Archives for posts with tag: Haresh Shah

FACE TO FACE WITH THE MASTER OF MAGICAL REALISM

December 13, 2013 //
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Haresh Shah

My Close Encounter With An Angry Nobel Laureate

The Original Unabridged Version Of FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ MARQUEZ

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.   On the day following  the announcement and during the following day, he is met by the press at his home in Mexico City.  Several frenetic phone calls from Playboy editors to his house are answered again and again by his Mexican maid.  He has gone away on a month long vacation, leaving behind strict instructions that he didn’t wish to be reached.

At that time I was assistant director for Playboy’s international publishing division.  The executive editor G. Barry Golson 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, I drive over to García Márquez’s home in the ritzy southern suburb of Mexico 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 a 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 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 or 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.

***

Unlike the centerfold and the world class literature which was a part of the editorial mix from the issue number one, when the magazine was launched in December 1953, the Playboy Interview didn’t make its debut until almost a decade later, in September 1962.  Earlier in the year, editor-publisher Hugh M. Hefner strode into the office of  his editorial director, A. C. Spectorsky and communicated to him that he wanted to include an interview feature in Playboy that went beyond the idle chit-chat of run of the mill question and answer format.  He also mentioned that there maybe some material in the inventory of Show Business Illustrated, the magazine he had just folded.  Spectorsky assigned young editor Murray Fisher to pour through the material and see if there was anything promising.  What Murray came up with was an incomplete interview with the jazz musician Miles Davis, conducted by then struggling black writer by the name of Alex Haley.   What Fisher found peculiar about the interview was; there wasn’t much talk about music.  Instead, Davis talked incessantly of his rage against racism and what it meant to be black.  Murray assigned Haley to go back and finish the interview.  The candor and the depth of that very first interview laid the solid foundation to what was destined to become an institution.  The art director Arthur Paul gave it a visual identity by incorporating in his design three black and white close ups  of the interview subject that made eye contact with the reader, and the captions directly under them teased out  the most provocative quotes to highlight the text that followed.

What makes a Playboy interview so unique is its depth and thoroughness with which they are conducted.  In its no holds barred questions, asked pointedly of the famous and notorious people of the world, it  takes you under the skins of many of those otherwise impenetrable personalities.  Whereas most interviews are conducted in one sitting and at one location, Playboy interviewers are known to follow their subjects around the country and if need be  — the world, and come home with hours and hours of tapes — and then go back for more.  This grueling process is aptly summed up by then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter when he said to the two journalists from Playboy, “You guys must have some kind of blackmail leverage over Jody Powell (his campaign manager).  I’ve ended up spending more time with you than with Newsweek. Time and all the others combined.”  He continued after a pause. “Of course you have an advantage the way you do your interviews, coming back again and again with follow-up questions.  I don’t object, but it sure is exhausting.” Hours and hours of tapes are then transcribed, edited, cut and pasted like splicing together film strips of a movie, to give the printed version of the conversations a smooth flow and coherency.  The facts are checked and re-checked, the copy edited for grammar and spellings, bringing it to near perfection.  And it gives its interviews maximum space in its pages — way more than any other quality mass market publication.

Sitting in the lobby bar of El Quijote Hotel, waiting for the Nobel laureate to surface in my line of vision, I am thinking of the whole slew of people the magazine has put through the unrelenting scrutiny of  its interviewers.   Following the landmark Miles Davis interview, the list of musicians that sat down for candid conversations with Playboy journalists include the Beatles, Elton John and Luciano Pavarotti. Even though most politicians are reluctant to appear in the middle of the pages containing pictures of naked women, not only did Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega used Playboy interview as platform for their messages, but so did civil liberties leader Martin Luther King Jr. and the extremist black Muslim leader Malcolm X.  Gloria Steinem refused an invitation to be interviewed, but the feminists Germaine Greer,  the author of The Female Eunuch  used Playboy’s pages to criticize the magazine and Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique as well as the co-founder and the first president of NOW,  used the same pages to retrospectively put the women’s movement in perspective.  The artists and writers include Salvador Dali,  Tennessee Williams, Henry Miller, Jean Paul Sartre, Ayn Rand and Salman Rushdie. Actors Jack Nicholson,  Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Betty Davis, Susan Sarandon and Sharon Stone.  Computer wizards Steven Jobs and Bill Gates and even convicted murderers James Earl Ray and Gary Gilmore got to confess and be cross-examined within the format of a Playboy interview.  And  yet, I will always remember Playboy’s long time editorial director Arthur Kretchmer once defining Playboy Interview to the editors of the magazine’s international editions as “over and above Playboy Interview tries to bring out the human face of the person being interviewed. If we were to interview Hitler, he would come out to be a sympathetic figure.” 

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 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 turning slowly first into disgust and then 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 conducted several months ago, why couldn’t have they 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 also two of  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 can 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 Ted Turner of CNN had turned violent during their interview, grabbing his tape recorder and smashing  it on the isle 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 endured the overt racism as the “führer” of the American Nazi party, George Lincoln Rockwell,  as he 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 in 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 —No One Writes to the Colonel and other Stories and Leaf Storm and other Stories.

My hunger contained and the euphoric feeling of having mission accomplished, I just couldn’t make myself to get back into 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.  Playboy transcript 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 of the galley. Marilise sitting behind his back smiles and flashes the thumb up at me.  He sits down and writes in No One Writes to Colonel, Para Haresh, de su colerico amigo, Gabriel ’82 and in 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 2012

Original Abridged Version

FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Categories Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Laureate, Profile, Writer

“HE’S A SON OF A BITCH”

November 28, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

How Does One Get A Job At Playboy?

resume

The question I’ve been asked time and again is: How does one get a job at Playboy?  Or more precisely: How did you get to work for them?

My answer always is: Like any other job. You apply for it. You have an interview and then you get hired. If that sounds too simplistic, how about this? You happen to be at the right place at the right time with right set of skills and qualifications. And the pure dumb luck doesn’t hurt either!

Not good enough still? Okay. Here’s how it happened. But me telling this story requires me to take you back in time. Back to the London College of Printing. Shashi (Patravali), my roommate and also the fellow alumni of LCP, are sitting in the college canteen. We’re at the end of our two year long diploma curriculum and would soon have to face the reality called life. Shashi is clear about his future. Soon as we’re done, he wants to spend a couple of months traveling the European Continent. Return back to India and manage a printing plant somewhere in the South.

‘How about you?’ He asks.

‘I want to go to America. Spend a year getting practical training at the GATF (Graphic Arts Technical Foundation) in Pittsburgh. And then work for Time & Life and for Playboy.

Shashi doesn’t say anything to that, but in his characteristic manner smirks at me, probably  thinking, “yeah right!”

●●●

My plans to go to America fall apart like the house of cards when the offer of the paid internship is withdrawn at the last minute by the trustees of the GATF on the budgetary grounds. It deals me a devastating blow. I spiral down and hit the abyss of depression. But uncle Jaman’s encouraging and uplifting letters and several incidental jobs sustain me for the next six months. I put on the back burner my dreams of going to America, instead accept a job as reproduction photographer at Burda Verlag in the Black Forest town of Offenburg in Germany. I master the language along the way. At the end of the year, I have enough money saved to buy myself one way passage to New York on the low-priced Icelandic Airlines. I have in my pocket five hundred dollar in traveler’s checks. I borrow as many dollars from uncle Jaman’s friend Bernard Geiss. His son and my cousin Ashwin is going to school in New York. He gives me ride to Pittsburgh in his fancy phallic Chevy Camaro. And I’m on my way.

●●●

Ray (Prince) works at the GATF. He  is younger than I am, but has a big presence with his towering height and the  deep gruff authoritative voice of an older man. He scrutinized my résumé and makes some minor corrections and then he reads the draft of my proposed cover letter.

To my I am seeking a job in the area of…he says: ‘You’re not looking for a job.’ He goes on without waiting for my response. ‘You’ve two college degrees for Christ’s sake! You have to be looking for a position!’ Waiting just long enough to make sure it’s sinking in, he lays out the plan for me.

‘We’re going to have your résumé and the letter typed up professionally on an electric typewriter, then have them printed on onion skin paper.’

He doesn’t let me finish my ‘But…’ because all I have is my hard earned Olivetti portable typewriter. And about having anything done professionally?

‘We’ll ask Susan to do that for you.’ Susan is the executive director’s secretary and the only one at the Foundation who has an electric IBM.  ‘And I’ll have my mother invite us for dinner on Sunday. My dad owns a small printing shop adjoining to our home. You and I can do the printing.’

And then he tells me to go through the list of the companies I would most want to work for. No more than twenty. Using GATF’s repro lab, make as many prints of the best head shot of myself. Buy twenty highest quality folders with two pockets and heavy duty manila envelopes. The cover letter would go in the left pocket and in the right my résumé with my photograph stapled at the top right hand corner.

The responses take me to the World Color in St. Louis, Missouri and then by a small chartered airplane to their printing plant in Sparta, Illinois – the town where the movie In the Heat of the Night was shot. Then onto New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to be interviewed by the Parade Publications – the publishers of Parade magazine – the Sunday supplement to the newspapers across the country, followed by McCall’s and Look magazines. And to Chicago to Time Inc’s production offices. Taking advantage of it, I also check out a job at Huron Printing House – a small privately owned quality printers. And make perfunctory contacts at Playboy. Nothing concrete, except a job offer from George Geist of Huron at the salary of $9000,- a year. Quite a bit of money for those days.  But I had to ask myself, is that what I really want to do?

At that point, I qualify equally either to work for a printing house or a publishing company. Flip sides of the same coin. Difference being: working for a printers meant servitude as opposed to being a master working for publishers. The question I had to ask myself was; did I want to take shit or be in position to give shit? Plus, publishing is in my blood.  The answer is clear to me. I decide to wait it out with I need some time to consider my other options.

●●●

A week later, a telegram arrives.

Called four times unsuccessfully, please call me at 326 1212. After five o’clock call 677 5024.

Robert Anderson Time Inc.

I’m ecstatic and jump up and down several times before calling back. On  Friday the 9th of August, I am on TWA flight to Chicago. Wouldn’t you know?  The traffic controllers are on strike. They have adopted the disruptive GO SLOW tactic. The plane takes off on time. But we circle the Chicago skies above lake Michigan waiting for the permission to land. It takes an hour and a half before we get ours and then we sit on the ground for another hour to get the gate to disembark. Until then we sit inside the plane having come standstill on the runway, sweltering in the summer heat. Robert Anderson is to interview me at the airport over a lunch. He has been waiting there since 11:30. It is after two when I finally get to put my feet on solid ground.

‘First of all, let’s go get something to eat and drink.’

I concur. We walk over to the Seven Continents and order drinks. For an airport restaurant, it has a certain flair with its panoramic view of the airfield with planes landing, taxing and taking off. It’s expansive and very tastefully put together with the raised gallery and a long bar – the dining room a couple of steps lower and the tables placed by or in clear view of the huge floor to ceiling glass walls. I’m impressed.

When looking back, that was the toughest interview I’ve ever had. Bob Anderson is impeccably dressed in his navy blue Mohair suit and a crisp white shirt with red tie. He wears very short crew cut and has a set of intensely inquisitive eyes, he looks very conservative. He also gives an impression of a cultivated executive who likes to play it big, but could be very considerate and sympathetic at the human level. The most striking feature about him is  the way he rotates his head from the left to right when he talks, as if mounted on a revolving pivot. His eyes follow the motion and even the words come rolling out of his mouth instead of in a straight line.

He doesn’t ask any technical questions, neither does he talk about what the nature of my work would be, if hired. He asks me a stream of questions that don’t have anything to do with the job, but those answers bring out my attitude towards life, towards the day-to-day things and my opinion of what I thought of the way of living in Europe and in America and why. He asks my opinion on different magazines and their print quality, especially that of Life when compared with Look and the European magazines of the same genre. It isn’t difficult for me to answer his questions. The books and magazines have always been my biggest passion. I don’t only buy and look at them, I closely study them as I page through and I have an opinion on almost all of them. This of course impresses him very much, even though my opinion of Life’s print quality isn’t that great. He would ask me short questions needing elaborate answers. In the meanwhile he has finished his T-bone steak, and my chicken breast is getting cold. By now, I am absolutely famished and on the verge of feeling even a bit weak.

‘Do you mind Mr. Anderson if I finished eating before I answer your next question?’ It just rolls out of my mouth. I don’t think about it. I am just being myself.

‘Oh, I am so sorry! Of course.’ He is even a bit embarrassed.

I finish my meal. I am feeling better now. Bob orders an after dinner drink, I order another Heineken. The interview resumes.

‘I think you have fantastic qualifications and I find you very pleasant.’ He says at the conclusion of the interview.

‘Well, maybe this doesn’t sound business like, but what I want to know frankly is what are the chances of me being hired?’ I ask boldly.

‘I have to talk to my boss first before I can tell you anything. Call me on Thursday and I will tell you.’

‘I think we will hire you Mr. Shah.’ The voice comes from Chicago end of the line.

It is 15th of August. The 22nd anniversary of India’s independence, and for me, the day on which one of my
dreams has come true.

Thrilled, I call George Geist of Huron to decline his generous offer, he ups it to $10,000,-.  I tell him it’s not the money. I accept Time’s $6800.- instead.

When I am well settled in my job at Time and have become one of the team, Bob tells me over a drink: it was when you stopped me so that you can finish eating, did I make up my mind to hire you.   

●●●

It’s been now four years since I’ve been working for Time Inc. They have been the most exciting, to say the least. During these years I have worked on all four of their magazines: Time, Life, Sports Illustrated and Fortune. Currently I am doing Life full time and covering the fast edit for SI at the Regensteiner. After having worked late Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I still show up in the office for a few hours on Thursday afternoon. But I’m absolutely exhausted and drained dry. I find myself perpetually tired and sluggish. It takes entire weekends to catch up on lost sleep. Also, as much as I love my job, I’m no longer content, especially because I’m stuck in the same slot and don’t see any clear future.

In the meanwhile, I’ve established informal contacts with Playboy’s production chief, John Mastro and his quality guy Gerrit Huig. They are located not far from my office. They have alluded that perhaps I can step into Gerrit’s position when he is transferred to Germany. Nope! Instead they hire Richard Quartarolli.

We are not done yet. Stay in touch, John tells me. They are planning an American edition of the French Lui to be called Oui. When Oui comes out without me, I have given up all hopes of ever working for Playboy Enterprises, and still, I don’t know why, I pick up the phone and dial 642 1000. It’s past working hours and I’m thinking that by then his ever protective secretary Rita Johnson is probably gone home, so instead of me always having to leave a message, John would have to answer the phone himself. Wrong! But the wonder of all wonders, Rita puts me through right away.

‘Harry!’ John never learned to pronounce my name.

‘Hi John, I was wondering if we could get together for a drink soon?’

‘I can’t Harry.’ There is a pause on the line. ‘Harry, would you be interested in going to Europe?’

‘I love to.’ That’s all I could say.

●●●

Ben Wendt, the technical director at the Regensteiner Printing would tell me this story at the Thank You party I had thrown for all my Time Inc. contacts the weekend before making my big move.

‘So, little over two months ago, John calls me and asks. “How well do you do you know this guy Harry who does SI (Sports Illustrated) at your place?’

‘You mean Haresh Shah? The Indian quality guy from Time?’

‘Yeah, the one who talks funny!’

‘What you want to know?’

‘You know, like how is he to work with?’

‘He’s quite pleasant. Always in good humor. We like him.’

‘That’s well and good. But what is he like with his work? Is he good with colors?’

‘Okay. He’s very good. He doesn’t know whit about American sports, but he knows exactly what color jerseys the Lakers wear. He’s a real professional and he knows his shit. To answer your question honestly, as nice as he normally is – when it comes to quality, he’s a son of a bitch!’

‘Thanks. That’s all I need to know.’

Years later, when we’re sitting in John’s corner office and he has time to just chat with me, suddenly he pulls out of his file drawer a bright red folder. Here, I’ve got a gift for you. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s the résumé I had sent out almost ten years earlier. Both John and I smile at my clear cut innocent face looking back at us.

●●●

Coming back to Shashi and me sitting at the LCP’s canteen. Fast forward fourteen years.

I am walking down the wide aisles of the McCormick Place in Chicago. It’s towards the end of the day and I see a familiar figure walking towards me. No question it’s good old Shashi – clean cut as ever to in the meanwhile my long hair and bearded face. We instantly crack big smiles at  each other. We are both attending EXPO PRINT 80.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

‘Checking out new technology for my printing company in Bombay.’

‘And you?’

‘I live here.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I am production manager for Playboy magazine’s international editions.’ Once again he doesn’t say a word, just gives me that big fat smirk.

‘And prior to that I spent six months at the GATF and also worked for Time & Life.’ Now I got double smirks from him. His look is admiring; ‘You son of a bitch!’ But he doesn’t say it.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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This is the wine country story I wanted to tell you when I started out writing Of Pinot Noire and the Burlaping in Boonville. But as you know, I got a bit side tracked. As Jan (Heemskerk) says; of that evening, he remembers the wines and I women. And so it is. But I haven’t forgotten wines either and all the philosophizing from the owners and the winemakers that surround this noble drink.

*WINTER BREAK

I have another eye surgery coming up on the 5th of December and I thought this is as good a time as any to take some time off and come back rejuvenated. But don’t  go away anywhere too far, because I still have many stories left to tell and will resume regular weekly telling of them starting with January 3rd 2014. In the meanwhile, have great holidays. Wish you all a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.

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Categories Corporate Matters, Employment, Time Inc.

MY WINTER VALENTINE

November 21, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

Of Pinot Noir And The Burlaping in Boonville

burlapping

The year is 1995 and talking of California wines to the Europeans is somewhat of a joke like the early transistor radios made in Japan were to everyone. Never mind that almost twenty years earlier on the day of America’s Bicentennial on July 4, 1976, the world’s wine experts were asked in a blind tasting to compare six California Cabernets and Chardonnays along with as many of Bordeaux and Burgundies and to everyone’s horror and American wine makers’  delight, California’s best stood shoulder to shoulder with the French on everyone’s scorecards, putting them instantly on the world map.

While the wine professionals of  Europe took a note of it, the wine consumers of the Continent remained oblivious to even their existence. Frustrated, California’s vintners decided, the time had come to make the world aware of the lush Napa Valley and its wines that were growing by leaps and bounds off the northern California Coast.

As a part of the broader push, California Wine Institute has invited the Dutch edition of Playboy to experience California’s wine country in all its glory, including its rapidly emerging cuisine and enjoy their steadily growing warm hospitality industry, in hopes that Playboy would take the message to its upscale demographics in Holland.

The editor-in-chief Jan Heemskerk himself takes upon the project and picks me to accompany him and assigns me to write a major piece for his edition. Not because by any dint of imagination I am a connoisseur or even an expert of wines, but because he thinks of me as someone who knows his wines, especially the ones from California.

He certainly doesn’t expect me to write something like what is on the back label of the 2011 Ménage à Trois I just picked up from the store: Ignite the romance with our silky, smooth Pinot Noir. Made with grapes from a trio of top California growing regions in a lush, fruit-forward style. It’s utterly irresistible. Bright cherries mingle with sultry violets and hints of toasty oak in a delicious slow jam on the palate. Whew! Enough to induce an instant wet dream!!!  Nothing like that. You haven’t picked a wine that I didn’t like. I’m obviously flattered and pleased. Not to mention all the fun we would have traveling together. Also to get out of Chicago’s bitter winter during the month of January is nothing to sniff at.

Over the next eleven days, we did the wineries of Napa Valley that included Sonoma and Mendocino counties. We met with the owners, wine makers, PR people and tasted a whole slew of what California had to offer in terms of wines paired to what has come to be known as California Cuisine, and enjoyed tremendously the hospitality of exquisite small, quaint and cozy boutique hotels, such as Vintners Inn and Medowood and others dotted along the wine trail. I hope to write of them in detail some other time, but the story I want to tell you today is that of the evening we spent with Pinot Noir farmers in the little hill-top town of Boonville.

With Ken Beck of Fetzer, a group of us drive up the long and winding mountainous route 128 to the place called The Sound Bite. It’s a down home all American small town restaurant and bar, complete with the pool table and serving very basic food. We have what looks and tastes like minced meat pie baked with a layer of mashed potatoes. The place is buzzing with the wine grape growers and winemakers of Mendocino County.  They have gathered here to present, taste and talk about their own Pinot Noirs, for which the region is renowned. More than any other varietal, they tell  us, Pinot Noir is very site specific if truly great wine is to be made.

Through the evening, we taste total of twenty one Pinot Noirs, including three sparkling varieties. The tasting is divided into six flights.  Each flight contains wines from three to four wineries.  Most of the wines presented are of ’93 and ’94 vintages and to our un-educated pallets they taste more like Beaujolais Nouveau.  For us, non wine-growers, the most interesting thing is to be among the wine farmers and the producers themselves, instead of the owners and the PR people describing their wares. The men and women we find ourselves surrounded by are the real farmers, they till the land, harvest the crops, press the grapes, make the wines and bottle them. You can see a definite parental pride and joy in their eyes as they fondly fuss over the wines that cross our lips and titillate our taste buds.

Of the five women sitting at our table of eight, four are grape farmers with their own Pinots, the fifth, Leisha is Ken’s daughter, and even though Ken too is a wine maker, he is with us as an observer – the other two men being Jan and I. Curiously, us three men are either married or committed, whereas all five women are apple heads–the Boonville slang for single women. I will call the four farmer femmes, Sally, Nicky, Christine and Mandy. They are all in their early to mid-thirties. Good looking even, in rustic sort of way. While they are dressed up for the evening, you could see and feel that they are true farmhands, wholesome and strong of toned muscles. After a couple of flights and after the ice has been broken between us, the women let their hair down and begin to educate us in the local secret language called Bootling.

‘You know what an apple head blanketing means?’ Asks Nicky. Seeing that we’re shaking our heads, she continues.

‘That means, a single woman getting laid. Like our Mandy here.’

‘Nicky! Please!!’ Mandy throws a faux embarrassment.

‘Actually she got burlaped, didn’t you Mandy?’ quips Christine.

‘What’s that?’ either Jan or I ask.

‘That means…’

‘No, don’t you dare! You are embarrassing me,’ squeals Mandy. Nicky throws a friendly wicked smile at Mandy and continues.

‘That means she got taken on top of a burlap bale,’ we see Mandy’s face turning water melon red.

‘Ouch, that’s got to scratch your sweet little booty good!’ It’s Christine again.

And while we are trying to imagine Mandy getting burlaped, the girls break out in a roaring chorus of a laughter, joined by Leisha and Ken, and then also by us while poor Mandy tries to hide her still reddening face behind the shield of her hands. The rest continue with how about, and throw at us some more Bootling slangs, such as Bucky Walter, Horn of Zeese, and Bal Gorms.  They mean public telephone, cup of coffee and good food.  And not to forget Madge and Moldunes meaning a whore and big boobs. Madge because in the days past, a woman called Madge ran the local bordello. Moldunes comes from the early Hippies that had migrated to the region and their women let their pendulums hang out and down – braless. There’s a story behind all of them and there even exists a book or two to keep the lore alive.  While we’re all having lots of laughs interspersed with different Pinots,  Sally somehow seems withdrawn, lost and a bit out of it. She is directly in the line of my vision and I can’t help but notice and observe the sadness settling on her face.

‘Poor Sally here, she’s sad tonight.  She just broke up with her boyfriend of  two years.’ Interjects Mandy, probably to shift the attention from her being blanketed on the burlap. But realizing that perhaps she has touched upon a raw nerve, the girls switch back to talking about their wines.

While I am busy conversing with Leisha, who’s sitting next to me, my attention keeps drifting to the sad face of Sally.  She is the runt of the group, perhaps even youngest and wears shorter hair that hugs closer to her neck. She has been quiet all evening long. She looks so sad that I feel she may just break down and cry. The passive pain of her face  makes you want to caress and comfort her. I see her excusing herself and slowly walking out of the restaurant.

‘She probably needs a smoke and wants to be alone for a while,’ says Christine. I wonder about Sally all alone outside the restaurant, smoking. Something draws me to her and I find excusing myself to go to the john and than casually step outside in the open. Sure enough, she is smoking, leaning against the hood of one of the parked pick-up-trucks.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. Just needed bit of fresh air.’

We engage in small talk. I ask her discreet questions about her break up. She gives me a feeling of being welcoming to have someone to talk with. The night is crisp and clear, the stars are bright and the mountain air is refreshing. Our subdued voices waft in the air like mellow musical notes. The stray light illuminates and deepens the sadness of her face. Us both leaning on the hood, seem to have slid closer. A sweet whiff of her perfume and her gentle breathing feel somehow intimate. I imagine her face tilting and resting over my shoulder, sliding down and buried in my chest. Out lips are so close, fluttering.  We’re at that certain now or never moment of either sealing or quelling of our suddenly awakened ardor.

And then I think of Susan, two thousand miles and two time zones away in Chicago, probably sitting in front of a television.  We’ve now been together for more than two years. Something similar must have been going through Sally’s mind as well. We consciously and slowly retract and step back.

‘It was wonderful meeting and talking to you. Hope you write a nice article about the Pinots.’

I wait until the taillight of her pick-up disappears in the downhill slope.

●●●

I do write a nice article about the California Wine Country. I write a series of them. A few days before the Valentine Day, Susan and I are having Sushi at Kama Kura in Evanston. We both are quiet or making polite low key conversation to fill the void that seems to have dawned between us two since my return from California. I sense it, but can’t quite put my finger on the possible cause.

‘You’re too sophisticated for me.’ I hear her say. Right!

She obviously has given our relationship some serious thought during these days. We talk for the umpteen time the perception and reality –  misunderstandings and interpretations.  But we both know, there is nothing more to say.

‘You know, you’re right, I have middle class values,’ she concedes. I’m disarmed.

Two days later, its Sunday and two days before the Valentine Day. The night before I have cooked an elaborate Indian meal. We have washed it down with a bottle of Cuvee Fumé  Preston. We have spent another one of the most loving and passionate nights. We are sitting at the round glass top table in the breakfast nook of my kitchen. There are tears. No more words. Laying in the middle is a bouquet of a dozen champagne roses – more my style than the traditional red ones.

And then she is gone. Emptiness begins to fall like the fluffy snow flakes. Slowly accumulating and settling on the ground.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, November 29, 2013

“HE’S A SON OF A BITCH’

That’s me they’re talking about. The question most asked of me time and time again is: How does one get a job at Playboy? Or more to the point: How did you get to work for them? Other than joking around, I have always avoided giving a straight answer to these questions – lest it may end up sounding like a boast.

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Categories California Wines, Food & Wine, Pinot Noir, The Netherlands

THE RIDES

November 14, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

Lonely And Lost On The Road

sadplane3

I have just flown in from Mexico City. I’m sitting at the bar having a beer at United terminal of Los Angeles International Airport. I have almost an hour before the departure of my connecting flight to Santa Barbara. I’m probably scribbling some notes in my agenda while slowly savoring  my beer. Mine is one of the last flights to leave the terminal and there are only a few of us lingering at the bar, waiting. Among the people, I notice a middle aged woman at the other end of the bar. I feel her gaze pointed at me. Must be in her mid-fifties, longer than shoulder length frizzled hair and dull grey eyes, she looks haggard and somewhat drunk, twirling a glass filled with a yellowish liquor, probably some Scotch or a Bourbon based cocktail.  I get back to my scribbling and am absorbed in it when I feel a human shadow shuffling next to me.

‘Mind I sit next to you?’ Seeing me a bit confused, she doesn’t wait for my answer, instead she eases herself on the next bar stool, as unsteady as she is on her feet, and asks the bar tender for ‘one more of the same.’ I try to ignore her, but she is intent on making small talk.

‘So, where are you off too?’ she slurs her words.

‘Oh, not far. Just a quick hop to Santa Barbara.’

‘I’m going there too.’ I don’t respond to that.

‘My daughter goes to school there, you know, at UCSB.’

She is in the mood to talk. I’m not. Besides, I’m somewhat repelled by the way she reeks of alcohol and is slurring her words and is so close in my hair. I try to be polite and plot my getaway. In the next few minutes I find out that she is divorced, and is having hard time with her daughter at the UCSB, that they don’t see each other that often, and even though she lives in LA, she doesn’t drive and she is hoping she and her daughter could be more of friends. I don’t  remember her name, or not sure even if I asked, but I will call her Ellie, I think she should be Ellie. I converse with her in monosyllables and when they announce the departure of the flight, I excuse myself to run to the bathroom and make my escape from the bar.

I purposely take longer before boarding and then leisurely walk to the plane. It’s a small city hopper jet and is sparsely occupied. I don’t see her anywhere on the board. I walk as far into the front as I could and duck my head below the head rest. But wouldn’t you know? She comes striding down the aisle just when the plane is about to take off and plumps herself right next to me. I am not welcoming, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Fortunately, its such a short flight that before we know, we have landed in Santa Barbara.

The few passengers scurry away while my friends Mark and Ann (Stevens) receive me with their usual, welcome back feel good brother. Mark picks up my suitcase and standing there by the baggage claim is Ellie. She looks so alone and abandoned.

‘Is  your daughter coming to get you?’

‘No, she doesn’t have a car.’

‘How are you getting to her apartment?’

‘I was hoping to get a ride from someone, she doesn’t live far, in Isla Vista.’ Which is only a few blocks away from where we all live in Goleta.

Normally the most generous and helpful Mark and Ann are not forthcoming. First because their little blue Datsun pickup can hardly seat two people comfortably. With me in there it would already be a squeeze. Plus seeing Ellie the way she is, I am sure that like me, they too weren’t kin on all of us squeezed in together, even though it would only be a ten minute ride.

Santa Barbara airport is only a little more than a shack. Surprisingly, it has frequent jets landing and taking off  to and from Los Angeles and San Francisco and I believe Las Vegas and Phoenix. For someone like me it’s a heaven, because it serves almost like an airlift to Los Angeles Airport to connect with whichever parts of the world I am asked to go during those two years of me returning back to Playboy as a freelancer while still being continue to live in the yet not overly crowded sunny southern California. But there is no public transportation between the airport and anywhere else and there certainly aren’t any cabs cruising by. The one man operation of the United too has thrown the last piece of the baggage on the small conveyer belt and has already driven away. So however begrudgingly, we squeeze Eliie into the little cabin of the Datsun, her perched atop my lap, and we take her to Isla Vista. We somehow survive her reeking of booze and her slurred pronouncements.  Fortunately, a young woman comes running down the stairs from the second floor of the strip of student apartments.

‘I was beginning to worry!’ We breath a sigh of relief in that however repulsive we found her,  we have now safely delivered her into the hands of her daughter.

●●●

On another night, I find myself in a similar predicament. That evening, I have unexpectedly decided to return home. Normally, if not Mark or Ann, I am always picked up by someone upon my arrival and taken to the airport by one of our close circle of friends – curiously, often in my own Buick. But in this instance, I wasn’t able to get hold of anybody before I left, not even when I tried to call someone from Los Angeles. They all must have been some place together. So I board the plane and hope that I’ll still be able to call someone from the airport to come pick me up. Fortunately for me, on the plane I’m seated next to a middle-aged man with a weathered face, who too is quite drunk but is still coherent and introduces himself as an off duty airline pilot heading home. Let’s call him Joe. He tells me that he used to fly commercial jets but now in his semi-retirement, he flies small corporate type chartered planes.  Seeing that I am rushing for the public telephone upon our arrival, he offers to give me ride home.

‘It’s not too much out of my way.’ He says, even though taking me to Goleta would mean driving north first and then turn around and go south to Carpentaria, where he lives with his wife. I thank him and we walk to his Toyota Corolla parked in the airport parking lot. Like an old-fashioned gentleman, Joe opens the door and lets me in first. He gets in on the driver’s side of the car, puts the key in the ignition and then nothing. For a flicker of a moment, I think of the similar encounter in Chicago with an older man who turned out to be gay and had some amorous intentions for us. It took some doing for me to have him stop the car in the middle of the street and me getting out of it in a hurry and walking a mile home. Instinctively I put myself on the psychological alert.

When he still doesn’t start the car, I’m getting nervous. I sense his face turning to look at me, as if to lean sideways to kiss. But instead, I see a sudden string of tears rolling down his eyes. And then he just plain breaks down and like a lost little kid, begins to sob in big and loud sobs. Uncontrollably so.

‘I’m sorry. My life is all fucked up! I need to talk to someone.’ He mumbles through his tears, his voice cracking like a badly scratched vinyl record.

Imagine this. Santa Barbara airport is in the middle of nowhere. There are no houses, no commercial areas, no motels and the little airport itself is now closed down. Lights turned off. The only lights are on the airfield, which must have been a farmland at some distant past. I am sitting there with this stranger in his little Toyota sedan – the lone car standing in an empty parking lot. I no longer feel any danger of being made pass at. But I am alone, with this man who is probably in need of some professional help for which I don’t in the least qualify. All I could do is, what another human being would. I first let him cry, howls and all. When he has calmed down, something he says guides me.

‘And I’m starving. I haven’t eaten anything in the last twenty four hours. And I’ve been drinking!’ Suddenly I am hungry too. He is not familiar with this part of the town. I direct him to the nearest pizza joint that’s open late. We order a large pizza and beer. Now I’m in need of a drink.

Here is the story he tells me. Just the day before, he has wracked an airplane while landing. He has survived without a scratch, but his job as a pilot is in jeopardy. He couldn’t help having a few drinks before flying, feeling down and out and devastated, because his wife is lying home dying. Had an argument over her care with his step-son who punches him in the mouth. I see his hand automatically reach and touch the clear bruise on his face. Haven’t had a piece of ass in more than two years, man! He tells me. Probably alluding to his wife’s long drawn out illness. What I don’t ask or no longer remember. He is absolutely out of it, besides himself and is so miserable. He keeps saying all evening long: ‘You know, I am going to drive that thing off the cliff as soon as I drop you off.’ He is dead serious as he says it, every time ever more so. The more I try  to pacify him, the more he wants to end it all.

Not knowing what to do, I think of my friend Janice (Maloney) in Chicago. Bless her heart, as she would say. She volunteers a night or two a week at the local crisis call center on the suicide hotline. She is trained to talk to the caller until she is relatively certain that she has succeeded in pacifying and talked the person out of the suicidal track. I wish I had her training, her patience and her compassion. Nothing I can do about the training, but I can certainly conjure up some patience and compassion. I put myself on a sympathetic friendly stranger’s mode.

We demolish a large pizza washed down with beer while I let him talk. I try to tell him about all the positives in life. I try to tell him that the test of a real man is to survive the storms. I tell him, that his ailing wife loves him and needs him more than ever. I try to paint a pretty picture of how everything’s going to turn out alright in the end. At the end of two hours, I feel I have helped him sober up enough that he doesn’t repeat his threat of driving off the cliff. Would have been an easy thing to do, as there are many of them along the coast, especially near Carpentaria where he lives.

But I feel reasonably certain that having had a chance to unload what had him so devastated, he seemed no longer a threat to himself. Before he drops me off, he apologizes profusely for burdening me with his problems, but thanks me as profusely for letting him pour out all that had bottled up inside of him. Thanks again. You just may have saved my life! He self consciously hugs me before getting back into his car. I watch him go around the cul-de-sac of Linfield Place and then swing out and turn left on the main road. I take comfort in the fact that his driving is straight and steady and he observes the turn signals. I watch the tail light in the distance and can’t help but imagine it going down a cliff. But I don’t think so.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, November 22, 2013

OF PINOT NOIR AND THE BURLAPING

Jan Heemskerk, the editor-in-chief of Playboy’s Dutch edition  and I take a trip to California’s wine country north of San Francisco and visit various wineries and their owners and the winemakers. Quite sophisticated, and then take a long and winding mountainous road to a little town called Boonville, which prides itself in its exquisite Pinot Noir. Nothing had prepared us for the wonderful evening we spent with the men and the women of the Pinot Noir country.

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Categories Automobile, Desperationn

LA DOLCE VITA

September 26, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

The Strike Italian Style

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I land in Milan for the very first time in November of 1972. This is my first week on the job. Having survived Munich and Essen, I spend a couple of days in Milan to meet up with Gerrit (Huig), Don Stewart and the people at Rizzoli – the Italian Playboy publishers – before returning to Chicago to wrap up my personal affairs. I have all of ten days to do what needs to be done, including several meetings in Chicago office and be ready for the moving van to pick up my possessions.

We have already landed at Linate. As we are about to deplane, we are told that we are to pick up our own checked-in baggage from the tarmac and carry it to the terminal. The ground crew is on strike, including the bus transfer from the plane to the terminal. I have with me my largest and the heaviest suitcase. They have not yet invented wheeled baggage. I somehow manage to drag it to the terminal, find a cab and check into the Grand Hotel. Dump my suitcase in my room and take another cab to the restaurant where Gerrit is waiting with his wife Barbara and Donald Stewart. Two days later, on Friday, I am at the airport waiting to board Amsterdam bound KLM flight which would connect me with its flight 611 to Chicago.

The flight to Amsterdam is delayed on account of the heavy fog at Milan airport, but they are hoping for it to lift soon and be able to depart at the latest by eleven. It would bring me into Amsterdam just in time to make my connection. The fog lifts, the sunrays begin to break through the clouds, they have already announced the departures of Amsterdam and several other flights. Everything is just cool. But wait!!Not so fast!!  Soon as the sky has cleared of the fog, they promptly go on strike. The negotiations begin. The hope is that they would get back to work in an hour or two, three at the most. Chicago passengers rush to change their tickets to fly via New York. But nothing moves for the whole day. We wait until after eight in the evening in hopes of getting out of Milano. Even though there are no transatlantic flights waiting for us anymore in Amsterdam or anywhere else on the continental Europe, it’s still better to spend the night anywhere else but in Milano. For there is no telling what tomorrow may bring.

But we’re stuck where we are. KLM feeds us a decent meal, makes us wait a bit longer and then to our dismay, we watch the empty aircraft take off, leaving us behind, gasping. The one which would return to Milan the next morning with the Amsterdam passengers and hopefully be able to take us back with it. We are given an option to take the night train to Amsterdam or stay over in a hotel and take our chances tomorrow. The train is not an option for me. I do not have visas to  travel through Switzerland and Holland. At least I get a good night’s sleep. The preceding twelve days have been hectic and harried and this unexpected break helps me re-energize. The Linate crew is still striking the next morning. We are bussed and flown out of Malpensa.

I have now lost a whole precious day. Planned are several meetings with different Playboy people including my boss Lee Hall and the production chief John Mastro. And I have to wrap up four years of my life in Chicago. During those years, I have made many close friends and the bunch at Time has become my family. As a gesture of my heartfelt thanks and to bid everyone proper farewell, I am throwing a lavish bash in the penthouse party room of the lake shore highrise in which I live. My Time buddies jump in and help.  Everything goes smooth. The celebration spills into the early morning. Good times had by all.

Two days later, a Bekin’s moving truck swallows the entire contents of my apartment and the car, and I say my arrivederci to Chicago.

●●●

Over the next two and a half years, I must have been fogged in or struck out or both for tens of times at Linate. In the meanwhile, I have acquired visas for every possible country on the continent, I might be required to cross. I try taking night train a couple of times, but when did I have that kind of time? So with the cancellations, delays  and all, I have no choice but to put up with the quirks of the weather and of the group of people called the Italians. Stranded at the Milan airport has its rewards. Often you run into interesting people, including the stunning beauty with whom I would travel in the first class. But the cherry on the cake waits to be crowned for my very last trip from Milan to Munich.

●●●

‘Ciao Haresh, I will call you next week when I get back to office.’ I stroke her face and get into the cab. ‘Linate per favore.’ I look back to wave at Celeste (Huenergard) as the cab paves its way out of the driveway of Hotel Principe e Savoia into Piazza della Republica. She is still standing there, waving and smiling at me. I see her smoky green eyes starting to blur.

The cab crosses via Pisani at an angle to the other side of the street and accelerates towards the airport. Celeste’s teary eyes follow me. Little do I realize, my eyes too are getting fogged up. I struggle hard to control my emotions. I look outside the window. The traffic has come to  standstill. The road around the tram tracks is being repaired, the right side of the street is blocked by a garbage truck picking up black plastic bags from the pavement. I glance at my watch. I can’t afford to be late. Milan airport has its very own set of rules about you checking-in on time.  And I just have to be in Munich that afternoon. I am throwing ausstand, my going away party for the people at Playboy in Germany. The anxiety of making it to the airport in time pushes Celeste away in back of my mind.

Soon as the cab edges in near the departure gates, I jump out and make my way through the waves of people and to the first counter with the shortest line. I still have at least forty minutes. But the woman at the counter is taking her sweet little time. Unlike most other airports, they don’t have computers to aid them. Instead she must make a phone call to check-in every single passenger. The television monitor up above, blinks the requirement of checking-in at least thirty five minutes prior to the scheduled departures. There are still two passengers in front of me. The clock keeps ticking. It is now 9:40 and the plane is to depart at 10:10.

‘It’s too late for the Munich flight!’ she frowns at me.

‘What you mean it’s too late. It doesn’t leave  for another half an hour,’

‘Yes, but you must check-in thirty five minutes before.’

‘Yes, but I have been standing in this line for fifteen minutes now!’

‘I don’t know that!’

‘What do you mean you don’t know that?’ Irritation in my voice is apparent.

‘The plane is already closed and it’s full. I am sorry, you understand English? I told you, you can’t get on the flight.’

This kind of rudeness only can happen at the Linate. I almost want to strangle her. Shut her up for once and for ever. Instead I  rush to the counter #1 to see the manger.

‘I am sorry, it’s too late to get on that flight’, he snaps and conveniently walks away. My frustration and rage is building up, but there is nothing I can do. I rush to another counter. The clerk is at least pleasant. I start babbling to him too. He checks on the phone and apologizes that there was nothing they could do. The flight is already closed, the reserved seats are given away to the waiting list passengers.

‘Where is the Lufthansa office?’ A Bavarian looking guy in his green coat butts in.

‘It’s downstairs, across from the police station.’

‘Are you a passenger to Munich too?’

‘Yes.’

We both rush downstairs through both wings of the airport in a fury, looking for Lufthansa office. A German looking young woman is standing near the door, seeming she is about to open the office. She isn’t in the uniform. I am about to blow up when I suddenly realize that she too is bumped off the flight and is down there to complain. We knock. No one answers. Besides,  the woman tells us that the airport personnel are going on their standard two hour strike in ten minutes. Perhaps we should check into the train schedule to see if there was an Intercity leaving soon. There is indeed one, leaving in about forty minutes. Fat chance that we could make it across the city within that time. Plus, it arrives in Munich  twelve hours later.  That too is no good. We also contemplate renting a car together and drive through the treacherous curves of the Alps. Not a good idea either.

But now with the three of us, we have strength in numbers. Hermann, an aeronautical engineer works for MBB in Munich. Rosemary is the European marketing manager for Elizabeth Arden,  working out of Düsseldorf. Not attractive in  conventional sense, but the way she carries herself has that certain sex appeal about her. And she certainly knows how to best use the beauty products she represents. She is in fact, the perfect walking and talking image for Ms. Arden.

At the stroke of ten past ten, suddenly there is calm and there is chaos. The airport employees have all flown away like a flock of migrating birds. . The check-in counters deserted and looking lonesome await the return of their occupants. The mob of people have turned around and are now moving in the opposite direction to re-book. Strangely enough they have opened a counter to do just that. While Hermann and I stand there, looking confused and disoriented, Rosemary has paved her way through the throng and all of a sudden she has planted herself at the front of the long line. She comes back with a reservation to Munich via Zürich. Hermann and I follow suit.

We stack all of our baggage together on one cart. I join the line, while Hermann and Rosemary wait for me. I am squeezed between two people on the sides and a hoard of them in the front and back of me in rows of three. For all these many people, there is only one agent re-booking. Over-worked, she does her work patiently and swiftly. By the time I get re-booked an hour later, I feel  nauseated by all that body odor I am forced to inhale. Rosemary could have sold a whole bunch of Elizabeth Arden deodorant that day.

The strike is going to be over in the next twenty minutes. Handing tickets to Hermann to check-in our baggage, I run to the public telephone to call Brigit (Peterson) in Munich. But the foreign telephone exchange is on strike as well. After having lost three telephone coins I get hold of Katherine (Morgan) at Rizzoli’s editorial offices, and ask her to send a telex to Munich.

Hadn’t I known the Italians outside of the Linate airport, my image of them would have been that of the people most inconsiderate and the rudest on earth. They could make you feel the most helpless ever. Outright nasty. I have experienced some of the most humiliating moments of my life  between Linate and Malpensa airports in Milano. You can plan anything, make dates, the weather could be the most beautiful, no fog to delay the departures. But at a whim of an union leader, they just walk out, leaving you glued to the spot where you stood, burning inside with rage, furious with your fists eager to punch someone, your feet stomping madly on the ground. But of no use. They have a cool way of pretending that you don’t even exist. You are in their land, and they are the ultimate MASTERS of the Universe.

You learn to be patient. You learn that it doesn’t help getting upset, that the blood you end up burning is your own. The smartest thing you can do is to accept the fact that you are helpless. You are dealing with the people who probably invented logic, but don’t quite understand it themselves. They are an emotional bunch. And you are dealing with the unions that are apt at blackmailing and disrupting the whole day, the whole city and the whole country, if not the whole continent, by going on strike only for two hours! Just take it easy. Not being able to get off the ground is not the worst thing that can happen on earth. Never get too upset and block your ability to reason. Never forget, you are dealing with the country that once was the greatest in Europe, and you are dealing with the people called THE ITALIANS.

The Zürich flight is leaving at 13:15. It has turned into a beautiful day. Sunny, the clean  unpolluted blue sky, the crisp air and the friendly sunrays stroking your skin. I look outside the window as the Swissair slowly rolls towards the runway. I waive, ‘Ciao Milano’.  And soon we are in Zürich.. We have three hours layover before Lufthansa takes off for Munich. We walk up the stairs of the atrium to the airport  restaurant. We clink our glasses to prost.

‘Back to the civilization!’ I say.

‘Yes, back to the civilization!’ Rosemary echoes with a broad smile.

I rush to call Brigit. ‘No party tonight,’ I tell her. She is disappointed. Heinz (Nellissen) has taken the trip from Essen and is around. We’re party people and don’t let little thing like Italian strike stop us

‘Don’t worry. We will arrange everything!’ Its nice to hear Heinz’s reassuring voice.

The party is already in full swing when I walk into the corridor of our Munich offices at little past six in the evening. It’s the loudest and the most rambunctious reception. The revelry goes on until four in the morning. When I finally hit the sack, I feel happily nostalgic about what I considered to be the longest cocktail party of my life – that was the act one of my time at Playboy.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, October 4, 2013

THE TAIWANESE BARBER SHOP

When I was just a little kid, the family barber would stop by our joint family home every morning to shave-cut hair-do head massage to the grown up males. He would squat on the floor with one of the males sitting in front of him, also on the floor, with his legs crossed. And submit himself  to be pampered. My generation got more modern barber shops called salons. And then I got to visit a Taiwanese Barber Shop. That would change forever the way I would think of the business of cutting hair.  

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Categories Italy

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK

September 12, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

Eat Your Heart Out!

mundial2

Imagine this! Puerto Vallarta. Chicago is in deep of the winter of 1986. It’s bone chilling cold as the city has a reputation of being every February. And here we are, the sun is shining bright, the sky is blue as can be and the waves of Bahia de Banderas off the Pacific Ocean are rushing towards the shore breaking and splashing. Wandering around in our shorts and t-shirts and the girls frolicking au naturell most of the day, Pompeo (Posar), Jan (Heemskerk) and I  are conferring by the poolside, deciding on the next dramatic but a fun shot, with eight of the world’s most beautiful women lined up in the water by the edge of the pool, holding on to the railing and ready to lift their bare butts in action, their faces turned sideways to their left, bursting with laughters and their legs and feet elevated, kicking the surface of the water in a choreographed harmony of synchronized swimming.

Right now we are on the lunch break. We have just availed ourselves of the sumptuous buffet and are sipping on our chilled to perfection Pacifico beers while the girls have retracted under the shade of the arch separating the private pool and the villa made available to us by Hotel Krystal for our exclusive use. A little earlier, the girls have emerged out of the pool and while waiting for the next shot, have not bothered to dry themselves nor cover up. Instead they are sitting and standing around a low table swarming with exotic drinks. They are an animated bunch, gossiping and in general making a ruckus despite language barriers.

We are in Mexico to produce this incredible pictorial as the warming  up act for the Football World Cup – Mundial 1986, to be hosted by this land of the mystical Aztecs.  Brainchild of Jan, I am the one in charge of bringing it all together with Playboy’s then existing twelve international editions. I am able to get only nine to participate. Missing most notably are Italy and Spain, and  sadly Holland, which didn’t even qualify. Quite an emotional blow for Jan to contain, while cheering everyone else. He brings instead Chantal Aarts of Belgium, because the Dutch edition is also distributed in Belgium. Bebe Martinez of Argentina either couldn’t afford to or wasn’t able to find an appropriate candidate, or both to send a girl of his own. I find one for him from our files,  the beautiful Evelyn Escalante from Costa Rica and put her in the Argentine blue and white stripes. It would have been devastating, had we not been able  to include Argentina, as they went on to win the Cup 3:2 against West Germany. This wasn’t an international cricket tournament, so Australia obviously wasn’t enthused. But Japan’s Emi Kojo, Turkey’s Sumer Ilken and America’s Andrea Huber came along for the fun of it and in the spirit of cooperation to partake in what Jan calls Playboyesque World Cup happening.  The logistics are abominable.  But we don’t think about the difficulties we may encounter, we just take a plunge, because the exotic scenario I have described above is all in a day’s work for us.

Jan and I arrive in Mexico City on Sunday, February 24th. Meet with our Mexican publisher Irina Schwartzman, and the editor-in-chief Eduardo Velazquez. On Monday, the rest begin to trickle in and check into Hotel Krystal Rosa – the meeting point from where we would begin.

The first one to arrive is Sumer (Ilken) from Istanbul. She has picked up a wrong suitcase and has walked through the customs without realizing it. Those friendly Mexicans!! They don’t care what you walk out with from the airport as long as you spend your tourists $$££¥¥€€ in their country. How dumb can you have to be? She is only twenty one. Only? But this is not the time to ask questions. However, Sumer seems to have a thing about forgetting things. A few days later,  she loses her sun glasses and then she arrives without her uniform to the stadium in Querétaro . This follows the last minute rush for someone to run down to her hotel room and bring the uniform to the stadium where we are preparing to shoot various mock tableaus to give the upcoming World Cup some real sex appeal. Sumer gets away with everything with disarming smiles and cuddles.

The shoot goes swell with the girls playing like a team of the friendly rivals and we stage various soccer situations such as dueling for and heading the ball, kicking a penalty shot, which results in Luiza shooting the ball so hard that it lands on the face of the West German goalie, Michaela Probst, knocking her down flat.  There is a tender shot of Luiza bending over and comforting Michaela in pain, lying on the ground. Sweet! The sexiest shot is that of all the girls taking off their shirts at the end of the game and swapping them with each other in good old football tradition of leaving the field with no hard feelings.

All goes well and without a hitch, that is; until at the last minute Jan comes up with the idea of perhaps do some sexy shots of the girls showering, getting out of their uniform, sitting around on the benches – sort of doing post game unwinding. Even though we have official permission to shoot in the stadium, soon as the maintenance staff realizes that we are photographing the girls in the locker room, with their uniforms serving as mere props, something triggers in them and they rush to get a sideway glances at the bare bodies and then promptly and  unceremoniously throwing us out with, Señor, eso no se puede ser .

Déjà vu of the couple of days earlier when we had gone to the Pyramids to do some group shots of the girls playing tourists, fully draped of course, albeit short shorts and tight fitting tops. Along the way, Luiza decides to make those tops sexier. As it turns out. she is very handy with the pair of scissors and t-shirts are slashed up this way and that to selectively reveal what the Pyramid authorities deem to be a bit much for the innocent eyes of the watching Mayan Gods. So off we’re sent on our way back to the hotel.

But mostly we’re welcomed all over with a lot of enthusiasm. Our press conference attracts 300 print and television journalists and the limelight shines on all of our girls with their elegantly dressed glamour shots flickering on television screens and on the society pages of most prestigious of the newspapers. Sumer of course is the most popular with her full head of floating blonde tresses and her sweet and seductive smiles and according to Jan, also because of her extravagant décolleté.  They also love the French, Nathalie Galan,  whom the prominent daily El Universal  calls despampanante rubia – a stunning blonde.

Luiza Brunet from Brazil is stunningly beautiful and yet the Mexican press doesn’t  pay her much attention probably because she is a mulatta,  dime a dozen with the Mexican streets filled with their own pretty morenas.  But Luiza is already a super model in her country and the official mascot of the Brazilian team.  She considers Pele to be her friend, with whom she is to make a movie in the near future. She is low key, unpretentious and soft spoken, but when she first appears, she is accompanied by her boyfriend Armando. To have boyfriends and husbands around is always pain in the butt. She is a professional so she is there when we need her, but then she has “him” waiting for her. But he stays in the background and I don’t remember any major disruption. Except that Armando is robbed of US$ 2400.- in cash. You can’t completely ignore it. You have to try to help him – one more thing to worry about.

One evening when our group walks into the restaurant El Refugio, Jan observes the look on the faces of the crowd gazing at us as them having witnessed a bunch of Martians having landed in their valley. We begin shooting in little Venice, that is the remote town center of Mexico City and goes by an exotic name, Xochimilco – literally soft milk. Once a lake, it has evolved into various canals filled with flower bedecked gondolas called trajineros, They are actually built flat like pontoons. We hire two of them. The girls in one and the crew in another one. We let the girls loose sans script and let Pompeo and his assistant Steve Conway just point and shoot. The girls are getting into the spirit, some on the deck even taking off their tops. The poor gondola drivers and the young onlookers on the canal banks. Only if the girls know what they are doing to those poor bastards!!  Fortunately there are no keepers of the morality around in this little paradise of Mexico City to throw us overboard.

But if only everything would go that smooth. That night we witness the Japanese candidate Emi Kojo  and her chaperone/interpreter, Yuko Kato suddenly break out in a violent cat and dog fight. No idea about what, because it is obviously all in the Japanese. We are sitting in a café and everyone gets to experience the war of two beautiful roses. I butt-in like a thorn in the middle and play referee. Détente comes with hugs and me taking them to San Angel Grill, where Mexican edition’s top executive, Alfred Amescua is hosting dinner to welcome the group. But the peace is short lived. Two nights later, we are in Hotel Real de Minas in Santiago de Querétaro, one of the World Cup venues.  In middle of the night, Jan calls my room informing me that Emi is complaining about a serious stomach ache. She is hysterical and wants us to call a doctor for her. We are practically in the middle of nowhere. Besides, I am not convinced of how serious her ache is. So I sit her down on the bed and reason. Ask her a few questions and tell her to drink a glass of warm milk, which we promptly order from the room service. I tell her that is what  my mother would have done. But she continues to squirm. To which I respond probably a bit sternly that I want her to try it and go to bed. Should it not work, I promise her we would get a doctor for her. She doesn’t call during the night but continues to complain about her stomach and refuses to join the other girls at the stadium in the morning. So we go ahead and shoot with the remaining eight. The individual nudes are to be shot in Puerto Vallarta, and it becomes clear to me that Emi would be more trouble than she would be worth. I have her to be the first to be photographed soon as we begin in the morning and ship her back to Tokyo on the first available flight. A month or two later, I receive a sweetest little letter from her:

Dear Mr. Shah,

I send my apologies for having been behaving like that.

Recalling the time when you gave me a scolding, I thing(k) of what father is. Having grown up without my real father, when you gave me hugs, I learned the warmth of father. 

Sincerely Emi

●●●

One afternoon while I am strolling the properties of Krystal in Vallarta and enjoying bit of  solitude, I run into Michaela. She is in tears. I feel like a cow! She cries out. Apparently one of the poses Pompeo had requested in the huge bathtub was for her to get down on all four. While we are still standing on the path, I notice Nathalie walking towards us, she too is  in tears. I will talk to Pompeo. I don’t want any of you to do what you are not comfortable with. I appease them with hugs, put my arms around the both and we stop for a glass of wine.

On our first evening in Puerto Vallarta, we are all sitting around a long table at Krystal’s Japanese restaurant Kama Kura, enjoying the dinner hosted by the Alfonso Vasquez M., the corporate manager . I am sitting either right next to Nathalie or close enough. We are all animated and getting into the spirit of things when suddenly we hear Nathalie making bird like squeaking sounds. Both of her hands are wrapped around her neck and the horror on her face conveys that she is choking on something. Her face is turning white and contorted and she is certainly in pain. She kicks off the chair and stands up. I grab her by the waist. She is pointing her finger at the partially bitten piece of chicken she has thrown back on her plate and then to her mouth. Fortunately, all it takes is for her to bend over my arm and me slapping her back a couple of times. Out comes a chicken bone, her face smeared with tears, her nose running. But after a glass of water and a sip of wine, our despampanante rubia is back to life, her face once again radiating.

On any project away from home, the entire group becomes your sole responsibility. You want to make everyone feel comfortable, well fed and motivated. Build a team. Even though when you get a group of the most beautiful women together, its hard sometimes, because each one of them thinks that she is the most beautiful of the bunch. Thus there is always a bit of competitive edge to such groups. In this case, enter also the nationalistic pride because they are representing the fierce game of the world soccer. But by and large they behave phenomenally well, even helping each other. During a couple of small crisis, the 23 year old Andrea Huber has established herself as the pleasant and cajoling peace maker. Mexico’s own Belén Balmori at 28, plays caring mother, They are big help.

The thing the producer has to worry most about is that all girls get a good night’s sleep and are rested and relaxed the next morning. Keep them together, never giving them or one of their admirers a chance to get closer and sneak away. Because you don’t want to have those elements interfere with work. Seems ironic coming from Playboy executive, but when you are involved in such a project you have to constantly strive for the balance which tilts heavily towards work.

But how do you keep the Cupid away from trying? Alfonso, (not the hotel manager) tall, suave and handsome is one of the people brought along Irina  – the social director of sorts – who is assigned to help us with anything and everything. Pat Tomlinson is a part of our Chicago team and is the most efficient and able stylist/make-up artist. Jan is a big golf aficionado and Alfonso has organized a t-off at the nearby Flamingo course and is to join Jan and Michaela for a round of golf that morning. While the two have already arranged a cab and are waiting for Alfonso to join them, he is nowhere to be found. Not in his room, nor in any of the likely resort restaurants where he could have been having breakfast. Where do they finally locate him? In Pat’s roomJ

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, September 20,20123

WHATEVER IS HOT!!

Let it be a surprise for both of us. Can’t decide which of the ones in works I want to or will inspire me to finish first.

 

 

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Categories World Cup '86

THE CORPORATE CASTE SYSTEM

September 5, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

A Touch Of Communism In The Capitalist Culture

tugowar2

In the fall of 1989 over the weekend of October, 6/8, Carolyn and I went to the Duneland Beach Inn in Michigan City, Indiana and returned with an agreement that the best course of action for us as individuals – to use the corporate cliché, going forward, was for us to go our own way. Not even a tiny blip on the world stage. That very weekend on October 7, Hungary becomes independent and on October 23rd, the acting President, Mátyás Szűrös declares the country a Republic in the public ceremony held in the same Kossuth Square where the first mass rally of the 1956 revolution was held.  The historic moment for which I happened to be in Budapest and along with the Hungarian  editors, would go to the square to hear the declaration proclaimed. We come back to the office and begin to put together the first issue of Playboy to come out a month later – the first of the three I would launch behind the iron curtain. On November 4, I turn 50 with a big fanfare and the nine liter Salamanzar  bottle of Lanson champagne, compliment of my boss and the friend Bill (Stokkan). The Berlin Wall falls on November 9th, the Velvet Revolution unfolds on Národní třída in Prague on November 17th, and in-between on the weekend of October 14/15, Playboy headquarters in Chicago move some three plus blocks south east  to 680 N. Lake Shore Drive from it’s imposing skyline presence at 919 N. Michigan Avenue. The Bunny Beacon that illuminated the Chicago skies for 23 years, is no longer and neither are the floor high letters PLAYBOY, lit bright.

I am not even in the town when the big move happens. Thanks to my most able and the efficient assistant Mary (Nastos) that I am moved into my new office and when I walk in a couple of weeks later, other than a few unopened boxes, Mary has found the new home for my stuff in a very organized way in the space I would occupy for the next four years. The office I have yet to see.

I park my car in the same building instead of a block away in a separate parking garage. I take the elevator first down to the lobby and switch to the one which would take me to the Playboy’s new headquarters on the 15th floor. I am dazzled by the cascade of natural and artificial light, the high ceiling and the U shaped railing up above, looking down at the receptionist a floor down below. Mounted on the wall on the west side of the reception area is a huge bronze sculpture of Playboy’s familiar Rabbit Head blinking at me with its left eye. Commissioned and created by the renowned Chicago sculptor, Richard Hunt. On the opposite side, in front of an expansive glass wall sits a slender, exotic looking dark skinned, very sweet and petite young woman, I have never seen before.

‘May I help you?’ She flashes a friendly smile, which is unconsciously seductive, her voice dripping with honey.

‘Oh yes! I am here – ur, I guess I work here!’

Soon I see in the background Mary coming down the steps of one of the two Terrazzo staircases.  At the first glance I perceive them to be  to be twin modernistic Spanish steps descending on to the either side of Piazza di Spagna in Rome. I see Mary rush towards the glass wall and yanking open the door on the side.

‘Welcome back,’ she gives me a hearty hug as the receptionist looks on.

‘Mona, meet my boss Haresh Shah.’ Mary introduces  me to the receptionist and takes me by the hand. ‘Let me take you to your new office.’

I am in awe of what I see as we approach the atrium. Instead of little shops and the stands found on a Piazza, I am face-to-face with a large oil on canvas portrait of Gloria Steinem, done by Chicago artist Ed Paschke, mounted on one of the panels, staring menacingly at me through her magenta colored glasses. Up the stairs on the wall facing us, I see a pair of giant red lips by Tom Wesselman, open wide in a hearty laugh, a set of perfectly aligned teeth sparkling. I also glance up at the  slanted modernistic metal canopies crowning the glass walls. The executive offices. Mary informs me, about what would come to be known as the fish tank. As we stop at the top of the floor, there is an office on my right, That’s John Mastro’s office. And the right outside begins the grey Steele railing that stretches over the expanse of the atrium, curved like  the shape of a luxury liner. Stunning!

Turning the curve, Mary  leads me to the section behind the lips; assigned to our group. Suddenly I am in the different world away from the glitz and the glamour of the areas surrounding the atrium and the executive offices.  It’s a large square space. Clustered in the middle are the work stations, mostly in blue with grey trimming. While most of the support staff sat outside the offices of their bosses at 919, here they each have their own work stations, separated by about six feet high soft padded partitioned walls. Over there is Bill’s office. She points to the closed door across what I will call the bullpen. And then there are other offices like fortresses to the support staff. This is where I sit, right outside of your office. She opens the closed door on her right, turns on the lights and lets me in.

I pause and stand at the threshold of my office and take it in. The floor is covered with bright royal blue soft padded rug, The bright white, perhaps 5000 Kelvin fluorescent tubes filtered through the chrome slated fixtures flood the room.  I am pleased that at long last, I’ve gotten the larger desk, the kind I had always wanted but never had an office big enough to justify having one. Unlike the beige marble desk top, this one has speckled black granite top. The base is the same with the filing and storage cabinets built-in as before, because it’s one of the same desks refurbished, in that instead of the natural oak stain, it is now painted black. It is flushed against the sidewall made up of the bright blue padded panels.  Behind the desk is wall-to-wall credenza – something I really love. A side of the desks had always been a small credenza meant for  typewriters. Which alas would become too small just in a year or so to accommodate desk top computers. The chairs too are the same, reupholstered and covered also with different fabric – now with either solid black or small black and grey pattern. On my right is a granite topped conference table, which is larger in diameter than the one I had. But no  couch for lounging during the meeting breaks.

Who got how big of an office and in which area and how each one of them would be furnished was determined by our corporate titles and the numeric personnel classifications. To be fair to everyone, a system had to be devised. It had to be just and egalitarian or at least to fit within our boss Bill’s definition of some people being more equal than others. Since there wasn’t going to be any natural light in our windowless offices, it became important to spruce up their interior  dressing.  Something we could choose. Sort of. So Sue Shoemaker, the Director of Corporate Administrative Services, stops by to see each one of us in advance of the big move.

‘What color wall paneling you like?’ Now the dirty brown cork walls to be replaced with the padded and fabric covered panels, to be used as before as our wall-to-wall bulletin boards. The choice was between bright red and royal blue. I chose  royal blue. Though I would get a larger desk, I had to choose between either a mini conference table and/or the couch.

‘I would like to have both!’

‘You can only have one or the other.’

‘I do have both of them right now.’

‘So I see. But with your position with the company, you’re entitled to only one of them.’

‘That’s new to me, but for what I do, I have a need for both of them. We have meetings all day long and it just makes it nicer to have a bit more relaxing couch when we break.’

‘Sorry, but we had to draw a line somewhere and only the Sr. VPs and above get both.’ I was only a VP.

What when and if I am promoted to be a Sr. VP? I want to ask, but stop short. Perhaps not a good omen. As it turns out, I am indeed promoted to be the senior VP within six months, but then the office I am assigned to is not big enough to accommodate both, and there is no provision for the expansion. Grudgingly, I accept what’s given to me.

‘Do you like your new office?’ Mary chirps.

‘I guess!’ She knows what I am thinking.

‘Well, I leave you alone to catch up with things. Welcome back again.’ And she closes the door behind her, leaving me feeling like a prisoner being lead to his cell and the door closed behind him. Feeling dismayed at not even a sliver of natural light peeking through, I try to forget it and settle myself at my new desk, pick up the piles of paper prioritized by Mary and begin with reading faxes that needed my immediate attention. The day slips by fast. Most everyone has left for the day, including Mary, leaving me behind still trying to catch up. Now with no need to keep the door closed, I am able to see out at the work stations outside. Even see a bit of the window at the farthest side of the hall, beyond which is Chicago’s pride and joy, Lake Michigan. The forbidden fruit for us.

When done for the day, I pack up and turn off the lights in my office. Suddenly its pitch dark in there, except for a bit of the light from the bullpen crossing in. On impulse, I put down my briefcase on the floor, enter back my office and shut the door. Never thought anything can be so dark. It feels like a cave with no opening. Closed in like a tomb. I hastily make my escape, and stop outside to look around at the exterior. While the atrium and other public areas and the conference rooms and the employee lounge are plastered with some of the magazine’s best art, none of the walls of our group have anything on their sterile white surfaces.

I approach Sue.

‘How about some artworks for our area?’

‘Its planned, but we just haven’t gotten around to it.’

‘How if I put up our own magazine covers that I had framed and hung outside our offices at 919?’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because everything has to be coordinated and in graphic harmony. I will talk to Tom (Staebler) (the art director) about it.’

Nothing for another couple of months. Either Tom didn’t have time or didn’t think we were important enough to deserve some of his fine illustrations. Or the discussion between Sue and Tom never  took place.

I broach the subject one more time and insist that what I really would like to do is for us to have our own identity and since I have already had those framed covers in my storage, why don’t I hang them up? If Tom comes up with something, we can always take them down.

‘Let me think about it!’ So she does. Still nothing. But I don’t let go and basically wear Sue out.

‘Okay, when Bill (the company carpenter) has some extra time, I will ask him to stop by and hang them up for you.’ That is almost like never.

‘I can do that myself!’

‘No, no, no. Its not your job. Should something happen, insurance doesn’t cover that.’

I want to scream, but instead say: ‘Well okay. Will wait for Bill to come by. Thanks’ And watch her turn her back and walk back to her office. I spend some time outside my office and scope the wall space I have and try to figure out how I can best display the framed covers on the walls available to me.

The next evening, its past six when I am certain that almost everybody is gone home, especially Sue, I pull out my measure tape, pencil, nails and the hammer that I have brought along from home. An hour and a half later, they are all adoring the International Publishing walls and suddenly those sterile looking white walls seem to have acquired colors on their anemic cheeks. I leave with a smile of satisfaction on my lips.

Late next morning, I see Sue walking past my office, stop and take in what I had done, I am not sure she even cared to look inside my office, but I see her shaking her head before walking away.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Mark

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Other Corporate Stories

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TO EXPENSE IT OR NOT

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Next Friday, September 13, 2013

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK

Imagine this! Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The sun is shining bright, the sky is blue as can be and the waves of Banderas Bay rushing towards the shore to hug us – wet and warm and heavenly. We are conferring by the poolside, deciding on the next dramatic but a fun shot, with nine of the world’s most beautiful women. Lined up in the water by the edge of the pool, holding on to the long railing and ready to lift their bare butts in action.

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Categories Corporate Matters, Eastern Europe

TO EXPENSE IT OR NOT

August 8, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

The Fine Art Of Getting Away With Murder

murder

By the time I heard this story of excess and padding of expense account by one of Life magazine’s star photographers, it had already acquired legendary proportions. There is nothing Life wouldn’t do to cover the world events and be the first and the fastest to bring it back to their nine million readers in words and living colors. Spreads and spreads of images – known among us at Time as fast edits. We were practically an assembly line of  experts from the reporters to the photographers to the writers to the editors and the art directors and at the tail end – us the production people. We would stand by days and nights, weekdays or weekends – and jump in so the magazine would be on its way to its loyal readers on time, week after week.

So it was no wonder that people at the front end of the making of Life were the most pampered, nurtured and spoiled rotten. The darlings among them were the photographers. The story I am told of is that of one of Life’s photographers most notorious for padding his expenses and constantly getting away with it to everyone else’s envy and chagrin. Padding itself was not too difficult, considering that we were not required to submit any receipts for the expenses under $25.00. If you happen to be on the road for several days, how much you can get away with writing off depended entirely on your own creative audacity.  No one ever questioned things you put down on your expense sheet – if for nothing else, not to sound cheap or earning a reputation of being a grouch.

This is how the story goes. A couple of editors and writers along with the photographer in question, who I will call Steve, are assigned to cover a major story in the USSR. They spend some weeks there and during their stay, Steve buys himself an expensive mink coat. No one is betting on Steve having paid for it out of his own pocket. So the editors rat on him and alert the editor-in-charge I will call Don, about the purchase. Steve walks into Don’s office as flamboyantly as ever – though a bit unsure this time around. He sits across the desk from Don and nervously watches  him scan and scrutinize his expenses. Though some of the charges seem a bit inflated, boy, those communist countries are expensive! Don justifies. But there is nothing in it that seems  out of ordinary. Certainly nothing in particular to make an issue of. So at long last he puts his John Hancock down on the dotted line. Relieved, Steve thanks him and begins to leave his office, but stops short of exiting.

‘Don!’

‘What?’

‘Just so that you know,’ and he stalls a bit, ‘that mink coat is in there!!’

None of us in the production department would get away with anything that came remotely as close. But it wouldn’t be unusual to put down and get away with charging for cabs instead of miles we drove on our cars, or when someone gave us a ride. Chicago cabbies were generous in peeling off their tablets and giving out blank receipts to their customers, especially the ones who tipped well.  And you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist either to ask for an inflated food and beverage receipt from your friendly waiter. Or we wouldn’t hesitate too much charging for the meals which the printers bought or that fancy dinner you took your girlfriend out to, especially on the evening that you had ended up working late. Little chicken shit like that.

Pretty much the same when I joined Playboy. Even though they had certain do’s and don’ts, their rules were quite flexible. More so for those of us who lived and worked abroad. We would book our own flights and book our own hotel rooms and keep track of our own expenses. I joined the division several  months after it came into being. I just followed the path already paved by the ones who had been around, such as staying always at the exclusive George V in Paris, Principe e Savoia in Milan, Excelsior in Rome, Vier Jahreszeiten in Hamburg.  This obviously wasn’t necessary, but that’s how it was. Though pretty soon I got tired of those pricey and pretentious places and whenever I could find a small boutique hotel, like L’Europe in Paris, El Cortez in Mexico City, U raka in Prague, I would stay there

They were small and cozy and personal and cost half as much. And I got to know the city from a perspective of a different neighborhood. I couldn’t see spending +/- $200.- a night, that is in the Seventies and the Eighties. Also because I wasn’t comfortable with the doorman, concierge, bellboy and sundry always picking up my stuff, calling cabs for me, opening doors, escorting me to my room and going through the motions of turning on lights and television, showing me how things worked with call buttons and at times even how the toilet paper rolled. Hanging around, fidgeting until you fumbled into your pockets and handed him whatever you fished out. With the currencies changing in every country, sometimes you gave too much, others not enough. I just felt so embarrassed at one human being playing the role of a subservient – waiting on you hands and feet.

I found this ritual to be quite humiliating. I didn’t see any grandeur in staying at those and boast about. Though I too have often done precisely that, it is mostly in jest, and also to communicate that I’ve been there. I’ve done that. And just because the company is paying for it, I had no reason to surrender my natural self – which is not being a subject of being fussed about.  I like just to step out and walk out on the street, walk down to a café and have some real good coffee with freshly baked Croissant or Brötchen or Simit or Media Lunas, whatever the specialty of the land was. Rub shoulders with the locals. I even went as far as convincing my boss in letting me rent apartments in Essen and Mexico City, where I needed to spend several days every month. A month’s rent would be covered by the equivalent of four or five nights of stay at one of our usual hotels.

Similarly, I never went overboard with my meals, just because they were paid for. Of course I went to and most of the time taken to some of the finest restaurants in those illustrious cities and enjoyed them, but when left alone for an evening or two – a rare occurrence – I would either stay in the room and order myself a club sandwich, heaped with the fries and wash them down with a beer – something I have discovered the glitzy hotels are better at.  Or I remember once in Paris, I had such a craving for the Big Mac, and thank God, they had a McDonalds right off the Champs Élysées  inside one of the shopping alleys. Or be able to eat Klobasa and beer on Václavské náměstí in Prague. And  I loved Köfte with rice at our Turkish publisher Ali Karacan’s staff canteen. I would really be embarrassed to charge those meals, so that I just left those columns blank.

I am not saying I have been squeaky clean with what I put on my expense reports. But its not something I would ever consciously entertain.  What was for the many: what can I  get away with? for me it was what can I  justify? For example, I didn’t hesitate a bit to charge the company’s Air Travel Card to upgrade myself to the first class of which I wrote in my last week’s Strangers On The Plane. Didn’t Chantal say that the economy was all sold out?  Or while I would be on a business track and invited a friend or family for a meal, it was fair to include them – a  philosophy I had picked up from Charley McCarthy of Cadillac Printing in Chicago: If I end up working late most of the week, I have no qualms about taking my family out for a nice dinner over the weekend at company’s expenses.

When I was re-hired, along with the others, I had negotiated the first class travel for myself, and when Carolyn accompanied me to Barcelona, I promptly traded in my first class ticket for two economies. It worked out about the same, because in those days, there were not a million different fares. There was first class and then there was full fare economy with no restrictions. And then there was “excursion” fare, that came with restrictions on the minimum and the maximum stays. And there was no business class.

Actually, some of what I put on my expenses was a laughing stock  in the accounting department. Such as several pounds of Pixies – the locally made Fannie May’s most delicious chocolates containing walnuts and caramel wrapped inside milk chocolate in the shape of a turtle. They are orgasmic, is how one of my managers – Jean Freehill described them. And once tasted, all of my partners across the globe had gotten addicted to them. For $6.00 a pound, (it has since gone up to $ 24.99 a lb.).  I couldn’t have done better. And sometimes, I also brought along a few bottles of California wines as gifts. What was there to question?

When I was in doubt and ran into a situation of to be or not to be, I would run it by my boss. When I was fired from Playboy the first time, I lived in Europe and my then boss Lee Hall and I  agreed that the company would pay for my relocating back to the States. Since I was in no hurry to get back, I thought it might be fun to sail across the Atlantic instead of flying back.  I had figured out that even thought sailing back would cost much more, if I took my car with me and filled it up with some of my stuff, it would actually be cheaper for the company. I talked to Lee. I personally don’t care, as long as you can convince the personnel – if they question.  So I returned back to the States, unemployed, but in style, on the luxury liner, Queen Elizabeth II.

Likewise, when I was re-hired, and joined the staff in Chicago, having gone through several suitcases, I realized that I needed something lighter but sturdier. My heart was set on an elegant looking but heavy duty Lark garment bag at the luggage store in the Water Tower Place. But it cost $350.00. Lot of money for a suitcase, even today. And this was in 1979. And yet, I was tempted to buy it and then a thought occurred to me, shouldn’t the company be paying for it? After all, a suitcase was one of the most important tools required for my job.

‘I don’t know about that Mr. Shah!’ Lee responded. So I had some convincing to do. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but he capitulated. ‘Look, I don’t think we can get away with it. But I will sign off on it, bur if they question it, then you’ll have to pay for it yourself.’ As much as I was inamorato with the damn suitcase, I agreed. And guess what? “They” never asked. Years later, my friend Nasim (Y. Khan) in Germany inherited it from me and its still out there somewhere.

Fast forward to 1992. The top Playboy managers from across the country are invited by Christie (Hefner)  to a management golf outing at the exclusive (read highbrow – pretentious) Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, to spend an informal day with other executives, “bonding”. We are teamed up with appropriately matched novices and serious golfers. I had done a couple of those before and had presumed that I could go on the greens with my shorts and the t-shirt. Sandals and all. Wrong! While shorts were okay, the club  rules required that we had to wear a shirt with collar – i.e. polo shirt at the minimum and must wear  proper golf shoes. I didn’t have either and we are about to t-off. No problem. Like all of them, they have a gift shop stocked with everything that a golfer would need. As snooty as the club is, things are obviously top of the line, even though the price tags made you cringe. What choice did I have? I pick up a nice polo shirt made of fine cotton,  the club logo discreetly embroidered on it. It was like fifty bucks. And while I am trying out the shoes, that run more like a hundred and fifty, I grumble to no one in particular. Sitting next to me in the locker room, tying on his own shoes is Herb Laney, Playboy’s Divisional Vice President for the mail order operations.

‘What are you bitching about? It’s a business expense!’

‘You mean?’

‘Of course. See this shirt?’ He turns his hand and pinches the very fine fabric of his polo shirt with his fingers. ‘You’re damn right I am going to expense it.’

‘But I also need the golf shoes!’

‘Well, since you’re not a golfer and are buying them only for today, I would expense them too!’ I look back at Herb, dumbfounded. He gives me an amazed look as if I had just gotten off the boat!

Suddenly, I can’t help but think of how I could have gotten away with charging that Tuxedo I was suckered into buying for the Czechoslovakian launch.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, August 16th, 2013

JE NE SAIS PAS

I really don’t know for sure. I have three irons in the fire, so I guess it will be whichever begins to glow first. So let the next week’s entry be a surprise:)

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Categories Corporate Matters

TEMPTATIONS…TEMPTATIONS…

May 16, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

Yes, It Happens

bubbleblowing2

Don’t lie. I know you’ve been dying to ask me – no matter in what form and the words – but have been afraid to or are just being too smug or polite to ask. And I have been knowingly ignoring or just stringing you along, instead of just come out and get it over with. But the time has come for me to face up and come clear. The answer is: YES, in bold CAPITAL letters.

It is the New Year’s day in the year 2000. The first day of the new millennium. Jan (Heemskerk) and I are taking a walk in the woods of the Dutch countryside. Not too far from his home in Alkmaar. It’s wet and it’s muddy and it’s bone chilling cold. But we are bundled up and the crisp cold fresh air does us good. I don’t remember what lead him to ask, but out of a clear blue sky, I hear his words amble in the air.

‘Shah, have you ever regretted having slept with someone? ’Almost in the exact words that I remember an author asking another in an article in The New Yorker – I think the question was directed at John Updike, but I am not sure.

‘Nope! But I certainly have regretted not having done so when I could have.’ I repeat pretty much what Updike or whoever it was had answered. My response puts us in reflective mode. We continue walking in silence. I don’t remember much being said about it. We probably drifted away talking about something else – or more likely picked up the thread of whatever conversation we were having.

Had we stayed on the subject, it probably would have become the hour of truth as is known to happen on any given New Year’s day. What could have been more appropriate than the first day of the new millennium? Had we gone on, this is what I would have liked to share with him.

‘Do  you remember the Dutch starlet you sent to Chicago to be photographed? What was her name? Yeah, her, right. Ans. I think it was the second or the third day of the shoot. We had built this elaborate set for her. Sort of Spanish Colonial arch in the background, and a huge king size bed perched atop the specially built stage. There are potted flowers, pastel pink and the bed is covered with usual props to selectively and enticingly hide and reveal the languishing shapely female form. During a short break, everyone was dispersed off the set. No one had gone far. Pat (Tomlinson), the stylist was in the props room, futzing around. Pompeo (Posar) was probably talking to his wife at home. Do you believe he calls his wife at least a dozen times every day just to tell her I love you? Steve (Conley), the assistant was somewhere else. And then I walk in on the set. Ans has climbed down the bed and sitting at the edge of the stage, relaxing with her legs dangling. Other than her turquoise choker and the matching earrings and the bracelets and a long shawl loosely hanging from her arm, she has not bothered to cover herself.’

‘So how is it going?’ I approach her.

‘Oh, good! They are taking a little break!’ And we indulge in small talk. I am standing in front of her, her face and my waist parallel to each other. And suddenly, like the head of a cobra springing  up from the snake charmer’s basket, she drops the shawl and her hand is cupping my crotch and affectionately squeezing my family jewels. I back up. She looks up at me with a wicked smile. Nothing is said. We just exchange looks. Amazement on my face, lust on hers.’ I know, Jan would have given me a knowing smile at the mention of family jewels, because as good as his English is, when we first started preparing for the Dutch Playboy, scheduled for the US edition was an article titled Family Jewels by Roy Blount Jr.. Everyone in the department would remember the hilarious telex traffic between him and our rights manager Jean Freehill (Connell), trying to explain to Jan what the family jewels meant. To keep it simple, everyone in the department got a copy of all the incoming telexes. So Jean had to be extra careful in answering, oh so delicate a subject matter.   

‘And remember Nicole?  When we were doing 1986 World Cup pictorial  in Mexico and staying at Krystal in Puerto Vallarta? It was about seven in the morning when Pat calls me.

‘Haresh, can you please do me a favor and call Nicole and Emily and make sure they come in for makeup as soon as possible. I am waiting for them. Pompeo wants to get in as many shots as possible before ten so the light is still soft?’

Obviously Pat could have coaxed them out of bed herself, but at times chemistry between the makeup artist/stylist and the models is not the most congenial. Instead of wasting my time calling, I just pull up my shorts, put on a T-shirt and walk over to their rooms. First I knock on Emily’s door. She is already up and about, dressed only in her undies and the Krystal t-shirt, having huevos rancheros for breakfast. We brush cheeks. As beautiful as she is, the whiff of scrambled eggs wafting from her mouth is disillusioning.  But okay. I put her on alert, telling her to be in Pat’s suite for make up no later than in fifteen minutes. Leaving her to get ready, I strut over to the different building of the complex to Nicole’s room.

It takes a few knocks and some sleepy grunts from inside the room before I sense her getting out of bed and shuffle over to open the door. She is similarly dressed or undressed. Shouldn’t really matter. When you have seen them in the nude, day in and day out for several days. But it does. They are their most attractive and the most seductive when they are dressed. When they show up in the evening for dinner in their “street” clothes, squeezed into their tight fitting  jeans and the tops or wrapped in their revealing evening dresses. And when they are not modeling. Just being their own natural self makes them ever so alluring and dangerous. Ditto, when they are scantily dressed like Emily was while ago and Nicole is right now.

Her eyes half closed, she flings her blonde tresses – twists her entire body like a cat waking up from a snooze. ‘I’m so tired. Let me sleep just a little more,’ she says and climbs right back into bed and curls up like an escargot. Pulling up the blanket, bottom of which is squeezed between her legs.

‘Let me sleep just a little more, pretty please!’ She repeats herself and gives me a poor little girl look.

‘I’m sorry Nicole. Come on. Get up. Pompeo will be waiting for you on the beach promptly at eight. All ready to roll. ‘ I sit down at the edge of her bed and prod her more.  She slowly and seductively uncoils herself, sits up and leans slightly towards me and gives me a hurt look. Her cloudy green eyes darted into mine like a double arrowed bow pulled by multiple cupids hovering up above our heads. She seems lost in deep thoughts for a moment and then twirls her torso in the most languid slow motion.

‘I was wondering what would it feel like to make love to you?’ The sentence comes out seamlessly – in a drawl, like a streamer unfurling in a slow billowing motion . And even before I have time to process what she said, her lips are precariously close to mine – fluttering.  Our eyes blend together. And I am pulled on the bed. Or was it me who nudged her down? Doesn’t really matter. Just a small detail. And I am on top of her. Squeezed underneath me, and our lips locked, cradling in my arm is Nicole. Beautiful, beautiful Nicole. And then as suddenly I untangle myself and jump out of bed with; ‘come on Nicole. Get up and get ready!’ She gives me a hateful look. I give her my hand, look into her eyes. ‘Please Nicole!’ I plead.  She lowers her gaze and as she climbs down the bed, looking hurt, I hear her subdued grouse: ‘you’re so cruel!’

Was I thinking of Carolyn back home? Yes. Is that why I peeled myself away before she could find out what it would feel like to make love to me? Or me finding out how sweet would it feel to have made love to her? No.

There were other reasons. The guilt I would feel and the lies I may someday tell. But trickier yet, in my position as the leader of the project, I just couldn’t afford to get involved with one of the twelve girls of the team. It would change the complete logistics and the attitude not only that of   Nicole, but of every girl. And Nicole would suddenly  feel and behave like the queen bee. That was very apparent that very evening. Normally aloof, that night during the dinner, she makes it a point to sit next to me, if not exactly snuggling up, but with a bit more familiarity than up until then.

Let’s  pause here for a sec to consider: What if? Most probably the answer would be: Nothing. I knew that both Nicole and Ans had boyfriends back home. Both of them Europeans; probably had kinds of relationships in which they could include a bit of frolicking in their narration, get a chuckle or two at having seduced a Playboy editor. None of us would have followed up or tried to keep in touch and would be cordial if and when we ran into each other.  Never uttering a word about our little secrets. And for me, had Carolyn asked me, I probably would have told her. Or not. Because at the early stages of our relationship, we had brushed upon the subject and she had said: I would rather not know.

But in nutshell, these liaisons happen only in the moment. Like delicious little bonbons and the bright little rainbows floating off a bubble wand, or the dazzling bouquet of light rays sprouting out of the sparkler. But soon, the bubbles burst, the blinding rays of the sparkler die and the sweetness of the bonbons dissolve on your tongue. So do those short sweet moments fade into the past and then they are gone. Puff!

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, May 24, 2013

BEAUTY AND THE BREASTS

What is this with women and their breasts? And why are we so obsessed with them? Help, Herr Dr. Freud. Because all I feel qualified to contribute is to report on the state of affairs vis-à-vis, you know?

 

 

 

 

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Categories Playmates

FOLLOWING IN GANDHI’S FOOTSTEPS

May 9, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

An Emotional Journey Of South Africa

gandhisteps

As long as apartheid ruled, Christie Hefner wouldn’t allow us even to think of doing business with South Africa. The management team totally respected her for her stand. But soon as Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, and when the South African President F.W. de Klerk repealed the remaining apartheid laws in 1991, I felt free to follow-up on a couple of leads that had landed on my desktop. I took my first exploratory trip to the country. Even so, something closer to home was nagging at me. Because if you are born of my generation in India, taking a trip to South Africa has to have some emotional undertones, for that’s where Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement first took roots.

The reason I was full of apprehensions on the night I boarded the Johannesburg bound Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt. I wasn’t quite sure of the kind of welcome that awaited me.  As usual, I had read up on the country and was a fan of J.M. Coetzee fiction, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003.  And had just finished reading one of the most disturbing books about the country,  My Traitor’s Heart by Rian Malan – a former crime reporter who fled his country after witnessing unimaginable atrocities, returns in search of the truth behind apartheid. He finds the answers – not in the way black and white South Africans live, but in the way they die at one another’s hands.

The heat and humidity hits me as soon as I deplane in the tropical Africa. Standing in front of me in the immigration line is a young black family of four. The husband shuffling all their passports clamped in his right hand. I could feel, or I was just imagining a certain nervousness on the faces of the couple as they moved up in the line. Kids, the daughter of about five and the son a few years older were just being kids, jumping and holding onto their parents’ fingers. The passport officers are all whites, dressed in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, like in Australia and New Zealand.  I watch the officer check all their passports and ask the man, how long were they gone? I could only hear “years” and then “England.”  The officer handing him back their passports and flashing a big smile, saying: welcome back home. Both the husband and the wife said in unison,  Thank you very much, and I see expressions on their faces relaxing and then their faces contorting as if about to break down and cry.  When the officer yelled out “next” I could see sudden smiles appearing on their faces. I too had my misgivings up until then, knowing that I too fell in the category of coloured in the country I was entering for the first time. But having witnessed the graceful reception of the black family relaxed me too as I stood in front of the immigration officer.

‘First time in our country?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hope you have a great stay.’

I am met by Greg Psilos,  an aspiring independent publisher who had shown interest in publishing Playboy in South Africa. I check into Carlton Hotel in downtown Johannesburg, walk around the Saturday morning shopping hoards. I don’t see a single non-black soul all through my hour and a half of walk, not even a brown skin one like myself. It feels strange, but hey, I am in their country. I would soon find out that not many white South Africans would dare come into the city center over the weekends. The weekdays were a different story, but that too, after work every evening, they would fly away like migrant birds and into their gated secure homes in suburbs. In fact, I was warned against walking around outside my hotel after hours. But that wasn’t enough to deter me from doing just that. How else does one get to know a new place?

On Sunday, along with a small group of other hotel guests, I take a minibus tour of the notorious segregated Johannesburg slum of Soweto, guided by Opa James. James is your weathered young-old  man – probably in his early to mid-forties – who has now taken upon himself to show the visitors the soft side of Johannesburg’s riotous township. We visit a typical Soweto family and have a beer with them. The idea is to make us feel that they are like any other regular family.

So far so good. I spend three days in Johannesburg before boarding my first domestic South African Airways flight bound for Durban. If not exactly nervous, as I approach the business class cabin of the plane, I can’t help but think of  that image of the movie Gandhi, in which he is kicked out of his rightful place in the first class compartment of the train on which he was traveling  from Durban to Pretoria.

But my fear is immediately expelled by the stewardess who takes my boarding pass and flashes a big smile at me with Welcome aboard Mr. Shah. It’s just a short flight from Johannesburg to Durban and the service provided onboard is as good as that on any other airlines in the world.

I knew that Durban is where Gandhi had first arrived at the invitation of Indian Muslim businessmen to provide legal services. And I am also faintly aware of the fact that Durban has the largest population of the people of Indian origin anywhere outside India. So much so that had I been brought there blind folded, I would certainly not believe that I was anywhere else but in an Indian city. The publishers I was meeting in Durban and elsewhere in the country were all white South Africans. That is: with exception of Anant Singh, of Video Vision, priding in calling himself  the first black movie maker from South Africa.  That meant, despite my pleasant reception in the country, the separation or apartheid  as it is called in Afrikaans had to be real, still.  I didn’t have to wait too long to find out myself.

Upon my arrival in Durban, I am met at the airport by Christopher Backerberg of Republican Press.  We have a drink together in the hotel bar and then I have a free evening. I have checked into Maharani Hotel, situated on Snell Parade right on the Indian Ocean. As the name suggests, it’s ornate with lot of gold and glitter. The lobby floors are all shiny marbles and tightly upholstered burgundy red leather couches in the lobby remind me of an English library.  The reception area is dark paneled wood and behind the counter are three or four young and pretty girls of Indian origin, with sparkling smiles on their faces. And I am quite pleased with my large room with a large bed, overlooking the beach and the ocean. I get goose bumps thinking that if I were to jump into the ocean and swim into the diagonally opposite direction, I could wash up on Chowpati Beach in Bombay and walk home to Mama Shah for dinner.

I have arrived in Durban on November 12, 1991. I meet with the executives of Republican Press on the 13th and the 14th and have a meeting planned with Anant Singh for the afternoon of the 15th. But Anant has arranged for me a city tour in the morning. I have been up and about for quite some time and have walked around the beach before it got to be hot and humid. The beach is practically deserted and its peaceful listening to the ocean waves. The driver, a  young man of Indian origin pulls up in a Mercedes Sports 450 SLC and gives me a comprehensive tour of Durban. Along the way, he asks me whether I’ve already had my breakfast, and I tell him that I have been up for a while, and yes, I did already have a breakfast and that I even had time enough to take a walk on the beach.

‘How long did you walk?’ He asks. A strange question, I think.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Half an hour, three-quarters of an hour maybe.’ I answer. He doesn’t say anything for a while and keeps driving, but his silence is unnerving.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘You know, you couldn’t have been able to do that a month ago.’ He blurts out. I don’t show it, but I couldn’t help but cringe inside.

It suddenly strikes me that almost a hundred years ago to the date, in 1893 to be exact, not only was Gandhi pushed out of his first class compartment at Maritzburg, but also while traveling by a stagecoach between Charlestown and Johannesburg, subjected to sit outside next to the driver and then when the leader of the coach wanted to smoke, he ordered him to sit at his feet, which Gandhi wouldn’t do. He was denied rooms in hotels, and even the ones who took him in would not allow him to eat in the dining room along with rest of the guests. And here I am, his child two generations removed and flying first class and staying in five stars hotels and no one has stopped me or even given a feeling somehow I didn’t belong. Even then I couldn’t just slough off what the driver has just said. But ever optimistic that I am, I also feel that F.W. de Klerk having signed the end of apartheid’s got to be the first step towards the eventual colorless co-existence.

Unbeknown to me, the sea change is taking place across the ocean in India during the five days that I am in South Africa.  Banned from International Cricket by the world twenty one years earlier, the South African cricket team is playing a series of one day international (ODI) games across India. The first country to take them back into the international fold and have been the most gracious hosts. It makes me proud to be born in India and I wish Gandhi were there to witness his  children following in the path of forgive and forget – something he firmly believed in along with Ahimsa and Satyagraha.

I would later read about the South African team’s overwhelming reception  upon their arrival in Calcutta in the 2010 reminiscence of Kanishkaa Balachandran, sub-editor at Cricinfo: Their reception in Calcutta surpassed all expectations. Upon landing, some of the South Africans mistook the large gathering of people near the airport for protesters, but they had actually gathered to welcome the team. Children waved flags, flower petals were showered over the players, and the 15-mile journey took a few hours. The South African captain, (Clive) Rice summed it up perfectly: “I know how Neil Armstrong felt when he stood on the moon.”

For me the most emotional moment came on the evening of the 14th. As it was, South Africa had lost the first two of the series of three games, in Calcutta and Gwalior. Disappointed but not disheartened,  their countrymen are just happy to be playing international cricket. But they win the third game in the nation’s capital, New Delhi. And they win it big. By then I too am caught up in the hype that has blanketed the whole nation.

I stop at the reception to get my key and stop for a while to flirt with the sweet receptionists. I try  to make some lame joke about the series that has just concluded. And I hear them say in unison, BUT WE WON! These are the girls born of Indian parents, but I love their pride in their team. And from what I caught on the television, the crowds in New Delhi and the Indian team too were as jubilant that the visiting team had won. That their first time back in the arena, and it wouldn’t bid well for the hosts to send their guests back home downbeat and defeated.  Far from it. As I am leaving from Johannesburg’s Jan Smut International Airport on the morning of the 16th.. on my way to Bombay via Nairobi, the airport is swarming with the jubilant crowds – not knowing what had brought them there – I get a peek at the deplaning South African team returning home from New Delhi – all smiles and joy on their faces.

They would reciprocate India’s hospitality by inviting them a year later to play four test series on South African soil, billed as the Friendship Series and universally hailed as the historic tour in more ways than one.

 

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, May 17, 2013

YES

Thought the time has come to answer something you have been dying to ask since I began writing this blog 25 weeks ago. All is well and good, but where’s the beef? Come on, after all we’re talking Playboy! Well, just one more week and you would know!

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Categories South Africa

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

April 25, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

The Beauty That Only Mothers Can See

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‘How about Terry?’  Bill asks. The question is directed more to his wife Irene than to me. And then looking at me, he adds: ‘You’ve got to see Irene’s daughter Terry. She is such a knockout!’

‘Bill!!!’ Goes Irene.

‘What? I think Terry is beautiful, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, she is, but…?

‘But what? I think she would make a perfect Playmate! She is just what Haresh just described. An all American pretty girl next door. What could be more American than a girl from Park Forest?’ He adds and smiles at his own clever connection – certainly a proud resident of southern suburb of Chicago.

‘She probably would, but…!

‘But what? Come on Irene. You’re just being modest. Let our friend Haresh here decide!’ Irene gives me a help me look.

‘Do you have a problem with that?’ Now excited, Bill continues.

‘Not really.’

So it went for a while between husband and wife.

Irene looks intrigued and seems comfortable with her daughter posing for Playboy.

‘Let me talk it over with Terry first.’ She says finally.

Encouraged, I put in my bit: ‘If Irene doesn’t mind and if Terry would be comfortable posing for me, I will be happy to submit her photos to Playboy here in Chicago.’

I have just returned back to the States and am spending some weeks in Chicago as I drive cross country to my final destination of Santa Barbara, California. Bill (Houston) is an old bowling buddy of mine. Both him and Irene work for Time Inc., my previous employers. We are having lunch near Time & Life building in near north side of Chicago. Catching up.  Bill is Irene’s second husband and we are talking about Irene’s daughter.

About future plans, I’m telling them that even though I may eventually look for another job, for the time being I was enjoying my freedom and intended to concentrate on my writing – something I had always wanted but never had enough time to do. And continue pursuing the nude photography for a while, especially since I had eyes and ears of the people at Playboy.  And I tell them about the test shootings I have done so far and how two of them had already made it to the pages of Playboy in Germany. And who knows? I might just be able replicate the same in the US.

Irene calls me a couple of days later to tell me that she had spoken to Terry and invited me over for lunch at their home on Saturday. She sounded quite enthusiastic and thrilled at the prospect of her daughter becoming a photo model, pretty as she was.

On Saturday, I get into my Buick and drive down to their home in Park Forest, a thirty miles ride (48 kilometers) south of downtown Chicago. Its your typical ranch style three bedroom family house, with the living areas down below and the bedrooms several steps up above.  Sitting at the kitchen table are Bill and Irene and Irene’s mother, having coffee. They call Terry down from her room. She is pretty for sure in an all American way. Straight dark hair hanging down below her shoulders, parted in the middle to frame her face like that of Joni Mitchell. She doesn’t wear any makeup that I can detect.  Looking unpretentious and simple, down home un-intimidating  beauty that one would have seen walking the isles of a local supermarket. She is probably nineteen or twenty and lacks that sparkle and the spunk that would make her sexy and desirable. Basically, she is Eliza of My Fair Lady, who can be transformed into a sophisticated and sexy young woman. We talk as I munch on my sandwich. She is soft spoken and probably a bit intimidated in my presence. Her smiles come easy, but shy – precisely what I find quite seductive as much as her hesitant and sparse eye contacts. Nothing to be concerned about, she would perk up once we are alone.  I know, there is a forest preserve not far from where they live and even though its mid-October, its warm enough for us to do the shoot outdoors in the nature. And she is  up for it.

‘You can use our bedroom upstairs. There is plenty of light in there.’ Offers Irene.

I am not so sure, with her parents and grandma around how she would feel about prancing around in the nude.  Even I myself feel a bit ambivalent. But seeing that none of her family in the room seem to have any reservations; why not?

‘You’re not inhibited because I am here, are you?’ Grandma chides her granddaughter. To which Terry goes, grandma!!  And that breaks the ice.

I tell Terry to go upstairs and undress and call me when she’s ready. When I walk up and enter the bedroom, she is lying on the bed, in a pose similar to the famous Modigliani reclining nude. The expressions on her face passive and somewhat timid.  Seen through my lens, there is no denying that she is a real beauty. Her figure is near perfect and as alluring as is her pretty face. Her skin is smooth as silk devoid of any blemishes. She has followed my instructions to Irene about making sure to remove her bras and panties hours before so that the elastic marks from the either wouldn’t show on her body – something I had learned from Pompeo Posar, while assisting him in Munich.

There is enough light coming through the bay windows. The room is furnished with a king size bed and a couch against the wall and ample space on the carpeted floor. The couch has large plaid and the rug irregular patterns on them, not the most ideal backdrops. But the first session is normally meant for the model and the photographer to get acquainted and comfortable with each other, build a certain rapport and let the resulting photos later show what poses and camera angles work better than others. She relaxes after a few sips of wine and the session goes well. I still want to shoot outdoors and she too is up for it. One of my strengths as a photographer is the head shots and this is something better done with a longer lens and in an open space that gives you shallow depth of field. So we get out of the house. I don’t remember on that very afternoon or a few days later – and go to the forest preserve. Terry and I are happy with the results.

Beyond that I drop off a selection of her photos to Alfred DeBat, who works as #2 to Lee Hall in Chicago’s Foreign Editions, and serves as a liaison between our group and the US editors.  I get into my car and continue driving west until I finally reach Santa Barbara, exactly  three months after I had landed in New York.  I lived with Mark and Ann in their farm house for a month and decided it was as good a place as any to settle for a while. I found myself a spacious two bedroom apartment not far from UCSB campus and the tar covered Pacific shore in the valley of San Ynez mountain range. Knowing that unlike in Germany, selecting a Playmate in the US was a long drawn out process with voting among editors and then still subject to Hugh M. Hefner’s seal of final approval. I leave it at that, but working with Terry further inspired and encouraged me to give my photographic ambition a serious push.

Luck would have it that the German Playmate Barbara too was now living in Southern California. Even though when still in Munich, we didn’t quite hang out, but when I called her in San Clemente, it was as if we  were long lost friends reunited. We decided to do some projects on spec and see if we could get them accepted, if not by either German or the US Playboy then probably by Oui – the American edition of highly successful Lui – the  magazine which Playboy had cross-licensed from the French publisher Daniel Filipacchi. I had done some small writing and contributed some pix to Oui, thus knew some of the editors.

Forming a creative partnership with Barbara further encouraged me to expand my technical abilities.  Whereas up until then I used only natural light, I invested in a set of artificial lighting equipment.

One of the projects we had most fun doing was A Day in Life based on the Beatles’ song I read the news today oh boy!  We cleared out my dining area and papered the entire walls, the floors and even the pillow with the pages of Sunday edition of The Los Angeles Times, and created a   tableau  of her waking up, reading the paper and tearing the pages up in tatters, feeling furious and frustrated at how much in turmoil the world found itself in one single day!!

Nothing came out of  those efforts, but they gave us something fun to do together which evolved in a lifelong friendship. I guess we both must have felt lost in our new environment and having found each other from the “home town” was quite comforting.

Also during the period both Mark and Ann were super supportive of my efforts and I ended up photographing their friend and also found a pretty young lady at the local laundromat to pose for me.

At the time I was collecting and living on my unemployment benefits, which required me to report personally once every week to the unemployment office in downtown. As everywhere else, the mention of Playboy as my employers triggered their curiosity. Normally it would be the beautiful reddish blonde Monica at the window and we would talk about the job I had just left and what it was then that I was now doing. Once in a while I would find Monica’s boss Mrs. Buckwalter at the window. Also pretty, but a woman in her mid to late forties. She was even more inquisitive. After weeks of our talking, she wondered out loud:

‘I wonder if one of my daughters would make it as a Playmate?’

Apparently she had twins. She pulled out their photo from her purse to show me. They were in their early twenties and it wasn’t just their mother talking,  the girls were indeed very pretty.

‘Would they want to give it a try?’

‘I don’t know.  But if you think they even have long shot at making it, I will talk to them.’

From what I understood, the girls didn’t seem too excited about the prospect but were intrigued enough to want to meet and speak with me.  Over the phone, the sister who was talking to me happened to mention how much they loved Indian food. So that was easy!

Not only were they pretty, they were also smart and spunky and happy young women. Perfect Playmate candidates. Fun to have them around as dinner companions.

I hadn’t yet broached the subject and they didn’t seem to be in hurry either to bring it up. We were just eating, drinking and enjoying being together. And then out of a clear blue sky, the older by five minutes sister Shannon, looking at her five minutes younger one  Emma says:

‘Poor Mom!’

‘Why is she poor?’ I quip.

‘Just that she is really convinced that we could be Playmates.’

‘Well, she is right.’

‘No, we don’t think so.’

‘Let me decide. I wasn’t sure before, but now that I have seen you in flesh and blood, walking and talking, I am sure that it would be worth trying. Also what you have going for you is the concept of double trouble and double delight.  Perfect sister act.’ I pause, and then continue, ‘That’s, if  you two are up to it!’

‘That’s the thing. We actually aren’t. We agreed to see you, because she spoke so highly of you and mainly just to please her. Thinking what must it have taken for her to make you see us!’

‘Not much, once she showed me your snapshot.’

‘Thanks. You’re being kind! But as I mentioned, us sisters just aren’t into it. And we want you to know that has nothing to do with the nudity.  It’s just not something either of us aspires to’

‘In that case, you certainly shouldn’t.’

‘We’re glad you understand.  We are also glad that at least we agreed to come out and see you, because this evening has been so delightful.  And the food!!’

Sorry dear Mother.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Related Stories:

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

MY SWEET LORD

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

Next Friday, May 3, 2013

FEEL GOOD SISTER

There are images that remain with you forever. One of them is me meeting Ann for the first time at Ristorante Positano in Munich, almost exactly forty years ago. The beautiful mélange of the east and the west and her mysterious eyes shining through that dark corner of the restaurant had such a mysterious look that my second name for her is mystery lady.

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Categories Playmates, Women

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

April 11, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

The Bad Boy Of Holland And The “Future Husband” Of Jayne Mansfield

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For those of you who have no clue who is  the bad boy of Holland, here is essential Jan Cremer in his own words. ‘ I am the best painter, I am the best writer.  I am for sure the best journalist of the Dutch language, and  certainly one of the best writers in the world’. He said to the writer and ex Playboy Holland editor, Guus Luijters for his book, Jan Cremer in Beeld.

He once famously said: ‘Rembrandt? I never heard of him. I’m not interested in sport.’

You have to be brilliant to utter such arrogant and provocative words. Sounds more like something coming out of the big mouth of  Cassius Clay a.k.a. Muhammad Ali, who said in his October 1964 Playboy interview: ‘I’m the greatest, I’m so pretty. People can’t stand a blowhard, but they’ll always listen to them,’, than from the mouth of a gentle Dutch writer and artist.  Jan Cremer too must have realized the shock value of his utterances spewed out in sound bites the way before there was a sound bites. Or could it be that he was just reading off  the script laid out by Cassius Clay?

And get this: He dedicated his book Ik Jan Cremer thus: For Jan Cremer and Jayne Mansfield. About which he said to Jules Farber, in Holland Herald, ‘It was the era when Jayne, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell were the big American sex symbols. For me, Mansfield was it – the voluptuous contemporary. Rubens woman.’ To coincide with the publication of I Jan Cremer in America, his New York agent arranged a meeting between Jayne and Jan for a publicity photo. ‘And wham! We went to South America for six months…and then we lived in Hollywood for another half year. Jayne introduced me to everyone as her future husband.’ And this isn’t  hype or a boast.

●●●

My first awareness of Jan Cremer came on the very second day of my first arrival in Holland in the summer of 1965. I was offered a summer internship by Drukerij Bosch in Utrecht. The printing plant specialized in producing paperbacks. I come from a family of pioneers in paperback publishing in India. And I loved books. To see all those many books piled high on their pallets all across the plant was for me like the kid let loose in a candy store. Among the piles, the biggest one was what looked like an unassuming book titled Ik Jan Cremer. A very simple black and white cover with the image of a menacing looking young man dressed in an all out denim outfit, perched atop a motorbike, his gloves clad hands gripping the wide handlebars, his head covered also with the denim version of the Dutch fisherman’s hat, complete with biker’s goggles, looking tough in the image of James Dean, the bike moving  dangerously towards you, as if to run you over.

What I realized over a period of time was that Bosch had devoted one printing press exclusively to printing nothing but Ik Jan Cremer, day in and day out. Published just a year earlier, the book was now in its fourth printing and there was no end in sight, because they couldn’t print and bind them fast enough to fill the shelves from where they immediately flew off. A month later, I was assigned a statistical project to track the sales of the paperbacks published and sold in various markets . When I returned to resume my internship during the Christmas break, Ik Jan Cremer, as months earlier, hadn’t budged from its # 1 spot on the Dutch bestseller list.  The same press still devoted to printing those same pages. The only difference was an appearance on the cover of a wide red band across the upper left hand corner screaming BESTSELLER and a bit lower, a round, larger than a postal stamp like image saying 300,000 copies sold, 350,000 copies sold, the numbers climbing with every subsequent printings.  When I ran into him quite by an accident in the summer of 1983, the book was translated into thirty some languages and it was still going strong in Holland after almost twenty years of its publication, with forty plus printings and sales of more than 800,000 copies in Dutch only.

It was the most controversial book of the time, and everybody – everybody was talking about it. And I also remembered how I wished I could read Dutch. But I had to make do with merely touching and feeling the bound volumes every time I passed by the pallets piling higher and higher.  As if touching it would make its contents instantly understandable to me.

It came out in its English translation only a year later, but  once back in England and buried into my studies and figuring out my future, I never got around to reading it until the summer of 1978, when quite by an accident, I ran into I Jan Cremer while browsing the used bookstore in the shopping mall near my home in Goleta, California. By then, there was also Jan Cremer Writes Again. I bought both and devoured them like a famished  dog.

I was taken by his vivid descriptions of growing up during the second world war, the raw sex and the harshness of the post-war European life and the angry forcefulness of his narration had me spellbound and had left an everlasting impression on me.

●●●

I was having dinner at the restaurant de Warsteiner in Amsterdam, with Jan Heemskerk and Dirk De Moei, the editor-in-chief and the art director designates of soon to be launched Dutch edition of Playboy.  Accompanying us were Gemmy, Jan’s wife and Ans, Dirk’s live-in lady. With us all settled, Dirk noticed Jan Cremer sitting at the bar with his girlfriend Babette.

‘Look who is here. Jan Cremer and Babette.’ I hear Dirk whispering to Jan.

I expressed the desire to go and say hello to the Dutch Legend.  Instead, Dirk invited him and Babette to join us. Jan pulled up a chair next to me and Babette sat at the other end of the table.  Cremer wore burgundy red short-sleeved shirt and a pair of blue jeans. At forty two, he didn’t look anything like my image of the young and rebellious biker, married to his fast and furious motorbike and the connoisseur of female of the species from all across the European continent. He looked and behaved no different from any other respectable Dutch man his age and like them spoke fluent but accented English.

Jan Cremer impressed me as being very down to earth, charismatic, self-confident and a friendly sort of guy. He seemed to feel very comfortable with his success, and very natural with the freedom it offered him with homes in New York, Switzerland and Amsterdam. Had replaced fast motorbikes with the fast cars. All this on just two major books and I would later find out, his art, which sold for large sums. Except for one of them, his 1960 painting of the Japanese War, on which he put the price tag of one million guilders – which at the time would have been quarter of a million dollars. Jan Heemskerk tells me that he is still holding out, for one of these days some sucker just might roll out the dough.

We talked about his books and how much of what is contained in them is true and how much is the product of his “depraved mind”.  At the time he was working on a travel book, his third major effort and supposedly the best he had written so far. But he seemed not in a hurry to finish it.

The conversation switched to Playboy and the kind of women it ran in its pages, especially the Playmates. To put it more or less in his own words: The girls you run in Playboy are too young, too beautiful, too glamorized and too perfect. I like women who have stretch marks on their stomachs, the breasts that sag and asses big and fat. I like to see wrinkles on their faces, feel roughness on their skins and be able to touch the flaws in their bodies.

I could tell that Jan was serious. At the same time, I couldn’t help glancing across the table at  gorgeous Babette, and appraise her in the light of what Jan was telling me about the kind of women he prefers. Babette looked anything but the description of his favored women full of flaws.  She looked to be in her mid-twenties, with beautiful blonde hair tied back neatly in a pony, with very proportionate pointed nose, softly darting eyes and from what I could tell, she possessed a delightful figure, a pretty face, she could have easily been a Playmate.  Ironically, he was working on a photographic collection of nudes and just a couple of months after our meeting, those of Babette’s appeared in the premier issues of Playboy’s Dutch edition. I certainly couldn’t find any flaws in her young and flawless beauty. Much as I would have liked to, I didn’t get to talk much to Babette. But from what I understood, she was an ex-model and was now living and traveling with Jan, they gave me a feeling of a very loving couple, with her assuming a lower profile, which perhaps was also a part of her natural personality.

●●●

Up until now, I hadn’t  thought about that night again. Perhaps when I saw something by Jan Cremer appear in the Dutch Playboy, such as when he did the cover for the edition’s fifteenth anniversary in 1998 and prior to that when his portfolio of erotic paintings of no other than Babette appeared in the pages of Playboy in all her carnal glory. And when I read about the publication of what is hailed as his masterpiece, 2000 page opus The Huns. Beyond that he seemed to have faded  into  the backdrop of my consciousness. That is, until very recently, when I was scanning the spines of the art books in my collection, I came upon a volume of what basically is a complete catalogue of his life and works spanning from 1957 to 1988, published  to coincide with the opening of his retrospective art exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in his home town of Enschede, from where it was scheduled to go to France, Germany, Switzerland and finally to the National Museum in Budapest.

There were mentions of his life as a fine artist in his Cremer books, but it never quite recorded in my memory. The catalogue is dedicated to me with the inscription: October 11, 1988 to Haresh Shah in Friendship, Jan Cremer. I have absolutely no recollection of ever having seen him again or been in touch with in any other way since our one and the only encounter in Amsterdam. Could it be that Mick Boskamp, the service editor of the Dutch edition who was spending a few days in Chicago around the same time brought it along? Mick too has absolutely no such recollection.  How did it then get to me? On the facing page to the dedication is a New York City address, written also in the same handwriting,  is the name and address of Sterling Lord Literistic – probably of his agent in the USA. Could it be that he was in New York that day and thought of me? Bit of a mystery to me, but it still pleases me to know that I could have left a positive impression with one of my favorite authors. Who as it turns out is as big an artist as he is an author. And in retrospect, it would be fair to say that he is a bigger artist than he ever became a writer.

I am not a good judge of art by any dint of imagination, but the only way I can describe his paintings in the catalogue is that they are abstracts with broad strokes of pleasing colors splashed across huge canvases. And it impresses and overwhelms to think how incredible it is for a single human being to be all that. His writing has often been compared with my all time favorite, Henry Miller, and now when I see his art, not the style and the objects he paints, but the idea of a writer also being an artist also puts him next to the old master, because Miller too picked up the brush in his sunset years and produced some beautiful watercolors.

Even though Cremer is an entire generation younger than Henry Miller, his I Jan Cremer would have never been allowed to be published in the United States if not for the battles fought over the publication of Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in 1961, which wasn’t allowed to be distributed freely in his own country up until 1964, more than thirty years after it was originally published in France. The very year when Ik Jan Cremer came out in Holland and in 1965 in its English translation in the United States.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, April 19, 2013

SEX EDUCATION À LA JAPONAISE

As excited  as I was when my boss assigned me to work in tandem with the Japanese editorial team, I also knew that Japanese were unlike any other people I had ever worked with and that I needed to know about them beyond the books I read. So before meeting with them, I embarked upon a weeklong journey of the country on their famed Shinkansan bullet trains. Crisscrossing the country, meeting people, visiting places, a university and pachinko parlors, staying only at the inns and eating only Japanese food, and yes, spend an afternoon watching  striptease.

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Categories Artist, Writer

MY SPRING VALENTINE

April 4, 2013 //
0

As The Time Goes By

Haresh Shah

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where are you?’

‘I am here. In Santa Barbara.’

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

‘Okay.’

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

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

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, April 12, 2013

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

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

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Categories Relationships, Romance, Women

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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Categories Uncategorized

WELCOME TO AMERICA

March 7, 2013 //
4

Haresh Shah

Playboy – The Declaration Of Independence?

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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.

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Categories Uncategorized

I DANCED WITH DONNA SUMMER

February 28, 2013 //
7

Haresh Shah

A Fond Farewell From A Friend      
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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.

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