Archives for posts with tag: Germany

THREE CHEATING HEARTS

May 15, 2014 //
0

Falling Like Dominos

Haresh Shah

threehearts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Like what?’

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

‘Wow! Paul McCartney live?’

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

‘That sounds super!’

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

‘But…?’

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

‘The thing is, there is this woman!’

‘What woman?’

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

‘You mean…?’

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

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

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

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

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

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

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

‘And?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, May 23, 2014

MAKING FRIENDS

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

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

THE PEEPING TOMS

February 12, 2014 //
2

Paparazzi In His Own Backyard

Haresh Shah

peepers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, February 21, 2014

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

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

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Categories Friendship, Germany, Profile

IN PRAISE OF MY BUICK

October 30, 2013 //
2

Haresh Shah

You Are What You Drive

buickcrash3

“That damn Buick of yours. As much as we have paid to transport it all over the world, the company should own the damn thing.” Exclaims my boss Lee Hall. So it should. The company could have even bought two of those damn things. But what was I supposed to do?

I had applied for a job at Playboy at the same time as I did Time. I have had a perfunctory interview with the production boss John Mastro. Nothing came out of it while Time offered me the job in Chicago. Now four years later when John does offer me the job, its over the phone – the one that would take me to Germany. And wouldn’t you know? He wants me yesterday.

Its Thursday October 26th 1972. This is how the conversation goes.

‘When can you start?’

‘As soon as I could.’

‘Can you leave in a couple of weeks?’

‘That might be a bit tight. I still have a job, I need to give them notice first,’

‘You need two weeks for that. If you give them your notice tomorrow, which is October 27th. You should be free by November 10th. Can you leave on November 11th?’

‘But I also have a whole household and the lease to worry about.’

‘Let’s not worry about all that now. Once you have done the next issue, you can find a window of time and come back to Chicago for a couple of weeks and wrap things up’.

‘And I have just bought a brand new car!’ It just slips out of my mouth. I hesitate to mention the woman I was in love with.

‘We could ship your car along with your personal belongings!’

Wow! Though I don’t say it. I am tongue tied. It would be something to drive around in a big flashy American boat of a car in the cobblestoned streets of the city of Munich. Well, why not?

This is my first new car and I have madly fallen in love with it. I have dreamt of her sleek, sexy and streamlined shapely body for sometime now. It’s a bit shorter than the long phallic Oldsmobile Cutlass I owned, but somehow classier. I can still ill afford to buy a new car, but one fine morning I find, or more accurately, don’t find my metallic gold  Olds on the street twelve floors below my South Shore apartment on the 67th street and when it’s determined that it’s irretrievable gone, I have no choice but buy another car in a hurry. My job at Time is totally dependent on my ability to drive. So I decide to take a plunge. And as long as I am buying a new car, I decide to buy its top of the line model in gleaming white color and the mottled chocolate-brown vinyl top. Air conditioned and with factory installed AM/FM stereo, rear defroster – automatic transmission of course, slippery sleek beige vinyl interior, power steering, white walls and all. The only thing I miss out on is a cassette player. Eight tracks are barely out of the door and the cassettes are just about to make their tepid entry into the market, having one installed in my car  doesn’t even occur to me. Something that would soon sting me. But not even having to consider leaving behind my Buick makes me enormously happy. It also means that Playboy does things in style!

So on Saturday October 11th, I check into Frankfurt bound Lufthansa flight and arrive in Munich on Sunday the 12th. Work on the Christmas issue, make a short detour to Milan, Italy and return back to Chicago to wrap up my life of four years, bid farewell to all my friends and board another trans-Atlantic flight and return to Munich.

When my stuff and the Buick arrive in January, my friend Dieter (Stark) rolls his eyes and calls it a tank. Dieter’s swanky Opel Sports was my envy when we worked together at Burda in Offenburg, five years earlier.  Dieter now lives in Munich. Amazingly, he works in the second wing of the same building on Augustenstrasse for the graphic reproduction company that does Playboy Germany’s color separations. He rolls his eyes again, pouts, and adds, so ein lastwagen! What a  truck! And then when we would drive around, amazed at my parking skills, he would go, jests du hast zwei parkplätze weggenomen! Now you have taken away two parking spots. But as skeptical as he is, he gets used to my tank-truck, while now he himself is driving a Volkswagen Bug. A perfect city car. But when you’re in love with your chariot, you don’t think of minor details like ease of parking!

My Buick is also talk of the town in our office building where they have given me a parking spot on the lower tier, which when the upper parking ramp is lowered, leaves only about an inch or two of space between the trunk of my car and the bottom of the metal ramp. Why they didn’t consider giving me the upper tier, I don’t ask, because somewhere along the line I see it as a challenge to be able to park my car just so, to keep it from crushed under the rough bottom of the ramp and the weight of the car up above. Soon my sassy American car becomes a sight to behold in the home town of the mighty BMW.

●●●

Another person I reconnect with in Munich is Marianne (Thyssen-Miller). Someone I had only met once years earlier in Krefeld and on whom I had developed an incredible crush. She too is now living in Munich. That gorgeous summer afternoon, she has invited me to join her and some of her friends to a picnic at Perlacher Forst – a forest preserve not too far from the center of the city. Marianne has given me very specific directions on how to get to the picnic grounds. I make it out of the city and reach the general neighborhood of where they had all gathered. And then as it often happens. I must have taken one wrong turn or missed a single direction, and after more than half an hour of going around in circles, and finding myself at the same crossroads for the third time, I am now feeling frustrated and quite frazzled. There are no other cars to be seen, no people walking around, no one I could stop and ask.  I look left and I look right and I look straight and then on impulse decide to turn left.  Right in front of my big hunk of white pointed metal, a Volkswagen Bug seems to have materialized out of nowhere.  By the time I see it coming towards me, it’s too late.

I see a very old couple occupying the front seats. They look scared and totally disoriented  behind their tiny windshield. I jump out of the car and run to make sure that they are okay.  There is no visible physical harm done to them, shook up, the woman keeps saying “it wasn’t our fault, it wasn’t our fault.”  “No it wasn’t”, I try to calm her.  I tell her that the most important thing is that they are okay, that it was my fault, and that I have proper insurance to take care of whatever damage the accident may have caused.

The couple must have been in their late sixties or even early seventies.  They are driving in from Dortmund to spend some days with their daughter who lives in the Munich area, not too far from where we have collided.  The loud thud of the collision has brought out the people living in nearby houses.  The old woman calls her daughter from one of the homes.  A few minutes later, a balding young man – their son-in-law shows up in his big boxy Mercedes Benz.  He introduces himself to me as Rudolph Geisler. I am bracing myself for his outburst and anger. I am in Germany and the cars mean a lot to the people. And they are attuned to doing everything in very official way. I am preparing myself psychologically to kiss my picnic goodbye. And the hopes of breaking away from the group in the evening and ending up at some cozy romantic restaurant alone with Marianne.

But the wonder of all wonders, instead of being angry and irate, Rudolph begins to apologize to me for the accident, telling me that he has often told his father-in-law that he was too old to drive, but he just wouldn’t listen – but this would teach him.

I re-confirm to Rudolph that I have international insurance and everything should be taken care of, that maybe we should call police and make a report.

“Let me just get my in-laws home first and then we will worry about that.  Let me give you my phone number and let me have yours and then we will work it all out.” This is very highly un-German way to behave. But haven’t I been told that the Bavarians are different?

We together move the Bug out of the way. There is hardly any damage done to my car, except the driver’s side of the door has shifted back a couple of millimeters, making it hard to open it completely, in contrast, the front end of the little Volkswagen looks like a battered bellow of an  accordion. Rudolph gives me proper directions on how to get to where I was going. He throws a perfunctory glance at Buick, as if saying: nicht schlecht! – not bad, and off he is on his way with his in-laws tucked safely inside his Benz. Sure enough, the picnic grounds aren’t far from where I am. I meet up with Marianne and her friends and join the fun.

I call Rudy the next day.  I tell him I have reported the accident to my insurance agent, and he  has assured me that everything will be taken care of.  Rudy doesn’t seem in the least concerned about the details.

“Listen, we will be busy the next few days with my in-laws.  I really don’t think the old man should drive anymore, so we will just put them on a train on Friday.  Why don’t you come over to our house over the weekend and we can settle things over a nice Bavarian meal?  I am sure Uschi, my wife will enjoy meeting you.”

So I go for the dinner. Uschi has cooked delicious Schewinsbraten with Knödel and sauerkraut.  I no longer am in touch with them, but they become very much a part of my social circle for as long as I still lived in Munich.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, October 08, 2013

IN PRAISE OF MY BUICK PART II

My move from Chicago to Munich happened so fast that there was no time to consider the practical aspects of taking my Buick along across the Atlantic. Had I known, what I was up against, I certainly would have sold the car and bought myself a new one in Munich. Probably my favorite Audi 80. But there are also rewards for having done just that.

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Categories Automobile, Germany

DESIGNING IN HIS DREAMS

August 22, 2013 //
0

 Haresh Shah

The Spookiness Of The Creative Mind

dreamer5

It’s It the Easter Monday in Italy. I am on an over crowded train going back to Milan from Pontremoli. Everybody is returning from the long holiday weekend and as squeezed together as we are, I have managed to find a “comfortable” corner of my own where I get to stand for all three hours of the train ride without being crushed.

This is the first time I am alone face to face with myself since the fateful late Monday night of the week before. I am reading Andy Warhol’s autobiographical excerpts, while the conflicting thoughts rush through my mind, they collide with each other to the rhythm of the oscillating motion of the train piercing  through  the still night of the Italian country side.

I have just spent a very pleasant and a relaxing weekend with Rainer (Wörtmann) and his wife Renate in their newly acquired  old mill in Italian country side. It’s a beauty, standing proudly in a little village called Mulazzo near Pontremoli. It stands forlorn in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a stream and rocks and a cluster of trees. The place is to serve as a retreat from their hectic lives in Munich. It also turns out to be a great and timely escape for me in the aftermath of the week before.

Lee (Hall) is smooth as silk when he tells me how great a job I had been doing, so much so that like any good manager, I had succeeded in eliminating my own position. It’s the night of Monday, March 24, 1975. Lee is doing his regular European stint. Bob (Gutwillig) has left the company and Lee is traveling with Richard Kopf, the new divisional VP. His note at the reception leads me to his suite 375 at Principe de Savoia, which is where we are staying.

‘How about some Scotch now?’ The offer I had declined earlier. Seems he have had a few already. I guessed he probably needed them before he could execute  a swift coup d’état. Shocked? Yes. Devastated?  No. All of a sudden, I see the word FREEDOM begin to flash in front of my eyes like on a digital billboard. This meant I could now write the book I have been wanting to for so long and go to California – the vacation I had planned to take the very week I took over the job at Playboy . Okay, I do end up spending a sleepless night. But am thinking about the ways this will change my life as I toss and turn.

Two days later, I return back to Munich with Lee and Richard. They are travelling in the first, of course. While standing in line at Milan’s Linate Airport, I run into Rainer, who is returning to Munich from his Italian country home. I don’t yet tell him about me having been fired, because Lee needs to inform the top Bauer management first. That evening. Rainer  and I end up having dinner at Le Cave.

The night after, I am deep in sleep when the door bell rings. Its around two in the morning. I hear Rainer’s slurred voice on the intercom.

‘I was out late and as I was driving home, it suddenly dawned on me that poor Haresh is jobless. What would he do now?’ I am touched. I assure him that I was doing fine and that how this break opens up so many exciting avenues for me. But Rainer seems to need to talk and so do I. We sit around until four in the morning, drinking Sambuca and listening to music.

I am not even sure if Rainer went home that night or just caught a wink at my place before we headed for the airport to catch the Milan bound morning flight and from there on drive to  Pontremoli.

●●●

The place is not finished yet, but its very livable with open fireplace and little nooks and crannies that make for ideal dining, cooking and sleeping spaces. The only snag that weekend is: it’s wet and it’s cold. We place the only available electric heater in the middle of us as we try to keep warm through the nights. I slide into my sleeping bag with all my clothes on. Including sweater and socks.

During the day, we meet up with Udo Wüst, an editor at the  German edition, and his wife, they too own a similar property in the area. The weekend is spent living the idyllic Italian country life. Leisurely and languid. Strolling and stopping  for coffee and cake at cozy little cafés and I remember eating one of the most delicious Italian meals at a local family restaurant. I fall in love with their signature dish Testaroli, a version of home made flat pasta which I had never tasted up until then and have not since then. It tasted and looked so much like Khata Dhokla, as whipped up by Mama Shah back home in Bombay.  As cold and wet as it is, most of the weekend we just sit around and play Backgammon and drink Calvados – the golden glow of which rushing through our veins help us keep warm. Entspannend, I wrote in my journal. Couldn’t have thought of a more relaxing way to spend my first weekend of  freedom.   

●●●

As I lean against the outer wall of the train, making myself comfortable, Andy Warhol now snuggly tucked back into my shoulder bag, I think of the thirty wonderful months of being a part  of Playboy, and how I had landed in Munich in the middle of the overt hostile environment and how along with Freddy (Baumgärtel), Rainer was the first one to warm up and work with me. We also began to socialize. Realizing my predicament with the vintage apartment I had taken over from Gerrit, him recruiting his wife Renate to help me find a place more to my liking.  In general, Rainer becoming my guardian angel. Us two, along with Heinz (Nellissen) in Essen, becoming a team.

●●●

We are sitting in Rainer’s office, drinking champagne at eleven in the morning. I watch the bubbles rise in the flute, Rainer asks: ‘So what did you think of my idea?’

‘Which idea?’

Because Rainer is an idea machine, hailed by Quick and Playboy Germany’s editorial director,  Heinz van Nouhuys as the wunderkind, because at the age 27, he has become the youngest art director of an international publication. . And also because Rainer says with all the modesty, maybe (because I was) talented? By then he already has under his belt, the experience of having done graphically progressive magazine Jasmin. He has also put in his time at DM and Zeitung in Stuttgart. And admirably, he doesn’t jump at the once in a life time opportunity when offered the position at Playboy. Instead he stipulates: I’ll fly to Chicago at my own expenses and meet with the art director of the “whole shop “and see if at all I can make it with my own graphic ideas. A meeting is arranged with Art Paul, the man who designed Playboy’s ubiquitous Rabbit Head and defined the magazine then and forever for its graphic excellence. And then Rainer calls back from Chicago, Well okay. I’ll start with you.

I no longer remember the exact illustration and the article about which we began to talk, but here is a scenario I just made up as an example. It would be pretty much true of the way Rainer “dreamt up” visual aspects of Playboy’s German edition.

‘You know the one about the illustration for the Maxim’s de Paris.’

‘The one (Franz) Spelman is writing?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about it?’

‘You know, the werkdruck, the special stock four page cutout?’

‘Sorry, I don’t. Refresh my memory.’

‘You know the one where the first page would be the die-cut pop up of the façade of the Maxim’s, and when you turn the page, the spread shows the interior of the main floor of the restaurant with the page four crossing  over the opener, showing the chefs working in the kitchen?’

‘Sounds like a great idea. With an illustration like that, why would anyone want to read the article?’

‘Genau. You know? Plus does it make a difference? I mean, who cares what Franz has to say?’

I don’t say anything to that. We just look at each other with knowing smiles on our faces. Probably envious of the fact that Franz got such a plum assignment, staying at George V in Paris and eating at Maxim’s a few times during his stay there. If we knew Franz, he probably had one or two of the local lovelies accompanying him to the meals – all at Playboy’s expenses. Franz certainly knows how to live! A born bon vivant!!

‘I’m sorry my friend, but I don’t remember you ever telling me of your idea before.’

‘How can you forget? It was last night, when we were having drinks at Le Cave.’

‘Can’t be. Because I just flew back from Düsseldorf.’

‘You did?’ And he momentarily seems lost in his thoughts. ‘Must have been that I dreamt about it. But I swear, I remember even having drawn you a rough sketch on the Le Cave napkin.’

‘Must have been on another night. Do you have the sketch?’

He fumbles into his jeans pockets and then breaks out in a broad smile. ‘Verdamt noch mal, things I dream about! Anyways, let me draw it for both of us now.’ And he pulls out the blue lined calibrated spiegel – the format sheet – and begins to draw the façade of Maxim’s.

●●●

Working with Rainer is fun. He is easy going, but can at times also be insistent and blunt when called for. I am amazed at his perception and being able to see through things.

A year  after I arrive in Germany, I am planning a trip to India and am in need of several rolls of films. Instead of just going out and buying them, I am being cheap! It occurs to me that perhaps I can get a freebie pack from the photo department which is under Rainer. I pick up the phone and call him.

‘I was wondering if I could get a dozen rolls of Ektachromes from your stock.’ Not to sound too obvious, I add: ‘Maybe I can get them at the same bulk rate?’

‘Oder umsonst? – or gratis!’ He doesn’t miss a beat. In the laughter that follows I detect slight sarcasm in his voice. Touché! He has seen right through me.

I save the day by laughing it off with: ‘Das wäre eigentilich besser/‘ – that would obviously be better!

Laughing back he says: ‘Of course you can have them.’ But boy his oder umsonst? stung. So much so that I still remember it forty years later:).

●●●

While I am still living in Munich and pounding away relentlessly at my bright orange Triumph portable electric typewriter, writing my book tentatively titled The Lost Identity – Personal Reflections, Rainer blows me away with a very pleasant surprise. He offers for me to become Playboy Germany’s photo editor. Susi (Pletz) and Helga Colle-Tiez the two who ran the photo department up until then have given their notices to leave.

Rainer’s offer puts me in the whirlwind of conflicting emotions. I am flattered and I am emotionally overwhelmed. My mind begins to whirr with all sorts of special pictorial ideas, and the Playmates I would find and produce. Still living in Munich and working with Rainer and Freddy and Heinz, opening up a whole new horizon for my future. The offer puts me between a rock and a hard place. It hasn’t taken me too long to get over my job loss. In the meanwhile I am more than halfway through writing my book. And am dreaming of starting a magazine of my own with a real possibility of Celeste (Huenergard) – the young American woman working as editorial assistant to Donald Stewart, our Italian in-house editorial executive – partnering with me. She has been a big moral support following my termination, keep the chin up. We have shared many a meals together and have lingered in the evenings with Grappas. Boy she is beautiful. Rainer kept saying when we had stopped at the offices of the Italian edition on our way to his country home

So what do I choose? A bird in the hand or two in the bush? Rainer’s offer is so tempting that I really don’t know. For three sleepless nights I agonize over should I and or shouldn’t I? I am conflicted between the future I was beginning to envision and the future that’s offered to me on the silver platter. I am torn and tortured. I am tempted to accept Rainer’s offer and think later. Perhaps I take it for a year or two, defer my dreams for a while – I tell myself, Rainer doesn’t have to know. Things can always change, can’t hey? And I remember the wisdom imparted by Mr. Moore, while both of us laid next to each other at St. Charles Hospital in London; that in business, you should never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. But that would be totally against my grain, and I want to be honest. I share with Rainer what I am thinking. Rainer wants me on indefinite basis, he has big plans for me.

At the end of those three nights of tossing and turning and having done some serious soul searching, I decline the offer.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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DEVIL IN THE PARADISE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS: Brief descriptions and direct links to the previous 37 posts.

Next Friday, August 30th, 2013

MY INTIMATE ENCOUNTER WITH EROTIC OYSTERS

How I Came to Like, No, Love Oysters? 

Oysters have been credited for their aphrodisiac qualities, but are also considered  visually erotic because of their succulent, raw, moist, tender and glistening look. And yet, I couldn’t for the life of me, see them in that context, let alone really put them in my mouth and savor. The story of my not so keen encounter with this most delicious of the fruit from the sea.    

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DEVIL IN THE PARADISE

May 30, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

Bonding Over Beer And The Blue Eyed Bitch

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

John Lennon

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

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

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a blue eyed bitch

And I wanna get rich

Get out of my way

Cuz I’m here to stay

I’m the wild one

Yes, I’m the wild one

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

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

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

‘He is not invited.’ Herr Schnelle whispers.

‘Why not? He is a part of our team.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Heinz.’ He doesn’t look up.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Na, Gut!’

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia  Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next: Friday, June 21, 2013

BEWITCHED BY THE BOA

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

SPRING BREAK

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

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

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PLAYBOY ON THE COFFEE TABLE

March 14, 2013 //
3

Haresh Shah

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

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‘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.                                                                                                                                                               

 

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THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

January 17, 2013 //
5

Haresh Shah

Without Makeup And With Their Clothes On

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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.

© Haresh Shah 2013

 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 10th 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.

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TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN…

January 3, 2013 //
4

Haresh Shah

From Only One Nipple To Pubic Wars And Back

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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!!!.

© Haresh Shah 2013

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!

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