, pulls out the handkerchief from his pants’ pocket, wipes his eyes lightly, gets himself together and shaking his head again, this time sideways, goes well! and picks up where he had left off. More often than not, I have observed him mesmerized by the twirling bulbous glass over the flame of the silver cognac warmer, his eyes and the frozen look reflected in the whirl of the liquid gold. I could almost feel and see the tumult he must feel watching the swirls inside the glass rushing like wild waves of an ocean.

I don’t want to say that this ever bothered me beyond the moment, but something I often think about without ever reaching a conclusion.

One afternoon, we’re taking a leisurely walk through the dark alleys of Ramblas. It’s likely that we’ve just emerged out of Quo Vadis after a long sumptuous Spanish meal, even fueled with my favorite sea food paella washed down with a Rioja and have had chilled huvas – grapes served in a bowl placed on the bed of ice, gulped down with freshly warmed cognac. He seems to be in a nostalgic mood and is pointing out buildings where he used to play when a kid. The bodega where he would accompany his mother to buy the produce, the cafes that he used to go with his dad. The neighborhood bakery, the cobbler shop and all. Along with it all, he suddenly stops on a narrow side walk and points at the gate across the alley, and spits out just like that.

And that’s where they shot my Dad. I was walking with him. I was just a kid! And I see on his face the same distant look that I had often encountered. Looking far far away. I am trying to imagine the scene. Going through my mind is the brutal history of the two and a half years of the Spanish Civil War and the years of atrocities that stretched beyond and up until the end of the second world war in 1945 and for another thirty years until Franco’s death in 1975. Franco ruled his country with the iron fist, crunching anything and anybody on even an inch left of his ideology. And all of it instantaneously coming undone. But the fear and the stories and the aftermath of it all remain even in the shards of that immediate past shattered to smithereens. I see it all summed up in the depth of my friend Sebastian’s frozen and framed eyes. I see them fogging up, there may even have been a tear or two streaking down his cheeks, followed by his head shake and the body shudder and then with a deep sigh, retreating back into the moment with his Well!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, March 21, 2014

AN INDIAN AMONGST THE INDIANS

With the passing of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988, that allowed the American Indians to open and operate the casinos on their land had them suddenly bathing in the wealth and prosperity they couldn’t have imagined even their wildest dreams. In 1995, Playboy Netherlands assigned me to travel across America to some of those casinos to find out how after centuries of suppression, they were striking back at the “white man”.

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Categories Friendship, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Spain, Travel

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

February 20, 2014 //
0

The Domestic Arrangements South Of The Border

Haresh Shah

aztecqueen

I met Pepe Morales during a Playmate promotional jaunt in Acapulco. Our publishers have hired Pepe to cover the event – a young Mexican photographer and socialite of some renown . He seems to know everyone we run into and is greeted with the warmest abrazoz and pats on the back, while he bumbles around following the Playmates and documenting the weekend, with me taking additional photos whenever I am able to sneak some shots without neglecting my duties that of the Playboy executive on site.

Pepe and I hit it off right away. When back in Mexico City, we meet one evening for dinner. We have fat juicy steak dinners at Barbas Negras during which we drown three bottles of Los Reyes. Feeling absolutely no pain, Pepe asks:

‘What would you like to do now?’

‘I don’t know. This is your town. Maybe go cunt chasing?’

‘Why not? Let’s just get out of here and together we’ll paint the town red,’ he proclaims.

So we get into his fire red Mach 1 and end up at the cozy Las Nueves. Unfortunately for us, since Pepe’s last visit there, it has now turned into a trendy gay hangout. We have a drink or two there and then make our exit.

‘I know where we can go. To your casa amarilla.’ So we end up at the lobby bar of Camino Real. This gives us time to simmer. As in Acapulco, Pepe seems to know everyone and everyone seems to know him. People would stop by, couples, men, women – especially women and they go through their Mexican tango of hugging, patting the back and then parting with promises to meet up soon again. At the end of which, two of his female acquaintances walk up with exuberant Hola Pepito. He invites them to join us. Introduces me and builds me up as el hombre de Playboy. Curiously, it’s a pair of a blonde and a brunette. Both good looking. Gives me a feeling of being society girls about town. Quite friendly. But they speak only perfunctory English. We have a couple of drinks with them and then Pepe proposes.

‘How if we go to my place and party?’

The girls try a bit hard to get, but then after some prodding from Pepe, seconded by me, we all pile into his compact sports car, somehow managing to squeeze ourselves in. Pepe and Lucia in the front and me and Tere  in the back.

●●●

On that Saturday, Pepe has invited me to his place for breakfast. He feels it’s unpardonable that as long as I have been coming to Mexico, nobody has yet gotten around to take me to the Pyramids. Why don’t you come over to my place on Saturday, we’ll have a nice breakfast and then drive out to the Pyramids?

Pepe’s is a spacious penthouse apartment near the Chapultepec Park in the center of Mexico City. Cascades of light pours in through the skylights illuminating dozens of artworks and the blown up photographs that adore the walls. Some of the photographs with blurred images of the billowing skirts of the folk dancers remind me of Holi festival in India. He’s not only a photographer but also a serious artist and all that hangs on the walls is his own work. The place looks larger than I remember it from a couple of nights ago. I think it contains three, if not four bedrooms. Large kitchen and the dining room. Even though some of the furnishings has that colorful feeling of Mexico, most of it is the modern functional. It feels warm and comfortable.

When I arrive, I am greeted by a tall, angular faced, as if lifted from a cubist art, long necked and sharp penetrating dark eyed woman standing on the other side of the threshold. She doesn’t say anything, but silently welcomes me with a toss of her head. Her long and curly hair following the motion of her neck.

‘Hola Haresh. Bien venido mi amigo a tu casa en Mexico.’  Pepe rushes towards me, suddenly throwing the woman in the background with a fuerte abrazo, and the pat on the back he takes me by the arm and leads me to the table. Such exuberance! But this is Mexico and I am getting used to it.

The table is laid out just so. The plates glowing with vibrant colors are nestled into the larger shiny copper plates that serve as placemats. The clothes napkins are bright burgundy. A jar sweating of freshly squeezed orange juice awaits. The pungent aroma of strong Mexican coffee permeates the air. Engulfed in Pepe’s exuberance and displayed hospitality, for a moment I even forget about the pretty young woman.

I am treated to a sumptuous Mexican breakfast consisting of fresh papayas and mangoes, huevos rancheros with home made red and green salsas, frijoles, chorizzo, piping hot tortillas and even chiles toreados – the pan fried hot jalapeño peppers with fresh scallions. The relish my Latin Valentine Patricia had introduced me to and Pepe remembered me telling him how very much I loved it. And of course the strong café Mexicano served so attentively and gracefully by his maid Clarissa. For every gracias I utter, she rewards me with de nada and with the sweetest little smile and a sparkle in her eyes. At every compliment, I feel that extra hump in her short walk between the kitchen and the dining room as I watch her long curly hair tossing up above small of her back and caressing her shoulders. She looks very young, like in her late teens the most. But even in her innocence, I sense a certain worldliness on her face and in her eyes. Would certainly qualify to be a Playmate. Even in her homely dress covered with an overall, her figure and her beauty excel.

Seeing that I am eying her, should we take her along? Asks Pepe.

‘Sure. Why not?’

‘Let’s do it. It would do her good to get out of the house. Why don’t you ask her?’

‘Me?’

“Si. Then she wouldn’t feel pressured!’

‘No quires ir con nosotros?’ I ask

‘A donde?’        

‘A los Pirámides.’

‘Puess…,’ she says and then hesitates a bit and turns her face to Pepe.

‘Puedes, si quires, Venn!’ She turns around to face me.

‘Entonces si. Me gustaria mucho. Gracias.’

When we’re done and she has cleared the table, Pepe tells her to leave the dishes alone and go and change.

Transformed, a gorgeous young woman emerges from the back room. She is dressed in a simple long white cotton dress. It’s trimmed with wide bands of light grey lace around the neck and the waist and the hem, practically touching the floor, a wide white sash tied in a bow at her back billowing in the air. A simple silver hoop choker with a dangling little ball adores her neck. Her sculpted face with high cheek bones and the shoulders pointed proudly upwards, she stands tall on her plain white platform shoes. Her slightly slanted eyes enhanced with the kohl outline, she wears only a light touch of red lipstick on her pert lips quivering under her dainty little nose.

It seems Pepe too is in awe of her sudden transformation from a simple maid serving us humbly a while ago into a femme fatal. Something he probably haven’t yet had a chance to see. And when placed in front of the Pyramids, neither Pepe, nor I could ignore her. Between us two, we turn Clarissa into the most sought after photo model. She doesn’t say much, except swirl and move as we request, flash shy smiles as if to herself and in her face I see her savoring what must have been a unique moment of her young life. To be appreciated for her own natural beauty and in an environment which undoubtedly is hers. She doesn’t look Spanish and or Indian or a mulatta, the mixture of the two. Her face wears the looks and the pride of an Aztec Princess reincarnate, standing comfortably in front of the Pyramids and the ruins of the ancient Aztec built city of Tenochtitlan, as if she owns them.

●●●

On our way back, Pepe drops off Clarissa before taking me back to my hotel. We are in contemplative mood. We avoid the bustles of the lobby bar and settle ourselves over beers in their by now subdued cantina.

‘She is pretty!’ I say reflexively.

‘Who, Clarissa?’

‘Who else?’

‘You’re right. She is prettier than I ever thought she was.’ And then we are quiet. I see a certain smile cross his face, as if trying to contain a private joke.

‘What?’

‘I guess, I picked her right.’

‘Did you interview many of them?’

‘No, that’s not how we do things around here in Mexico. One weekend, I just drove out to the country bazar, she was standing there up above on cliff under the tree with others, and I picked her.’

‘You mean like from a line up?’

‘Not exactly. But sort of. They are offered for the domestic work, mostly by their parents.’

‘You mean like slaves?’

‘Noooooo mi amigo. Just that they are poor in the backlands and one way for them to make some money is to work in the city. You negotiate with their parents and agree upon the monthly salary and other conditions. But she is free to leave whenever she wants to.’

Having grown up in India in a relatively affluent family, domestic help is not that unusual to me. But all our servants came from little villages to Bombay on their own, looking for jobs. They may have known someone else from their village in the city and then its just a word of mouth. What Pepe tells me is a bit different. Seeing me lost in my unspoken thoughts, he continues.

‘I pay all her expenses. She has every Sunday off and has her own living quarters in the back of my apartment.’

‘How does that work? A young pretty woman living under the same roof?’

‘You’re right. There is always that possibility. And the temptation. As you see, she is very pretty, you know?’ I give him a sideway look.

‘Okay. I could take advantage of her if I wanted to, and get away with it without even risking losing her. But your friend here is a romantic type. I had to pursue her, and pursue her long.’

I don’t interrupt.

‘She always resisted my advances. And I respected her for that. And then one evening, without any warning, she just opened up to me, like a flower. Like an orchid!!’ I can see on Pepe’s face what he must be seeing, something I could just imagine.

‘Doesn’t that put a damper on your social life with other women?’

‘Not at all. At the end of the day, she realizes, and I make sure she knows that the first and the foremost she is my maid.’

‘Yes, but we’re now talking matters of the heart. How does she feel about when we showed up in the middle of the night with the two women a couple of days go? Or was she off that night?’

‘No she was very much there, and she didn’t like it. In fact she is quite crossed with me. Thanks for being so kind to her and making her feel special. I think she is now softened a bit and I’m sure we’ll make up.’

Just a few hours drive from Santa Barbara and you’re in Mexico. What a different world? I think.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, February 28, 2014

UNDETERMINED

Both you and I will have to wait and see which entry in works makes its way up to the top. Whichever it turns out to be, promises to be good. Stay tuned.

 

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Categories Artist, Culture, Friendship, Mexico, Profile

THE PEEPING TOMS

February 12, 2014 //
2

Paparazzi In His Own Backyard

Haresh Shah

peepers

It’s only once in a life time that you meet someone like FHG. The initials stand for Franz Hermann Gomfers from the little BIG town of Wachtendonk, tucked away near the Dutch border of Venlo in Germany’s lower Rhine region. He spoke only German in the Niederrhein with frequently punctuating with nicht wahr? And yet his house on Feldstrasse 29 would be bursting with smatterings of languages and the people from all around the globe. His curiosity knew no bounds, which was always topped with his patience with a common friend going back and forth between him and his new acquaintances, translating and interpreting. Something about him was fraulich,  in which he would dig out all the gory and juicy details from the person and would bring him or her to a confessional mode, with the seriousness on his face that would betray earnestness even that of Herr Doktor Freud. Because he is genuinely interested in their lives and what they have to say. And yet, he was a little boy like mischievous prankster to the core. The plotter, the match maker, the eternal flirt, frequently crossing his boundary to the utter dismay of his dear Lizbeth. And then getting away with a coy and guilty but a hearty laugh, just like not so innocent Tom Sawyer.
Among hundreds other, I feel fortunate to have known him for twenty five years until the moment he checked out of this material world at the young age of 67.  Madhu (Parekh) and I flew out to attend his funeral. We had the hardest time containing ourselves from breaking out in a loud laugh. It was absolutely incredible to see him lying there, down in the cold basement of the village church, decked out impeccably in his black tuxedo and all. But what I found the strangest was to see his hands neatly folded under his chest, clutching the rosary strewn around and across his waist. The rosary!! It seemed like a joke. Someone getting even with him for snubbing the church all his life. It felt so ironic and weird that I was expecting him to open one of his eyes for a split second and wink at me, and let one of his naughty smiles break out, as if saying: so ist es junge. Wenn du bist tod, bist du tod!!! – that’s how it is, when you’re dead, you’re dead. And then withdraw back into the world of the departed.

But there couldn’t be any regrets, for Franz Hermann lived his life as if every day was his last. The ultimate existentialist, living in the moment. As if everyday were an ongoing Karneval and Christmas and Sylvester. His life crammed with hordes of people. Mostly much younger than himself and many of them foreigners such as myself, Madhu and Nasim (Yar Khan). At some point it would seem to me that he had taken upon himself the mission of making us stay put in Germany, marry German women and live closer to where he was.

Comfortably affluent, he was the most unpretentious and downhome mensch, always drove Volkswagen bug up until after they introduced the Golf. But that was the extent of his luxury. Heilpraktiker (Healing Practitioner, described as an alternative and complementary health care) at the time when it wasn’t exactly in vogue. We joked with him that it was more of a hobby for him than a real profession. Plus in such a title conscious society as Germany, it afforded him the title of Herr Doktor. Gave  him an excuse to get in his car every morning to drive from Wacthtendonk to Krefeld – some twenty kilometers. His physician’s sticker gave him an excuse to speed, something he loved to do and did. When coming upon a slow moving vehicle, he would say out loud in his exasperation: eure idioten! Just because they have posted a speed limit!! And then he would shake his head in disgust.

Similarly, he had no patience and or respect for authorities. So very unlike a German. It’s the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and we are stuck in the middle of traffic thick as jungle. Everyone is out doing their last minute shopping before the shops close at two. Traffic is further thrown in disarray by a police car stopped smack dab in the middle of the square, trying to give a ticket. Fuming, Franz Hermann rolls down the window, sticks his neck out and yells at the cops. What you think you’re doing? Nowhere in the world you yell at cops like that, let alone in Germany! Unless, of course your name is Franz Hermann. Would you believe, the cop got into the car and drove away?

And I still remember when he visited me in Munich and we’re in Alte Pinakothek – the art museum. On one of the glass topped display cabinets is a cardboard sign mounted on a wooden stand, which says: VORSICHT! POLIZERIALARM. Just to see if an alarm would really go off, he is about to lift it when I stop him. Ah quatsch – nonsense, there is no police alarm! He grumbles, but then lets it go. A couple of hours later, when we are sitting in a café, what does he pull out of his coat pocket and put on the table top? The sign with the stand and all. Ein geschenk – a gift! And he smiles his knowing smile. I still have it.  

Uncrowned feudal lord of the grossstadt Wachtendonk, he could make things happen, such as when Madhu returned from India with his brand new bride, Uma in the tow, it was the front page news in the regional Rheinische Post.
Politically active, locally and nationally, Franz Hermann was the supporter of the liberal FDP (Free Democratic Party), and hobnobbed with big boys such as the foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher. Deathly afraid of flying, he never set foot on an airplane, with one noticeable exception when he flew to Turkey with Wilhelm Dünwald, then the German ambassador to Turkey, as part of his delegation. Beyond that it was in Wachtendonk that he would bring the oceans and the mountains from far away. A big opera fan, mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn, when in Germany, she hung out at his home in the little BIG city of Wachtendonk.

After Madhu emigrated to Canada, I remained behind in Germany. Soon I too would go west. Those few months cemented our friendship and we even allowed ourselves to be called familiar Du. As with Madhu’s departure, he was sad for me to go too. But then when Playboy brought me back to Germany, we picked up the threads and let our friendship grow and flourish. It gave him boasting rights that I had returned with such a plum job and that I held an important position at none other than Germany’s top quality zeitschrift, Playboy.

Though Munich wasn’t exactly hop-skip and jump from Wachtendonk, Essen was where we printed the magazine and I maintained there a second apartment. This natural proximity allowed us to see each other and to splurge frequently and share stunde der wahrheit – many hours of the truth, with Nasim whom he had practically adopted and when Madhu came for one Christmas – just like in good old days.

Of the several girls I photographed during that phase of me hunting for Playmates, Barbara was already scheduled to be published (July 1975), while I had just done some initial tests of another Playmate candidate – a petite Eurasian beauty, half German and half Japanese, an army brat, Karen Sugimoto.

Other than the home where Franz Hermann lived with his family, he owned a summer home just a short walking distance from the main house, which everyone called Flieth – a German version of the Russian Dacha and the Czech Chalupa. A ranch style low structure cozy dwelling stood at the farthest end of the front gate and the garden path that lead you to the house fronted with a small round pond and a fountain springing out of a large millstone as its centerpiece. The property was secluded by the sheer fact of ten minutes walk from the stadtmitte, the “center” of Wachtendonk. The further privacy was lent by the high fences covered with ivy, hedges and the dense tall trees. A gentle ribbon of the river Nette flowed behind the house under the dainty wooden bridge. The grounds lit by the old fashioned romantic street lamp posts painted white. An ideal dream like location to shoot a  Playmate.

When I asked Franz Hermann, he was tickled  pink. Aber natürlich, he enthused. Karen and I  would spend the weekend at his home. I would shoot during the day and we would visit at night. Only slight concern we had was the weather, because it’s already November. But we’re in luck and Karen is game. If it does get colder, we can always duck in and out of the house.

The only snag is – and a delicate one at that.

‘Don’t you need an assistant? I can help you with things around the house.’

This doesn’t come as a surprise, so I am prepared. I tell him that this is something that’s just not done. An outsider on the set makes every one nervous, especially it’s not fair to the girl. As much he tries to convince me that he would make his presence barely felt, seeing that I am firm, however reluctantly, he gives up. He takes us to the house, which I am quite familiar with, and goes through the motions of showing us around and then retreats back home.

‘Call, if you need anything!’ He winks at me and I see him slowly walking back to the main house like a dejected spoiled little kid.
It’s a bright sunny day and warm enough to shoot. But there is bit of chill in the air, so we are in and out of the house. Karen is a good sport and really gets into placing her natural self in the backdrop of the landscaping and blends in. We end the day with some truly beautiful shots. She has dropped her shyness and is not being as uncomfortable as she was in the photos I had shot of her in Munich.

Everyone in the office loves the shoot and the exotic Eurasian beauty of Karen. She appears as November 1975 Playmate.

●●●

Long after I have returned back to the States and am visiting Franz Hermann during one of my trips to Germany and when one evening we’re sitting around after dinner, sipping on his stash of Rheinhessen, his long time friend and the gardener Egon stops by. After we have drowned a few glasses, they begin to reminisce about the day I photographed Karen in the Flieth.

When I think back on it, I should have known better. Franz Hermann is not the kind who could have sat still at his home all those many hours when I was in his sunny Flieth taking akt photos of this gorgeous and exotic young thing. I could just imagine him sitting at home, constantly wiggling in his chair like a year old baby, crossing and uncrossing his legs back and forth, rubbing his palms, pressing his thighs together as if in pain, imagining me with Karen in his other house, focusing my lens on various tantalizing curves of her anatomy. He couldn’t just sit there and do nothing but twiddle his fingers, waiting for us to return.

‘And you remember Haresh rubbing ice cubes on her nipples?’ One of the tricks of the trade when the nipples don’t pop up on their own. And they kept at it, giggling like two teenage girls.

Would you believe he teamed up with Egon and climbed up one of the farthest and the tallest trees with his camera loaded with a long telephoto lens and zoomed in on us? Just like something Franz Hermann would do! And you know what? You can’t get mad at the man!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, February 21, 2014

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

The poster on the wall of the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles read: So close and yet so different. And you see the difference right away as soon as you cross the border from the United States into Mexico. The Mayans and the Aztecs had long defined the country way before the Spaniards ever put foot on the continent. You see the colors of the ancient cultures in the people who call themselves Mexicans, and even more so in their beautiful women.

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Categories Friendship, Germany, Profile

THE DUTCH TREAT

October 10, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

Happiness Is A Piping Hot Croquette

automat

Art directors are a breed unto themselves. Crazy as they come. Crazy as in creative crazy, in positive sense. They are normally temperamental, egocentric and a proud clan. Starting with the Godfathers of them all, Art Paul and Tom Staebler of the U.S., Rainer Wörtmann of Germany, to Milan Hlaviček of Czech Republic and Andrzej Pągoski of Poland – these masters of the visual communication  are also the purveyors of good taste, dressed in their own individual style, be it the beat up pair of blue jeans, or wrinkled khakis and equally as wrinkled shirts and jackets. Or the designer suits and long fancy rain coats. The category in which, the first Dutch art director, Dirk de Moei falls.

Always impeccably dressed in his light crème suit and his longish off white trench coat, his trademark tortoise shell red framed glasses with inquisitive and confusing looking set of smoky green eyes peering through tinted lenses, Dirk is flamboyant, no taller that 5’9”(175 cms), his rusty brown hair isn’t too long, nor short, his round face makes him look no different than Mr. middle of the road from the planet earth.  The man of good taste in clothes and food and he carries the most expensive Smythson of Bond Street, thick as a paperback address book, he is the man about town. To the editor-in-chief Jan’s (Heemskerk’s) somber personality, he is the fleshy one of the duo that arrived in my Chicago office in early 1983, to learn the ropes.

As opposed to the editors with whom I discussed and disagreed on the ideas of the overall  content, I often butted heads with the art directors. Lucky for the editors that in most of the cases their texts were in a language I couldn’t read or understand. But I could see clearer the graphic ideas of the art directors and have an opinion of my own. And I would have ideas of my own to contribute. Art directors also being an emotional bunch and extremely possessive of their talents  would resist the most. When Dirk came up with the re-designed front of the book pages, splitting two or more rubrics on the same page instead of devoting a page each to Music, Books, Films and other sections, he was up against resistance from me. That’s altering the basic design and the format of the classic Playboy.  My job it was to preserve and guard them.

‘We neither have as much material, nor space and ads like the US Playboy to afford that kind of luxury. While the U.S. Playboy has an average of 230 + pages every month, we would l have about 130.’ Dirk throws a bewildered look in my direction.

That logic of his did it for me. Those pages looked nice, if a bit cluttered like a small Dutch house, where every single centimeter has to be judiciously utilized. The steep stairs with an incline only a slightly more than a stepladder against the wall, every nook and corner had to be used in the most productive way. Furthermore, his improvised design gave more editorial flexibility. Made imminent sense. In the end we would agree on a compromise, and from all our disagreements, the magazine benefitted the most. I thought of Dirk a couple of weeks ago when I saw the grand old dame The New Yorker’s, front of the book pages similarly split after 83 years of publication. Dirk did it with their issue # 0.

There was rarely animosity between us and we got along famously at and outside of the work.  Dirk was also the man about town and would be often consulted as to where we should go out for dinner.

So it is no wonder that Dirk wants to introduce me to the best of what Holland has to offer in terms of the culinary excellence. One evening, he picks me up from the hotel with his live-in squeeze Ans and we drive into the Dutch countryside to the restaurant de Hoefslag in Bosch en Duin. It is awarded no less than two Michelin Stars and its cuisine is known to stack up to any

I am flattered and I am curious. Really looking forward to it as Dirk builds it up how exquisite and exclusive the place is – not to mention how expensive! Soon as we walk in, Dirk and Ans are fussed over by the co-owner, chef Gerard Fagel who ran the restaurant with his brother Martin. We are given a prime table in the middle of the restaurant that allows us the generous panoramic view of the ample space that the dining room occupies. A bottle of champagne appears without being ordered and while the chef and Dirk are babbling away excitedly in Dutch, catching up, Ans and I look at each other like Alice and Alex in the Wonderland.

The dining room is spacious and airy. It’s lit just right with enhancing and highlighting plants and other inanimate objects. I am presuming that this is Ans’ first time also, from the way she surveys the place, as if in awe.

Now my memory is a bit fuzzy on the exact details of the meal we consumed over the next two or so hours. What I remember clearly still is that the appetizer contained of a diminutive quail egg topped with a spot of glistening Beluga caviar, resting on the bed of exotic looking mix of lettuce, and somewhere along the meal, no bigger than a Kennedy silver dollar in diameter and about two inches (5 cm) thick Filet Mignon crowned on the mound of various accoutrement and revolving bottles of champagne all through the meal. All served on shiny white plates, a smaller one nestled into a large service plate. Every course visually enhanced by the chef’s artistic skills.

It was a multi course meal and I am sure there were wine pairings. None of which I remember. But just to give you an idea, I have had my son-in-law Carlo Lamagna, who is currently the executive chef at one of Chicago’s top, Benny’s Steak House and was sous chef  at the elite, known for its  earth to table cuisine, North Pond, frequented by likes of Ricardo Mutti and Gérard Depardieu, make up the following sample menu of that night now thirty years later.

MENU

Amuse – trio of melon with balsamic and basil

1st course – vichyssoise, black truffle, chive baton

2nd course – quail egg, beluga caviar, frisee, garlic vinaigrette

3rd course – foie gras torchon, sauterne Gelee, brioche crouton

4th course – lobster poached in vanilla butter, celeriac puree, wilted spinach, sauce américaine

5th course – petite filet mignon, pomme puree, roasted chantrelles, marchand di vin

intermezzo – beet granite

6th course – vanilla creme brulee, mascerated raspberries

Yum! Or like the Dutch would say: lekker! We are properly wined and dined and are buzzing pleasantly with the champagne circulating through our veins like the chemicals scurrying in slow motion roller-coasters through the test tubes in a science lab, with bubbles and all. The only way I can describe it is: we’re feeling no pain as we say our thanks and goodbyes to the chef and the restaurant.

As we’re driving back in near silence, Dirk’s Alfa Romeo Sports is gliding along the tree covered roads and snaking towards Amsterdam, I hear Ans shuffling in her back seat and leaning forward.

‘So, did you like the meal?’

‘Of course. It was exquisite. Nothing like I have ever tasted before.’ And then I turn my face sideways to look at Dirk. He’s wearing a smile of satisfaction. Then I turn around and face Ans.

‘But you know? I’m still a bit hungry!’

‘You are?’ She doesn’t come out and say what I read on her face.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘To tell you the truth, yes, I am a bit too.’ I hear a not very happy grunt coming out of Dirk’s throat.

Just having vocalized what my stomach is telling me, gurgling, I come out and say what I am thinking.

‘You know what?’

‘What”?’

‘A fresh hot chicken croquette with mustard would taste really good right now!’

‘I think so too,’

‘Let’s stop for one. My treat!!’

What I see clearly on Dirk’s face is utter disgust at us two ungrateful creatures. And yet, he suddenly exists the dark avenue we have been traveling on and within minutes is pulling up at an all night automat. At the  first bite of the piping hot croquette, both Ans and I feel we died and went to heaven. Dirk refrains from having any.

He has just plunked down hundreds of guilders on wining and dining us.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Other Food & Wine Stories

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MY INTIMATE ENCOUNTER WITH EROTIC OYSTER

HOLA Y ADIOS AMOEBAS

Next Friday, October 18, 2013

MY FATHER’S SECRET STASH

When my father died, he left behind a trunk full of personal stuff containing of things that were near and dear to him, mainly several watches that he wore through his lifetime, gold cufflinks and shirt buttons, several bottles of partly or barely used men’s fragrances, among them a bottle of Playboy fragrance, several little bottles of herbal attars, fancy pocket handkerchiefs and such, which my mother wanted us four brothers to have. Since I was coming home soon, my brothers decided to wait to open it when all four of us would be together. But they had gone ahead and taken a quick peek…

 

 

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Categories Food & Wine, Friendship, Profile, The Netherlands

DEVIL IN THE PARADISE

May 30, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

Bonding Over Beer And The Blue Eyed Bitch

rockshowcolor

Life is what happens to you when you’re too busy planning it.

John Lennon

Things happened at the lightening speed. Instead of a three week vacation in California, I am checking in at the Lufthansa counter at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for their Frankfurt bound flight on my way to Munich. Everything seems to have fallen in place smoothly. My lifelong dream of working for Playboy has come true. Better yet. I will be working for them in Europe. I am elated.

I won’t bother you with details such as cancelled flights, delays, lost baggage and such. Their significance has long been lost. So is that of the icy reception upon my arrival in what would be my stomping grounds in Munich and Essen, West Germany.  But what is still significant in telling of this tale is that how swiftly my joy of having landed my dream job had vanished at the realization of being dropped off smack dab in the middle of the debris of the hostile war zone. That I was neither wanted nor welcomed in the job they had hired me to do.

In nutshell – unlike Time & Life, Playboy’s foreign editions are licensed to local publishers. To Bauer Verlag in Germany.  The contract stipulates that Playboy would have direct editorial and printing quality control of its editions through Playboy hired and paid representatives to be posted on site.  Neither Germans nor Italians or the French were thrilled with this clause in the contract and had put up strong resistance to the condition. In the end, Playboy prevailed. And here I am – unwelcomed and unloved. Imposed upon them. Nobody other than the management knows of their contractual obligation. To make matters worse, instead of building bridges, Gerrit (Huig) – my predecessor had however inadvertently managed to burn some. Leaving me to waddle through muddy waters.

●●●

Up until then, Heinz Nellissen of the Bauer Team was in complete control of their flagship weekly, Quick. Bauer’s editorial offices were based in Hamburg and Munich and they had their own printing plant in Köln for their mass market publications. But they printed their quality publications in Essen at Girardet. And like us at Time, Bauer’s production team had set up their shop right at the printers’ doorsteps. So Heinz and his colleagues had plump jobs like we did at Time. They would do their jobs, stop for a beer or two or three and then go home. Other than occasional visits from their Hamburg based boss, Herr Schatong, for practical purposes, they were their own bosses. It even got better for Heinz when they assigned him to Playboy. Like me, up until then he had done weeklies and to be assigned to a single product a month for him was a child’s play. But to his chagrin, not one, but two of us intruders were dispatched back-to-back to disrupt his paradise.

Little by little, this becomes clear to me. But what am I supposed to do? Quit? Go back to Time? If I had any illusions about such a possibility, that too is shattered just before Christmas when the front page headline in The International Herald Tribune cried: LIFE DIES. I remember walking past the Essen Hauptbahnhof, struggling to hold back tears. My last days at Time were also my most glory days when I was given Life back, something they were forced to remove me from the very first month of my employment with them. In the meanwhile, I have dissolved my home and life in Chicago, my possessions overstuffed inside a container or two floating eastward on the Atlantic and so is my brand new beautiful Buick Skylark.

So suddenly we have two equally as qualified and experienced professionals assigned to the job which either of us could have done with our eyes closed. Plus, Heinz has an edge. He knows the Photogravure inside out of which I only have theoretical knowledge. I have specialized in Offset, the newer printing process that has already made big strides in the States, but the old world still hangs onto the Gravure.  And he has long established pleasant working relationship with the people at the plant.      

We are practically in each other’s way. So what do we do?  We accept each other’s existence –however reluctantly. We begin to build some semblance of working relationship. Thanks to Rainer (Wörtmann) realizing my usefulness, I carve out a role for myself and become his liaison with Essen – to make sure his creative vision is reproduced and reflected in the final product.  Freddy (Baumgärtel) – the Playboy team leader – invites me to attend regular editorial meetings. I become their direct link to Chicago.  I partner and discuss with Heinz the best technical possibilities and solutions. Something our teams at Time did with art directors and editors in New York. Heinz helps me with finding a beautiful one bedroom apartment in Essen’s ritzy Stadtwald neighborhood, so that I would have my own pied-à-terre there instead of being stuck in hotel rooms.  Thanks to Bauer’s discreet and Playboy’s generous expense
accounts, we feast at some of the most exclusive restaurants in Essen, such as Kockshusen, Grugahof, Schinkekrug, Amboss and  get to know each other: first through the professional respect and then slowly to forge a friendship. Instead of me always going to Essen, I have him come to Munich once a month and us two sitting down with Rainer and discuss every single page of the magazine. Heinz is far from being a stern faced German from Ruhr area in North Rhine-Westphalia, but he would still dress up in his sports jackets and ties to my open collared shirts and sweaters.

I even take him to the Suzi Quatro concert in Munich’s Circus Krone and subject him to her deafening screams. At the time Suzi Q from Michigan was all the rage across Europe. Heinz is in awe of the pint size screaming sex bomb, sliding her guitar as big as herself  between her legs, dressed in the skin tight black leather pants and the jeans jacket, tossing her shoulder grazing full head of hair and belting out…

I’m a blue eyed bitch

And I wanna get rich

Get out of my way

Cuz I’m here to stay

I’m the wild one

Yes, I’m the wild one

Those were the days when the concert halls were not gigantic affairs like today and I am still always able to get seats up front within the first fifteen rows. And I remember, we are standing in the arena in front of the stage. Heinz has loosened his tie and removed his jacket and is grooving to the gyrations of this teeny bopper sensation.

Heinz can tell this one better than I could. Also because its his story, and by me trying to tell it, I am  risking being immodest, and worse yet, boastful. In fact I had completely forgotten all about it until Heinz brought it up two years ago when he came to visit me here in Chicago with his wife Lia.  And then I remembered vaguely the tableau in which we stood around at the end of the plant tour to show our visiting production boss John Mastro accompanied by John Groening – a printing executive from the US. I am not sure if the Playboy German edition editorial director Heinz van Nouhuys was also there or not. But there are also Friedrich Karl Schnelle – Girardet’s managing director and Dr. Wilhelm Girardet Jr. himself. And stepping back from the group was Heinz, wishing us all Gute Nacht and Guten Apetit. Dr.Girardet was hosting a dinner for us all at the Schloss Hugenpoet – a very exclusive  hotel and the restaurant around Essen.

‘Where are you going? Aren’t you going to have dinner with us?’ I ask. Heinz doesn’t answer, but the expressions on his face lead me to turn around and look at Messers. Girardet and Schnelle.

‘He is not invited.’ Herr Schnelle whispers.

‘Why not? He is a part of our team.’

‘He doesn’t fit into the present company.’ Dr. Girardet answers, meaning John and John.

‘Well, in that case, I don’t either!’ It just rolls out of my mouth.

India gets all the bad rap for our caste system, and rightfully so. But if this isn’t a caste system of a different kind, then what  is it?  Put in the compromising position and also sensing John and John’s silent approval of me, Dr. Girardet, feeling however  awkward, invites Heinz to join us. And Heinz isn’t even in socio-psychological frame of mind to gracefully decline the invitation and wiggle out of his predicament. If Dr. Girardet has personally invited him, then all he could say is: Danke. Gerne. It enormously pleases me. And relieves John and John of whatever discomfort they must have felt.

‘I have never forgotten that.’ Heinz has often said to me.

So yes, we have bonded. And yet, there remains a certain amount of indignation that I can sense in Heinz. We never talked about it, but I could imagine him feeling at times that here I was, the devil in what was his paradise. Albeit a friendly one and likable even, making it harder that at the end of the day, I would have the final say on the matters we couldn’t agree upon.

There would be small annoyances and disagreements that would play out between us in front of people of the printing company, and whereas before Playboy’s arrival, he would be the only one to scratch his signature on the corrected forms (normally 16 or 32 page on large sheet of paper), now had to be okayed by both of us. But we always managed to reach a compromise and never allowed those things to come between us and our favorite watering hole Amboss nearby. The place we referred to as Axel’s – after it’s owner’s name.  An added attraction was Axel’s Rubenesque but very pretty and flirtatious wife Bärbel. That is until…

Must have been around 3:30 and we are looking at a form and doing color corrections with Girardet’s Hans (Potisch). I no longer remember the exact nature of correction or the extent of it, but we couldn’t seem to have reached an accord and agree to a compromise. If I insisted and Heinz resisted, it must have been something that would cost Bauer fair amount of money in labor, material and lost time. Something Heinz is responsible for. Whatever it was, it must have been important enough to me to correct. An argument ensued. It gets heated. Normally, Hans would step in and suggest a middle way. Not this time. At some point, Heinz gets so angry, he throws his China marker wax pencil across the viewing table. Frustrated he spews out:

‘Verdamt! Du machts was du willst, Ich habe nicht damit zu tun!‘(Damn, you do what you want to do. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.)  Huffing and puffing, he darts out of our loft viewing room and I hear him thumping down the spiral stairs, opening his office door and then violently slamming it close.

Left behind in bit of a daze, after a while, Hans  picks up his wax pencil and begins to mark the proofs spread out on the table and us two finish the job. He rolls up the pages, shoves them under his arm.

‘Gute nacht Haresh. Bis Morgan!’ And he leaves.

I sit down at my desk and take a deep breath. By then it must be 4:30 or later. I got it my way, but I am far from being happy about it. Heinz and I have grown on each other and I thought we had found a way to work together. And we had. And suddenly, there is a lapse.

I gather myself and walk down. Even though the door to his office is partially closed, I know that Heinz is still there. I don’t even think about walking out of there without wishing him good night. I slowly open the door. He is sitting at his desk. Looking pensive and down like a defeated warrior. I hold the partially open door and say:

‘Heinz.’ He doesn’t look up.

‘How about a beer?’ I say. Now he looks up. Quite confused, probably not knowing what to say to that. So he doesn’t respond. The expressions on his face seems to say: What the fuck! Are you crazy or something? You’ve got some balls! I answer to it, as if he really said it.

‘Look, you were doing your job and I was doing mine. Now is after five, feierabend . Why can’t we go have a beer together?’

From the changing expressions on his face I see that he still isn’t sure. Seems flabbergasted at my audacity.  While just over an hour or so a go I had caused him such a humiliation in front of a technician from the printing company over whom he had reigned supreme up until  not long ago.

His eyes level straight at mine. It just comes out of my mouth: ‘You know what? At the end of the day it’s just a fucking job. Let’s go have a beer.’

He lowers his gaze. Shuffles his stuff off the desk and gets up.

‘Na, Gut!’

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia  Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next: Friday, June 21, 2013

BEWITCHED BY THE BOA

Ever since La Toya Jackson asked for a Boa Constrictor to accompany her to the popular television talk show to promote her layout in Playboy Germany, I have often wondered what it is about the snakes that enchant women?

SPRING BREAK

Yup: You read it right. The next post to arrive on your screens will be on Friday, June 21st. I was actually thinking of taking a short break after the 25th post, but seemed both you and I were in a fine momentum, so I just kept going. Now Celia and Jordan are taking a couple of weeks’ vacation to go see their parents “back East,”  and even though Celia offered to double up and illustrate the next two posts, I decided now is as good a time as any for me to take a short break as well. Let’s try not to miss each other. The break will give you time to catch  up and me some extra time to build some inventory. So have wonderful next two weeks and Playboy Stories will be back to its weekly frequency on the 21st of June.

Don’t go away. More exciting stories are still to come 🙂 

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Categories Friendship, Profile

FEEL GOOD SISTER

May 2, 2013 //
3

Haresh Shah

If Only I Could See Through The Depth Of Those Eyes

datsun_finger2

Not knowing what it is I want for lunch, I walk over to Briennerplatz and my feet automatically take me down the steps to Ristorante Positano. Just a few blocks away from Playboy offices in Munich.  It’s a little before two. The place looks deserted. Thinking perhaps they have already closed for the afternoon, I am about to turn around and leave when I hear some shuffling in back of the wardrobe room. A young woman emerges from the dark.

‘I’ll be just two minutes.’ She says, holding up her hand with three middle fingers raised. While I am mulling over why exactly “two minutes”, I notice her open palm. Didn’t she say two? Confused only for a flash, she turns her palm around, looks at it and slowly retracts one of the fingers.  A self-conscious smile breaks out on her face. From what I can tell, she looks Eurasian, with her narrow fish eyes, her smooth round face, and her silky smooth pitch black hair. I see something mysterious hidden behind the depth of those eyes, further intensified by the ambience of that dark corner of the restaurant. This is the image that has remained with me all these years later.

I stop to talk on my way out.

‘Where are  you from?’ I ask. California.’ She answers. This strikes me a bit odd, as if California were an independent  nation. Might as well have been because I have never been there and all that I have heard about it so far tells me that it must be a place like no other.

I tell her, I too am from the States – Chicago to be precise. The two of us making the most unlikely samples of America, still we feel a certain sense of belonging.  I end up inviting her to the house warming party I am having at my brand new apartment. She is delighted and so am I at  having accidentally landed a date with this exotic beauty.

Her name is Ann. Ann Unruh Stevens. She is a mélange of Japanese mother and American father of German descent, a Sergeant Major – an army brat. Born in Okinawa, Japan, she has grown up in Hawaii.  She is unpretentiously pretty and looks striking in her petite frame. And something about her is quite mysterious. The way she talks in whispers and the way she looks at you with kind and friendly way, somehow makes you feel special. I feel a certain spell unfurl and fall upon me through her gentle gaze. I am thrilled at the prospects of seeing her again. And I find myself already building sand castles in the air.

She is on the phone a day or two before the party. She tells me how she is excited and how very much she is looking forward to coming to my party, thanking me profusely for inviting her. It makes me happy that she lingers on the phone, just making idle chat.

‘I was wondering if I could bring “my man” to the party?’ She asks in a voice that is hesitant  and barely audible. My sand castles suddenly crumbling and all my enthusiasm deflated, I am thinking: shit, why would I want “your man” at the party? Weren’t you supposed to be my date? That is like kebab main haddi – literally, a bone in kebab. Nothing can sour more the silky smooth savor of juicy minced lamb delicacy.

What am I supposed to say? ‘Of course, by all means! What’s his name?’

‘Mark  (Stevens).  I really appreciate it. I’m sure you two would like each other.’

Like? To Ann’s chagrin, we hit it off right away. And how?

If I had to profile Jesus Christ, I would describe Mark. A tall, handsome, permanently tanned Californian with shoulder length wavy blonde locks, carefully  trimmed beard and the eyes as blue as coral, filled to the brim with and intelligent kid’s curiosity of the universe. His easy smiles and warm friendly demeanor has me absolutely disarmed.

Fast forward to four years. I am now living closer to them in California. While Ann is at work in the evening, Mark and I hang out frequently. When finished working, Ann would meet up with us, mostly at their place or mine and find us two twirling our snifters filled with Remy Martin, blowing clouds from our cigars and lost deep into whatever it is that we are talking – totally oblivious of her arrival. Probably talking women.  Soon as we hear her footsteps coming closer, we would abruptly  shut up – communicating only with our eyes, holding back our amazement with expressions on our faces like that of two cats just having swallowed the canaries.  Ann, shifting her gaze back and forth, feeling left out and alienated. I remember that one time when she must have felt so humiliated and frustrated that she focuses her gaze sharply on Mark and furiously stamps her foot on the ground: But he is my friend!!!

●●●

But let’s rewind back to Munich. Like a whole bunch of other young Americans, Mark and Ann too are doing their stint in the old world. Along with Gary and Michelle, Dieter and Monika and Kamal, they too become a part of my intimate circle.  Just hanging out, sweating out pores in the sauna, go swimming and then sitting around on the floor, some times sin ropas, drinking beer and wine, them also smoking pot, with candles flickering and the wisps of incense in the air – feeling mellow, we form a permanent bond which would eventually bring me to Santa Barbara, California, and into the living room of their funky farm house, calling ourselves  feel good brothers and a sister.

At this phase in my life, being in Santa Barbara turns out for me to be in the right place at the right time. The early months are difficult and lonely and I often feel lost. Having succeeded in luring me to the end of the continent, Mark and Ann not only felt responsible for my well being, but for a while I also became their mission. Between them two, they initiate me into the southern California life – step by step. Introducing me to new people and new places, breaking me into hearty walks and health foods. Make me enjoy the nature and the pleasure of watching sunsets. We would take off and go up the mountains to Solvang, hang around Mark’s parents’ trailer house up on Lake Cachuma, go skinny dipping in secluded natural grottos. Eating fresh fish and get to appreciate California wines. They break me into completely new laidback lifestyle, devoid of what was until then for me go-go-go  kind of existence.

The house itself is small. There is a long driveway parallel to the farm right off Hollister Avenue that leads you to the small structure. At the back of the house is a fairly large greenhouse where Ann grows vegetables and they also grow their own marijuana.  There is  only one bedroom. The problem farm toilet with septic tank in the backyard. Not to mention 1975 water shortage of California with the consciousness hammered into everyone: If It’s yellow, its mellow. If It’s brown, flush it down. Even sleeping in the living room, I am comfortable. I feel welcome and wanted and loved. The house is furnished with bits and pieces of hand me downs or the garage sale stuff. Funky but warm and cozy. There are afghans and Indian bed spreads and lamps, all with some personal touch.

My wake up call would be Ann futzing around and getting the pot belly stove going before I would flip the covers over and start my day. Mark works for the city – running machines that process the human waste and Ann works in the evening as a waitress at the Italian restaurant Roccos in Isla Vista on the campus. During the days, she runs around, doing errands, keeping me company. In her spare time Ann makes jewelry from her own designs – (http://annstevensjewelry.com/) something she loves to do.

There is a bookshelf and also a bunch of books strewn all around the shelf, containing of the volumes of Tolkien’s Hobbit series,  Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the kind pegged by the book trade as “alternative lit”. The way books are left all over is just a mess to my organized mind, who has all his books and records  alphabetically shelved in neat order. Something that bothers me every time I look at the piles from my bed across the room. So one morning, while Ann is out running errands, I sit down on the floor, take all books off the shelves, line them up on the floor and re-shelve them in alphabetical order in neat rows. Suddenly the floor looks spacious and uncluttered, books accessible. Ann walks in while I am sitting on my bed and admiring my handiwork.

‘Hi, how’s your morning going?’ She greets me with her usual exuberance, and then suddenly stops in her tracks. Looks around. The uncluttered and clean floor, the organized bookshelves. I am waiting for her to crack her big smile and say something like: you’re such a doll. Thanks. Thanks very much. Rush over and give me a hug.

Instead, she looks at me a bit befuddled. Welling up on her face is restraint anger turning into a hurt look.

‘Did it feel good cleaning up? She asks and then pauses, to compose herself.

‘Its alright!’ She adds and works at softening the expressions on her face.

What I feel she most probably wants to say is: Why the fuck you do that? Rightfully so, because I have committed a cardinal sin of inadvertently violating their sense of order.

But she is not the one to dwell on such things, so after all, I do get to see a slight smile, crossing her lips.

●●●

Basically, I am well taken care of by Mark and Ann. What a bargain? Two for the price of one! But Ann still remains my (primary) friend. She is there for me always. Cheerleading me, giving out generous hugs, showering me again and again with I love you,  and often flirting with me shamelessly.  I am absolutely at home.

I still cherish the little things that she would do for me such as her leaving bunches of flowers – freshly cut from her garden – in my apartment in my absence. Leaving little endearing notes. Chauffeuring me around.

To call Mark and Ann pot heads would not do them justice. Their devotion to the weed is more spiritual than its worldly. So much so that Ann would try to seduce me with it in her sweet little ways, by sneaking in and leaving in my spice cabinet a big fat joint or two. ‘Just in case!’ She would say. And be disappointed to see it still there untouched and ignored for months.

And she was there for me to welcome Carolyn and her mother to my house when I was on other side of the world in Australia. She did it better than I would have.

Carolyn and I had not lived together before. We maintain the long distance relationship living four hundred miles (640 kilometers) apart. Her in San Francisco and me in Santa Barbara. She had already moved back east to Minnesota when she found out that she was pregnant.

All this happened very fast. I didn’t know I would be gone for six weeks and Carolyn had packed up and was heading back west, accompanying by her mother, to move in with me. I asked Mark and Ann to welcome them and to make sure that there were a dozen long stemmed red roses waiting for Carolyn in my apartment. Which Ann arranged, but she also added to that a dozen white roses for her mother and attached to them appropriate message from me. Carolyn later told me how overwhelmed and teary-eyed her mother was – not remembering the last time anyone sent her flowers, let alone a dozen long stem roses. But that’s Ann for you. And I got all the accolades:)

●●●

I don’t remember in what context, but I do remember Ann having once said to me that dynamite come in small packages.  And not too long after, this petite little femme just proves that to me.

We are riding in their blue Datsun pickup and are about to exit a strip mall with her at the wheel. She has stopped at the incline of the driveway and is moving her head sideways to make sure there are no cars coming from either direction before she enters the street. Just then a slightly bigger pickup coming from behind swerves in the front and cuts her off like a chef chopping off a fish head. And I see her face turning, fury in her yes. She rolls down the driver side of the window, and yells.

‘Hey Mister!!!’ Her hand stretched out, her elbow firmly planted on the window frame and the palm upturned.  The driver breaks and makes a mistake of looking back.  Her hand springs up in the air and this time its only one – the middle finger snaps up, she flips a violent bird at him and spews out like fire, Fuck you very much! And the driver couldn’t get away fast enough, with his wheels screeching and the breaks grounding and all.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

Haresh Shah

If Only I Could See Through The Depth Of Those Eyes

datsun_finger2

Not knowing what it is I want for lunch, I walk over to Briennerplatz and my feet automatically take me down the steps to Ristorante Positano. Just a few blocks away from Playboy offices in Munich.  It’s a little before two. The place looks deserted. Thinking perhaps they have already closed for the afternoon, I am about to turn around and leave when I hear some shuffling in back of the wardrobe room. A young woman emerges from the dark.

‘I’ll be just two minutes.’ She says, holding up her hand with three middle fingers raised. While I am mulling over why exactly “two minutes”, I notice her open palm. Didn’t she say two? Confused only for a flash, she turns her palm around, looks at it and slowly retracts one of the fingers.  A self-conscious smile breaks out on her face. From what I can tell, she looks Eurasian, with her narrow fish eyes, her smooth round face, and her silky smooth pitch black hair. I see something mysterious hidden behind the depth of those eyes, further intensified by the ambience of that dark corner of the restaurant. This is the image that has remained with me all these years later.

I stop to talk on my way out.

‘Where are  you from?’ I ask. California.’ She answers. This strikes me a bit odd, as if California were an independent  nation. Might as well have been because I have never been there and all that I have heard about it so far tells me that it must be a place like no other.

I tell her, I too am from the States – Chicago to be precise. The two of us making the most unlikely samples of America, still we feel a certain sense of belonging.  I end up inviting her to the house warming party I am having at my brand new apartment. She is delighted and so am I at  having accidentally landed a date with this exotic beauty.

Her name is Ann. Ann Unruh Stevens. She is a mélange of Japanese mother and American father of German descent, a Sergeant Major – an army brat. Born in Okinawa, Japan, she has grown up in Hawaii.  She is unpretentiously pretty and looks striking in her petite frame. And something about her is quite mysterious. The way she talks in whispers and the way she looks at you with kind and friendly way, somehow makes you feel special. I feel a certain spell unfurl and fall upon me through her gentle gaze. I am thrilled at the prospects of seeing her again. And I find myself already building sand castles in the air.

She is on the phone a day or two before the party. She tells me how she is excited and how very much she is looking forward to coming to my party, thanking me profusely for inviting her. It makes me happy that she lingers on the phone, just making idle chat.

‘I was wondering if I could bring “my man” to the party?’ She asks in a voice that is hesitant  and barely audible. My sand castles suddenly crumbling and all my enthusiasm deflated, I am thinking: shit, why would I want “your man” at the party? Weren’t you supposed to be my date? That is like kebab main haddi – literally, a bone in kebab. Nothing can sour more the silky smooth savor of juicy minced lamb delicacy.

What am I supposed to say? ‘Of course, by all means! What’s his name?’

‘Mark  (Stevens).  I really appreciate it. I’m sure you two would like each other.’

Like? To Ann’s chagrin, we hit it off right away. And how?

If I had to profile Jesus Christ, I would describe Mark. A tall, handsome, permanently tanned Californian with shoulder length wavy blonde locks, carefully  trimmed beard and the eyes as blue as coral, filled to the brim with and intelligent kid’s curiosity of the universe. His easy smiles and warm friendly demeanor has me absolutely disarmed.

Fast forward to four years. I am now living closer to them in California. While Ann is at work in the evening, Mark and I hang out frequently. When finished working, Ann would meet up with us, mostly at their place or mine and find us two twirling our snifters filled with Remy Martin, blowing clouds from our cigars and lost deep into whatever it is that we are talking – totally oblivious of her arrival. Probably talking women.  Soon as we hear her footsteps coming closer, we would abruptly  shut up – communicating only with our eyes, holding back our amazement with expressions on our faces like that of two cats just having swallowed the canaries.  Ann, shifting her gaze back and forth, feeling left out and alienated. I remember that one time when she must have felt so humiliated and frustrated that she focuses her gaze sharply on Mark and furiously stamps her foot on the ground: But he is my friend!!!

●●●

But let’s rewind back to Munich. Like a whole bunch of other young Americans, Mark and Ann too are doing their stint in the old world. Along with Gary and Michelle, Dieter and Monika and Kamal, they too become a part of my intimate circle.  Just hanging out, sweating out pores in the sauna, go swimming and then sitting around on the floor, some times sin ropas, drinking beer and wine, them also smoking pot, with candles flickering and the wisps of incense in the air – feeling mellow, we form a permanent bond which would eventually bring me to Santa Barbara, California, and into the living room of their funky farm house, calling ourselves  feel good brothers and a sister.

At this phase in my life, being in Santa Barbara turns out for me to be in the right place at the right time. The early months are difficult and lonely and I often feel lost. Having succeeded in luring me to the end of the continent, Mark and Ann not only felt responsible for my well being, but for a while I also became their mission. Between them two, they initiate me into the southern California life – step by step. Introducing me to new people and new places, breaking me into hearty walks and health foods. Make me enjoy the nature and the pleasure of watching sunsets. We would take off and go up the mountains to Solvang, hang around Mark’s parents’ trailer house up on Lake Cachuma, go skinny dipping in secluded natural grottos. Eating fresh fish and get to appreciate California wines. They break me into completely new laidback lifestyle, devoid of what was until then for me go-go-go  kind of existence.

The house itself is small. There is a long driveway parallel to the farm right off Hollister Avenue that leads you to the small structure. At the back of the house is a fairly large greenhouse where Ann grows vegetables and they also grow their own marijuana.  There is  only one bedroom. The problem farm toilet with septic tank in the backyard. Not to mention 1975 water shortage of California with the consciousness hammered into everyone: If It’s yellow, its mellow. If It’s brown, flush it down. Even sleeping in the living room, I am comfortable. I feel welcome and wanted and loved. The house is furnished with bits and pieces of hand me downs or the garage sale stuff. Funky but warm and cozy. There are afghans and Indian bed spreads and lamps, all with some personal touch.

My wake up call would be Ann futzing around and getting the pot belly stove going before I would flip the covers over and start my day. Mark works for the city – running machines that process the human waste and Ann works in the evening as a waitress at the Italian restaurant Roccos in Isla Vista on the campus. During the days, she runs around, doing errands, keeping me company. In her spare time Ann makes jewelry from her own designs – (http://annstevensjewelry.com/) something she loves to do.

There is a bookshelf and also a bunch of books strewn all around the shelf, containing of the volumes of Tolkien’s Hobbit series,  Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the kind pegged by the book trade as “alternative lit”. The way books are left all over is just a mess to my organized mind, who has all his books and records  alphabetically shelved in neat order. Something that bothers me every time I look at the piles from my bed across the room. So one morning, while Ann is out running errands, I sit down on the floor, take all books off the shelves, line them up on the floor and re-shelve them in alphabetical order in neat rows. Suddenly the floor looks spacious and uncluttered, books accessible. Ann walks in while I am sitting on my bed and admiring my handiwork.

‘Hi, how’s your morning going?’ She greets me with her usual exuberance, and then suddenly stops in her tracks. Looks around. The uncluttered and clean floor, the organized bookshelves. I am waiting for her to crack her big smile and say something like: you’re such a doll. Thanks. Thanks very much. Rush over and give me a hug.

Instead, she looks at me a bit befuddled. Welling up on her face is restraint anger turning into a hurt look.

‘Did it feel good cleaning up? She asks and then pauses, to compose herself.

‘Its alright!’ She adds and works at softening the expressions on her face.

What I feel she most probably wants to say is: Why the fuck you do that? Rightfully so, because I have committed a cardinal sin of inadvertently violating their sense of order.

But she is not the one to dwell on such things, so after all, I do get to see a slight smile, crossing her lips.

●●●

Basically, I am well taken care of by Mark and Ann. What a bargain? Two for the price of one! But Ann still remains my (primary) friend. She is there for me always. Cheerleading me, giving out generous hugs, showering me again and again with I love you,  and often flirting with me shamelessly.  I am absolutely at home.

I still cherish the little things that she would do for me such as her leaving bunches of flowers – freshly cut from her garden – in my apartment in my absence. Leaving little endearing notes. Chauffeuring me around.

To call Mark and Ann pot heads would not do them justice. Their devotion to the weed is more spiritual than its worldly. So much so that Ann would try to seduce me with it in her sweet little ways, by sneaking in and leaving in my spice cabinet a big fat joint or two. ‘Just in case!’ She would say. And be disappointed to see it still there untouched and ignored for months.

And she was there for me to welcome Carolyn and her mother to my house when I was on other side of the world in Australia. She did it better than I would have.

Carolyn and I had not lived together before. We maintain the long distance relationship living four hundred miles (640 kilometers) apart. Her in San Francisco and me in Santa Barbara. She had already moved back east to Minnesota when she found out that she was pregnant.

All this happened very fast. I didn’t know I would be gone for six weeks and Carolyn had packed up and was heading back west, accompanying by her mother, to move in with me. I asked Mark and Ann to welcome them and to make sure that there were a dozen long stemmed red roses waiting for Carolyn in my apartment. Which Ann arranged, but she also added to that a dozen white roses for her mother and attached to them appropriate message from me. Carolyn later told me how overwhelmed and teary-eyed her mother was – not remembering the last time anyone sent her flowers, let alone a dozen long stem roses. But that’s Ann for you. And I got all the accolades:)

●●●

I don’t remember in what context, but I do remember Ann having once said to me that dynamite come in small packages.  And not too long after, this petite little femme just proves that to me.

We are riding in their blue Datsun pickup and are about to exit a strip mall with her at the wheel. She has stopped at the incline of the driveway and is moving her head sideways to make sure there are no cars coming from either direction before she enters the street. Just then a slightly bigger pickup coming from behind swerves in the front and cuts her off like a chef chopping off a fish head. And I see her face turning, fury in her yes. She rolls down the driver side of the window, and yells.

‘Hey Mister!!!’ Her hand stretched out, her elbow firmly planted on the window frame and the palm upturned.  The driver breaks and makes a mistake of looking back.  Her hand springs up in the air and this time its only one – the middle finger snaps up, she flips a violent bird at him and spews out like fire, Fuck you very much! And the driver couldn’t get away fast enough, with his wheels screeching and the breaks grounding and all.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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