Archives for category: Relationships

THREE CHEATING HEARTS

May 15, 2014 //
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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

TENDER TRAPS

March 6, 2014 //
0

Sweet, Silky And Slippery

Haresh Shah

silkscarf

I flash my room registration card at the receptionist who is busy talking to a young man and a sort of pretty, short dark haired young woman in white, both of whom stood on the other side of the counter. ‘Room 416’, I tell him. He hands me my key. I throw a quick glance at the girl, making perfunctory eye contact and walk to the elevator. As I press the floor button, I notice the girl waving at me as if to wish me bon voyage. But the sliding doors have already closed and I am on my way up. I see her smiling face through the transparent glass door and wave back at her.

I am staying at the hip Hotel Americain in Amsterdam. I am not too impressed with the place, but built in 1900, it’s listed as one of Amsterdam’s landmarks with its turn of the century art deco and the roaring twenties atmosphere and because of its proximity to the theatre DeLaMar, it has an illustrious history – something I am often attracted to. And it’s frequented by the actors, directors and other art types of the city.

The window of my room looks down on the most popular town square, Leidseplein, which is filled with hoards of people engaged in multitude of activities. Rock & Roll band blaring out the sounds from their portable amplifiers, a group playing African drums, the flute players, a magician, the lone guitarist strumming in the early morning rain and an audience as attentive as it is appreciative. It feels like a multi-ring circus, a happy carnival. The grinding of the gears and the screeching of the trams somehow blend in harmoniously with the sounds of the street side shows. Wafting in through my room windows is the sad soothing sound of a violin. The lukewarm breeze carries-in with it a mild fragrance of the pink roses that Playboy Netherland’s editor designate Jan (Heemskerk) has so kindly delivered to my room to welcome me to Holland, as I eventually doze off for a while.

Dirk (de Moei), the art director designate and his live-in lady Ans pick me up at nine. We drive a few blocks to the restaurant de Warstein where Jan and his wife Gemmy join us for dinner.  Towards the tail end of the evening, we run into the bad boy of the Dutch literature, Jan Cremer of Ik Jan Cremer fame and his girlfriend Babette. Him and Babette join our table and Cremer treats  us to a couple of after dinner drinks. It is after three in the morning by the time Dirk and Ans drop me off at the hotel.

The elevator moves upward. I wonder about the girl’s sweet smile as I get off on the fourth floor. Those last two Remy Martins and the entire evening has put me into a very pleasant, if not euphemistic mood and I don’t even feel tired in the least. As I walk towards my room, the key in my hand at ready, I hear a female voice coming out of nowhere

‘Hello,’ it says.

I don’t see anybody around. The entire hallway is deserted. I look around and respond to the voice.

‘Yes!’

A smooth sentence floats in the air like a streamer, which I don’t understand a word of. It sounds very much like French, and now there is a face to the voice. It’s the girl from behind the reception. I am amazed at how she made it up to the floor so fast. She must have jumped right away into one of the two idle elevators waiting across from the receptionist. I stop briefly and turn around to took at her.

‘I thought you might like some company. ‘ I hear her say, with that certain sexy and seductive smile on her face.

I am tempted for a second. But the answer that rolls out of my mouth on its own is:  ‘Thanks lady but not tonight! I am just too tired.’ I lie.

‘Maybe tomorrow?’ She persists.

‘Maybe! I don’t know.’ To which she throws a sugary goodnight at me, turns around to go back to her post downstairs.

●●●

Even before I have had a chance to sit down, Luis (Moretti), Playboy partners Editorial Perfil’s corporate counselor hands me a piece of paper. Crudely torn from a notepad, it’s crumpled. I smooth it out on the table and read the scribbles. It says, Rosario, and underneath is what looks like a phone number.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘She wants you to call her.’

‘Who is Rosario?’

‘The girl on the other set of the studio where you were photographed.’

I am in Buenos Aires during my routine South American trip. One of Perfil’s weeklies, La Semana  wants to do a profile of me as a part of their in-house cross promotional efforts. They are photographing me with another girl, the skin on whose bare butt I am scrutinizing with a large magnifying glass. On my way out, I notice a buxom blonde with big head of bleached blonde hair fanned out on a pink pillow, scantily dressed in Victoria’s Secret like sexy lingerie, she is curled up seductively on the bed, her voluptuous figure spilling out of her small frame.  I don’t remember even having made as much as a quick eye contact with her.

‘What does she want?’

‘I guess she has taken liking for you. You will make her very happy if you called. She said she will be up and around late in the night.’ Answers Luis with a sly smile on his face, a bit envious perhaps?

I have landed in Buenos Aires that morning after an all night flight from Miami and have put in the whole day. I meet Luis for dinner at Las Nazarenas, my favorite steak house in the city. All I want to do is to have an early dinner, walk across the street to the Sheraton, where I am staying and hit the sack. That’s precisely what I do. When in the room, I empty my pockets and out comes the crumpled piece of the paper with the phone number. I look at the phone on the bedside table. Temptations, temptations.. But do the right thing and soon I am snoozing. On that trip, I spend several days in Buenos Aires, and yet never call her. She just wasn’t my type.

Or could it be that my encounter the night after had her pushed back in the obscurity?

The lights are dim. The music is slow and soothing. The dance floor is well-attended, but not crowded. Dancing close to me is Dulce. She is sweet, just like her name. We are dancing close but not too close. I can feel the contours of her female form and then feel her head gently drooping on my shoulder. I pull her closer ever so lightly. She allows herself to be nudged into a slight squeeze. Her perfume is pleasant – not overbearing. She is dressed modestly in a pair of well fitting pastel peach slacks and a black low necked top. Nothing glittery like most other girls in the crowd. She is down home pretty with shoulder length dusty blonde hair that smell of a faint whiff of shampoo. She fits snugly under my arms. It feels good to hold and feel so close her female form. It’s been a while.

The night is young. It’s little after midnight. That’s early for the disco world. The place, if not as crowded as earlier, is still buzzing. It’s Playboy Argentina’s anniversary that we are celebrating at Hippo – the “in most” night spot in Buenos Aires. As we dance to the whatever soft melody they’re playing, I am wondering. Perhaps I get to take her back to my hotel. That would be nice. With every dance and every whisper, I’m liking her more and more. Even falling for her tender, almost motherly ways. When the music stops for a minute, she lifts her face to look at me and I feel a sudden melting of my reflection into her honey brown eyes. When the disc jockey finally decides to take a short break and when I walk her back to the table where she sat with some friends, the booth is empty. I look around for some Playboy people still around. I don’t see anyone I recognize. For a moment we stand there, wondering.

‘I guess our friends have abandoned us.’

‘I think so too. One of them was going to give me ride back home.’

‘I can drop you off by cab on my way back to the hotel.’ I offer.

‘That would be nice. Thanks.’ And then there is bit of hesitation. ‘Don’t you just want to take me to your hotel room instead?’ I see a pleading mellowness in her eyes. Almost heartbreaking somehow. Not up until that very moment does it cross my mind that she could be anything but a young society woman out on the town with her friends.

‘Let’s sit down for a while and have a drink.’

‘Bueno!’ She says and snuggles next to me.

Dulce is a single mother who works in a small boutique on Calle Florida, the city’s most popular pedestrian shopping zone. The job barely pays for her living expenses. She doesn’t walk the streets to make ends meet, instead frequents high end places like Hippopotamus in the ritzy and popular tourist district of Ricoleta as well as five star hotel bars. I like it that she is in no hurry and we’re able to talk. I appreciate what I perceive to be her honesty.

But taking her back to my hotel room is no longer an option for me. Not that I have never been out with one of them, but a couple of times that I did was at the end of the long nights of eating and drinking and with a friend or two having wandered out kind. I don’t regret those outings, mainly because those women and the experiences were pleasant. But as a matter of not even some moral principal – but the sheer fact that I am very romantic at heart, I just wouldn’t/couldn’t bring myself to forge such a liaison.

I am being honest and I tell her how very much I like her and was even falling for her charms and the sincerity, but taking home a profi wasn’t something I did.

‘Pero soy buena!’ She urges. ‘But I am good!’ Even sounding like a saleswoman in a boutique.

‘Lo siento!’ ‘I am sorry!’ She doesn’t say anything to it, just scoots closer to me, takes my hand in hers and lets her head fall on my shoulder. It feels good that she feels at ease doing that. That perhaps in my small way I am a comfort to her as she is to me.

‘But I can still drop you off if you want?’

I get out of the cab in front of her home to see her off and press into her fist a $50.- bill.

‘It’s not much, but…Gracias!’

‘Gracias.’ She echoes, and gives me a quick hug. I watch her opening the front door and disappear inside her building.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, March 14, 2014

IN THE DEPTH OF HIS EYES

Up until my first trip to Spain in the fall of 1978, I only had a vague knowledge of the Spanish Civil War and how Franco ruled the country for almost forty years with his ruthless iron fist. In fact it was the dictator’s death that would make possible even to think of bringing any western publication in to the country, let alone a local edition of Playboy. A poignant personal account.

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Categories Memoire, Playboy, Prostitution, Relationships, Travel

THE BEST MAN AND THE BRIDE

August 15, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

Just One Last Time

brideescape3

I don’t remember anything at all of the wedding ceremony of Tina Chan – one of our freelance contributors at Playboy’s Chinese language edition in Hong Kong.  Or even if I or anyone else sitting at the table was invited to attuned. Whether it was a church wedding or a traditional Chinese affair. What I do remember is; about a dozen of us editors and executives are seated at the table of the noisy and crowded banquet hall of the Hotel Royal Garden in the heart of Kowloon, waiting for the bride and the groom and the wedding party to arrive for the celebrations to begin. When they make their grand entrance, Christina is dressed in the western bridal dress with the veil lifted and the train trailing. She is not particularly what I would call  pretty, but in her bridal finery, she looks as stunning, radiant and beautiful as a bride should. The happy smile on her face communicates the bliss she must feel. Her husband too is dressed as would a western groom – in a tuxedo, ruffled shirt with starched collar, shiny shoes and the bow tie.  The just married couple and the wedding party enter the hall with a roar of applause and the cheers from the family and friends, following which they together go from table to table, their faces bursting with smiles and laughters, welcoming each and every guest and then finally sitting down at the bridal table for the banquet to commence.

Like any other formal Chinese banquet, this night’s banquet too contains a traditional twelve course meal.  A glass top lazy Susan is placed atop each of the tables and the food is served in large platters or turins. I obviously don’t remember all that was served, but most likely there was Shark Fin soup, various sea food dishes, which may have included abalone and shrimps, pork, beef and chicken and some unrecognizable gooey and slimy dishes whose origins I am afraid to ask. The white slippery lumps of meat that I pick up from one of the platters could be anything. I think of the skinned snakes dangling down in Taiwan’s snake alley, freshly slit lengthwise from the head to its tiny tail, the hot blood dripping over a dozen or so little cups the size of the shot glasses waiting to catch the spewing blood and several young men eagerly picking them up and chugging up while the blood is still fresh and hot, for it’s believed that the fresh snake blood makes you more virile.

Without giving it much of a thought, I follow their gestures and try my best to negotiate the shiny lacquered chopsticks without dropping or dripping the morsels I have managed to trap in their jaws, and lower them gently inside the little bowl placed in front of each one of us, before swiftly shoving the food inside my mouth. Just the way they do it. Some of what I eat is delicious, some I am not sure about and some undetermined. I wish all through the meal for some fried rice with which to mix some of what I am eating. But traditionally, rice is always served at the end of the meal just like in the North and the West India. So I try to wash it all down with San Miguel  beer. The lazy Susan keeps turning, the food keeps coming in. It takes about two hours before rice appears, thus signaling the end of the courses.

Traditionally, there are no drinks served with a Chinese meal, but soon as the meal has ended, the bride and the groom get up from their tables and begin their rounds to greet each group, a bottle of Hennessey XO in hands, toasting each one of the guests. From table to table, and at times from person to person, they toast and must drink bottoms up. I am absolutely amazed at how much the newly weds must drink over the course of the night. And they still float and maneuver the narrow aisles between the tables with that permanent smiles pasted over their faces, listening and telling jokes. Not only do the bride and the groom, but also the bridesmaids and the groomsmen and the close family, swirl around the hall,  back slap and talk loud and then down yet another shot of Hennessey.

As they begin to fold up the tables and just when I think the evening has come to an end, the  mahjong tables replace the dining tables and as if the cacophony of the people screaming and shouting and backslapping weren’t loud enough, the sliding back and forth of and bashing against each other of the mahjong tiles is deafening. But the mood is jovial and the downing of Hennessey continues. Now the bride and the groom have split up and are tending different tables, sort of like the division of labor. How can  you even begin to stand straight after those many shots of cognac?  But they do, and do it in style.

While the groom is busy at one end of the hall, on the other end the bride is surrounded by some of the groomsmen and other young male friends. I notice that there is a lot of giggling and horseplay going on between the bride and the men surrounding her, mainly the men teasing and roughhousing the bride while even attempting at some blatant groping – pinching of her ass, rough flash-quick squeezing of her breasts through the bridal gown. The advances the bride constantly tries to fend off in good humor. I see one of them lift her long wedding dress, another grope her above the waist. Just fun and games.

Along with everyone else, I too am feeling bit of a buzz, but perhaps a little less, because as much as I like cognac, I have my limit and also because my favorite is Remy Martin VSOP. Its smoother and lighter on the palate as compared to stronger and darker Hennessey XO. Beyond two or three shots, I stick to my beer and linger. Since I don’t play mahjong, I walk around with the beer glass in my hands, amazed at the whole scene, I just plain watch. The bride is still prodded and groped and manhandled. But she seems into it, fending for herself, but not really. Laughing and screaming  things in Chinese, which of course, I don’t understand.

Reminds me of what I had witnessed during the Holi festival years earlier in Bombay. There lived a Marwari family of five farther down the alley from our house, in a two room apartment. An older couple, their daughter and the son Gopal and his wife Radhika, to whom he was recently married. None of us had really seen Radhika face-to-face, except when the fabric of her carefully pulled down sari would inadvertently slip and we would catch a glimpse of her young face. She couldn’t be more than eighteen. Not a beauty, but ugly she wasn’t either. And for my thirteen or fourteen year old, she was an older woman with rounded limbs, and therefore quite desirable. Its Holi, India’s spring festival and everyone is out there with their syringe guns filled with colored water and hanging around their necks, the slings looking like pouches filled with dried and powdered color pigments – rung, with which to splash and smear whoever crossed your path.

I am approaching the Marwari family’s house and am about to pull the plunger of my syringe when I see Radhika, coming out of the house screaming, running and giggling, trying to defend herself from an attack from a young man, Gopal’s country cousin Manoj. He throws a splash of rang on her, she throws some back, but now he has caught her and holding her close against her faux protests while he brings fistful of rung and is struggling to put it inside her blouse. The end of the sari covering her face is askew, her palav is disheveled  revealing her naked midriff and her choli pulled up, wet and clinging, exposing the contours of her small breasts. They are rough housing, her trying to keep his hand away from her chest, his hand getting precariously closer and then his fingers pulling the fabric of her choli from the neck   and his hand shoving a fistful of green powder inside. Fighting hard and giggling hilariously like a little girl,  pulling herself back, she breaks loose. But Manoj puts his hand inside his sling and this time comes out with a fistful of purple dye. He has gotten hold of her again, Gopal watching intently and laughing, cheering her on, don’t let him, Radhika, push him back. But her little fists pounding on the cousin’s chest don’t do much. He has her pinned to him from her waist and is now lifting her sari and in one swift motion, he has reached between her legs and is rubbing the powder between her thighs. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill  you, she threatens and giggles and then either succeeds to push him away or he just lets go of her. They are both smeared and drenched all over looking like walking, talking and fitted tie-dyed outfits. Gopal is hilarious and so is Manoj, while Radhika though still giggling, busies herself straightening her choli and the sari, giving Gopal a twisted, but loving look and screams at Manoj: just you wait!!! Leaving my teenage body aroused and flustered.

I leave the banquet hall and wander over to the men’s room. What I find there is a big commotion. The groom is lying flat on the floor, totally passed out while a couple of his groomsmen fuss over him and conclude that he needed to lie there for a while.

I don’t personally know the groom, except for having said a quick hello while wishing them well in the reception line. I inquire to see if he is okay. I don’t know the groomsmen either, but they know who I am.

‘He always gets this way after he has had a bit to drink. He will bounce back and up soon enough. No worries!’

So I do my thing and come out. I say my goodbyes to my publisher and a couple of editors, who all are banging at the mahjong tiles.  As I stumble over to the elevator bank, I notice the best man and the bride getting on the elevator headed up – more like as if he were the groom, with his arms around her waist, their sides glued together. The elevator door slides close and they are gone. I watch the floor lights of the ascending elevator and notice it stop on an executive floor up above. Probably the bridal suite.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, August 23, 2013

DESIGNING IN HIS DREAMS

Over the period of time, I have worked with some of the most talented art directors in the world. Some of them super well known fine artists in their countries, some just plain awesome in the way they interpreted and gave a graphic identity to their editions. With very few exceptions, the art directors are also quite colorful characters, a bit crazy, if you may and bon vivant in the true sense of the expression. Among them, Germany’s wunderkind,  Rainer Wörtmann.

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Categories Hong Kong, India, Relationships

PLAYBOY AND WOMEN IN MY LIFE

July 11, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

Painting Devils On The Wall

devilwall2

‘Do you think Playboy exploits women?’ Asks Jennifer. I have just entered the northbound Lake Shore Drive off Michigan Avenue ramp and we are driving home, instead of having stopped some place for a drink following the concert. The question hangs in the air exacerbating the silence that has dawned upon us.

‘I have an 8:30 meeting. Can’t stay out tonight.’ If not exactly distraught, it has put me in dark mood. It seemed too good to be true. I am thinking to myself. It had made me so happy when Jennifer sat in my living room a week earlier, flipping the pages of that week’s Evanston Review, while her two kids and Anjuli occupied elsewhere in the house. She casually mentioned that Carole King was going to be in town.

‘You wanna go?’ I ask.

‘Do you?’

Suddenly I had felt euphoric at the remote chance that after all, it wasn’t yet over between us two. Whereas I have given up all hopes, it was her who had initiated barbecuing and spending that beautiful spring day at my place with her kids and visiting Anjuli. My spirits lifted, I couldn’t have been happier.

And now this! As if she has found out for the first time that I happen to work for the magazine called Playboy and go all hostile feminist on me. I am chewing on her question like one would a piece of sugarcane wrung dry into a stringy pulp. The standard corporate answer and the one Hefner (Hugh) himself had given in one of his interviews : “Playboy exploits women the way Sports Illustrated exploits athletes” Ironically, when I worked for SI, no one ever accused us of exploiting athletes.  Instead this is what I say:

‘Well, what the magazine does is to reflect the way men think. Men not only aspire to a well paying exciting jobs, nice places to live in equipped with the latest in the audio-visual, flashy cars, have his liquor cabinet filled with premium brands and so on. At the end of the day, he also wants young and beautiful women to be a part of his world. And one thing us men do is to immediately begin to undress the ones we may desire.’

‘You do?’

‘Certainly. Like right now, as you sit next to me I am undressing you in my mind’s eye. We never get tired of wondering, what does she look like underneath her clothes. So Hefner decided why not make this a part of his editorial mix?  My Rights manager Jean Connell sums it up aptly and justifiably that this is because men are visual and women aural. The reason why the readership of both Playboy and Playgirl is predominantly men.’  If she was trying to divert my sadness at how the evening was ending, she had failed utterly. Soon we withdraw within ourselves for rest of the way.

●●●

One of the most frequently asked questions of me was: How does your wife feel about your working for Playboy? My immediate instinct is to answer: How should she feel? How does a pilot’s wife feel about her husband flying and salesman’s wife feel about his selling and an accountant’s wife feel about his nose buried in the books? But I don’t. I do my best to hold back answering their question with questions of my own. However annoying I may have found them sometime, I realize that in their perception, working for a product like Playboy has to be different. More than working for movie productions or television channel. The product sexually charged with all that glamour and glorified women – yes, women. Naked women for Christ’s sake.

What they don’t realize is: That like any other businesses, first and foremost, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. too is a business. And like in any business what matters most at the end of the day is the bottom line, showing the hard profit and loss figures and not the soft curvaceous kind. Not any different than when I worked in production quality. To give the best example, when I did Sports Illustrated, other than getting the colors of the uniforms and the team logos right, the real challenge was always to acquire color balance in the skin tones of the athletes, especially that of the black ones. Just a few percent off in one of the basic color balance and you could end up with Michael Jordan looking like the Green Giant. Similarly, when working with the naked skins of all those beautiful ladies, you could easily cause them to look hot pink like lobsters. And  I would never have anything at all to do with the sexy hot bodies in the photos whose skin tones I was trying to match.

Okay, so I ended up not doing production quality as my main job  for rest of my life and did get into the editorial and the photographic aspects of the magazine and also in to the business of it all, with P & L responsibilities. And was involved intimately with the pictorial parts of the international editions as well. So fair enough. Once in a while I would have such conversations with Carolyn, mainly about what we called her painting devils on the wall. An expression I had picked  up from the American singer of the 60’s, Peggy March singing German schlager  of the Seventies: Male nicht den teaufel an der wand – don’t paint devil on the wall. And sometimes, she would be jealous. Or more like insecure. And I would do my best to communicate to her that for what I did for a living, it was all in the day’s work.

Since my job brought young women from all over, I would also be in charge of taking care of and entertaining them during their stays in Chicago.  Often, I would make it a point of bringing them home for dinner or tag them along and include them in our family lives.  Include them into the day-to-day  activities such as going to the movies, going picnicking and listening to the music under the swaying trees and the open skies of the Ravinia Park.

The first one to come home with me was Barbara Corser, (German Playmate, July 1975). I hadn’t seen Barbara in a while since my Santa Barbara days. By now she had also become Penthouse Pet of the Month and happened to be in Chicago on a promotional assignment from the magazine. It wasn’t until late in the evening that I could meet up with her. As close as we once were, I wanted her to see my new home, say hello to Carolyn and get a peek at Anjuli who certainly would be asleep by than. Must be after ten when we climb up to our third floor condo in Hyde Park. Having worked all day long, Barbara had not gotten around to eat anything all day. Carolyn, though already in her pajamas, if not happily, was gracious enough to fix her a sandwich.  This late night visit probably set the tone of how our life together would be.

Then came Sylvana Suarez (Miss World 1978) from Argentina . She spent a weekend with us, we all went to see Gandhi and had dinner at Bombay Palace. And not only Carolyn, but other friends too realized that Miss World or not, she too was just like any other young women, aspiring wives and mothers, that they had boyfriends/husbands back home waiting for them to return.  Whatever their stories, they certainly weren’t after your man. When the Dutch twins Karin and Mirjam van Breeschooten (June 1988) came to Chicago for their playmate shoot for the American edition, they had just turned eighteen, having appeared in the Dutch Playboy a year earlier. Only ten at the time, Anjuli remembers them as two young girls who chose to go eat a pizza instead of going to a fancy restaurant. When she was in her early teens, Anjuli got to spend some time with Playmate Elke Jeinsen (May, 1993) when she traveled with me to Brazil. On the day I was busy with back-to- back meetings, the photo editor practically kidnapped Anjuli and put her in the makeup chair, made her up and had their fashion photographer do some flattering headshots of her. That gave her a chance to see that being photographed with all that glitz and glamour was a job like any other. Knowing some of those women helped ease Carolyn’s apprehensions about my job at Playboy.  But still…

Its difficult, if not utterly impossible to change and modify people’s opinions about things. The most everyone who has strong opinions about Playboy, have never as much as even attempted to read the magazine. They blow you off the chair at the mere mention of the excellent interviews, fiction and non-fiction.

‘Yeah right! You read it for the interviews! Hahaha.’ End of the story.

Similarly the most people have a certain image of Hefner, the one I must admit he himself has helped create and hasn’t done anything to dispel. So when in the spring of 1989, my brother Suresh (Shah)   and his family came to visit, I arranged for us all to visit Playboy Mansion West, in the similar vein as them visiting: Disneyland and the Universal Studios. Suresh was obviously excited and so was my cousin Dhiru who lives in Los Angeles. I am not sure how my sister-in-law Aruna felt, but that question was promptly preempted by Carolyn, who decided that the women and the kids would go to the beach instead. By then she had been to Bombay three times and must have known that us Indians avoid the sun and the sand like plague. But she sloughed off the idea of visiting the mansion like the fly swatted flat. In retrospect, I could see in this defiance the early seeds of what was to come – not to mention the re-awakening of her dormant feminist hostility.  We never spoke about it, but I can imagine some of it had to do with whatever disdain she might be harboring about the chauvinist of a man who made objectifying women glamorous. Nothing I could do. Us boys went to the mansion, the girls to the beach.

●●●

When I met Gina, I was no longer working for Playboy, but as hard as we had fallen for each other, to justify any of my behavior, especially when it concerned women in particular, and that I was such close friends with so many of them, her mind right away interpreted it as: no wonder he worked for Playboy for so long. And there was nothing I could say or do that would change her perception. Never mind the fact that I started out in book publishing that published classics of Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Marie Corelli and a whole list of well-known self-help books. That I also worked for Time Inc. with their portfolio of family oriented magazines, among them Time and Life and that at the time I was doing Florida Sportsfan.

It was beyond her to comprehend  the unconventional way in which I thought about balancing  relationships and personal freedom.  That it was something I had begun to struggle with when as young as nineteen and when I still lived with my family in Bombay. The pages of my journal from those days are filled with me agonizing over and questioning the norms of male-female relationships.  But the answer for her always was my Playboy years. I often wished, if only she could read Gujrati!

●●●

Coming back to Jennifer. In aftermath of the Carole King concert, our relationship/non-relationship trudged along. I have practically written her off but still carry bit of a pang in my heart. I have just returned from a trip to South Africa. And when my phone rings on that long labor day weekend and when I hear her voice, my heart jumps.

‘Hi, Haresh’  it is Jennifer’s old cheery voice.  ‘you know, yesterday, when Clive woke from his nap, the first thing he said was ‘let’s go to Hanesh’s house.  Isn’t that something?’ Hanesh is as close as little Clive came to pronouncing my name.

‘You should have brought him by’

‘Really!’

And its back to as if nothing had happened between us. The months haven’t passed. As if we just parted the night before. But there is a pause:

‘You know, I called.’ She says. Her voice is a hushed whisper. Sort of a mild apology.

‘I know, Mary (Nastos} dropped off my stuff from the office.’

‘I feel bad about the way things ended between us two.’

‘Ya?’ is how I respond, but in smoother tone. ‘May be we can talk about it some other time?’

‘Yes.’ And her cheery voice returns.

‘What are you doing today?’

‘Oh, I have this South African Playmate (Nikki Peterson – January 1994, SA PB) in town and I would have to feed her, so we may go out for dinner. How about you?’

‘I am not doing anything.  I was going to call my friend Carrie, who works with me.  Was also thinking maybe you can come over and I can grill some chicken.’

‘I would love to, if you don’t mind me bringing along the Playmate.’

‘It depends on how threatened I will feel.’

Is she serious? Feeling threatened of a nineteen year old model trying to make it in the world?’

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

*The “naughty doodles” on the wall adapted from the images burned in the copper plates by Janette Newton.  

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Next Friday, July 19, 2013

FACE TO FACE WITH HUGH M. HEFNER

I can’t claim to have known the man closely or even casually. But yes, I have had a couple of face to face encounters with the capo dei capi. Quite pleasant actually. And long enough to form a certain impressions of my own about the man with the initials HMH.   

 

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Categories Playmates, Relationships, Women

MY SPRING VALENTINE

April 4, 2013 //
0

As The Time Goes By

Haresh Shah

myvalentinev2

Exactly thirty six years ago today on April 5th. 1977, in Santa Barbara, California, it was another fucking beautiful day, as my neighbor Greg Ketchum and I had began to refer to our forever such gorgeous weather, whenever we both found ourselves out on our respective balconies, overlooking the awesome Santa Ynez Mountain Range.  I was done with my writing for the day and was sitting around in my living room with Mike and Guusje, drinking beer, when the phone rings.

Without any pleasantries, the female voice on the other line dives right into it.

‘I understand you are auditioning young ladies for Playboy.’

‘Not quite.’ I respond with trepidation, trying hard to think who it might be. Sensing confused silence on my end of the line, the voice breaks out in a hearty laugh.

‘This is Carolyn,’ it says.’ It still doesn’t ring the bell.

‘I was just passing through. I am on my way down south to see Gwen in LA.’ And then I knew.

‘Where are you?’

‘I am here. In Santa Barbara.’

‘You are? Why don’t you come on over?’

‘Okay.’

She doesn’t ask for the direction. Soon I see her pulling up on the Linfield Place in her yellow Volkswagen, named Rachel Rabbit.  She had once lived here before moving up north to Sacramento.  She plans to spend a couple of days walking down the memory lane, perhaps meet up with some people she knew and then continue on to Los Angeles to see her sister. As soon as she walks in, we hug, ever so self  consciously, but there is a feeling of a certain intimacy, which becomes apparent after Mike and Guusje leave. We stand in the middle of the room with our arms wrapped around and holding each other as if we were long lost lovers, and then abruptly but gently step back.

I invite her out for dinner and we drive down to Dobb’s in the city center from Goleta, where I live off the UCSB campus. The dinner is animated and we talk a lot about relationships. Hers with her husband Bob has just ended and they have filed for no-contest divorce. I am trying to build a long distance relationship with Patricia in Mexico City, but neither of us is quite sure. We are sort of oscillating. Carolyn has also been sort of dating someone. But as we talk, the magnetic pull between us two is obvious. After dinner we take a walk on the beach, feeling mellow, listening to the gentle waves of the Pacific splashing the shore. The vast expanse of the beach is deserted that night. I don’t remember for sure if it were a full moon night, but let’s assume that it was, just to give an extra romantic edge to the evening. We feel the ocean breeze lightly feather our exposed skins. The stars seem to be aligned just right on this clear cloudless night. We are walking hand-in-hand and feel the tender but intense energy transpiring through our entwined fingers.

The way I normally tell the rest of the story is: I bring her back home that night, thread my three hour long reel-to-reel tape containing Keith Jarrett’s soothing Cologne concert. And keep her.

●●●

I first met Carolyn and her husband Bob in the bar of a canal side little B & B in Amsterdam, where I had stopped by to look for a room. They were fully booked. But I stayed to have a beer in their bar before venturing out in the early January cold. Sitting diagonally opposite from me was a young couple from Duluth, Minnesota.

I had not planned to be in Amsterdam on this trip.  Certainly not to spend the whole week there. A little over a week earlier I had run away from Chicago in hopes to mend my broken heart. I had picked Denmark literally by putting my finger on the map. The place where no one I knew lived and the place where I could be face-to-face with my lonely self, the place where I could nurse  my wounds and disappear in its anonymity. Copenhagen seemed to do just that for me. Regaining some of my spirit back, I flew on to Stockholm – thinking I would celebrate  my New Year’s Eve up there. But on that morning, it got to be too lonesome. At the last minute, I called my friend Franz-Hermann Gomfers in Wachtendonk, a little town in the lower Rhine, that bordered with Venlo in Holland. As usual, he was hosting the Sylvester party and I found myself amongst the jubilant throng of the New Year’s Eve revelers.

Four years earlier, also at Franz Hermann’s Sylvester party, I had met the flaming red head, Felicita. Fe, as everyone called her,  grew up in a house in the alley diagonally opposite from Fran Hermann’s house. Shy as she was, we had clicked and spent most of the night sitting on a corner sofa, talking. Getting up once in a while to slow dance and then sit down again.  There is a photo of me sitting next to her, holding her wrist in my hand and twirling her bracelet, gazing at it as if in admiration. As good a pretense as any to hold her hand. Three weeks later I had left Europe to come to the United States.

Reconnected, we drive to Krefeld to have dinner the night of the New Year. Staying out late, we  leisurely stroll the deserted streets of the town. Stop frequently at store fronts and window shop. Four years earlier, she wore her hair very short. Now seeing her in a longer than shoulder length hair, I am blown away by how breathtakingly gorgeous she looks. Her radiant smooth skin matches the color of her hair, her shy smiles has me absolutely captivated.

Playfully, I say to her: ‘I’ll marry you when your hair grows down to here,’ pointing to the small of her back with the blade of my hand.

‘Be careful what you say, because my hair grows very fast. In fact, I did have it down to my waist up until a month ago.’ She responds with an impish smile on her face.

And our game begins, as if we were an engaged couple, soon to be married. We pick the bridal gowns and the tuxedos that she and I would wear on our wedding day. We build an imaginary house and begin to fill it with the furniture we see on display. We select baby clothes and the little booties and bonnets for our baby. Even toss around a few names for the daughter we would have. And as we continue our silly little make-believe game, I imagine her walking down the aisle, her radiant face luminous behind the veil.

My plan is now to spend the remaining eight days of my escape from Chicago in Amsterdam. Something I had dreamt of doing with Karen. But it wasn’t meant to be. And now my fickle heart is longing for Fe to explore with me the canals, the bridges and the alleys of the Venice of the north.

●●●

On that Sunday evening, as I stand over one of the thousand bridges of Amsterdam and watch the canal floating down below, I see in its ripples the faces of the women that dot the canvas of my emotional landscape.

Netty, who worked at Drukerij Bosch when I was an intern there seven years earlier,  now lives in Amsterdam. It’s been nice seeing her again, but I can still feel a certain amount of tension linger  between us. Her girlfriend Reneé, on whom I had an incredible crush, leading to a few stolen kisses, is now married and also lives in Amsterdam. Both Netty and I went  to see her and her husband one evening. There is also Carolyn. I thought she was pretty and liked her American way of dressing in blue jeans and a simple top. Lacking of any visible makeup and the hair almost touching her waist. She reminded me of Joan Baez . But I don’t carry any  deeper impression of her. And of course, there is Karen, back in Chicago – the woman I have run away from. But the face that superimposes all of them is that of Fe’s.  What I see clearly in that fluid water is the parting  image of her, clutching the bunch of red tulips, her eyes fogging up and the tail light of her disappearing train.

Having spent the whole weekend together, walking around Amsterdam till wee hours of the morning – still feeling weary and sleepy after the late morning breakfast, we are lying sideways on her single bed – talking, almost whispering – sharing with each other and feeling a certain   closeness at our parallel stories of the bruised hearts, I am overwhelmed at the silence that has fallen between us. Us staring deep into each other’s eyes.

‘Willst du mich heiraten?’ It just pops out of my mouth. Something I had never asked anybody up until then and have not to this day since. ‘Will you marry me?’

The fog has fallen dense on the city of Amsterdam. My emotions are torn. The longing intensified. The faces dissolving in the ripples as they march on.

●●●

It’s January 3rd 1979. Delayed by two and a half hours, our United flight from Los Angeles is the last one to land that night at 12:30 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, before the back-to-back snow storms would blanket and paralyze the city for weeks and months to come. We check into the Playboy Towers – the old dame of the hotel known as The Knickerbocker, before and after its present avatar – at two in the morning with a whole bunch of boxed live potted plants that make up the bulk of our excess baggage. Because we are told that they would never make it to Chicago in the truck. I have returned to Playboy full time to work out of their head offices. Carolyn is seven months pregnant. We have bought a condo in Hyde Park and would move in soon as our stuff arrives.  The side streets remain buried under mountains of snow up until April. When the truck finally makes it to Chicago area, they deliver bits and pieces by minivans. Soon as they deliver the mattresses on the 26th, we move in.

After three weeks of being stuck in a hotel, it feels good to be in our own place. However inadequately equipped. We are prepared to sleep on the hardwood floors if we had to. In the meanwhile, I keep trucking. Of which Lee Hall writes in his International Publishing Newsletter dated February 5: Haresh will be returning from Spain this weekend to assist in the last minute birth of his first child. He and Caroline (sic) have recently moved into a delightful apartment in Chicago but are currently awaiting the arrival not only of the baby but of their furniture van which has been marooned somewhere in the Mid-western snow.

And then its March 6. Its 04:04 in the morning – the drama of a new child being born is enacted in the bedroom of our apartment. Propped up and leaning on the wall at the edge of the bed is me, Carolyn’s head resting on my shoulder. At the ready is the midwife Kay with her experienced hands to clutch and catch the baby pushing to emerge into this world. Surrounding the bed are Dr. Elvove, Anita and Keeline while Bob is clicking away with the little Kodak Instamatic with his trembling hands.  We see first Anjuli’s head pop out and then with another push, all of her. Dr. Elvove hands me a pair of scissors to snap the umbilical cord. A daughter born in Playboy family receives Playboy kind of welcome by telexes from around the world in response to Lee Hall’s following announcement, barely making it  in his Newsletter dated March 5, but not mailed until later.

PS: Anjuli Shah-Johnson, the first daughter of Haresh Shah and Carolyn Johnson, was born on March 6.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

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Next Friday, April 12, 2013

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

It is very likely that the most of you have never heard of Jan Cremer, the ultimate enfant terrible of the Dutch literature and the art. He once famously said in an interview: Rembrandt? I have never heard of him. I’m not interested in sports. Arrogant? Brilliant?  Whatever. But I am a big fan of his books, I Jan Cremer and Jan Cremer Writes Again. And have had a pleasure of meeting and talking to him.

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Categories Relationships, Romance, Women