Archives for category: Uncategorized

THE TAIWANESE BARBER SHOP

October 3, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

What’s There Not To Like?

When I was just a kid, I remember the family barber stopping by on the fifth floor of Jagjivan Mansion – built by my grandpa and his three brothers – park himself in the corner by the stairs at the end of the long corridor, at the foot of the custom built telephone booth. He carried a black shoulder bag made of rugged leather, containing multiple pockets to accommodate his long and shiny sharp bladed knives, several pairs of scissors, manual trimmers with handles, a mixing bowl for soap and the water, a soft lather brush and a long leather strap about three inches wide on which he sharpened his long blades while waiting for one of the older males sitting down on the floor in front of him and submit himself to the barber’s ministrations with his head bent down while the barber squatted over, trims the hair, shaves the day old growth on their chins and then oils their scalps with his palms pummeling their heads with quick jerking and frequent slapping motions. As rough as it looked and sounded and at times even hurt, once he was done, your head felt light as a feather – all the worries slipped away and be ready to face the world all over again. Professional barber’s pride and joy was the boast that he would be the only person in front of whom even the king had to bow his head.

The days of those professional home visiting barbers began to fade when my generation of Shahs began to patronize the modern hair salon down the street from our home. Equipped with high adjustable chairs and mirrors on the walls. Soon, they sprouted up in every neighborhood, symbolized by the round vertical drums of red, white and blue striped flags that twirled non-stop.

My image of the barber shop. When I first noticed similar shop fronts in Taipei, Taiwan, they didn’t look anything like typical barber shops with the hairdressers hovering over heads snap-snapping. They were wide shop fronts with clear glass walls behind which would be a well lit modern reception desk and staring at the computer screen would be a pretty young thing. A huge vertical tube of the traditional barbershop flag continuously turning inside round glass drums, some as tall as the height of the mostly revolving glass door entrances. Displayed credit card decals indicating the acceptance of Diner’s Club, American Express, Visa, Master Card and other local bank cards. Uhm, Fancy! I think to myself. But little did I know!!

Unlike European and South American business dinners that can begin as late as eleven, with meeting for drinks at nine, in the Orient, dinner takes place earlier, most of the time soon after leaving the offices. Even the most elaborate meals are done by nine or latest by ten. But when you’re being entertained, that’s when the real evening begins. Normally they took me to their usual hangouts, small cozy bars in obscure alleys and buildings. The place we most frequented was Hsilang Bar – a cozy hole in the wall. I still remember one of the hostesses by the name of Michelle. Since she spoke the most English and also we had taken to liking each other, whenever she could get away from other customers, she would come and sit next to me and we would talk. The most we would ever do was tenderly hold hands and look into each other’s eyes. Confide in little things. I would be happy just to stay home, have a couple of kids. Cook for my family I will always make myself pretty and be there for my husband, for whatever he wants to do with me. At the time Carolyn and I had recently split, and often I couldn’t help but fantasize about being that husband to her. While there may have been some hostess bars where you could take one of them home or to a motel room, neither Hsilang Bar nor a couple of others that Playboy team frequented were anything more than bars with hostesses, who sat with you and served drinks, like Saqi in the ghazals of Mirza Ghalib. Neither were they exclusive men’s territories. Half of Taiwan Playboy staff and contributors were females, and they too would hang out with us. And then I would either grab a cab or someone would drop me off to my hotel.

But one evening, when everyone else had left I find myself alone with Winston (Tsui), an executive and the editor-in-chief, Henry (Jen). I think it is Henry who is driving both Winston and me back to our respective hotels, when Winston says: It’s still early to go home. Why don’t we stop at a barber shop and get a proper massage? We’ve been working so hard, we deserve one!

Suddenly, I am standing with the two of them in front of well lit and sophisticated reception desk with the young pretty lady holding in her hands a long piece of paper looking like the one they give you at Dim Sum restaurants, to check off whatever, for when the Dim Sum carts come by, they can glance at the list and serve you accordingly. We order full body massages. And then she asks something in Chinese. Henry and Winston consult each other and then ask me, how I want my massage to end? Sensing confusion on my face, one of them explains, it has to be pre-ordered and paid for in advance and the price they charge is based on whether following the massage you wanted to have an intercourse with the woman, or perhaps just a blow or a hand job. Though I had suspected something of the sort, I haven’t given any thought to it. I certainly didn’t want to have an intercourse or the blow job. Something I just didn’t do. Plus, as a defense I would always say in jest, you know what you went in with, but never know what you might come out with!

‘Never mind.’ Says Winston and tells the girl something in Chinese. She jots it down and then inputs all of it in her computer. Winston flashes his corporate American Express. She hands us each a card with a number on them and buzzes the side door open for us to enter the facilities. I smell chlorine and the sound of water flowing. We are standing in front of a decent sized swimming pool with crystal clear water and the pool with blue tiles at the bottom. There are some men splashing in it. There is a Jacuzzi at the farthest end of the pool and the place is also equipped with the steam bath and sauna. And there are tropical plants scattered around. Everything looks clean and shiny and reverentially quiet. It’s a high quality and high priced health club. I am not sure, if we swim, but probably take showers before walking down the stairs and to our assigned cabins for our respective massages. The room is dimly lit and the layout reminds me of the tourist class cabins of the SS Marconi and QE II, the luxury liners I had sailed on.

‘That’s your cabin. See you later. Enjoy.’ Says one of them and they both disappear down the corridor.

Not knowing what exactly to expect, I lightly knock on the closed door. A petite young Chinese woman opens the door, bows slightly and lets me in, gently closing the door behind us. She doesn’t speak any English, so our communication is a few words and more gestures. As I remove my outer clothing, she neatly folds each one of the items and places them on a side table. I am down to my jockey shorts. She gestures me to lie down on my stomach on the massage table.

The room is small but seems well organized with shelves full of towels, piles of bed sheets, bottles of fragrant oils lined on a counter, a small stool placed by the side of the massage table. It is lit in a shade of purple haze. Soft piped in music wafting in is soothing and puts me in a trance as I feel her hands touch my back.

Forty five minutes or so later, I am feeling like a million dollars. Winston was right. We’ve been working really hard and it seems with those oils and her magic hands she has squeezed out of my body every iota of the stress and stiffness. All the toxins peeled off. My eyes are closed and the feeling of being lulled to peaceful sleep envelops me, when I feel her hands tugging at the elastic of my jockey shorts. She is gesturing for me to lift my butt to facilitate their removal. I comply. She slowly and softly begins to caress and massage my inner thighs. Ever so gently. I am being aroused. She has been sitting on the edge of the massage table with her back facing me. And then she lithely turns her torso and makes eye contact with me. She points at her blouse and touches the upper button.

‘Open?’ She asks.

Daintily and slowly she unbuttons her blouse and lets it slip off with a slight shudder of her shoulder blades. She is wearing no bra. Her breasts are small and firm with dark pointed nipples. They certainly don’t need support of a bra. She lets my eyes linger on them for a bit longer before turning around and reaching for my inner thigh with her hands. But then stops and brings her hands backward and lifts both of my mine lying limply by my side and with a gentle pressure places my palms over her bare breasts. It feels like a mother buckling her young kid into a seat of a Go-cart, and putting his hands over the steering wheel for him to hold onto when the car begins to gain speed.

When I feel her hand on my penis, it reminds me of Jean Jacques Lesueur – tall, handsome French man with an angular face, curly dark head of hair and a permanent impish grin on his face. He is married to the stunning Danish beauty Katrine and they live in Athens, Greece with their two kids. Jean Jacques is in the business of publishing with his best friend – a young Greek and is the publisher of the Greek edition of Playboy.

One evening I am sitting in the living room of their Athens home, having pre-dinner drinks with him and Katrine and he reminisces about his trip to Thailand, while Katrine listens in with her ever so sweet dimpled smile. The way Jean Jacques tells it is obviously more animated and somehow sounds cuter in his French accent. But I will try my to re-tell it as best I can, albeit in third person.

His father-in-law is a diplomat and at the time is posted in Thailand. Jean Jacques and Katrine are taking a vacation in Bangkok. Whereas Katrine has traveled some days earlier, Jean Jacques has just arrived after a long flight from Athens. It’s just before dinner time in the evening and the family of four is sitting around in the living room having drinks before the dinner is served. Considering that Jean Jacques would be tired and may enjoy a nice relaxing massage before they sat down for dinner, his in-laws have arranged a professional masseuse to give him a full body massage. She has set up her massage table and is waiting for him in one of the rooms in the house. She is young and pretty and an excellent professional of her trade. During an hour long massage, he is completely relaxed and refreshed and is thankful for the thoughtfulness of his in-laws. But he gets a bit uneasy when he feels her pulling at his underwear. He is not sure. If a bit guiltily and hesitantly, he allows her to finish the massage, the one he terms: with a happy ending. He emerges out of the room, not able to hide the glow of the guilty pleasure, blushing like a little kid. He notices a slight smile on his wife’s face – the kind I am noticing right now – followed by smirks on his in-laws’ faces before all three break out in a hearty laughter.

‘Comment était ton premier Thaï massage mon chérie?’ Asks Katrine. He just smiles back, thinking, what’s there not to like?

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, October 12, 2013

THE DUTCH TREAT

Nope, this one is not a cheap one. Actually its about the dinner at Restaurant de Hoefslag at the time of its two Michelin Stars glory. It must have cost an arm and a leg. Delicieux. And all that champagne flowing? Lekker!

Tags Barber Shops, Henry Jen, India, Jean Jacques Lesueur, Katrine Lesueur, Massage, Taiwan, Thailand, Winston Tsui

Categories Uncategorized

SCENES FROM MISS PLAYBOY INTER-NATIONAL BEAUTY PAGEANT

July 4, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Glamour And Glitter,Trials,Turbulence,Tears And Joy

If anyone, it had to be Albert Cheng – our dynamic publisher in Hong Kong – to pull it off as swiftly and smoothly, the Herculean task of the first and the only Miss Playboy International Beauty Pageant within a little over a year of launching Playboy’s first Chinese language edition on this city state of the fragrant harbor.

It all began over an elaborate lunch with Hong Kong’s TVB executives, Bernard Cheung and Sophia Chan. The thing I remember the most about that lunch now twenty six years later is the table-side preparation of the tiger shrimps tossed live in the hot frying pan and them shooting up above our heads, some even higher, before landing back into the sizzling hot pan to meet with their instant demise and immediately turning into the most delicious dish sautéed in the restaurant’s exquisite sauce. I must confess that as tasty as they turned out, I found it hard to swallow them. It certainly gave a new meaning to the culinary tradition of from farm to the table. Thanks to the excellent Chablis pairing that helped washing them down while hiding my apparent discomfort from showing on my face in front of my most gracious hosts. Albert and I had met them to discuss the possibility and the logistics of staging the beauty contest in which the contestants would come from then existing fourteen international editions of Playboy.

Albert has done his part of conceiving and selling the idea. TVB executives had done their numbers, and now it was upon me to agree and get excited about and have all the editions enthusiastic and then have my superiors back in Chicago buy into it. TVB would bankroll the project and will do their part in producing and broadcasting it live as one of their prime time pre-Christmas offerings. Albert and his staff would take care of the logistics and the organizations in Hong Kong. And I would have to be the one to deliver the fourteen most beautiful women hand picked by the editorial teams of each one of our editions.

Our meeting took place on 22^nd of May of 1987. We all had a little over six months to bring the project to life. Soon as I had gotten Chicago’s approval, each one of our editions went to work. This is the kind of a project, if you stop to think of the enormity of the task, overwhelmed, you never would do it. So the best was to just begin. I am not quite sure how the idea of tying-in a major pictorial came about, but I believe it had to be Jan Heemskerk, the editor-in-chief of our Dutch edition. We had partnered a year before in producing of Mundial ’86 – the soccer world cup in Mexico, and now we would work together to do the same with the Beauty Pageant. Gary Cole – the photography director of the mother edition loaned us his star editor and producer Jeff Cohen, we got Tom Staebler – the art director as a bonus. In addition, Gary hired and made available to us the renowned British photographer Byron Newman, who as it turns out, also went to London College of Printing to study photography, probably around the same years as I was studying Photolithography also at LCP, and his wife/stylist, the French actress Brigitte Ariel, who played Edith Piaf in the movie, Piaf: The Early Years. And he would contribute substantial sum towards the expenses of the photo production. My division and the editions would pick up the rest.

●●●

The infrastructure in place, on December 2, 1987, Jeff, Tom and I, accompanied by Playmate Lynne Austin (July 1986) – who is to represent the United States – board Tokyo bound Japan Airlines Flight 009, which would connect us with an onward flight to Hong Kong.

Us four are sitting in the middle row – happy to be pulling away from our respective day-to-day grinds, we are looking forward to our two week long adventure in Hong Kong. Half way through the flight, Jeff and Tom have either drifted away, snoozing or have withdrawn within themselves, while Lynne and I are quite animated, chatting away. I love her down home southern natural self. And her Texas twang. We talk about things and the conversation veers towards the beauty pageant. She asks many relevant questions about the contest and its organization. I tell her what I know and then she asks.

‘Who will be the judges?’

‘Albert Cheng, our Hong Kong publisher for one, and other local dignitaries.’

‘Will they all be men?’

‘I am not sure, but of the group, I think one or two are women.’

‘Hum!’ She grunts and then looks at me with an impish smile on her face.

‘Do you think Chinese men like blow jobs?’

She is of course kidding. Or is she? Anything to win? The more I get to know h, the more I like the real woman that she is and I am charmed by her natural beauty and her sense of humor.

●●●

There is absolutely no rest for the wicked. We left Chicago the day before at around noon, arriving in Hong Kong at three in the afternoon the next day. Soon as we check into Hotel Prince, the instant meeting breaks out and lasts until one in the morning. Already there or arriving simultaneously are Byron and Brigitte, Jan and Lucienne Bruinooge of Holland. There is no time to waste, so we get into the production of the pictorial the very next day. Most of the themes are conceived by Byron and Brigitte and are discussed among us. The concepts basically present the stereotypes of each country, which makes their nationalities easily recognizable.

Lucienne is photographed as the cellophane wrapped bouquet of Tulips who among the real colorful dozen tulips is the prettiest centerpiece. Similarly, Shannon Long in the outback Aussie gear, Jenny Vergdou of Greece dressed in blue with a pile of plates for her to smash, Spain’s Nuria Posariza Dobon as the torero, Marta Duca of Italy in a glittery green dress pulled by paparazzis posed by Jan and me, Lynne in her American West cowboy garb complete with the Stetson hat and Luma de Oliveira of Brazil in all her Samba School gold and glitter. The fun fantasy stuff. Except that editors of Germany and Japan are upset at the way we have planned to portray their girls. The German girl is decked out in all black leather, the bustier with three straps, a leather scarf and thigh high leather boots and her entire arms covered with tight leather gloves. There are rhinestone studs and she is wearing dark sinister looking sunglasses. The only image the props conjure up is that of a brutal Nazi officer. The Japanese girl is propped up on a chair with red ribbons sprouting out from a spoke, symbolizes The land of the Rising Sun. They are more than offended and the German editor Bernd Prievert even threatens to pack up and leave with his girl. Don’t ask me how I was able to pacify and convince them that those were meant to be funny and not meant to communicate anything else.

When I look at those photos today, I must confess, there is nothing funny about those two concepts. However inadvertently, in the place of Bernd and the Japanese editor, whose name escapes my memory, I too would have not only been upset, but would have forced the creative team to change the concepts. Probably put the German Fräuline in Dirndl and the Japanese girl in a revealing Kimono. I would have not threatened to up and leave, because that would be against my nature and the team spirit. If anyone, me having lived in Germany, I should have known the sensitivity of what even a remotest hint at Nazism would make me feel. But I am glad that however I was able to resolve the conflict, the harmony and the spirit remained in tact. Perhaps the readers too saw those props as self-mockery instead of symbolizing anything so grave. Because as far as I know, there was no negative reaction to those shots.

●●●

Not withstanding minor day-to-day crisis, the major crisis erupts when the waiter in the Royal Garden Hotel’s atrium (We have now moved to Royal Garden) where I am having drinks with the editors, informs me that I am wanted on the phone. Its almost two in the morning. On the line is Holland’s Lucienne.

‘Stella and I need to talk to you urgently.’ Now what? I look at my watch and walk over to the elevator.

‘We girls had a meeting earlier, and we won’t do it. Wear those ugly one piece swimming sacks they want us to.’

And I thought we had resolved the crisis that threatened cancellation of the pageant. The Christian Theological Society of Hong Kong had made waves about the Playboy show allowed to be aired in the prime time. They had threatened to protest outside the Queen Elizabeth Stadium from where the show would be broadcast live in the presence of Hong Kong’s 2000 who’s who audience. TVB would stand its ground by going ahead with the show live as planned, but was sufficiently worried about the aftermath and it was decided to tone down the presentation by having girls wear hastily made white single piece swimsuits with its flimsy conservative cuts that would make nuns look racier. Only distinguishing element among them would be different colored satin bands wrapped around their waists tied in large bows dangling in the back. This was the compromise nobody liked, but we had to defer to the decision by TVB. It seemed the only way to quell the fire the show could otherwise cause.

The girls were obviously devastated. They were there for a beauty pageant and nothing can allow them to show off their wonderful figures as much as their own handpicked bikinis. They had grumbled and registered their displeasure at this change, but seemed accepting it however reluctantly. But obviously not.

Stella and Lucienne are sitting on one of the beds. I am sitting across from them. We are like forty-four hours from going live on the air and from the tone of Lucienne’s voice, it becomes clear to me that the girls had long and serious talks about it. They are angry and they are adamant. After all, they were not competing to show which one of them looked most homely and unattractive. If they indeed go on strike and even one of them don’t show up, that would spell disaster of a major proportions. Something I cannot allow to happen.

‘Okay. You girls are absolutely right. This is the beauty contest and the routine has to include you to parade in your bikinis. After all, each one of you is beautiful with near perfect bodies and they are going to read out your vital statistics when you’re presented. That’s what was planned and that’s what we want. I want. But the situation we’re facing is not about being right or wrong. When you are dealing with the religious zealots or hostile feminist groups, the logic goes out of the window. Believe me, they are in mini-minority at the very best. But they have apparently made enough noise to be noticed. And what they are demanding is to cancel the show. TVB is determined to go ahead with the show, at the risk of perhaps even losing their broadcasting license. But have come up with a compromise, should it come to that, they would have a convincing argument. Now if us from Playboy family cause the cancellation, I don’t even want to imagine what the cost of that would be to each one of our editions.

‘As for taking all the glamour out of the swim suit routine, look at it this way. You will all have the same handicap. The judges are well aware of that. And each one of them would have seen the special issue we have put out containing your original nudes as they appeared in your country’s edition. So they would know. We would ask them to pay closer attention to those’

I see expressions on their faces soften a bit. As angry and disappointed as they are, we have been working together and living under the same roof for now almost two weeks. We are a team and we are becoming a family. Plus, we still have the opening spread to shoot. We are to shoot it on the classic Chinese Junk while sailing around Hong Kong harbor. There is likely to be the press, and even television coverage. ‘You can show off your bikinis in the bright daylight. Fuck those bastards!’ The prospect of having the last word and to end it with the fuck you moment before returning home puts a smile on theirs and my face.

‘Look, I can’t force you to do anything. But we are in this together. And I need you to not let those disgruntled few to force us into a devastating defeat.’

Lucienne and Stella still unhappy, but seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. They agree to talk it over again with the girls in the morning and ask me to be there with them. I pretty much repeat what I had said the night before. Nobody is feeling really hot about it. We all understood what we had to do and left for the rehearsal.

Bikinis or not, the show went on the air promptly at 9:30 PM on the night of Sunday, December 12^th 1987 and kicked off TVB’s special Christmas offering. And 95% of Hong Kong’s television viewers tuned into TVB’s Miss Playboy International Beauty Pageant. There were some protestors outside the stadium, mostly ignored and the show concluded without a stitch. Good times had by all. TVB and Playboy crew exhausted and elated met for the midnight dinner at the Royal Garden.

To add bit of a drama to it, earlier in the day, Jan had landed at the Adventist Hospital with a sudden swelling in his foot and was subjected to watch the show on TV from his hospital bed. The Japanese editor loses his briefcase containing lot of cash, his passport, credit cards and all. And soon as the lights dim on the specially built outdoor set and all the girls have walked off the arena, France’s Nathalie Galan remains at the edge of the stage, tears rolling down her eyes, utterly devastated at not even making it as one of the two runner ups, let alone winning the title. She refuses to go have dinner with us. I put my arm around her and hold her while she breaks down in sobs. We stand like that when rest of the stage lights are turned off and when the crew arrives to dismantle the set. In excitement and in hurry, everyone has rushed back to the hotel, having totally forgotten about the two of us missing. Streets are dark and deserted outside the stadium. We stand there for a while. Confused, when a lone cab slows down in front of us. There is an applause when we walk in to the dining room.

●●●

THE WINNERS

Luma de Oliveira – Brazil – Miss Playboy International 1987 & Editor’s Choice

Marta Duca – Italy – First Runner Up

Lynn Austin – USA – Second Runner Up

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, July 12, 2013

PLAYBOY AND WOMEN IN MY LIFE

No one, even the women in your life understand that working for Playboy is like any other job – just making a living. That its not any different than working for Time or Life magazines. Personal anecdotes about working for living and matters of the heart.

Tags Albert Cheng, Bernard Cheung, Bernd Prievert, Hong Kong, Jan Heemskerk, Jeff Cohen, Lynn Austin, Playboy Beauty Contest, Playmates, Tom Staebler, TVB

Categories Beauty Contest, Playmates, Uncategorized

ALL ABOUT THE WILD PARTIES AT PLAYBOY

June 27, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Not Following In The Boss’ Footsteps

‘No one aspires to Hef’s (Hugh M.Hefner) lifestyle anymore.’

Talking to us at our 1982 International Publishing’s Annual Conference is the US Playboy’s Editorial Director, Arthur Kretchmer. After having them held all over the world including at Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, we have brought the group of about sixty to the home turf in Chicago. Seamlessly connected to Playboy’s 919 North Michigan Avenue offices by a passageway is Playboy Towers, right next door at what used to be the landmark Chicago hotel, The Knickerbocker, now renamed Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel. We are breathing nothing but Playboy, practically day in and day out for four days and four nights.

Arthur is not the man of many words. But when you get him to say something, nobody can say it better than he could. Even though Hugh M. Hefner crowns the magazine’s masthead, being his eyes and ears, it’s Arthur who builds the magazine with his editorial team, nut and bolts, brick by brick. What he just said must have been obvious to most everyone present in the room, but coming from Arthur’s mouth makes it official – confirmed beyond doubt.

I for one had frequently felt that I was actually living the Playboy lifestyle in the real world, traveling first class around the globe, picked up and brought back home by stretched limos, staying at the best hotels in Paris, Munich, Milan and wherever else my assignments took me, eating in the best restaurants and having animated conversations with the crème de la crème of the publishing world, having a time of my life, while by then Hefner himself had slid into the surreal fantasy world of his own.

When he first started publishing Playboy in December of 1953 at the age of 27, and was putting together his magazine on the kitchen table of his apartment on the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, he aspired to the lifestyle of, if not famous, certainly well to do, who in his imagination occupied the penthouse apartments in the highrises that lined North Shore Drive of the city. Just like I had aspired to be living in a similar flat on Bombay’s Marine Drive, famously known as the Queen’s Necklace. He aspired to living a life of an affluent young man about town showing up at the “in” spots of the city with an enviously pretty thing hanging on his arm. One of those “in” spots was the Gaslight Club, established also in 1953, which inspired Hefner to open Playboy Club scant seven years later, also in what is now known as River North neighborhood.

Not only that, the way Playboy sky rocketed to an unprecedented heights that even surpassed his wildest dreams, he never got to live on the umpteenth floor of any of the skyscrapers he dreamed about but went way beyond by bringing the whatever good life was happening up above, down to the ground level when he bought a 70 room classical French brick and limestone mansion at 1340 State Street in the exclusive Gold Coast of Chicago – only a stone’s throw away from those tall and the glittering dwellings and at the intersection of the trendy Division, State and Rush streets where Chicago’s thriving night life overlapped. Just a short stroll away were Chez Paul and Biggs, the two of Chicago’s most elegant restaurants of the time and Ricardo’s, where Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune gang hung out. As it turns out, he didn’t even have to take those walks. He brought everyone and everything he desired within the confines of his famed Chicago mansion. Complete with underwater bar and firemen’s pole to slide down to the swimming pool down below the main floor.

I could probably see myself being aspired to something to that extent. But beyond?

Not even his most ardent imitators such as Bob Guccione of Penthouse, Daniel Filipacchi of Lui (Oui in the US, published by Playboy under cross licensing agreement in which Filipacchi published the French edition of Playboy) or even Larry Flynt of Hustler aspired to imitate his lifestyle. They emulated Hefner to an extent and then stopped. None of them went as far as to buy a private jet. Serial marriages yes, but Guccione stayed true to Kathy Keeton and Flynt to Althea Leasure till death did indeed them part. Filipacchi never even married. And most importantly, none of them retreated inside the confines of their habitats.

Their publications never became impersonation of themselves as did Playboy. So much so that the mere mention of the name Playboy conjures up an instant image of Hugh M. Hefner. His Playmates and his Bunnies, his silk pajamas and robes, his ubiquitous pipe and his private jet and his clubs, and of course his mansions. Did I ever envy his world? Did anyone at Playboy? God NO! Not even the men who worked closest to him. They all lead what can easily be termed as normal American lives with wives and kids, houses with white picket fences in the suburbs, SUVs, dogs and all.

If you are thinking of us Playboy-ites to be submerged in the underground swimming pool of the Chicago mansion or the Grotto of the Los Angeles estate, frolicking with the most beautiful and desired naked women swarming all over us – you will be absolutely and horrifyingly disappointed, shaking your head in utter disbelief. As did then seven year old Graham (Miller), Anjuli’s littlie cousin from Minnesota. Carolyn’s sister LeAnne was visiting Chicago with her younger son and they all stopped at my office in Playboy Building. While they sat down to visit for a while, Graham jumps off his chair and promptly runs out the door and I hear him run up the corridor. I could sense his running up and down the passage and then returning back to my office, slowed down, looking disappointed and shaking his head in disbelief. Even before anyone could ask him where he ran off to, he just blurts out: There are no naked ladies! I don’t even have any juicy Christmas party stories of “squeezed together in the closet” to tell – a la Playboy cartoons in its holiday issues.

There were parties of course. But not much different than any other business get togethers. Among them my division’s annual conference and other divisional affairs in New York and Los Angeles, every year the spring/summer soirée at Christie Hefner’s rooftop apartment in the Gold Cost, where she invited her top managers with their spouses and dates that allowed everyone to let their hair down and partake in good spirits, good food and almost always enjoy the good weather from top of the building and feel the breeze coming in from Lake Michigan. Informal as it was, it was still prim and proper business affair. Add to them the bonding events such as a weekend at Kohler Design Center, in Kohler, Wisconsin, where we mingled amidst the latest bathroom fixtures, shower stalls and huge bathtubs, Jacuzzis and bidet. State of the art toilet bowls and bathroom sinks. We would be invited to a day of golfing at exclusive Westchester Country Club and meet up at the Playboy Mansion West for an informal drink and dinner event one evening during the long traditional Playboy Jazz Festivals in Los Angeles. Hefner himself would show up for a while during these evenings and mingle and make small talk with some of us. A Playmate or a Bunny may wander out once in a while, but looking no different than any well dressed good looking young woman at any other social gathering. Not to forget the employee Christmas Parties every year. Sumptuous and fun, but not unlike any other corporate sponsored holiday event. And that would be the extent of it.

If I were to tell this to my ex colleagues at Time, even unbelieving, they would believe me because of my status as an outsider insider and sum up the Playboy crowd as being an L and a 7. A perfect boring square.

We at Time worked hard. Very hard. That’s what it took to get three weeklies and one monthly out on the trucks and the airplanes. But then we played as hard. Prairie House? Coach House? Booze & Bits? Butch McGuire’s? Name it, and you could have found us there. And we didn’t even have to scout for the liaisons outside of the group. Between our production and traffic offices on the 22^nd street and the data processing /administration offices on Ohio – yes we socialized. We had softball teams and the bowling leagues. Those activities followed by ending up at one of the night spots or even at one of us single member’s apartments in the city. Including mine. There were plenty of young men and women, married and unmarried. But did it matter? These are the late Sixties and early Seventies. Bars with juke boxes. Us dancing to the Carpenters’ Close to you and Rainy days and Mondays. Squeezed together in the dim lit back room of the Prairie House or wherever. Hormones raging, falling in love and falling out. It was like the musical chairs of the coupling and uncoupling. A real Peyton Place if there was one! Eventually I would define the Time crowd as being the most incestuous group of people I have ever worked with. And from what I understood from the photo editors and the art directors we worked with, it weren’t any different in the New York office. Only more lavish and most every foray even paid by the expense accounts. This was confirmed by The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd – who too worked at Time in her early days, recounts in her recent musings: After my sting in Washington, Time moved me to the New York headquarter, with its “Mad Man” aura of whiskey, cigarettes, four hour sodden lunches and illicit liaisons…On Friday nights when the magazine was going to bed, there were sumptuous platters of roast beef rolled in, and bars in editor’s offices. You get the picture.

Back to Playboy, whose offices were only three blocks north of our Ohio Street offices and thirteen blocks north of the production offices where I worked. Two different worlds. Could it be that we at Time represented New York of the era and Playboy, Chicago of the Midwest?

I am not saying that nothing of the sort ever happened at Playboy. That would be not natural. When you put a bunch of men and women together, cupids are going to hover up above. So Playboy people too fall in love and get this: get married. Just to mention some at the top – the editorial director Arthur Kretchmer has always been married to Patricia as long as I have known him. Gary Cole, the photography director met his wife Nancy at Playboy. Okay she is his third wife, but they’ve been married almost thirty years now. Photo editor Jeff Cohen met Gayle, as well at work and they have been married decades and so did Jim Larson who married Gary’s assistant Renay. What is this with the photo department executives? Cupid must have been playing favoritism around the studios. They’re all still married. And note that none of them married a Playmate or a photo model – the most likeliest scenario. Ditto, my bosses at various times, Lee Hall, Bill Stokkan and Mike Perlis, all married in the conventional sense and so are Jan Heemskerk, Rainer Wörtmann, Freddy Baumgärtel and Albert Cheng across the oceans. Even the star photographers, Pompeo Posar and Richard Fegley. Both married to their wives for long times until deaths indeed did them part.

So yes, how right Arthur is when he says No one aspires to Hef’s lifestyle anymore. Certainly not the ones shrouded in his aura and living in his orbit. Someone’s got to put out the magazine!!

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, July 5, 2013 TK

SCENES FROM MISS PLAYBOY INTERNATIONAL BEAUTY PAGEANT

In the winter of 1987, Playboy held its one and the only beauty pageant ever in cooperation with Albert Cheng, the publisher of the magazine’s Hong Kong based Chinese language edition and TVB, the major television channel. When broadcast live, 95% of Hong Kong tuned in.

Tags Arthur Kretchmer, Chicago, Hugh Hefner, Playboy Mansions, Playboy Marriages, Playboy Parties, Time & Life

Categories Uncategorized

PLAYBOY ON THE COFFEE TABLE

March 14, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

How Do An Indian Grandma And Her American Grand Daughter View Playboy?

‘And I can no longer see Playboy calendar hanging in my home.’ I could see Gina was riled up about my last ditch attempt at saving our relationship by offering to sell my house and us together buying a condo. But it was too late to make any difference. We both knew it was over. And even though her outburst was no longer meaningful, any more than a rubber bullet, nothing that would kill me, but boy did it sting!! And the irony is: there were never any Playboy calendars hanging in my house. What she probably meant was all those monthly issues lying all around. Especially after I left the magazine. Because for months after my departure, my assistant Mary (Nastos) still kept sending me all the international editions, eighteen in all, every month. They were piling up and at some point could be found strewn all over my house.

Or most likely, the three nude studies by my artist friend Deven (Mehta) hanging in the guest washroom by the kitchen that had triggered her ire. In any case, not until after she said it did I ever give any thought to the placement of Playboy in my house. I had never seen any need to tuck them away some place out of sight. Gina’s disdainful words took me back to my Time & Life years, when we had a sort of an exchange program set up with messengers from various printing companies around Chicago area that printed a part or all of one of our publications and some also printed Playboy and Penthouse. We got them in exchange for our magazines.

When the new issues of Playboy and Penthouse arrived, we would page through them and comment on that month’s Playmates and the Pets. And then rest of the guys would slough their copies into their desk drawers, I would slip mine into my briefcase and take them home to look and read at leisure.

‘We don’t want our old ladies to get all worked up about them!’ Big Larry (Howard) would say with a knowing smile on his face. Up until Jeff (Anderson) joined us a year or so later, I was the only single guy in the department. At the time I didn’t give it much of a thought, except that I was single and didn’t have to worry about hiding them from my wife and kids. I must have felt a bit strange though, considering that growing up in India, my image of America came from Hollywood movies. A country that was free and liberal. That for us meant mostly the social freedom such as falling in love and getting married instead of arranged unions, kissing in public, making out and having sex before marriage. And even though bikinis hadn’t made big inroads yet, we found the American women in the fashion magazines and in the movies wearing revealing single piece swimsuits titillating.

I had only known American political history of the unilateral declaration of the independence, the Boston Tea Party and the Constitution proclaiming life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I had no idea of the puritan heritage that was weaved into the every thread of the American fabric. I had not yet had a serious relationship with an American woman. One could say that Playboy changed it all for me, but actually most of my ideas and the character have been molded by Germany and Europe, probably facilitated by Playboy. The conclusion I had come to at the time and after Gina’s outburst, that the problem with having to hide magazines and calendars had to do with only one thing: the nudity. And that majority of the people who have strong negative opinion of Playboy, had never actually read the magazine.

Something I would have understood in my early days in the West, because in India or in my home, we wouldn’t even remove all of our clothes even to take a shower. We soaped and sprinkled ourselves by lifting layers of clothing. It was when living in Munich that I began to see the absurdity of it all. The Johannclanzestrasse complex where I lived, we had coed sauna. And no one sat around in it with towels wrapped around. It made sense. The whole purpose of taking sauna is to let your pores open up and sweat out the toxins. The only way to reap full benefit of subjecting yourself to the extreme heat is to let your clothes and inhibitions drop. And the Europeans certainly don’t have any qualms about that. One of my coolest images of the sauna is that of the three generations of women together walking into the steam filled room – seven or eight year old grand daughter, her young mother, perhaps in her early thirties and the grandma in her sixties. A perfect study in evolution.

And living in Munich in itself was liberating in that sense. Our offices were downtown, not far from Englischer Garten, right in the heart of the city. When the spring came and soon as the temps climbed upwards of around 25 degrees Celsius (about 77 Fahrenheit), it wouldn’t be too unusual to see young office workers on their lunch breaks to cross their arms and lift their tops over their heads and their hands reaching backwards to undo their bra straps, becoming a part of the landscape dotted with the female anatomy surrendered to the warm sunrays. Even the nudist beach on Isar river that ran through the city, wasn’t far from the center. You would walk through some shrubbery and suddenly be standing in the middle of hundreds of people clustered au naturell, drinking beer, barbecuing, lounging just like here in Chicago at the North Street Beach. So when I returned to America, I experienced a big cultural shock, more so than the one I must have felt several years earlier when I had just gotten off the boat.

I had come back with the definite opinion and the attitude about the nudity. Though I have never been married, my partner Carolyn and I lived together for thirteen years and are proud parents of now thirty four year old daughter Anjuli. In our household, the nudity itself never was an issue. Not that we ran around in the nude all the time, but we never necessarily reached for a cover during our normal day-to-day living.

The display of the magazine I worked for and loved, was never a problem in our home. But in some people it could conjure up all sorts of weird ideas, as should be apparent from the comment by my dear friend Karen (Abbott) posted about my announced blog entry of this week: “That’s nothing. I worked for Playboy and, of course, had PB mags all over my living room tables and stuff. Some of the cute male phone techs or workman thought I was a lesbian. So what do you have that matches that? Pretty funny!”

Not exactly, mainly because of our genders. Why would anyone think of me a gay man because they found in my house magazines with naked women? In fact, once they found out I worked for Playboy, it lead to some wishful conversations, nothing more. But once I found myself in an eerie situation. A refrigerator technician was in my house fixing the compressor. He must have noticed copies of Playboy in my living room. As he was diligently fixing my fridge, I stood not too far from him making small talk.

‘Do you read them magazines lying in your living room?’ I didn’t notice it quite then, but in retrospect I remember the tone of his voice changing from friendly to critical.

‘I sure do. I work for them.’

‘You do?’ Now I sensed a certain amount of disdain in his voice, sounding almost menacing. The kind that comes from someone all too self-righteous: I have found the way, and you ain’t. You are doomed to go to hell kind. Earlier in the conversation he had mentioned that he was “born again”. That explained.

“Well, good for you!!!” He said. But his sarcasm and self-righteousness didn’t escape me. I was never as relieved to see a workman leave my house than when he did.

The time when I had gone home to Bombay to visit my family soon after I had started working for Playboy and had “smuggled” in several copies of the magazine, my parent’s bedroom seemed to have turned into a curious little gathering containing of male family and friends. Everyone practically waiting their turns to be able to page through one of the issues. It would of course begin with me showing them my name listed in the masthead, which certainly was a pride factor for everyone. But how could my name by itself compete with those beautiful and bare breasted fräulines? Once the mob thinned out, my Dad sat down and gave one or two issues serious look and then exited leaving us four brothers alone. My brothers obviously asked me questions. We joked about some figures and the poses. Soon they each took a copy or two with them to show to their friends, leaving on the living room table only one issue. Which neither I, nor anyone else felt necessary to remove from there.

Must have been a couple of hours later, when everyone had dispersed or taking their afternoon naps, I found my mother sitting on the floor by the table and slowly turning the pages of that lone issue. She couldn’t read English, let alone German, so she was obviously checking out the women. At the time I was thirty-four, so my mother was barely fifty, still in good shape and quite good looking, despite her having had nine of us. When younger, she was actually a very pretty woman. As she scanned those near perfect female bodies, I couldn’t help but wonder whether she were comparing her younger self with any of them. Wasn’t beyond the scope for a wife of the Rasa Manjari reading husband. Hearing me come and sit down, she didn’t flinch or shut the magazine close or slough it away. She took her time before slapping it shut.

‘So this is what you do?’

‘Yup!’ And I could see her smile slightly. Not looking at me, but just staring at the empty space in front of her.

On my next trip, I had brought along some Playboy calendars, that went like freshly roasted hot corn-on-the-cobs. And since then, my brother Suresh would remind me several times not to forget to bring along some calendars, because he had the Saheb – the income tax officer hooked on them and brought them along with a bottle of Royal Salute. I am sure his auditing went ever so smoothly!!

Fast forward several years to Chicago. Anjuli must have been two or three years old. She was just getting to be able to stand up if she found something within the reach of her hands to hold onto and prop herself up on her feet. Once I walked into the living room and found her standing behind the cast iron bar and methodically unloading one liquor bottle at a time from the shelf putting it down to the floor. Then at another time she propped herself up by my expensive turn table placed on a low table and yanked at the tone arm, destroying the diamond stylus – mightily upsetting her daddy. The next time, I found her standing at the edge of the coffee table, one of her hands resting on the table, and another on an open page of Playboy. Hearing my footsteps, she must have thought it was her mother coming, I see her poking her fingers at an open page,

Mama, Boobooj… Mama, Boobooj. She was pointing at the ample pair of breasts on a close-up of one of the women.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, March 22, 2013

LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOCA

When I look back and think of the whirlwind life I lived crossing from one country to another and hopping across oceans to different continents, it all seems a little surreal and things and the people I used to pack in within short few days. Here is the story of eleven days in the life of Haresh Shah. The days that were normal for me, but somehow they weren’t.

Tags Anjuli., Culture, Deven Mehta, Europe, Family, Germany, Gramdma, Haresh Shah, Karen Abbott, Munich, Nudity

Categories Uncategorized

WELCOME TO AMERICA

March 7, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Playboy – The Declaration Of Independence?

I have no hard luck story to tell about acquiring my Green Card. It was practically offered to me on a silver platter by the INS officer in Pittsburgh. I had only one more day to go before my H3 visa expires. So I dump my stuff at the YMCA and rush to the immigration office. I am sitting across from a young immigration officer, a black gentleman who is scanning my application for the extension.

‘Everything looks fine.’ He says and picks up my passport to stamp the extension. Instead he puts the passport back down on his desk top and asks;

‘Why don’t you apply for Green Card?’

‘What’s Green Card?’ I answer. If he is astonished at my naiveté, he doesn’t show. After all he could see in my application that I have landed in this country for the first time just a week earlier. Practically gotten off the boat – so to say.

‘Its kind of permanent visa that allows you to live and work in this country indefinitely.’

‘But I don’t intend to live and work here.’

‘Maybe so, but you’ve got nothing to lose! You’ve got two college degrees, you will have further training here. You more than qualify for the third preference. Nothing in it says you have to stay here any longer than you want to. This way, should you change your mind or an opportunity knocks on you door… I mean, as long as you are here.’

Third preference? Whatever that means. But the wheels in my mind are turning, though I’m not sure what kind of a trap I might be getting myself into. I hesitate.

‘What do I have to do to apply for Green Card?’

‘Fill in another form. Which is a bit longer.’

He now shuffles under his desk and pulls out a multi page form. I no longer remember what the questions were and how long it took me to fill it in. But somehow I manage and hand back the form to him. He asks me a couple of additional questions and fills in some more details.

‘Good. You’re all set. You’ll hear from us in a couple of months. Welcome to the United States.’

●●●

Not such a smooth sailing with my citizenship. Normally once you get your Green Card, there is a five year waiting period before you become eligible to apply for the citizenship. Of these five years, there is a requirement called physical presence in the country. I believe the total of two and a half years of which a continuous physical presence of six months is required preceding the filing of the citizenship application. This never even crossed my mind when Playboy hired me and immediately shipped me off to Munich. The only requirement I was aware of was that to maintain my legal residence status the Green Card afforded me, I must return to the United States at least once a year. That too could be waived by filing of the form N 470, the petition to preserve residence for naturalization purposes. This was discussed with the lawyers and taken care of during one of my earlier trips to Chicago. Once settled in Santa Barbara and having fulfilled the condition of six continuous months of physical presence, now eligible, I applied for the citizenship and was summoned by the INS to present myself at their district offices in downtown Los Angeles.

Its March 18, 1976 and I am driving south on Highway 101, with two of my Santa Barbara friends to be my witnesses on this one of the most important days of my life. I have studied hard and am prepared to answer whatever questions I am asked about the American History and its Constitution, rattle off the names of the presidents and all of the states in the Union. I am looking forward to raising my hand and pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes. I am taken into the office of an immigration officer for the customary interview that precedes the citizenship procedures. A bit nervous, but very excited. But as the interview progresses, I am absolutely deflated at being told that while working abroad, I had failed to return to the States once a year, and in lieu of that also failed to file N 470 to preserve my residency.

I swear that I had filed, nay, believed that Playboy hired attorney specializing in things immigration had done so on my behalf. Nope. He did, but then in whatever confusion it entailed, the application was withdrawn. So I stood there, dumbfounded. This meant, I would have to start all over again from scratch and wait out remaining four some years before I would become re-eligible to apply.

The INS officer in Los Angeles was sympathetic, even friendly: What’s the difference Mr. Shah? You’re back in the States and you would be re-eligible before you know it. He was absolutely right of course, that is: if I were one of those “normal” subjects who stayed put. In those days, green card holders were still considered “outsiders”, more so than today, with separate immigration lines at the International Airports and the visa requirements from other countries – they hardly if ever took into consideration your US legal residence status, even to cross borders of the neighboring Mexico and Canada. Besides, if you were a US citizen and worked abroad you could exclude up to the first $20M of your yearly earned income. (currently $91,500.-) from your tax obligations. Not so for the resident aliens in the possession of the Green Card. During the years I lived in Germany, I religiously filed and paid the US taxes and continued to contribute into my social security to keep in tact my legal resident status. But the most important for me was the freedom of movement, something that an American passport would immediately afford me. Something that had become an integral part of my life and the pre-requisite of my employment, as would be evidenced by my double bound passports piggy backing on each other in order to accommodate all the visas I required.

I would feel echoes of my predicament more than thirty years later, when President Obama’s chief of the staff, Rahm Emanuel returned to Chicago to run for its mayor. His opponents immediately made a big fuss over the residency and the physical presence requirements. Questioning, whether he was eligible to run for the office. A court case ensued. In the end, he was declared eligible to run and is now the mayor of Chicago. I wasn’t so lucky. . Nothing I could do.

But I am not the one to give up that easily. However rigid the laws, I believe that there is always an exception to every rule. So a little over a year later, I wrote a detailed two and a half page letter to the newly elected and new in the office President Jimmy Carter. Requesting that considering the unusual circumstances of my case, the usual physical presence requirement be waived and I be allowed to immediately re-apply for the citizenship. While writing to the President, I subconsciously must have thought that if anybody, he would be sympathetic also to the fact that I worked for Playboy. It was his Playboy Interview as then candidate Carter, in the magazine’s November 1976 issue, that caused an incredible amount of stir and a media blitz across the country. Not because anything he said of his politics, but what he said at the tail end of the interview, as if reflecting on something: I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I have committed adultery in my heart many times.

I doubt it if the President ever read my letter, but it certainly triggered a flurry of communication from Washington, DC to Los Angeles. The first response I received was from the INS commissioner in DC, followed by letters from Los Angeles, acting director, assistant district director and eventually the district director himself, granting me a face-to-face interview with the INS attorney to further discuss(my) naturalization, resulting into a 22 page transcript of our interview. In the end, I was still denied immediate citizenship in a 5 page summary signed by the district director.

As the officer in Los Angeles had said, the years flew by faster than I would have thought. In the meanwhile, Playboy has brought me to their corporate offices in Chicago. I am at the immigration office, sitting across from a young INS officer – once again all prepared to flaunt my knowledge of the American History and its Constitution. Its August 12, 1980. Waiting outside are Carolyn and my friend Denise, they are to be my witnesses, and crawling on their laps and all over the aisles is our barely 18 months old daughter Anjuli. They are waiting eagerly and anxiously for me to come out and are now getting antsy and beginning to feel nervous at why it was taking so long behind the closed doors, while other doors opened and closed every few minutes with soon to become citizens coming out with big smiles on their faces.

Playboy! That is why. My citizenship file quickly opened and closed, the examining officer thumps it on his desk. If not exactly in the same words and the sequence, this is how our citizenship interview unfolds:

‘So what is it like to work for Playboy?’

‘Oh, not much different than working for Time & Life’. I answer, alluding to the fact that I had worked for them equally as long.

‘No, I mean what is it that you really do for Playboy?’

‘Oh, I take care of the printing quality of our international editions. Travel a lot and also edit photos.’

‘Edit photos?’

‘Yes, you know, Playboy shoots thousands of photos for every pictorial and Playmates. I select the ones that appear in the international editions. The tastes and the censorship laws differ from country to country.’

‘You mean they are not the same with the text translated?’

‘No, they are individually tailored for the local readership.’

‘Oh. Have you ever met a Playmate? Been to the mansion? Met Hugh Hefner? What’s his daughter Christie like?

Now relaxed and no longer worried about flunking the test, I indulge the officer with long and detailed answers as if I were briefing one of my new international editors who had just come on board.

Glancing at his wristwatch, he picks up a piece of paper, signs it and hands it to me with: ‘I better let you go before the swearing in begins.’ We shake hands. I thank him and with his ‘Its been pleasure talking with you. Good luck to you!’ I slowly walk out of there. Everyone else have cleared out of the waiting hall except for Carolyn, Denise and Anjuli. They are relieved to see me smiling.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, March 15, 2013

PLAYBOY ON COFFEE TABLE

Not until four years after I had left Playboy, did it ever cross mind that my leaving issues of Playboy on my living room coffee table, along with half a dozen other magazines I subscribed to would be deemed offensive to some people. It has been as much a part of my life as anything else. An angry outburst from my girlfriend conjured up some funny stories about coffee table display of the magazine.

Tags Citizenship, Green Card, Haresh Shah, Immigration, Playboy Interview, President Jimmy Carter, Rahm Emanuel

Categories Uncategorized

I DANCED WITH DONNA SUMMER

February 28, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

A Fond Farewell From A Friend

On the afternoon of May 17, 2012 my friend Donna (Drapeau) and I were having our periodic lunch at our favorite via Carducci, and along with the catching up we normally did, for some reason, we found ourselves talking about how we often hesitate calling our older friends for the fear that he or she may no longer be around. Ominous? Because soon as I returned home and turned on my computer, the front page news item in that day’s New York Times was the death of Donna Summer.

If not for her untimely passing, I probably would not have thought of writing about her. It would have seemed superfluous name dropping. I had known her but for a very short period of time, when both of us lived in Munich and during the time she was briefly dating an acquaintance of mine – the Swiss psychiatrist Dieter Weeren. Just like most everyone else at the time, I met Donna in my own apartment in Munich. She became one of the group for a short while, going out for dinners and dancing and just hanging out with us at my apartment.

It had to be the summer of 1974 – Donna was doing Munich night club circuit and had to her credit one LP, Lady of the Night, which never made it outside of Europe and was mainly known in the Netherlands. When she gave me a copy of it, I had said to her jokingly: I should ask you to sign it, then I could say, I knew you when! To that she gave me a wistful look In the same vein I asked her whether she would ever consider posing for Playboy, to which she answered, also in jest, with this bod of mine? Gesturing and running her eyes down the entire frame of her skinny self. The album remained un-autographed. I still have it. Wishing that I she had autographed it. But never mind, what matters to me the most is: it was held and touched by her. And most importantly listened by me and our Munich friends over and over again. In spite of her phenomenal success that followed, the two songs that have remained with me are from that album. The title track of course, and the sad slow ballad, full of emptiness, which also appears in two versions on the flip side of her now landmark, love to love you baby album.

By then, she had been living in Munich for some time. Originally brought there by the German production of Hair, now making ends meet by performing at small clubs, which Munich had aplenty. I remember chauffeuring her around to and from a couple of those venues. Reminiscing of those days, my friend Michelle (Davis-Scharrnbeck) recalls: I can only remember meeting her once or twice with Britt (Walker) and the memories are also a bit fuzzy. Before I knew who she was, and met through you, I had seen her while she was working at a small boutique in Schwabing near the Kunst Akadamie. I have more of a lasting memory of her from those brief encounters. She seemed so fragile, lovable and “schutzbedürftig”, (needing of protection).

Bidding her time and waiting for her big break. Munich for her turned out to be being at the right place at the right time. In early to mid-seventies, Munich was where it was happening. During those years, it wouldn’t have been unusual to run into one of the Stones, especially Mick Jaeger and Keith Richards or Led Zeppelin and Elton John at one of the two “in” discotheques: Why Not? and P1. The places I too frequented, if not that often. They all came to record at the Musicland Studios owned by the record producer Giorgio Moroder, whose partner Pete Bellotte had produced Lady of the Night.

But the place and the night I most remember was the night when after dinner we all had ended up at another popular disco, Yellow Submarine, sunk deep into the Holiday Inn on Leopoldstrasse, where I got to dance with Donna. I am not a good dancer by any dint of imagination, but when a couple of drinks and the music moves me, I can’t just sit still. I would be one of the first ones to jump up and strut out to the dance floor. How well I dance, I don’t know. More like you could see my head bopping up and down or sideways like the head of a kathakali doll on a coiled spring, with the flashing psychedelic lights breaking up the bodies on the floor into sparkling slivers. I was absolutely no match for this soul lady so gracefully swaying in front of me, with her every move so naturally elegant and effortless. While awkwardly trying to imitate her it was awesome just to stand there and watch her groove to John McCrae’s Rock Your Baby, Barry White’s Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Baby or to the ear-splitting screaming of the pint-sized fireball, Susie Quatro’s The Wild One.

And when the sweat began to shine and drip down from everybody’s faces, the disc jockey switched to the obligatory slower, gentler tempo. Disappearing blazing strobes giving way to the subdued slowly twirling mirror-ball up above, spinning to the favorites of those days. Probably Daliah Lavi’s Wäre ich ein buch, the German version of Gordon Lightfoot’s If you could read my mind love, Roy Etzel’s instrumental Tränen lügen nicht, (tears don’t lie) or the ultimate snuggle song, Je t’aime performed by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, with Serge whispering sweet nothings and Jane responding with her orgasmic grunts, moans and the heavy breathing with such an urgency – the song that inspired Donna to come up with the idea for Love to love you baby. Who would have thought that in less than two years, Donna’s own sixteen minutes and fifty seconds extended orgasm would usurp and take many times over the very song she was dancing to?

Up close and with our arms wrapped around each other, as we danced, Donna’s tall and lanky frame towered over me. A whole head shorter than her, my face resting on her chest, listening to her heartbeat and taking in her perfume is the image of Donna that has remained with me after all these decades.

About a year later, some of us are invited to Donna’s concert at a small Munich auditorium to see “our Donna” perform at a venue bigger than the small cramped local dives. As we waited eagerly for the curtains to rise, and when the lights dimmed and the pin-drop silence fell, and the whole auditorium went pitch black, without even a sliver of light coming through – all we could hear is the curtains slowly sliding open and the click of them stopping in their tracks. Still nothing happens. Must have been just a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity while we wait with breathless anticipation. And then we hear something that sounds like a sob, a moan and a swish of sweet pain pierces the air, followed by a long drawn out Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, as if emerging from a deep and narrow cave, sobs and moans and grunts echoing and escaping in the atmosphere. And it continues:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I,

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Love To Love You Baby….

Reverberating over and over again and again through the stillness of the invisible auditorium. And then the halo of soft light outlines the figure that lies on the stage and soon we see it begin to stir and love to love you baby continues to echo and it rushes towards us like tidal waves. We see the figure turning slightly and seductively, uncoiling like a sleeping beauty waking up after a hundred years, rising languidly like a flicker of a dormant flame leaping up from a heap of ashes. And then suddenly she is up and standing with the music gaining tempo, microphone in her hands and we all gasp! At that very moment the a sublime transformation has taken place. The star is born in the front of our very bewildered eyes.

Here my memories are a bit fuzzy. I am sure we got to see her backstage, but then she was probably whisked away by her producers. I may have even seen her once or twice during the next couple of months, before I drove away in my Buick from Munich to meet the QE II in Cherbourg, France and sail away to New York. Driving cross-country, when I arrived in Chicago a month later and when one evening went browsing at the Ross Records on State and Rush, I stood face-to-face with Donna. Not her flesh and blood self, but bigger than the life size cutout of her staring down at me. Piled at her feet was a huge stack of LPs, with an image of Donna, wearing a sleeveless semi-transparent dress, her face turned slightly upward, her lips painted deep maroon and her eyes closed. It was November 15, 1975.

Then she was nowhere to be found. Until a year and a half later. During one of my sojourns in Mexico City I read in the local newspaper that Donna Summer was going to perform for several nights at the roof top bar Stellaris of the Hotel Fiesta Palace (now Fiesta Americana). I somehow was able to penetrate through her entourage and get through to her. It was a hurried conversation, but she invited me to her show that night, which I attended with Lina Quesada, a casual acquaintance. We got to talk after the show – sitting in her dressing room and watching her remove her makeup and get ready for whatever after-show activities the local promoters had planned. We reminisced of our Munich days and exchanged contact details, and promised to see each other when we both got back home. She had now moved to Los Angeles and I was living in Santa Barbara, a scant hundred miles (160 km) north along the coast. I am not sure if we ever talked again, even with her private number, it became almost impossible to cut through her publicist and whoever asking annoying questions. On that night of May 27, 1977, I wrote in my journal: Went to see Donna. She has changed – obviously, but was about the same as far as our friendship was concerned, except that it isn’t that easy to reach her.

Beyond that, I would read about her now and then. At times I would almost be tempted to get in touch with her, but just the thought of having to deal with the multiple barbed fences that surrounded her, I never tried to reach her again. Probably, the way I thought must have been – how big and how unreachable she had become. I could see her, but couldn’t touch. Must be why they are called stars. And yet, it was always a good feeling to know that her heart on which I had rested my head and heard it beating, was still beating somewhere in the world. I felt an incredible void on that afternoon of May 17, 2012 and do right now as I write this, to think that heart is no longer beating.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, May 8, 2013

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

When I first started this blog, I already had about a dozen entries fully written, if not edited. So far they have all followed some sort of logical sequence. Now I have about six of them mostly completed, I am not sure which one of them should go next. Well, it will be as much of a surprise to me as it would be to you. Stay tuned for my first SURPRISE entry.

Tags Donna Summer, Haresh Shah, Lady of the Night, Love to Love You Baby, Mexico City, Munich, Musicland, Singer

Categories Uncategorized

BY THE TIME I GET TO AMSTERDAM…

February 21, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Leaving On A Jet Plane

The captain has already announced for the crew to prepare for the departure. The aircraft door is already pulled in and slammed shut, when I notice one of the flight attendants picking up the receiver from the wall phone and in turn calling the cockpit. The plane comes to a halt and then very slowly inches back to meet the jetway. The door opens and in comes trotting a young woman, weighed down on her right by a fairly large and what seems like a heavy blue duffle bag. The flight attendant helps her with the bag. Looking frazzled and out of breath, she gives a feeling of being distraught and disoriented . She is tall and pretty, but looks a bit haggard with no visible makeup on her face and her unkempt, unwashed shoulder length blond locks. She has a chiseled angular face, a small but proportional nose and the dull grey eyes. She is dressed in a beat up pair of blue jeans and a long sleeved well fitting deep purple T-shirt, under black leather jacket. Her frame carries a shapely figure. She is being escorted to the empty seat next to mine. She throws her bulky purse under the seat in the front and plumps herself down next to me, hurriedly snapping together her seat belt.

‘Hi,’ I greet her. She gives me a cursory look without responding. Realizing she probably wants to be left alone, I pick up the copy of Holland Herald from the seat pocket in front of me. I hear a sigh of relief from her as she sinks into the long and wide first class seat.

Once up in the air, when the aircraft has reached the cruising altitude, she seems to let herself be relaxed and accepts a glass of champagne when the flight attendants come by with drinks and bowls of roasted almonds. I order a glass of dry Sherry. Then I sense her head turn side ways with her glass of champagne raised and hear her say, ‘prost.’

‘Magda.’ She offers her hand sideways.

‘Haresh.’ I introduce myself and we shake hands if a bit awkwardly. We clink our glasses and once again the silence prevails as we both retreat to our own private little world.

‘I just left my husband!’ I hear her say, addressing to no on in particular.

‘What happened?’ Hesitantly, I venture.

‘Nothing really that I can pinpoint. I just felt so cramped and smothered, so very suffocated that I couldn’t breath. So boxed in. I just had to escape before I snapped.’

●●●

From then on until we land in Amsterdam seven hours later, sprinkled in-between our drinks and meals, she tells me the story of her life. I have strung together here from whatever I remember of those conversations with as much accuracy as my memory affords me. What I couldn’t remember in details, I have taken the creative freedom to fill them in. Yet, the story itself remains pretty much the same as she shared it with me. Narrated in Magda’s voice, told in the first person to give it intimacy.

‘I was born and grew up in Alkmaar. Do you know the town in the north west of Holland? Its known for its famous cheese market.’

‘Actually, I do know Alkmaar quite well. That’s where my friend Jan Heemskerk lives.’ And I give her a quick rundown on my long and warm relationship with Holland and its people starting with my internship in the printing house Drukkerij Bosch in Utrecht, the family Tukker and my Dutch girlfriend Netty and years later me returning back to Holland to do Playboy.

‘Then maybe you will understand how I feel.’

‘I will try.’

‘Anyways, when I was old enough, I moved to Amsterdam and found myself a job, a small one bedroom apartment of my own and was living a life of a small town girl really in love with the big city of Amsterdam.

Pages: 1 2

Tags Alkmaar, Amsterdam. Breakups, Holland, Love Story, Relationships, Valentine's Day

Categories Uncategorized

IN THE NAME OF LOVE

February 14, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Every Picture Tells A Story

Its crispy cold December morning. The sun is shining bright outside and I am having my usual Sunday breakfast of Shahmolette – so christened by Jan Heemskerk – our friend and at the time editor-in-chief of Playboy’s Dutch edition. Because in addition to mushrooms and onions, my recipe includes finely chopped, insanely hot Thai peppers and cilantro. Also our Sunday morning feast included freshly baked bagels from Skokie’s famous and the best in the world, Bagels & Bialys, and their home made cream cheese with chives. Carolyn is futzing around the kitchen when the phone rings. I hear her making a perfunctory but pleasant conversation with the caller. Not knowing or caring to know who she might be talking to, I flip the pages of that week’s Time.

‘Sure! He’s right here. Just a minute.’ She covers the mouthpiece of the receiver and mouths ‘Lee Hall.’

Lee Hall? That’s my boss. What is he doing calling me at home on a Sunday morning? It sure couldn’t be good news. I take the receiver and lean against the credenza by the phone.

‘Mr. Shah!’ I hear him say. Once in a while he would call me that endearingly. But still…

‘Sorry to bother you at home on Sunday morning – but as you know I’ve just returned from my far east trip and thought I fill you in on Hong Kong before things get crazy tomorrow morning at the office.’

A sigh of relief! ‘Sure. You want me to come over?’ I offer.

‘No that’s not necessary. But I was wondering if not too inconvenient, I could stop by at your place and we can talk over a cup of delicious masala chai. You know, my body clock is upside down and I am wide awake. Would do me good to take a ride along the lake.’

About an hour or so later, his unpretentious burgundy Chevy Malibu pulls up in front of our house in the Chicago suburb of Evanston. His tall frame stoops down on our relatively low sofa. As we sip on our tea he gives me run down on his visit with our Japanese publishers Shueisha.

‘They love you down there,’ he tells me and also compliments me on the job well done.

‘That brings me to Hong Kong. We are about to conclude an agreement with Sally Aw of Sing Tao Newspaper Group. I would like you to take a trip there at your earliest convenience soon after the holiday rush is over, and help them set up and launch the Chinese edition.’

Hong Kong!!! In The World of Suzie Wong! He tells me in detail about the two principles. Sally Aw and the Playboy’s publisher designate, dynamic Albert Cheng. He shares with me what he has jotted in his notes and gives me Albert Cheng’s direct phone number and asks me I should call him in a day or two and establish initial contact. It all sounds so wonderful that I am absolutely thrilled. But at the same time, I sense in Lee a certain amount of discomfort. Telling me everything in minute detail, almost stretching it, giving me a feeling that there is something else hidden behind all of that nervous energy and that he is somehow having hard time leading up to it.

‘Well, I have taken up enough of your family time on this weekend morning. I better be going.’

‘Not at all, we are delighted to have you in our home.’ I say sincerely. Following that he says his goodbye to Carolyn and thanking her for tea and probably pats Anjuli on the head and prepares to leave.

‘There is something else…’

‘Yes?’

‘Come on out with me. There is something I want to show you. A bit confused and a bit curious, I follow him to his car. He opens the trunk to the car and lifts out of it what looks like a framed painting. He shows it to me. It’s a water color of an Indian temple perched atop a steep hill, with the stone stairs leading up. He rests is against the open door of the trunk and lifts up two more paintings. One that of an Indian village iron smith working on his anvil right outside of his thatched hut and another one, a bit modern-ish of a woman with an infant raised up above her head.

‘They are beautiful.’ I say. Thinking he is showing them to me because of their origin.

‘I acquired them when growing up in India. As you already know, my father was in diplomatic service in Delhi. I just love them. Makes me nostalgic about the times I spent in your beautiful country.’ The way he stares at them with such fondness demonstrates one of those rare emotional moments of his otherwise stoic demeanor.

Still not getting why he is showing them to me, I wait.

‘I would like to ask you for a big favor. If you can. If its alright with you, I would like to loan them to you.’ He must have noticed a confused look on my face.

‘See, the thing is; Sarah is decorating our new apartment and she absolutely hates them!’ I am speechless. I had of course known Sarah and liked her the way you like your boss’ pleasant spouse. But other than when thrown together during the required company social gatherings, our talks never went past perfunctory pleasantries. Neither was I personally that close to Lee. Our relationship was congenial and warm but mainly based on mutual professional respect. Other than his foray in India, we also shared a common thread of both of us having worked at Time Inc., where he was editor-in-chief of Life en Espanol. He worked out of the editorial offices in New York and I think also in Paris and Tokyo. I worked in Time’s production offices in Chicago. Our paths had never crossed during our Time & Life days. Of his personal life, I knew only bits and pieces. That he was married before and had three kids and had been divorced – must not have been that pleasant. From his accidental comments, his relationship with his kids too seemed more obligatory than warm. That he have had a serious bout with alcoholism, which too I was only somewhat aware of at the tail end. But the ones who knew him better, would tell me that it was real bad until after he married Sarah. All of them were in agreement that it was Sarah who had helped straighten him out. And that she loved him and had been good for him. That she was the reason Lee has been and was dry for some time now.

They had just moved from their matchbox of a highrise on the North Lake Shore Drive to a vintage lowrise on the short strip at the curve of the lake on Oak Street, from whose windows you could practically touch the water. An elegant place. Sarah’s own domain. And as much as Sarah had done for him, even having mostly given up drinking herself and whatever else it must have taken for her to steer Lee in the right direction – and as much as Lee seemed to love her, giving up those three paintings was the least he could do for the woman who meant so much to him.

All that scrolled through the screen of my head as I heard him continue: ‘I would be grateful if you would agree to take them. This way I would know that they are in good hands and I am sure that you and Caroline (sic) would appreciate and enjoy them. And whenever I feel homesick for them, I can always stop by and look at them.’

That was in 1985. I still have those paintings occupying very prominent spots in my apartment. Lee never looked back, never reclaimed them or visited to admire them. The sacrifice he made turned out to be worth his while, because Sarah and Lee remained happily married up until indeed death did them part. And now he is no longer among us. But when in 1997, I wrote about the incident in my book, Of Simultaneous Orgasms and Other Popular Myths: A Realistic Look at Relationships, as an example in the chapter titled, Little Things Make Big Differences, and sent him a copy of the book – he wrote back. Thank you for the dedication as well as the mention in the book (including the nicely disguised one about the Indian Paintings.)

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, February 29, 2013

BY THE TIME I GET TO AMSTERDAM…

Not every relationship problem is resolved by giving away paintings. There are times when the only solution is to go your own separate ways. Here is the story of a dramatic escape of someone not waiting until the death did them part.

Tags Albert Cheng, Carolyn, Hong Kong, Jan Heemskerk, Lee Hall, Love Story, Relationship, Valentine's Day

Categories Uncategorized

MY LATIN VALENTINE

February 7, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Eres Tu, Eres Tu, Asi, Asi, Eres Tu…

Premonition? Up until this very moment, I had never thought of it that way. But there are times when you can’t help but wonder and end up giving things the benefit of the doubt! During the trip I took from Chicago to Mexico City, I met with Francisco Sadurni, the local attorney hired by Playboy to help me get a long term multiple entry visa. Knowing that I didn’t have any plans for the evening, he tagged me along to a party at his uncle’s house – also an attorney.

From the outside, the house looked quite unpretentious. Ordinary even. But what I encountered behind the closed street-side gate was nothing like anything I had seen inside a private home. It opened into a vast courtyard running into a spacious living room. The centerpiece about which the people milled around was a real fountain, like in a small garden of a Shinto shrine. There were ornate columns buttressing the slanted skylight roof. The palm, cactus and other tropical plants gave you a feeling of being in a rain forest. Five piece strolling Mariachi band serenaded while the guests made trips back and forth between the individually canopied food and drink stands, set up like in a traditional Mexican mercado. Bottles of French champagne popped open and emptied every few minutes. Men were all dressed like lawyers in their dark pinstripe suites, which many of them probably were. There were scores of beautiful young women dressed so provocatively and yet elegantly in their clingingly skin tight outfits with revealing tops. I felt like Alex in the wonderland. What I had thought to be a party containing of about twenty people, turned out to be a hundred or more guests.

Francisco takes me by the hand and introduces me to many of the guests with his good humored effervescent Mexican manner with an abrazo here, a back slapping there.. As everywhere else, the name Playboy evokes an awe as people shake hands with me and make small talk.

Seeing that I am eyeing the approaching morena in her dark and shiny burgundy-on-burgundy striped satin jumpsuit, he stops her in her tracks.

‘Let me introduce you to my cousin Luis’ daughter Patricia.‘

We say hello. Her English is rudimentary at the best, and my Spanish is yet non-existent. When Francisco runs away to greet new arrivals, we are left alone standing in the middle of the hall – trying to communicate best as we can. She is more exotic than she can be called pretty. Her oily dark brown skin is darker than mine. Her jet black hair and big penetrating dark eyes and the complexion makes her stand apart from most of the light skinned women swirling around. Up close, I notice that cut out at the top of her tight fitting jumpsuit is a heart shaped slit, revealing the firm round breasts through her cleavage.

We try to talk for a while and then excusing herself she disappears in to the crowd and is gone for hours. Soon she fades from my awareness as I engage in conversation with other guests. It must have been closer to one in the morning. I guess I must have been having good time to still be around. Francisco is long gone and the crowd is now thinning out. And I see her again. Now looking a bit weary, she is sitting on one of the two facing love seats. The another one is occupied by an elderly couple. Intuitively, I walk up to her. She gestures me to sit down next to her.

‘Meet my parents, Luis and Rosario.’

‘Mucho gusto,’ I say.

And we talk. Rosario has lived in Los Angeles for a while, and she speaks good English. Mainly it is her and I talk while Luis sits there looking tired and bored. Rosario engages me and Patricia in pleasant talks. Asking me about myself, my job, even my family back in India. I could tell, the mother likes me. A definite kiss of death! Or maybe not.

Soon after, Rosario gets up with; ‘I better bring my husband home before he falls asleep’ Patricia too makes a move to depart.

‘Stay for a while, please!’ I plead. ‘I will bring you home in a cab.’

‘She doesn’t have to go with us. She has her own car,’ says her mother.

Patricia sticks around for an hour or longer. We somehow manage to communicate, mostly in mimes augmented by a few words in-between. Actually she ends up taking me back to my hotel in her little Volkswagen Bug. I manage to make a date with her for the weekend.

‘I am sorry but my younger sister Tere will have to come with me!’

I agree. I guess that’s how things are done in Mexico.

I shouldn’t have worried about the third wheel. She indeed shows up with her sister for the poolside buffet at Camino Real. Soon as we finish eating and have moved to the grassy patch to lounge around, Tere promptly excuses herself and is gone. She is spending the afternoon with her boyfriend!

●●●

During the next seven days that I spend in Mexico City, Patricia and I see each other several times. Sneaking out for quick lunches, meet for dinners. Growing closer and feeling more and more emotionally linked at every encounter. In absence of being able to verbally communicate fluently, we complement our body language with passing back and forth of my Spanish-English pocket dictionary. She fills it in with some English words that she remembers from what she must have learned in school. I use the few Spanish words I pick up everyday from here and there. But most of our growing infatuation with each other can easily be summed up from the night before I return back to Santa Barbara. We sit together huddled on a bench seat of the most elegant and romantic restaurant, Le Fouquet’s de Paris, nestled inside the vast expanse of my hotel.

Mostly we hold hands and communicate the intensity of our feelings by varying the pressure of our squeezes. We gaze into each others eyes and catch that certain ray of the flickering candlelight from her eyes to mine and mine to hers. Between the courses, while waiting for the next, which are paced just right, we would scoot – or more like cuddle closer – as if it were possible to be any nearer.

Me whispering: You’re so beautiful, almost wanting to break into Joe Cocker rendition of you’re so beautiful, to me. Her looking back, meeting my gaze and whispering back, probably translating eres guapo, into “you’re a beautiful boy.”

Sitting there with this exotic beauty, only twenty two years old, working as an executive secretary, it amazes me to think that how sophisticated she is in the way she is dressed, and in her knowledge of good wines and the food. And how refined is her manners. I am specially touched by the way she takes a piece of bread, butters it daintily and hands it to me so tenderly, like a loving little mother. And then watching me eating it as tenderly, before picking up a piece for herself.

As the evening wears and we sit there with the glasses warmed over the open flame of the cognac warmer, she takes a sip, then puts down the glass. Takes my hand into hers. We are facing each other sideways. I see her lips flutter.

‘I love you.’ She whispers.

‘I love you.’ I whisper back.

By the time I escort her to her little VW Bug, the hotel garage is deserted save for a few cars strewn here and there. I am overwhelmed with emotions and the desire so deep and fervent that I don’t want to let her go. We stand by her car and hold each other close. There are kisses and then she gently peels herself away.

‘My father will kill me.’ Those words emerge slowly. Somehow she has managed to utter an entire English sentence.

I pull her to me one more time. My arms resting on her shoulders, I scoop her face into my hands. I don’t want to let her go. ‘This is a crazy question to ask, but would you be my girlfriend?’ It just rolls out of my mouth.

Startled, she steps back. Her eyes fixed on mine, I hear her utter, ever so softly: ‘Si.’

●●●

Next morning she picks me up and brings me to Benito Juarez International Airport. We have coffee up in the terrace café. We are both tired, sleepy even. We don’t say much but hold hands across the table. My hand sandwiched between hers.

‘I’ll miss you.’ She says.

‘I’ll miss you.’ I repeat.

‘I’ll wait for you. And…’ she whispers something that I don’t quite grasp at first but then understand as, ‘And be good!’

‘I am always good!’ I answer playfully!

‘Be good.’ She repeats. ‘Or…’ And I see her slide the blade of her hand across her neck.

‘Ouch!’

I let out a nervous laugh. I could almost feel the sharp knife slashing through my throat and see the blood dripping. And think: she is a Latin Lover alright. But no importa. I haven’t felt this good and this close to anyone in a long time. I reach across the table and put my other hand on the top of our already layered hands, like in a Pyramid.

They announce my flight. We shuffle and I sling my carry on bag over my shoulder. As we walk down the stairs, we stop on the landing. I put down my carry-on and take her in my arms. ‘But the people!’ Her mild protest is lost in our sealed lips. And we continue our descent. She takes my hand in hers, gives it a slight squeeze and I hear her say, ‘I feel triste.’ The sadness has dawned upon me as well. We pause at the bottom of the stairs, and then I hurry through to the immigration desk. When I look back, she is gone. I imagine her blurry eyes. I want to run back.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, February 15, 2013

IN THE NAME OF LOVE

It’s easy to fall in love. But it takes some doing to sustain a relationship. Most of the time it’s only little things that make big differences. To wrap up my Valentine Month, I tell the story of a friend who chooses to sustain his love with his wife than to hold on to something that was emotionally so dear and near to him.

Tags Camino Real, Fracisco Sadurni, Love Story, Mexico, Patricia Tijerina, Relationships, Valentine's Day

Categories Uncategorized

MEXICAN CONSUL AND MATTERS OF THE HEART

January 31, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Corazon de Melon, de Melon, de Melon….

Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles had more of a feeling of a traveling agency then that of a diplomatic mission. Of the posters on display there with enticing graphics of the country’s top tourist destinations, the one that I remember the most, said in the large type face: Mexico. So Close And Yet So Different. On my second visit, I said to myself, they might as well add: And So Outrageously Difficult To Get Into. So close in fact, that you can get in your car, have a nice lunch in Tijuana and come back on the same day. Or if you lived in the border town of San Ysidro, south of San Diego, you can simply walk across the border, pick up some cheap Mexican grocery and medication, come back and go as often as you want. And from the places farther away, like Chicago, you can hop the plane and on impulse take off for Puerto Vallarta for a weekend.

Not so simple if you were a holder of passport from one of the “third world” countries. Up until 1980, I traveled with my Indian passport. This meant, I needed a visa to go anywhere beyond the defined borders and the time frame. Several years earlier, when I took my first ever trip from Chicago to Buffalo, New York, George, the young account executive at the printing plant fixed me up with a friend of his girlfriend and we three went out on the town on a double date. During the course of the evening, I got to see yet another wonder of the world – the Niagara Falls. So breath-taking. ‘Its even better from the other side,’ they told me. But I wasn’t allowed to cross the border into Canada without a visa, so we remained where we were. While living in Chicago, I used to often joke about how some day I might even need a visa to go see Wisconsin Dells! You wouldn’t think getting one for Mexico would be all that difficult. Especially considering that I was a legal resident of the United States and the possessor of the mighty green card. No importa. It was my Indian passport that had the consuls in Los Angeles and Chicago humiliate me before carrying out their bureaucratic function of issuing me a visa.

But I will forgive them their nasty petty-powered bureaucracy, because say what you will about the Mexican bureaucracy, and them being universally defined as los hombres de mañana and the people difficult to do business with. But when it comes to their hospitality, warmth and the most humane welcoming attitude of mi casa es su casa, they are the tops. Especially when it comes to the matters of the heart, they melt like marshmallow on a twig over camp fire.

After my assignment ended in Munich, I returned to the States and at the time was living in Santa Barbara, California. When Playboy called me back, it was first to work for them as a freelancer, which would still allow me to continue living in Santa Barbara and travel to Mexico City as needed. Perhaps once or twice a month. Hop, skip and jump from the little shed of the SB airport. But I knew that before booking my flight, I had to first take a trip to Los Angeles and visit the Mexican Consulate and acquire a visa. Actually it was fun driving south on the most picturesque highway 101 and spending a pleasant day there, accompanied by my French Canadian friend Claude and her Swedish boyfriend, Gunnar. We checked in with the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles promptly as it opened. Put in my application through, paid the fee of 200 Mexican pesos (about US$ 9.-) and ventured out to stroll the neighborhood of Olvera Street and the plaza. Had late breakfast and later an authentic Mexican lunch that went beyond tacos and enchiladas and flautas. Picked up the visa and drove back with the Pacific roaring on our left and the San Ynez Mountain Range on our right.

What was supposed to be just a short introductory trip, ended up being a stay that stretched to three full weeks. Wasn’t too hard to take, basking in the lap of luxury at Camino Real, which was to become my home away from home and because of its bright yellow façade with the magenta trimming, came to be known among my Mexican associates as tu casa amarilla.

There was enough work to keep me occupied. And our partners Ricardo Ampudia and Carlos Civita took care of me through the days with sumptuous meals. Lunches that started at two in the afternoon and lasted until six. Back to office for two to three hours, and then it would be dinner time around ten. During those three weeks I was introduced to some of Mexico City’s most alluring places. Playing tourist over the weekends, I had absolutely fallen in love with the smells and the sounds of Mexico City. Must have been the pollution, the waves of black heads bopping, the noise and the perpetual chaos on the streets that reminded me of home, filling me with the nostalgia of the similar landscape of the street life of Bombay.

Unlike my residence permit problems in Germany when Playboy had shipped me off to Munich, this time around they were aware of the fact that for me to take frequent trips to Mexico, I would require a long-term multiple entry visa. So in-between my first trip in January 1977 and the second in February, they had gone ahead and hired a young attorney in Mexico City to immediately start the visa proceedings. Attorney or not, these things take time. In Los Angeles, they had completely ignored my request for the multiple entry visa. This meant, I would need one for every trip I took to south of the border.

My first stay lasted from January 11 through January 30^th. I was required to be back in Mexico in about ten days. A week later, Playboy asked me to first come to the head offices in Chicago. From there I would continue on to Mexico City. I needed to get another visa.

I’ll spare you the humiliation of the grilling I was subjected to when I presented myself to the Mexican Consulate in Chicago. In nutshell they were suspicious of the motive of me going back to their country so soon. When asked, I answered:

‘Because I have fallen in love with your beautiful country and would like to explore it more.’

The consul Jose Antonio Arias gives me a skeptical look, yeah right! He is probably looking for a justification to be able to deny me the visa. That would mean, I would be temporarily out of the job. The prospect would have absolutely devastated me. But before the dismay takes over and shows on my face, something outrageous crosses my mind. Something that happens only once in a blue moon and only on impulse. I couldn’t possibly have thought it up. I meet the counsel’s gaze.

‘Yes, you’re right.’ I agree with him, even though he hasn’t said anything to my having fallen in love with his country. ‘Of course I have fallen in love with your beautiful country. But the truth is: during my three weeks stay there, I met this most gorgeous woman in my life. And I think we are in love.’

Still looking skeptical, his face softens.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Maria Elena…Maria Elena Luna.’ The woman that comes instantly to my mind is the typesetter at the Mexican edition. A petite blonde – very pretty. I don’t know how much that convinces him, but what can be more compelling than un hombre enamorado? He lowers his pointed gaze. Picks up my passport and flips through to the blank page facing my earlier visa.

‘Entonces, bueno.’

The passport with the visa stamped inside, I rush to the airport. The American Airlines’ waiting area is mobbed. Still feeling drained and humiliated of the experience, I am walking around in bit of a haze, completely oblivious to a young man approaching me.

‘Aren’t you Haresh Shah?’

He looks familiar, but I can’t place him right away.

‘Lalo. Lalo Guerro. From Time?’ Of course. The Mexican young man. He is now working for American Airlines as their on-site PR agent. I tell him about my job with Playboy and about just having started a Mexican edition of the magazine.

‘Give me your boarding card!’ he practically snatches it away from my hand. Walks over to the check-in counter, walks back and hands me another boarding card. ‘I’ve got to run to the Dallas flight. Have a nice trip.’ And he disappears in the crowd, as suddenly as he had appeared. He has upgraded me to First Class.

I don’t even like champagne, but don’t turn it down when the flight attendant hands me a flute with the bubbles hurriedly rushing up. As I sip on the dry and crisp, chilled-to-perfection glass of Moët et Chandon, I feel my humiliation and frustrations dissolving like an Alka Seltzer in a glass of water.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, February 8, 2013

MY LATIN VALENTINE

Premonition? I certainly don’t believe in such nonsense! But then there are times when you can’t help but give such a notion the benefit of the doubt. Because on my trip after the Chicago visa debacle, I meet an exotic morena at a party and we promptly fall in love.

Tags Carlos Civita, Lalo Guerro, Mexico, Ricardo Ampudia, Visa Problems

Categories Uncategorized

FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

January 24, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

My Close Encounter With The (Angry) Master of Magical Realism

It’s October 29, 1982. The master of magical realism – Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez has just won the Nobel Prize. Playboy magazine has in its inventory a recently concluded interview with him, conducted by the veteran journalist, Claudia Dreifus. The interview has been transcribed from hours and hours of time Ms. Dreifus spent talking with García Márquez in his Paris apartment. It has been edited and ready to go – almost. Playboy has promised García Márquez that it would show him the edited version, mainly to check facts and to point out inaccuracies. As a matter of policy and editorial integrity, the magazine does not give the interview subjects right of approval. Normally, Playboy closes most of its issues three to four months in advance. García Márquez would make the trip to Stockholm in December to accept the Prize. The interview must appear as close to the Nobel ceremony as possible. This means, the scheduled February interview had to be pulled and be replaced by García Márquez interview. The problem is; the elusive Nobel laureate is nowhere to be found. Several frenetic phone calls from Playboy editors to his house in Mexico City are answered again and again by his maid. He has gone away on a month long vacation, leaving behind strict instructions that he didn’t wish to be reached.

The executive editor G. Barry Golson has drafted me to hand carry the interview to Mexico and do whatever was necessary in trying to track down the suddenly disappeared author and get his seal of approval. With then editor of Playboy’s Mexican edition, Miguel Arana and I drive over to García Márquez’s home in the ritzy southern suburb of the city. I encounter the maid face-to-face. She is polite, but firm in telling us that she couldn’t indulge to us where we could find the master of the house. After initial conversation, I tell her that I was going to park myself right outside the house in the fashion of passive resistance, until she could tell me his whereabouts. She just couldn’t. But she promises to mention to García Márquez of our being camped out at the front gate of his house, when and if he calls in. An hour or so later, she hands me a piece of paper. Written on it is a phone number of Hotel El Quijote in San Luis Potosi, a dusty town in north-central Mexico, some 225 miles out of Mexico City, reachable only through mostly unpaved country roads. After all day of calling the hotel and leaving messages that are never answered, I finally hear his voice on the other side of the line. He sounds congenial but tired. He agrees to meet with me the next afternoon at his hotel in San Luis Potosi. I leave very early in the morning to make it in time for our rendezvous.

He is not in his room. Not in the hotel restaurant or the lobby bar either. I patiently pace the hotel property. I circle the large swimming pool and admire his shiny BMW parked outside his room. Eventually, I plunk myself down in the lobby bar overlooking the entrance to the hotel. I sit there in excess of four hours, observing every single person entering and leaving the lobby — drowning beer after beer and munching on tortilla chips and salsa. I don’t even once wonder why we had to go through what I am going through, just so our interview subject can look at the transcript. I think to myself that’s one of the many reasons why Playboy Interview and its format and depth have become ultimate yardstick against which all the journalistic efforts in the question and answer format are measured.

●●●

It is getting to be late. I am beginning to lose my patience. I am exhausted and have consumed all the beer I could manage that day. And I am absolutely famished! I am trying to decide whether I should order something to eat when I suddenly notice short and stocky frame of Garbriel García Márquez entering the lobby. With him is a young lady I perceive to be in her mid-thirties, who I find out later is Marilise Simons, the Mexican correspondent to The New York Times. I rush to greet him. He apologizes for making me wait so long, while Marilise comes to his aid with “it was all my fault. My car broke down on the way over.” Doesn’t matter. Like an answered prayer, Gabriel García Márquez is standing in front of me face-to-face. He asks me and Marilise to accompany him to his suite. The front room is littered with the magazines, newspapers and loose manuscript pages piled next to a manual typewriter perched atop a cabinet in vertical position. He is in San Luis Potosi to help with the screenplay of his book Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother, being filmed there with Greek actress Irene Papas in the leading role. And also following him on the location is the French television crew, making a documentary of his life. Now at last he has a moment to pause and catch a breath.

As the three of us settle around the large round table in the middle of the room, he still looks harried and exhausted. I hand him the galley. The cover letter from Barry states that we needed to have his comments within three days and that he should restrict his changes to the facts and the possible distortion in translation. As he reads on, I see the congenial expressions of his face slowly turning, first into disgust and then into visible anger.

“I am furious at Playboy.” He is livid as he hurls the pages in his hands on the table with a loud thud. “I feel betrayed because Claudia (Dreifus) had promised that I would have the right to make any changes in the interview before its publication. And that I would be given enough time to be able to thoroughly go through it.” He continues on, telling me that the interview was concluded several months ago, why couldn’t they have sent him the typescript in the interim? In fact, he was given to understand that it was postponed indefinitely. “ Now just because I have won the Nobel Prize, Playboy suddenly wants to have it yesterday! Had I not won the Nobel, they probably would have killed it entirely.”

I am not quite prepared for his emotional outburst and the Latin temper. I am one of his biggest fans, I tell him, and he realizes that it comes from the heart. I tell him that the Nobel or not, he is one of the most important literary figures of our time. If Playboy thought any lesser of him, they wouldn’t have sent a personal emissary to hand carry it to him and to show him our goodwill. And I ask him, were he still reporting for El Tiempo or El Espectador, would he not want to run the interview with himself right now?

“But I don’t need any more publicity!” He says lamely. Still looking quite angry.

“Sr, García Márquez, if I may. This interview is not meant to publicize you. But to give your readers a deeper understanding of your ideas and your philosophy. As you know, Playboy has published many of your fictions. I have read all of them and have also read your books. I read our interview with you on my flight over here, and I must say, as one of your avid fans, it has enlightened me enormously of my understanding of you as a man and of your work, more than ever before. And I am sure, so would your readers around the world.”

I realize I am pontificating, but he could sense that I am being honest. It hits home and seems to calm him down somewhat. He promises to get back to us within the requested time frame of three days. Before I leave, he switches to a conciliatory tone in that we talk about insignificant things for a few minutes and then about the Indian Nobel winner, the poet Rabindranath Tagore. He then apologizes profusely for taking it all out on me, but then concludes with pragmatic “that’s what happens to the messengers!”

On my way over to see him, I had wanted to ask some additional questions to update the interview, but the way things turned out, it just wasn’t in the cards. At the very last minute all I could think of asking him was something I had read in that week’s Time magazine, in which he had said that to accept his award in Stockholm, he intends to wear the traditional Mexican guayabera, a light weight shirt worn outside the trousers. When Time asked, his answer: “To avoid putting on a tuxedo, I’ll stand the cold.” When I referred to it and asked him; why? His answer to me is: “Superstition.” More like it. Something a character of magical realism would say.

Before heading back to Mexico City, I decide to put something in my stomach. All I had all day long was huevos rancheros. I sit down, order another beer and some enchiladas verde and mull over my forty-five some minutes with the man who had just won the most prestigious literary prize in the world. His wrath has me unsettled for a while. But then I think of the interviewer Peter Ross Range and how CNN boss Ted Turner had turned violent during their interview, grabbing his tape recorder and smashing it on the aisle of the first class cabin of an airliner and how he had then snatched his camera bag and practically destroyed the tapes containing their conversation. How the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci would throw temper tantrums at her interviewer Robert Scheer when he turned the tables on her, confronting Fallaci with the questions she didn’t like. And how Alex Haley, the author of Roots endured the overt racism while the “führer” of the American Nazi party, George Lincoln Rockwell, outlined to him his intentions to ship “niggers” back to Africa.

At least, I had the pleasure of having encountered face-to-face one of my most favorite writers, and be able to tell him how much I admired his work. On my way over from Chicago, I had picked up brand new copies of two of his books, recently published in their quality paperback editions — the ones of which he had not yet even gotten author’s copies.

My hunger contained and the euphoric feeling of having mission accomplished, I just couldn’t make myself to get back to the car and head back to Mexico City. With my heart fluttering, I slowly walk back to his room. He himself answers the knock on his door.

“I am sorry, to bother you again, I almost feel like a teenager, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave without asking you to autograph these books for me.” By now he looks like a different person. The interview transcript in form of the galley proofs is spread out all over the table. “Look, I am already working for Playboy,” he says with a wry smile pointing at the strewn pages. Marilise sitting behind his back smiles and flashes the thumb up at me. He sits down and writes in first of the two books I have brought: No One Writes to Colonel, Para Haresh, de su colerico amigo, Gabriel ’82 and in the second: Leaf Storm, he draws an olive branch on the title page inside and writes, “Para Haresh, con un lomo de olivos, and signs it.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, February 1, 2013

MEXICAN CONSUL AND MATTERS OF THE HEART

Up until 1980, I traveled with my Indian passport, with which I couldn’t even cross the border to Canada or to Mexico without having a valid visa, issued by the respective country’s diplomatic mission. Sometimes, an outrageously humiliating experience. How I overcame one of the hurdles by baring my heart to the Consul General:).

Tags Barry Golson, Claudia Dreifus, Gabriel García Márquez, Irene Papas, Marilise Simons, Mexico, Miguel Arana, Nobel Prize

Categories Uncategorized

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

January 17, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Without Makeup And With Their Clothes On

Even though I would go on to produce and organize a whole bunch of Playmates and other pictorials for Playboy’s International Editions, of the women I’ve had privilege to work with, the two that have remained in my memory and my thoughts are the first ones from Germany, Barbara Corser and Dagmar Puttkammer. I got to know both of them up front and close and we were able to strike up a certain personal rapport that went beyond the usual superfluous bonding that results at being thrown together while working on a project.

Dagmar appeared on Playboy Germany’s March 1975 cover with her upside down naked image as seen through the ground glass at back of the camera. Shot by Tassilo Trost, another one of Germany’s illustrious photographers. The cover blurb said: Klar steh ich kopf, ich bin der erste Playmate. (Of course I am standing on my head, I am the first Playmate.) Like the editors of the German edition, I too was in awe of what it took to produce a Playboy’s Playmate. They wrote in Unter Uns – the German version of Playbill – that to fill those ten pages, it took three photographers, 80 color and 20 black and white films, 36 exposures each, and 100 large format single plates – in all 3700 photos. This is not counting about a dozen rolls I used for the test shoot. A minor production by the standards of the mother edition in the U.S.

As much as I would have loved for Barbara to have become the first German Playmate, by then I was equally as happy for Dagmar. Because in a different sort of way, she too was my very first experience in what it took to produce a centerfold, and in the process getting to know the young woman behind all that glamour.

‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ I heard Susi say, sneaking up close to me from behind. ‘When I look at her, I can see why there are women who fall in love with other women.’ I still remember that momentary wishful look on her face. At the time, Dagmar was only nineteen – at the age when she was no longer an innocent little girl, nor was she a fully grown woman. Unlike David Hamilton’s mist covered budding waifs, resplendent with the early morning dew and dreaming sleeping beauties, Dagmar was wide awake, bathed in the bright daylight, throbbing with full of life and yet vulnerable enough to wilt away at a mere touch, like – lajamni – the shy one, an Indian flower that in its full bloom promptly closes its petals at a slightest touch.

For the late September, it was particularly a warm day and we were shooting in the living room of an exclusive Munich home with a large secluded courtyard in rear of the house. During a short break, Dagmar had just casually wandered into the yard, sloughing off the bathrobe offered her by the assistant. She twirled around as if showering under the sunrays, soaking them in, like a naked angel gliding in the paradise. Totally unaware of Susi and I standing by the porch door, absolutely infatuated by her unadulterated beauty. While Pompeo and his assistant were oblivious to her being gone, busy tinkering with the camera and the light settings. When later asked by an editor, how did it feel to be photographed in the nude for the first time? Her answer: “Na, und? Zu Hause laufe ich doch auch immer was ohne rum” (And so? At home I always run around without anything on.)

Returning to the set, she reverted to her very self-conscious, shy and almost awkward demeanor and resumed her stiff pose, leaning on a life size sculpture of a black pit bull. Even though we realized that she was placed in what was very uncomfortable posture, at that moment we were all trying to still make it work. The real reason being; we only had a limited time. Pompeo had to leave for Italy the next day to resume his project there. Susi and I wanted to have our centerfold done before he departed. The end result was not satisfactory at all. With everything in place on the set, the next day we tried with a local photographer. It got even worse. In the end, Freddy and Rainer decided to go with the best of what Pompeo had shot. We kept Dagmar in Munich for some days longer to shoot the cover and do some additional photos.

Oktoberfest had just began that weekend and the hotels all over Munich were overbooked. Penta couldn’t extend Dagmar’s stay. Susi asked me if she could stay with me, so it was Chez Shah for remaining of her stay in Munich. One of those evenings, Dagmar and I sat at a quiet table in my favorite Hungarian restaurant, Piroschka Csarda. We whisper talked in that dimly lit elegantly decorated place filled with the pleasant smells of paprika flavored dishes and the serenading of the strolling musicians.

Introvert and reticent up until then, she began to relax. Words began to flow out of her mouth – slowly and softly. As I looked at her from across the table, I couldn’t help but notice something sad hidden behind her shy and timid demeanor. The candle light flickering over her youthful luminous face had me mesmerized as I listened to her talk. What began to unfold that night and during rest of the weekend, was a story of her troubled young life.

Following what must have been a tortuous divorce of her parents, Dagmar and her three brothers were placed into orphanage, which is where the siblings spent their formative years. Her disdain for her birth mother bordered on hate, for feeding them with all sorts of lies about their father. Finally, when their father remarried, he got the custody of the kids. Soon after, he died of a heart attack. Through the subdued light and the low key ambience of the restaurant, I saw gleaming tears rolling down her eyes. As I put my hand over hers to comfort her, I couldn’t help but think of Marilyn Monroe, who too grew up in foster homes and by default became Playboy’s first Playmate, then called Sweetheart of the Month.

Prior to that, I would have thought Dagmar to be chasing rainbow through her appearance in Playboy. Quite the contrary. She had no such ambitions. At the time, she was a full time art and design student at Kölnner Fachhochschule für Kunst und Design, pursuing its teaching program. And if not for the freelance photographer Jacques Alexandre, hovering around her and having talked her into doing some “romantic photos”, she would never have thought of posing for anything, let alone becoming Playboy Germany’s first Playmate. Of which, she says with a cryptic smile on her face: is actually very funny – schon sehr lustig. Farthest from her mind was a career in modeling or otherwise becoming a part of the glamour scene, which at the time in Germany was Munich. She was flattered that we thought her to be beautiful, and since for her the nudity was not an issue, why not? The DM 4000.- honorar she would receive was certainly a draw – for it would help pay for her school. What she wanted of life was to someday get married, most probably to her boyfriend Leo – a law student, and to live in a big vintage apartment in which to raise her children.

Not so Barbara. Even though in long term she too aspired to be a mother of “many kids”, at that stage in her life she did want to indulge in whatever came her way, making the best of having become a Playmate and use it as the stepping stone. To Dagmar’s introvert passive self, Barbara was dynamic and a “go getter”.

From that trip to Chicago, Barbara continued on to California, married Scott and settled in San Clemente. Thus depriving Playboy of its promotional plans. But from there, she went on to become a professional model and the only Playmate I know of to have appeared as centerfolds also in Oui and Penthouse. For the latter, she did extensive promotion during her reign as its Pet of the Month, and beyond, .

Dagmar too didn’t do any promotion. Playboy Germany had made all sorts of plans for her. She was to appear and interviewed on TV, was going to be used for tons of promotional purposes, probably travel through the country and what not! But soon as she left Munich, she had just plain disappeared from the radar. Though she did make sort of a splash in the press for being the first ever German Playmate, upon her return to Wuppertal, she became pregnant and by the time her issue hit stands in March, she was half way towards becoming a mother. I think it was around July that I received a card from her announcing the birth of her son Tristan. I am sure we must have spoken over the phone and exchanged a couple of letters before I sailed back to the States in September. After that we lost touch with each other.

Barbara and I have somehow managed to stay in touch, if sporadically. The life she has lead has been eventful and exciting, to say the least. But that’s her story to tell – not mine. Except that she didn’t go on to have “many kids” – but is the proud mother of a grown up son, Klaus.

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, January 21, 2013

FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

Tenth Anniversary Special

Next Friday marks my 10^th blog post, a sort of anniversary for Playboy Stories. To celebrate, I am pleased to share with you a slightly longer entry – my encounter with the Nobel Prize winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude. One of the most memorable experience of my Playboy days. A classic example of why Playboy Interviews have become the standard against all other interviews are measured.

Tags Barbara Corser, Dagman Puttkammer, Germany, Jacques Alexandre, Playmates, Tassilo Trost

Categories Uncategorized

THE COMPANY POLICY

January 10, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

How Did I Get Myself Suckered Into Having A Television?

When I say to people that I have never owned a television in my whole life, their first reaction is that of a disbelief. The second, if they are sitting in my living room, their heads swivel around. ‘Uhm, you’re right, there is no TV!’ Big revelation!! They are confused because my living area is configured differently. The couch and the love seat are pulled forward away from the walls and nearer to the fireplace, with a large rectangle cocktail table in the bullpen. The corner where there should have been a huge flat screen, is the corner of the wall with paintings on the either walls. And there is empty galley space between the back of the couch and the sliding door opening on to the Juliette balcony. The very first week when I had moved in and my couch was just delivered, I asked my neighbor Paul’s opinion about what did he think of the placements of them in an L shape.

‘Let me call my wife, she is better at these things.’

Melissa not as much survey as points in the opposite corner. ‘Let’s see. Well, that corner of the walls would be best for your flat screen television. So starting with that…’ My friend Hurley had the flat screen on the wall space above the fireplace, where I had planned to hang my Radha-Krishna painting by an anonymous Indian folk artist.

‘Wrong!’ I butt-in both times. ‘No television!’

Don’t ask me why. Not even when I had first left India back in 1964 and found myself sitting for the first time in my life in front of a television set in the student common room in London, my extent of watching tele contained of two regular shows a week: an episode of Perry Mason series, probably because at the time in India, the boys my age were all into reading Earle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie and Ellery Quinn mysteries. It didn’t hurt that uncle Tulsi’s company was the sole distributor of the American Pocket Books, which I was allowed to pluck from the revolving display in his showroom.
Of all the characters in them, Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake remained fresh in my memory. So it was natural that I would be attracted to its visual version. And I always loved music and never missed India’s most popular countdown, Binaca Geetmala every Wednesday night on Radio Ceylon, moderated by silky smooth voice of Ameen Sayani. Another natural draw for me was England’s weekly hit parade, Top of the Pops. I still remember Petula Clark belting out Downtown and bare feet Sandy Shaw performing her Eurovision hit Puppet on a string. And I watched occasional current affair broadcasts like Harold Wilson’s Labor Party winning the election, Winston Churchill’s funeral and Queen Elizabeth’s opening of the parliament parade.

When I was brought back years later to live and work for Playboy in Chicago, and my very pregnant partner Carolyn and I merged our combined household possessions in our newly acquired condo in Hyde Park, she too came without what was then often referred to as an “idiot box”. But it was when we bought a house in Evanston and our daughter Anjuli was about to start her school, did Carolyn feel that we needed to buy a TV for her to at least watch popular kid’s programs, such as Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers and other shows, of which Reading Rainbow was her all time favorite, so that she would be able to make informed conversation with other kids in the school. We went out and bought her a smallest screen TV we could find, and put it into her room. Even so, she was allowed maximum of an hour to watch it. As it turned out, it was fine with her. She took the TV with her to the college and when it died, bought another one equally as small and non-visible as the first one – to be tucked away in an obscure corner. Because other than some of her favorite programs, and renting of video cassettes to watch movies, she too never got into watching television in any significant way.

Without going into psychoanalysis of why I never got into watching the boob tube, an honest answer is: Television has never appealed to me. It wasn’t something even on my lowest priority list. I did have a television in each of my two Prague apartments. But they came furnished, and I ever barely turned them on. Ironically, I was editor-in-chief of Serial, the magazine devoted entirely to television shows. I did then have a television set installed in my office which beamed as many as 500 channels from around the world. That too, I barely watched. Zapped was more like it. Once I got the gist of a new series and a feeling of what the show was all about, enough knowledge to be able to discuss it coherently with my editors was all I needed to know. They would tell me the rest. I must confess though, that when I was invited by the PR department of The Bold and the Beautiful, to spend a couple of days on its set and given access to interview any and all of its stars of the time, I did watch the show in its entirety for a couple of weeks prior to landing in Los Angeles. In those episodes, not much happened on the day-to-day basis. But I could see how easy it would be to get hooked to something like that.

But still!

So the day the light blinked on my ringing desk phone in my office, I wasn’t too thrilled at the news it brought. On the other line was Millie Gunn, former wife of Mr. Playboy himself, Hugh M. Hefner and the mother of his two oldest children, David and Christie Hefner.

‘Congratulations on your fifteen years with the company.’ She said in her usual cheery and friendly as can be voice, which was for real. Millie worked for the company as its Employee Relations Person. Not to confuse with the Human Resources. She had a certain congenial and very warm way about her. Platinum blonde, dignified and still extremely good looking, she must have been pretty as a Playmate when young. Her effervescence and enviously upbeat demeanor had made her darling of everybody in Playboy’s Chicago office.

‘As a token of our appreciation, the company would like to send to your house a state of the art big screen Sony television set.’ I heard her saying.

‘Television set?’ Probably wondering why I wasn’t jumping with joy and screaming exclamations the way they do on radio shows when one or the other listener is called and told he/she had won a vacuum cleaner or a couple of tickets to a concert. Instead, sensing my voice dropping, she offers: ‘I get it. You’ve already got a nice set of your own. Your other option is a VCR.’ Still not getting any rise out of me, she throws at me the next option; ‘How about a camcorder then? Its top of the line. Also a Sony.’

Finally I had to interrupt her.

‘Millie, I don’t have a television, so what would I do with a VCR or a camcorder?’

‘That makes it easy. Then TV it is.’

‘No, no, no. I hate television. How about good old cash?’

‘That we can’t do. Against the company policy.’

So a TV set it had to be. I put it into the most remote corner of my rambling three storied, seven bedroom house. Bought an old but a classic decorative Radio Gram console from my next door neighbor, Mr. White, who was black! Propped the television on the top of it diagonally opposite from my slat-top desk and the computer. That’s where it remained for years – occasionally watched by house guests. I watched on it O.J. Simpson’s white SUV chase, funerals of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. And that was about it. But it mostly remained unwatched, unwelcomed and unloved by me.

Before making my big long term move to Prague and putting up my house on the market, instead of holding a traditional “garage sale”, I decided to give away all of my furniture and other material possessions I no longer wanted to keep, to whoever would take them. Anjuli and Carolyn got the first picks. Before choosing television, Carolyn looked at me with a knowing smile: I suppose you won’t be too heart broken if I took the television!!

Note: Originally published as Television, VCR, Camcorder & Me

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, January 18^th, 2013

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

You have already met Barbara and Dagmar in the process of their becoming the first two German Playmates. I was privileged to get to know them beyond the glare of the photo studio and without makeup. Mini profiles through personal reflections.

Tags Melissa Morrill, Millie Gunn, Television

Categories Uncategorized

TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN…

January 3, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

From Only One Nipple To Pubic Wars And Back

How ludicrous the censorship can be isn’t even worth discussing. The books that once considered to be obscene and pornographic are now hailed classics. Just to name three: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. And Nabokov even went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

That Playboy launched in December 1953 will face continuous hounding of censorship was a given. Hugh Hefner did fight many battles and endured incessant harassment from the self-appointed moral guardians of America and the world. Even so, it wasn’t up until January 1971 – full eighteen years after Playboy was born that he dared show a partial patch of pubic hair on that month’s Playmate, Liv Lindeland. Nothing for a few months after, until October when one got a glimpse of a dark bit peeking through an out of focus foliage on Playmate Claire Rambeau. And suddenly the shroud was lifted. Also with the arrival of Penthouse on the American shores from its initial launch in the Great Britain, what Hefner termed to be the “pubic wars” broke out between the two publications. It was no longer just pubic hair, but what came to be termed among the editors and the photographers as explicit “crotch shots” began to appear in both magazines in an effort to outdo each other. Until at some point, Hefner decided to scale back by saying something to the effect that its silly, we are not going to imitate the imitator.

While the US Playboy would never dare show the frontal nudity on its cover even today, not even breasts, there was no such restriction in Germany back in 1972 when the German edition was launched. In its very second issue it had a Polaroid layer peeling off a photograph of the sleeping beauty with her fully exposed breasts staring right at you. For none of the Western European editions, “to be or not to be” of breasts or even pubic hair has ever been an issue. They don’t deliberately go out of their way to run explicit covers, because it is universally believed and accepted that nothing makes one want to pick up a magazine more so than a friendly face making an “eye contact” with the readers.

Enter Japan – the edition launched in July 1975. Even before its launch, it was possible to buy the US Playboy in the country. But the local laws dictated that no magazine showing pubic hair could be distributed in Japan. How do you get around that? Simple. The customs hire a bunch of teenagers, throw them together in a cramped room, pile huge stacks of imported magazines in front of them, hand them fat tipped black magic markers and make them go through each photo and scratch a big blob of wet black ink in the pubic region. Voila, now the Japanese youth would be saved from their carnal temptations and the corruption of their innocent minds.

But for the locally produced Japanese edition of Playboy, we would have to come up with a selection of photos that didn’t contain even a tiny wisp of hair. Since Playboy shoots thousands of photos for about a dozen they end up using, this normally wasn’t a big problem for someone to sit down and select fotos sin pelo pubico. Even so, sometimes it was difficult to find enough usable photos with right expressions on the girl’s face. It was initially my job to go through those thousands of photos and do an edit for the Japanese. Frustrated, sometimes I would accost the photographers and remind them that we needed ample non-pubic photos. At times it was difficult for them – having just been freed from the shackles and having to go backward must have been psychologically daunting for them. So much so that when in 1987 we were producing a multi-girls pictorial, to complement the Miss Playboy International Beauty Pageant broadcast live from Hong Kong’s Queen Elizabeth Stadium, when the Turkish candidate Arzum Cibir, showed up in the studio with her pubic region clean-shaved, the photographer Byron Newman and his wife/stylist Brigitte were horrified. A minor crisis ensued in the air. Of the solutions discussed and bounced around was also the possibility of giving Arzum an artificial patch of pubes, in the form of a custom-made, how can I say it – a pussy wig? In the end, the silliness discounted and sanity prevailed. We decided that they would pose her in a way that would not require her to shoot full frontal. There were thirteen more girls in the group. So…

But for the legal requirement of the countries, there was not much the photographers could do, because now we needed them not only for Japan but also for Brazil (launched in August 1976), and Mexico (November 1976), later added to the list would be Turkey (January 1986) and Taiwan (April 1990).

In the cases of Mexico and Brazil, we couldn’t even call the magazines Playboy, until years later. In Brazil it was called Homem (Man) and in Mexico Caballero, con Lo Mejor de Playboy (Gentleman, with the best of Playboy). In Brazil, every nude layout that went into the magazine, had to be presented to the censor board and approved by the authorities before they could be put into the magazine. They required not only no-pubic, but also we were restricted to show only a single nipple in an image. And this is in the country of Samba and the wildest Carnival and the skimpiest dental floss bikinis running around Copacabana beach!

The most absurd thing to happen was in Mexico. One fine morning Eduardo Gongorra, the General Manager of the Mexican edition was called in by the authorities and told that their license to publish Caballero was suspended. Not only they couldn’t call the magazine Playboy under any circumstances, but the new law dictated that no publication can use a noun as its proper name. They couldn’t change it to Señor either, because Señor too was a noun. How about Signore? It meant the same, but in Italian and not in Spanish. Since they couldn’t come up with an immediate retort to that, after several harried phone calls between Chicago and Mexico City, it was collectively agreed to change the name immediately and continue publishing while we would appeal and fight the battle to eventually be allowed to call the magazine by its rightful name, Playboy.

Coming back to Japan, there were times when the Japanese editors in their creative frenzy would want to include in their layout one of the photos published in the US edition. No matter a blob of curls plainly in sight. What do they do? Have it airbrushed out. They knew I would scream murder when the issue hit my desk a few days later. Then it would be too late to do anything about it. I would hear from other executives of the company – including once directly from Christie Hefner, how horrible and unnatural airbrushed pussies looked? I know! I know!! I would slap hands of the Japanese. They would apologize with a promise to never do it again – that is until they would some months later. Hoping that Shah-san won’t notice. But notice I did. Dismayed, as I often sat at my desk staring at those bald as an eagle-head patches so expertly smoothed out and blended into rest of the skin, like them I too hoped that no one else would notice – Christie most of all.

Fast forward to 2007. After nine years sojourn in Prague and after fourteen years since I left Playboy, I have returned to Chicago to live. I am sitting in my guest room on a chair next to my floor to ceiling bookcases filled with the issues of more than forty-five years of Playboy. Sitting across from me on the edge of the bed are my neighbor Melissa and her younger sister Andrea. They want to see the issues of the months and the years they were born. I hand Melissa the bound volume containing the first four issues of 1974. She quickly flips through and zeros in on February Playmate Francine Park’s pictorial. The opening spread doesn’t get her attention as much, but as she turns the page, at the bottom of the next page is a shot of reclining Francine with her eyes dreamily closed, her torso lifted slightly by the pillow underneath and rest of her body seductively sloping downward. Her right hand reaches up above framing her head, the left hand resting down by her thigh. And staring right at Melissa is her ample tuft, dark and dense, bushier than a bird’s nest. And I see Melissa pointing at it and then hear her screaming exclamation: Oh my God! Those girls had pubic hair!!!.

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday: January 11, 2013

TELEVISION, VCR, CAMCORDER & ME

I have been incessantly and relentlessly pelted by e-mail, mail orders and even over the telephone, companies offering me package deals for satellite/cable services. When I tell them, I own no television to start with, they are left with a speechless Oh!

Tags Andrea Morrrill, Brazil, Censorship, Germany, Japan, Melissa Morrill, Mexico, Pubic Wars

Categories Uncategorized

HERR DOKTOR SHAH

December 27, 2012 //

Haresh Shah

That’s Just What I Needed To Be

Between my hasty arrival in Munich and the hastier departure next day to Düsseldorf, there wasn‘t much time to think of or look for a permanent place for me to live in Munich, which is where I would be based. The most practical thing for me to do would have been to move into Gerrit Huig’s apartment from which he had already moved out and established himself in Milan. I was his replacement in Germany with editorial based in Munich and production in Essen near Düsseldorf. Eventually I would have preferred a pièd à terre in both cities, but having taken over Gerrit’s apartment gave me a temporary reprise and perhaps a permanent one if I so wished. But soon it became apparent to me that it wasn’t a right place for me for more reasons than one. Just within the first few weeks I was awoken by the loud and harsh ringing of the phone early in the morning. On the line was Frau Westerholz – my landlady – hysterically screaming at me. She had just received the telephone bill in the amount of a couple of hundred deautsch marks, listing frequent calls to Chicago and also to Milan and Paris.

At the time, if you rented a place anywhere in Europe, you made sure that it came with a telephone already installed. It wasn’t easy to transfer it to your name and/or easily ordered and installed in a day or two like in the US. When renting a place, you just agreed to reimburse your landlord the phone charges. Took me first to shake myself awake and then assuming a milder tone, I calmed down Frau Westerholz. Telling her that soon as she handed me the bill, I would immediately transfer the funds to her account. But even otherwise, the apartment wasn’t something I aspired to. The neighbors were unfriendly, if not outright nasty. Parking was a big problem.

Hearing of my frustrations, Rainer’s wife Renate kindly offered to help find a new apartment. In Chicago I had lived in a brand new lake front apartment on the south side. A spacious one bedroom place with the glass walls and wonderful panoramic view of the South Shore Country Club and the Lake Shore Drive. It came with a swimming pool, the penthouse party room and underground garage.

‘There are many new buildings, I am sure we can find something as good for you.’ Renate assured. She made up a classified ad for me, something to the effect that a young American professional just having moved to Munich was looking for a specious two bedroom apartment. She placed the ad in Süddeautsche Zeitung, and the phone on my desk began to ring incessantly and insistently.

I must have spoken to at least half a dozen potential landlords. The rent most of them quoted was not a problem, in fact they were lower than DM 1000.- I was paying for Gerrit’s apartment. But in the end, none of them wanted to rent me their places. The composite conversation went something like this.

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty two.’

Married? How many kids?’

‘Not married. No kids.’

‘Hum!’

‘You are single?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you need such a large apartment?’

‘I don’t know. I just like the feeling of space.’

‘And you said you work for Playboy magazine?’

‘Yes. Is that a problem?’

‘No. I don’t know. I need to check with my husband/wife. I will call you back later.’

Enter Tim Nater – our American editorial assistant, with whom I shared the office and who would go on to become a foreign correspondent for Newsweek. Seeing me sitting there looking frazzled, I see him raising his eyebrows, his look pointed and zoomed through his thick tortoise-shell framed glasses.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘These fucking Germans!’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘Why is it their business that I’m married with children or not? Shouldn’t it to be whether or not I have good credit and that I will pay my rent on time?’

‘It’s. You’ll find out soon enough!’

‘Well, then why they ask me those stupid questions about why a single man would want to rent a hundred square meter two bedroom apartment? As if I were planning to run a bordello or run a betting ring from there.’

‘Worst yet, heaven forbid! You may throw all those wild parties – the orgies. Horror! And disturb the peace of the law-abiding German citizens.’ Said Tim and laughed. ‘Tell me exactly what happened?’

So I tell him.

‘Okay, I got it. Look, this is Germany and its unusual for a single man even wanting or having a one bedroom apartment. Majority of them live in studios — einzimmer wohnung. Plus it doesn’t help that you’re a foreigner and speak German with a funny accent. It probably doesn’t bode well that you work for the “porno” magazine Playboy! But don’t worry, we’ll find something good for you.’

‘Thanks Tim. Fuck it! I’m going to go out and get something to eat and have a stein of Paulaner.’

‘Go ahead. I’ll answer your calls.’

●●●

‘I think you may have found just the right place. Perhaps even better.’ Tim informs me soon as I have returned.

‘Tell me!’

‘A lady called. Frau von Liebe. She owns a brand new apartment – two bedrooms, balcony all around, spacious 100 + square meters. And they have Olympic size swimming pool and full sauna. The rent is DM 900.-. Hope it’s within your budget?’ At the exchange rate of DM 3.50 to a dollar, it is a steal.

‘Sounds really good. Let’s call her back.’

‘No. Let’s wait until she calls back. I told her that Herr Doktor Shah ist bei mittags essen. Rufen sie mal bitte an in etwa eine stunde — and then he winks at me — you don’t want to seem too eager!’

‘Okay. But What’s that Herr Doktor shit?’

‘That would put to rest the question of why a single man needs two bedroom place. You know how it is? In this country, titles mean a lot!’

So we wait. When the phone rings, Tim picks it up. Guten tag. Leitung von Herr Doktor Shah!

I hear a muffled female voice escaping from the receiver.

‚Ja, er ist schon wieder da. Eine kleine moment bitte.‘

‚Herr Doktor Shah?‘

‚Am aparat. Guten tag frau von Liebe!‘

And we talk. I answer her questions and give her pertinent information about myself and me working for an American company in partnership with one of the top German publishing groups, Bauer Verlag — the publishers of Quick and Neue Revue. I skip mentioning Playboy, just in case. Tim must have done a good PR job of building me up, for she doesn’t ask me any offensive questions about my single status. We agree to meet the next morning.

It’s a gorgeous late winter early spring day in Munich. I pull up in front of Johannclanzestrasse 49, in my shining like a newly minted penny, white Buick Skylark. Since the building is on my left hand side, I just cross the street sideways and park the car right near the front door, facing wrong way.

Frau von Liebe, a mild-mannered elderly lady with short curly blonde hair emerges from behind the glass door. Before greeting me with Herr Doktor Shah, her giving my Buick up and down doesn’t escape me. I could just hear her saying to herself, alles klar!!

Its a spacious glass covered corner unit with a wrap around balcony in which the bedroom, kitchen, living room and the second bedrooms all open. With the floors heated, no radiators to block placing of the furniture. The place is doused in abundance of natural light. It is a couple of neighborhoods removed from the city center, nearer to the outer Mittlererring – but has everything I would have wished for, including underground garage parking space . I could just imagine the fun I would have living there.

Illustration:Jordan Rutherford

Next Friday, January 4, 2013

TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN…

Silly as silly can be is how I think of all the legal battles and censorship and restrictions on books, movies and all other art forms. How can Playboy be an exception? I share with you some outlandish, bizarre but funny episodes from around the world.

Tags Munich, Rainer Wörtmann, Renate Wörtmann, Renting Aoartment, Tim Nater

Categories Uncategorized

MY SWEET LORD

December 20, 2012 //

Haresh Shah

Playmates, Playmates, Playmates. Überall

Barbara was a good sport. If she was disappointed, she didn’t let on. We laughed at her ghost images and I even stack loaded the slides and projected them on the wall. However faint the images, we learned from them what poses worked and what didn’t. As relaxed as she was, there were still traces of a certain stiffness in those poses that reflected the initial discomfort and nervousness that both of us must have felt in front of the camera and behind.

We stuck to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass LP and played over and over again My Sweet Lord and Wah-Wah – the track that followed. Those tunes carried her moods and the movements. We repeated the session of the week before. Now more relaxed and really getting into the swing of it, we continued the routine over the next couple of weekends. Those sessions resulted into some naturally beautiful shots of Barbara’s youthful energy, exuberance and her flirtatious and teasing smiles. We went outdoors and did a series of headshots to capture her achingly natural good looks.

Barbara was a natural model. Not only was she comfortable in her nudity, she was almost unaware of it as she danced to the music and flirted with the lens, as if it were the man she most desired and was determined to lure into her orbit. Just like those songs and dances in Bollywood movies. Those weekends, not only yielded us some wonderful photos, but they also began to morph into what would turn out to be a lifelong friendship. A year and a half later, coincidentally we both found ourselves living in southern California. Me in Santa Barbara, and her a hundred and fifty miles south in San Clemente. In the interim, she had married Scott and had moved to the US and I found myself “cost cut” from Playboy. Feeling absolutely free after nineteen long years of schooling and working, I accepted on impulse my friends Mark and Ann’s invitation and returned to the US and settled close to them in California. Barbara and I having found ourselves within driving distance and so far away from home, we saw each other frequently, worked on some serious photographic projects, of which though nothing came out, but we did have lots of fun and laughs in the roles of the photographer and his muse. Now 38 years later, we’re still in touch and try to see each other whenever we can. If not as frequently as we would like, but when we do, its back to being transposed back to those weekends and those days in California.

Getting back to the beginning; what I loved the most about Barbara was that she was in no hurry to become a Playmate and was willing and ready to shoot as many sessions as it took to be able to present the best the two of us had to offer as a team.

When I finally showed a small selection of what we had shot, and handed them her four page-long Playmate Data Sheet, both Rainer and Freddy loved how naturally beautiful and how German she looked. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that we had stumbled upon the best possible Playmate candidate to be called the First. Twenty-one years old, she weighed 54 kg. (120 lbs.) and was 173 centimeter (5’.7”) tall. Her vital statistics measured 93x63x93 (36.5” x25”36.5” ). She came from an old Bavarian family in which “everyone loved to drink.” While her father’s ancestors transported salt across the country, the ancestors on her mother’s side were brewers; “hence the enormous thirst in the family.” And having born and grown up in the city of the legendary Oktoberfest made for a perfect storyline. Ironically, she is only a moderate drinker.

At the time, she worked as Executive Secretary to Münchener Olympiade, had graduated from high school majoring in home economics and aspired to be a social worker. In answer to Why do you want to be a Playmate? she wrote; so that I can show my kids how beautiful their Mama looked when young. What can be more down to earth and wholesome? Beyond that, Chicago’s approval was a mere formality.

Freddy and other executives saw an enormous promotional potential in her. She would become the darling of the press, appear on television talk shows and the advertising department could tag her along to meetings with their clients. She would be the special attraction at trade shows and the conventions. The potential was limitless. There was palpable excitement in the air. Freddy, Heinz, Rainer and other top executives began to see why Chicago was so keen and insistent on them to producing their own Playmates.

Everything was ready and set to go. Peter Brüchmann – one of the top glamour photographers of the country was hired to shoot the pictorial. But the problem was producing of the centerfold. By Hefner’s personal decree, it had to be shot on the large 20×25 (8”10”) format studio camera, thus ensuring the highest possible reproduction quality over the spread stretching out on to three full pages. After much discussion, it was decided that instead of allowing Peter to shoot it and him learning by trial and error, taking a long view, why not send him, Barbara and our photo editor Susi Pletz to Chicago and have Pompeo Posar – one of the Playboy’s star photographers do the first centerfold, with Peter assisting and learning, but mainly Susi picking up nuts and bolts of Playmate production and bringing back home that knowledge. This delayed the project by several months, because that’s how long it took to get everyone’s schedules in sync.

In the meanwhile, Susi had come up with three more Playmate candidates, one of them she had plain spotted in the supermarket and approached, the others came as submissions from professional photographers. Among them: Jacques Alexandre’s portfolio of gorgeous nudes of the sultry redhead Dagmar Puttkammer from Wuppertal. No problem with the photos as submitted. Jacques shot some more “story” photos capturing her life in and around her hometown, featuring the places and the people in her life. That is: except the centerfold. The luck would have it, Pompeo Posar happened to be in Italy at the time on a project from the U.S. edition. We were able to have him come over to Munich for a long weekend to help us out. Susi organized the location, the props and acquired a large format camera, set up weekend processing of films and we together assisted Pompeo into shooting what would become the first ever Playmate of Playboy’s German, and therefore the foreign editions.

While reluctant at first, now Freddy couldn’t have a German Playmate soon enough. And thus by default, Dagmar became the first German Playmate making her debut in March 1975. Barbara followed in July 1975.

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

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MOTHER KNOWS BEST

Next Friday: December 28, 2012

HERR DOKTOR SHAH

Nope, I don’t have a doctorate of any kind. Even if I did, I would be petrified to have such a pompous title precede my name. But our editorial assistant Tim Nater decided, that’s just what I needed.

Tags Barbara Corser, Dagmar Puttkammer, Playmate Shoot, Pompeo Posar, Susi Pletz

Categories Uncategorized

SMUGGLING SMUT

December 13, 2012 //

Haresh Shah

Some Call It Smut – Others Read It For The Interviews – And You?

Why I felt the need to write to my parents to justify my taking a job at Playboy, I don’t know. But just in case if they had similar misconceptions about Playboy as do most of the people who had actually never even read it. I wrote a long letter telling my parents how happy I was to have had an opportunity to work for one of the best magazines in the world. Of the four magazines I consider to be the standard bearers are: Time, The New Yorker, New York and Playboy. The letter was basically me refuting the people who expressed their opinions with a smirk: yeah right! You read it for its interviews.

To my astonishment, my father’s response was: so what’s the big deal? Haven’t you ever read Rasa Manjari? Right!! But my dad read Rasa Manjari? Uhm! Not only had I paged through Rasa Manjari, but also had to study two Sanskrit classics: Shakuntla by Kalidasa and Swapna Vasvadatta (Vision of Vasvadatta) by Bhása. Their microscopic descriptions of the female anatomy in all their graphic details would make even Madonna blush. Not to speak of Kama Sutra, which I hadn’t read. And what about all those multi-dimensional carvings of Khajuraho and other Indian temples depicting every conceivable positions in blatant fornication? They all prove the point made by the late Bollywood legend, Dev Anand, in his opinion column that appeared decades earlier in I believe either Indian Express or Free Press Journal. Accordingly, what we now proudly call the Indian culture was sadly brought upon us by the culmination of several hundred years of rule by the Moguls and the English. Along with the breath-taking Mogul monuments such as Taj Mahal and the British building of the country-wide network of railroads, what we also inherited from them were their prudish socio-sexual values and morality. India before them was the country of the gender equality and the ultimate socio-sexual freedom. It was a country in which the court dancers occupied honored positions in royal advisory councils.

Breathing a sigh of relief, when a year later I boarded the Bombay bound Swissair flight, squeezed in-between my clothes and gifts were several copies of Playboy. The magazine long banned in India. I wanted to show my family and friends the love of my labor. How would I get it through the ever so vigilant customs of the country was something I had to play by ear.

It must be about two in the morning as I stood in front of the dressed in lily-white and starched to the-T, uniformed customs officer. My suitcase propped up on top of the counter and what would be an early version of a boom box, hanging from my left hand.

‘I am afraid you will have to pay duty on that transistor.’
‘How much?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Do you have the bill? I think probably about two thousand rupees.’
‘But it didn’t even cost me that much.
‘Sorry, the duty is 200%’
‘In that case, you can keep it here. I will take it back on my return flight. I am sure I can buy one similar for much less from Crawford Market.’ Seeing that I had managed to throw him off-track, I continued: ‘My father will be heart-broken, because he normally never asks me for anything. He asked me for this so he can record and play bhajans during his puja sessions every day.’

I could see the expressions on his face changing. Suddenly I had put him in a moral bind. How could he deny a gift to a father from his son? Even more so, it was meant to play spiritual bhajans in a home temple. Still not saying anything, he points at the suitcase.

‘What else you’ve got in there?’
‘Oh, just some small gifts for my brothers and sisters. We are eight siblings. Some toys for their kids and a sari for my mother.’

But I am not worried about them. It’s the issues of Playboy stashed between the layers of clothing. One thing I had learned from my very first encounter with the customs at the port of Dover in England was – never try to or even hint at having hidden anything which the customs officer may deem in the slightest susceptible. It has served me well. Years and years that I have traveled and hundreds of trips I have taken all over the world, I have but only once paid minimal customs duty, that of around forty American dollars.

With my suitcase wide open on the counter, I turn over my clothes and fish out a couple of issues of Playboy.

‘Other than that the only other thing I have are these copies of Playboy. But I work for the magazine in Germany and am its production manager. I want to show my friends and the family what I do for a living.’ To authenticate my claim, I pull out my business card and extend my hand to give it to him. Without even turning his head, he throws a perfunctory sideway glance at the card. I am standing there with an issue of Playboy in my hand, proceeding to flip to the staff page and show him my name in the masthead.

‘No, no, no, no. No!!!. Put it right back in your suitcase, shut it quick and get the hell out of here before my boss sees it and you and I both get into trouble!’

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Related Stories

TIMES THEY’RE A CHANGIN’

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Next Friday, December 21, 2012
MY SWEET LORD
Well, if you have been wondering whatever happened to the beautiful Barbara and her inexperienced photographer, and his botched test shoot, wonder no more. Click next week on this continuation of Hunting For The Girl Next Door.

Tags Erotic Indian Literature, Playboy and Customs, Prudish Values

Categories Uncategorized

HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

December 6, 2012 //

Haresh Shah

Why Even Go As Far As The Next Door?

‘So how’s your search for Playmates coming along?’ Asks Freddy as we run into each other in the hallway of the executive floor. Freddy is wearing his characteristic grin which gives his natural dimples a couple of extra wrinkles.

‘Its coming along. I may soon have a couple of candidates to show you.’

Still grinning, he goes; ‘come on, don’t kill yourself. Just because you had to open your big fucking mouth in front of your big American bosses!’

I grin back.

‘I tell you what! If you do find some, just have fun, fuck them and forget this Playmate business. You know, Chicago would never approve a German chick.’

At that, we both flash our cryptic smirks and go on to wherever we were headed. Me thinking that perhaps Freddy is still hoping that I was just trying to show off, trying to earn a few brownie points, and nothing of substance would come out of it. Soon that conversation at Neuer Simpl will be forgotten and he won’t have to worry about what must have seemed to him an enormous burden on his budget, let alone having to undertake such an iconic photo shoot and then fail.

But little did he know, not only was I fired up but so was Rainer. This wunderkind had extra wheels turning into his already hyper creative head. He had immediately briefed his photo editor Susi Pletz that we were looking for Playmate candidates. All it took for them and for me, was to put out the word.

In Munich I had cultivated a sizeable circle of friends in a short span of months. Among them, Britt Walker. The only one who frequented the night spots more than I did. This was also because he lived in the very heart of the trendy Schwabing in the newly built and the most “in” dwelling complex, Fuchsbau.

Britt was an incredible magnet to women. I don’t know what his secret was, but he always showed up with a pretty young thing at least half his age, hanging on his arms, clinging and seemed to have madly fallen in love with him. Someone he would have introduced to us as Cersti, Gabriella, Karen, Amy, Marion and others — ones he had met the night before at Domicile, Tangente, Why Not or Yellow Submarine. Most of the girls he brought to my apartment were either already photo models, starlets or aspiring to be one or the other. Now with the genuine Playboy hook, his modus operandi must have become even smoother. I could just imagine him using a line such as: You’ve got to meet my good friend Haresh from Playboy. To his credit, I must say, he never misled or promised them anything – other than insinuating that as beautiful as they were, they just may have a chance of becoming Playmates. But mainly they came along because mine was an open house where friends felt comfortable walking in with a friend or two of their own. These visits would often turn into an impromptu party. Nothing wild by any stretch of imagination. Hanging out, going out to eat and dance, stop at cafes and bars that were also art galleries, sit around for hours at the stammtisch – a large table reserved for the regulars in good old German tradition – at one at one of our favorite wine lokals.

Britt came up with several girls. None of them quite qualified to be a Playmate. The first one he brought over was flat chested, the second had already posed in the nude, the third was cute but her breasts sagged, and also there was something about her face that looked perpetually tired. Britt calling me up every so often and asking me to look at a Playmate candidate had started to irritate me. Annoyed, I was about to put a stop to his assault on my time. Just then he came up with a winner.

Barbara – a strikingly pretty and yet easy-going, unpretentious Bavarian beauty, with an oval face. Tall, lithe curvaceous figure, a brunette with her hair floating down below her shoulders, and a set of penetrating brown eyes. What struck me the most about her was her mischievous innocence. And she didn’t come hanging on Britt’s arm. Accompanying her was her American boyfriend, Scott.

We were just starting out so there was no procedure in place. I knew, at the US Playboy they would just bring in the girl into the studio, place her on an existing set and do some Polaroids and test shoot a few quick rolls of films. I didn’t want to approach Freddy about how we would go about doing a test shoot. That would give him one more excuse to back out. But I mentioned it to Rainer who let me have a few rolls of Ektachromes cooling in the photo department’s refrigerator. The less fuss we made about it, the better it would be.

My apartment in Munich was a spacious two bedroom fifth floor unit with wrap around balcony, facing North and West and the outer glass walls through which cascades of light filtered in. And yet it offered total privacy of an attic with sky lights. Even though I had studied photography and was a serious amateur and in possession of semi-professional photographic equipment, I hadn’t any experience in doing serious nudes, other than having done some hobby nudes of my friends Jan and Marilyn in Chicago years earlier. Since what I was going to do was just a test shoot – should she be approved, we would have a professional photographer take over. So without much a do, I pulled out my Pentax Spotmatic and various lenses from their black case and loaded the camera with one of the Ektachromes.

Unlike most other girls requiring a glass of champagne or wine to loosen up, Barbara was naturally relaxed. She was completely at ease with her clothes off. She moved and laughed and made faces, came up with some good suggestions and good poses. I just put George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass on the turn table, placed her in the front of my bare white wall and let her dance to the music. We shot two rolls. The next morning I dropped off the films at the in-house lab for processing.

When the processed strips of the films were delivered to my office that night, to my horror, they contained no more than washed out barely visible ghost images of Barbara. Absolutely bummed out, when I checked my camera, I realized that the battery powering the light meter was dead, causing the needle indicating the exposure to be stuck. I had overexposed to oblivion in my brightly lit apartment.

Nothing I could do.

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Related Stories

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

MY SWEET LORT

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

Next Friday, December 14, 2012

SMUGGLING SMUT: Its one thing to work for the magazine banned in India. Quite an ordeal trying to sneak several copies of it past the customs. But how else could I show off my family and friends the product I was so proud of and had a part in making?

Tags Barbara Corser, Britt Walker, Fred Baumgärtel, Girl Next Door, Playmates, Rainer Wörtmann, Susi Pletz

Categories Uncategorized

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

November 29, 2012 //

Haresh Shah

How I Managed To Put My Foot In My Mouth

About a year in my job, my bosses Bob Gutwilig and Lee Hall come down to Munich. Other than the three of us, sitting around the dining table are Franz Spelman, our local editorial consultant, Heinz van Nouhuys, editorial director of Playboy’s German edition and Fred Baumgärtel – the man really in charge of it all. And not to forget Rainer Wörtmann, the art director wunderkind. Of the group, Rainer is the youngest and I am the second youngest.

Playboy Germany in it’s over a year of publication had taken off like a rocket. The time had come to look back and look forward instead of resting on the laurels of success. Among other editorial matters, the subject of the Playmates came up again. The basic concept of the young woman who would adorn the centerfold as defined by Hefner was that she couldn’t be a professional model, an actress or a celebrity. She had to be the girl next door. Playmate is not just another pretty face with near perfect vital statistics. She has certain personality traits. She is smart, she is articulate, she is confident and she is gracious. At the same time, she is down home wholesome and unpretentious. The kind of girl the readers can relate to and not be intimidated by in the way most attractive women could be.

Now with three European editions of Playboy dotting the western Europe, that included Italy and France, it was becoming imperative to expand the scope of their local editorial contents. Even though a lot of editorial material such as Playboy After Dark, Playboy Interviews, Playboy Advisor as well as most of the non-fiction and fiction pieces covering the local scene were already produced by the respective editions, missing glaringly from their pages were the local Playmates. By now I too had become a true Münchener and as many pretty things as I saw walking Stachus, Schwabing and the pedestrian zone of Marienplatz, I could well imagine one or more of those home-grown beauties becoming the girl next door to grace the German centerfold.

Technically, I was “just” their production manager with the primary function of overseeing the printing quality and shouldn’t even be included in that night’s dinner at the trendy Neuer Simpl, breaking bread with the top brass. I was invited perhaps because I was a part of the very small American team of three in Munich, perhaps because after the initial coolness and apprehension, I had succeeded in endearing the Germans to my presence among them. So after they were done talking text and illustrations, Bob once again brought up, something we had already touched upon during their visit a couple of months earlier.

‘When are you going to start producing your own Playmates?’

‘I don’t think we are ready to take that step yet. I am quite content with the American Playmates. Besides, to produce our own Playmates would be prohibitively expensive. I would rather use my budget in trying to get good authors at this time than put the money into Playmates,’ responded Freddy.

‘Yes, but that’s not the same,’ said Bob.

‘And they aren’t exactly girls next door for the German readers,’ I quipped.

‘How do you mean it?’

‘I mean, Miki Garcia from California, Ellen Michaels from Long Island and Marilyn Cole from London, are not exactly what we could call the girls next door for “our” readers.’ I rattled off the list of some recent American Playmates that had appeared in the German edition. Bob let me continue and just listened encouragingly.

‘One hardly could relate to them if you lived, say in Munich, Milan or Paris. They never could imagine running into any of them walking down Leopoldstrasse, for example.’ I added. I saw both Bob and Lee shaking their heads in assent and also Rainer while Heinz remained visibly non-committal.

‘Okay, here is the main reason. Even not considering the production costs and while Munich is overflowing with most beautiful models and starlets, they are not exactly girls next door either.’

‘But there are so many beautiful young women all over Germany.’

‘So they are. But I don’t think any of them would want to pose in the nude. It would be very difficult to find the ones who would and still be up to the U.S. standards.’ Freddy said, looking a bit frustrated. He had a point. Nudity per se was not a taboo in Europe. Even the “news” magazines such as Quick and Neue Revue carried nudes on their covers, majority of them of unknown origin, submitted by freelance photographers. Would we want one of those girls to be in Playboy? Probably not.

‘What if I found us an acceptable Playmate?’ Don’t ask me what made me say that. Even I was astounded at my own chutzpah, especially considering that both of my big bosses sat at the table and I was at the very bottom of the totem pole of our group hierarchy. It must have been that both Bob and Lee remained silent, tacitly allowing me to take the reign.

‘You probably could Mr. Shah. But I wouldn’t want it to interfere with your day job!’ Lee said in half jest, being his Machiavellian self as ever.

‘What if I do it in my spare time?’

I didn’t want to divulge the amount of spare time I had. For someone who had done three weekly magazines at Time – for me to do a monthly magazine, planned months in advance was something I could do in my sleep. Not to mention my most able counterpart Heinz Nellissen planted firmly right in the printing shop in Essen.

‘If you find us a candidate that is acceptable to Chicago, then we will certainly consider producing her.’ Freddy relented with Rainer and Heinz van Neuhuys nodding their assent.

‘I think we might be up to something here. Chicago will of course help you with the production and the expertise. We will make available one of our top photographers to work with you guys.’ Bob assured.

‘We absolutely will.’ Lee seconded. Those promises were comforting. If Freddy still remaining somewhat apprehensive, we were all in agreement that a local girl with the staples in her belly would indeed make it an authentic German edition.

No one was exactly betting on me really finding a Playmate candidate acceptable to Chicago. We parted feeling pleased at having addressed and agreed upon an important issue. Soon, everybody seemed to have comfortably sloughed it off and tucked it away in their subconscious.

That is, except me. I had work to do.

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, December 7, 2012

Related Stories

HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

MY SWEET LORD

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: If she indeed lives right next door, why can’t I just knock on her door? My next door neighbor at the time was good old Dr. Max Grenzman – a gynecologist. That certainly didn’t help. Or? Wait, how about one of his pretty patients?

Tags Bob Gutwilig, Franz Spelman, Girl Next Door, Heinz van Nouhuys, Hugh Hefner, Lee Hall, Playmates Definition, Rainer Wörtmann

Categories Uncategorized

PANDORA’S BOX

November 17, 2012 //

Haresh Shah

Every Life Untold Is A Pandora’s Box

The reason I decided to write Playboy Stories is: However I try not to talk about me having worked at the magazine for twenty one years, it always comes up. Like the afternoon when I was visiting my childhood friend Deven at his brother Madhu’s house in Elgin. I also met for the first time Madhu’s son Mehul and his wife Priti. We’ve had a leisurely late afternoon lunch and were just trying to catch up when out of a clear blue sky, Deven comes out and says to Priti that I worked for Playboy. No wonder you’re so cool! She exclaimed. Whatever that meant. As I began to answer some of her questions and mentioned I was thinking of starting a blog about my years at Playboy, suddenly her husband Mehul’s antenna popped up. Up until then, he hadn’t said a word other than the initial hello, beyond that his nose remained buried into the screen of his I-Pad.

About a month earlier, I had invited for dinner my two young neighbors, Alex and Evan with their girlfriends Jessica and Tara. When Alex happened to mention my Playboy connection, that answered the girls’ curiosity regarding why half of my wall in the guest room is filled with every single issue of the last fifty years of the US Playboy, as well as the landmark issues of the international editions of which I was editorial director. The girls had questions. Tara 22 and Jessica 23. What was it like to work for Playboy? Had I ever met Hefner? Had I been to his mansion? Was I ever present at photo shoots? What are those girls like? They can’t all be that perfect. And so on, is when Alex said good humouredly, Don’t ask many questions. Its like opening up Pandora’s Box. A week later, when I ended up sharing a steak dinner with Alex and Jessica, I couldn’t help but think how pretty she was, and how unpretentious, down home simple. Just like, yes, the girl next door. I said out loud, that she could be a Playmate.

‘No, I can’t. With my height, and…’ She didn’t finish the sentence, but I presumed, she didn’t think her breasts were ample enough.

‘No Jessica, not all Playmates are tall and buxom. For example…what’s her name?’ As it often happens to me, even though I could clearly picture Jenny McCarthy standing next to me, fitting snuggly under my arm – a whole head shorter than me. And I am only five-five (1.65m). After they left, I rummaged through one of my many shoe boxes of photographic prints waiting to be included in an album I may make someday or never get around to ever doing it. But our brief conversation inspired me to do just that – to throw together all the stray photos depicting bits and pieces of my life at Playboy in a scrapbook ostentatiously titled, La Vie Playboy – Das Leben und Zeiten von Haresh Shah – 1972-1993.

As anal as I normally am about order and chronology, I just decided to throw caution to the wind and not to worry about it as long as there was some semblance of both and let the captions I proceeded to write tell individual stories. Working on the scrapbook lead me to want to write about the answers I give to people and the memories I cherish of my long association with Playboy magazine.

For those of you who may not know, or only barely remember where I am coming from – here is a brief rundown on the professional trajectory I have followed.

I began working with my uncle Jaisukh in his just-getting-off-the-ground Wilco Publishing House in Bombay, right out of high school at the age of seventeen. I worked all through my six college years. Four at Jai Hind College where I earned my B.A. in Economics and two more years at the Government School of Printing Technology, before sailing away from the Ballard Pier, to get a diploma in Photolithography at London School of Printing. Spent a year at Burda Publishing in the heart of the Black Forrest in Germany as their reproduction photographer. Following that I landed in the city of New York and my cousin Ashwin drove me to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My six months working on the floors of Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, put the cherry on the top of my educational achievements. A job offer from Time Inc, now Time Warner, landed me in cold and windy Chicago, becoming one of their team of six quality control supervisors in charge of Time, Life – the largest circulation weekly of those days –Sports Illustrated and Fortune. Four years later, in 1972, I let Playboy steal me away from them and ship me off to Munich, Germany to become its production manager for the newly launched “foreign” edition of the magazine. Over the period of next twenty one years, with a brief hiatus in-between, I worked my way up to the corporate position of Senior Vice President and international publishing division’s Editorial Director in charge of eighteen countries. It took me all over the world many times over. Along the way, I learned to speak fluent German and Spanish and also picked up fair amount of Czech, some French and Italian. I left Playboy at the end of September 1993. Since then I did Florida Sportsfan, moved and lived in Prague as editorial adviser to half a dozen women’s magazines and eventually conceived and became Editor and Publisher of TV/Entertainment magazine Serial, until I retired in 2005.

Never mind that I try to tell all of this to people so that they can put in perspective where I am coming from or where I have been. All of that goes over their heads, except of course the Playboy part. So what choice do I have?

That’s my motivation and the reason for undertaking this journey. A past girlfriend Susan frequently said of me: You live in the past! And so it is. I guess there is a certain amount of gratuitous gratification living in the days that are no longer.

Illustration: Deven Mehta

Next Friday, November 30, 2012

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: is how Hefner defined his Playmates as opposed to celebrities and professional models. When I communicated this to one of my editors – his response while scrutinizing the current centerfold was: If she is the girl next door, I must be living in a wrong neighborhood.

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Tags Haresh Shah Trajectory, Life, Playboy, Serial, Time, Wilco

Categories Uncategorized