Archives for posts with tag: Mexico City

THE GHOST OF DON MANUEL

June 4, 2015 //
0

The Dream That Never Died

Haresh Shah


It stands there in the middle of Mexico City, looking wrecked and devastated like the crudely chiseled and ravaged structures in the bombed damaged cities of Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. The walls half built and then left unfinished with their uneven rough edges sticking up, floors smeared with the dried out cement. The bare stairs next to the elevators are exposed with no doors concealing them. The haltingly moving lethargic lifts are pulled up and down by the sinister looking cables behind the barely lit entrance to the building. You need to strain your eyes to see the lone figure of the security guard sitting at his battered desk sprouting a dim desk lamp. The open wires devoid of the fixtures dangle down from the high ceilings like in the Snake Alley of Taipei.

When coming in from the street, you walk the rough dusty grounds of what was probably  intended to be a Plaza to surround the tall structure planned to be the tallest building in the all of the Latin America. You climb the few unplastered scratchy cement steps to the lobby and make your way towards the elevators. You hurry past the guard and barely return his greetings. You wait for the elevator descend ever so slowly and watch the cables that control it in that semi-dark dusk like filtered vision.

You hurry in and hurry out of the elevator when you get off your designated floor lest one or more of their cables were to snap. On your left is unlit deep dark bowling alley like narrow passage. The corridor on your right is all lit up. The walls are plastered smooth and painted in pleasant colors. There are doors on the either side with bright light pouring through. Walls in between the doors are adorned with paintings – most of them large originals of the illustrations that brighten up the writing within the pages of the magazine. You hear the cacophony of voices and the hustle of the humans presence from behind the doors. These are the Playboy offices in the Aztec capital of Mexico City.

If brought in blind folded and walked directly into one of the offices, you never would imagine the exterior of the building being anything other than one of the modern glass fronted structures of the time. Sitting in our publisher Irina (Schwartzman)’s office what you see are the angled  walls covered with multiple of original paintings and the clear glass panels that form the outer walls, overlooking the trees and the buildings outside in this residential neighborhood of Colonia Nápoles. Irina’s glass top desk and the chairs around make it for the setting of one of the most modern offices providing a very pleasant work environment. Even though we are only on the second floor of the building, what you see outside those glass walls is the panoramic view of this sprawling mega city, which is mostly covered in the dense smog. So prevalent is the smog that someone with a sense of humor is marketing a Mexican flag covered sealed beverage can “containing” aire de Mexico sin smog – the Mexican air without smog. But the view you get from Irina’s office is more like the romanticized dusty urban landscape reminiscence of the hazy  dreamy images of David Hamilton’s pubescent maidens.

This is the late Eighties. The building was originally meant to be a fifty stories high Hotel de Mexico. The man often referred to be the protégé of Pancho Villa, it was to be the dream tower of the eccentric entrepreneur Manuel Suarez y Suarez, construction for which began in 1962 and was meant to be completed before the country’s 1968 Summer Olympics to provide accommodations for the athletes from around the world. It was to be just like Mexico’s hosting of the Olympics, meant to showcase the country as becoming a part of the modern world, coming true of an immigrant dream that this Spaniard wanted for his adopted country.

Unfortunately, Don Manuel as he was universally called, ran out of the money, and the construction of his dream project had to be halted. Even though the main tower was completed in 1972, it remained an unfinished skeleton for twenty more years. However, also completed and inaugurated was the integral part of this massive undertaking, Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros. In 1980, the project was re-imagined as an international business center. Don Manuel blessed the idea, but before it could be materialized, he died in 1988, while still leaving the unfinished tower to its own fate. But in 1992, the remodeling began partially with the public funds and the completed tower finally opened in 1995 as Mexico’s World Trade Center and eventually went on to become the administrative head quarters for NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).

It is during the interim years when the building was infested with rats and inhabited by the squatters that our clever publisher Francisco Javier Sánchez Campuzano grabbed the opportunity to headquarter Playboy Mexico’s parent company Grupo Siete in the building so desolate and bare boned Meccano like structure.

Javier had an uncanny knack for setting up his offices whatever space he could lay his hands upon. Originally situated in a family home in the residential Colonia del Valle, it was then moved to Calle Maricopa, practically around the corner from the World Trade Center, into the corner of an art gallery, still known as Hotel de Mexico. Now that I think of it, could well have been an extension of the Polyforum Siqueiros.

Like another sub bunder ka vepari – the trader of every port, Javier dabbled seriously into the art business as well. It seemed quite natural to him to fill the nooks and corners of the large space with setting up desks and phone lines for his editorial staff. Which reminds me of the weekend retrieve Christie Hefner had us Playboy executives to convene and bond. It was at the Kohler show room in Kohler, Wisconsin. Yes, we mingled and toasted and were treated to a sumptuous buffet set up along with the high café tables in the midst of shiny toilet bowls, a huge variety of bidets, bath tubs and shower stalls. It turned out to be one of the most relaxing venues for us to synergize in.

And so were Playboy offices dotting the art gallery. It obviously couldn’t well be the permanent habitat. Whatever other businesses Grupo Siete had drummed up under its umbrella, Javier owned several radio stations of which he had come up with a brilliant idea of setting some of  them up to focus mainly on the listeners of north of the borders – that is, of the United States of America. The Hispanic population of the border states such as California, Arizona, Louisiana, Florida, ate up the programing and the advertisers couldn’t be happier, while the listeners got the taste of home.

What’s more – while most of the building remained in unfinished tatters, what was already finished was the antenna tower, reached by the take your lives into your hands high speed elevators. Voila. Javier knew how to make use of the antenna and he promptly set up his radio stations on the very top of the Mexican skyline.

The saving grace were those awesome King Kong size murals already dominating the entrance to the Polyforum, created by no other than the illustrious muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, in front of which stood statues of the artist and his legendary patron, Don Manuel Suarez y Suarez. Approaching Calle Montecito from Avenida Insurgentes Sur, you can’t help but be in awe of those imposingly beautiful murals, lighting up the otherwise drab and deserted fog and dust filled city scape. It had a feeling of a lush green patch of lawn in the middle of the dry desert. It was a pleasure to stroll by them during our long lunch breaks.

As much of a shock as entering the main tower was, we had gotten used to our environment, of which many stories could be told. Often, Jesus (Bojalil), the editor in chief and his second in command Perla (Carreto) and I would ride the elevator to the vertiginous height and breath the cleanest air one can possibly in Mexico City and look down at the swarming multi-colored houses splattered across the horizon. And Jesus would tell us with all seriousness on his face the vibes he often felt when left alone in the office at nights, how he felt the presence of a shadow moving across our hallways, which he was certain being that of the wandering soul of no other than Don Manuel himself. His dream place, still struggling for life. With Playboy people breathing there, he must have taken comfort in the knowledge that at least the hallways of the second floor had cuddly little bunnies hoping and some of the most beautiful young women frolicking and filling them up with their perfume and and laughers.

This however small a ray of light, he must have seen as the beginning of what would within a few short years turning his dream into the reality. That once again the construction would begin and it would be opened as the convention and cultural centers, containing of the parking facilities, a multiplex, a revolving 45th floor luxury restaurant and a major shopping center with Sears as its principal occupier. And the complex also includes 22 floors of luxury hotel rooms. Perhaps Mexico should host another summer Olympics and have those rooms abuzz with the fervors of the world’s top athletes.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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On Friday, June 19, 2015

MULTIPLYING LIKE RABBITS

You of course know Playboy to be the name of a magazine, but you have also seen or heard of Playboy Clubs, Playboy Apparels, Playboy Pinball machines, Playboy fragrances, Playboy cigars, Playboy golf balls. Have you ever wondered how a sheer magazine become known for all of the above?

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Categories Entrepreneurs, Mexico, Playboy

THE TUNNEL OF LOVE

April 23, 2015 //
2

My Pied À Terre In Mexico City

Haresh Shah

tunneloflove3
You would think, who in his right mind would get tired of living in Mexico City’s most luxurious and yet most making you feel at home hotel, Camino Real? Especially when the company is paying for it? During the first few months of my back-to-back trips and long sojourns in the city, Camino Real, or as my friends began to call it tu casa amarilla, because of its predominantly yellow façade, has become my permanent home. What’s more, I have fallen in love with the place. As big as it is, it has that warm homey feeling. By now, I know every nook and corner of this huge labyrinth of 720 rooms hotel, have been to each one of the restaurants and bars. The rooms are spacious and I am always welcomed by being placed in a poolside room with balcony. In a few short months, I have spent more romantic days and evenings at Camino Real than all other hotels of the world put together. I am regular at their French restaurant Le Fouquet and their private Le Club. Have splurged into frequent poolside buffets outside Los Azulejos, sat at La Cantina drinking beer and watching the traffic of the beautiful people of the city walking to and from the most-in Lobby Bar – the place where the locals and the hotel guests come together to see and be seen. And have danced the nights away at Cero Cero and then stumbled in for late breakfast at Las Huertas and nursed my hangovers with freshly squeezed tropical juices and very strong Mexican café con leche. Practically every service personnel knows and makes fuss over me. The place I feel at home in the true Mexican spirit of mi casa es su casa. What else can one ask for?

Well, like the Linda Ronstadt song, silver threads and golden needle, at some point that kind of  indulgence too saturates you. What I suddenly want is a place of my own, a pied-à-terre, in the city that is becoming as much my home as is Santa Barbara. I want my own kitchen and make my own ham and cheese sandwich and my famous soon to be baptized Shamolette by Mick Boskamp of Holland. Pop a bottle of beer, instead of having it delivered to my room. I want to cook elaborate Indian food and invite friends, play my own music. Be able to go from one room to another. I want to have a place where my friends from north of the border can come and visit and be able to stay with me.

We find a place, not too far from Camino Real at the corner of Calle Guadalquivir and Paseo de la Reforma. It’s unpresumptuous two bedroom apartment, owned by a woman called Señora Maldonado. It is furnished and comes equipped with kitchen appliances including pots and pans, a set of dishes, silverware and all. Adequate for my trips to Mexico. Just that there is something very ordinary, very boring about the place. The starkness of the place and the lack of imagination makes it look and feel like a drab, but I still take it. It’s at the intersection of two busy streets with incessant  auto traffic. This is Mexico and this is 1977. There are no rules about the air pollution and the noise. I spend night after sleepless night, tossing and turning, tortured by the shrill screeching of the metal over metal of the worn out breaks and grinding of the grease deprived gearshifts. Just within a couple of days, I know that I’ve got to get out of there. But I have signed a  year long lease and Señora Maldonado is not in the least inclined to allow me to wiggle out of it. Finally with the intervention of my friends at the office, she very reluctantly lets me off the hook with me agreeing to pay her two month’s rent for having lived there barely for a week.

Hearing my woeful tale, our publisher Ricardo (Ampudia) picks up the phone.

‘Let me see what I can do!’

‘Hola Antonio….’ And I hear lots of laughs and bantering of the two old school buddies.

‘I think I have just the place for you.’

The very next day, I am climbing the elevator of Berna 14, in the heart of Mexico City’s famed Zona Rosa. The small L shaped street you can enter or exit from Paseo de la Reforma at the Angel and Florencia. Number 14 is snugly nestled in the sharp corner of the inverted L. The building so narrow that you may mistake the sliver of the visible façade to be a dividing line between the two edifices tightly hugging it. It has three floors and three apartments. Mine is on the top floor. Each apartment is accessible only through the elevator, and there are no buttons to push. You need a key for your floor. Like starting a car.

On the third floor, the elevator doors open into the total darkness. When the lights are switched on, you find yourself standing in the middle of a long tube of a submarine like abode. You are in the kitchen/dining room. On the right is the bedroom – the only room to face the street and is exposed to the natural light. It is tastefully furnished with a custom-made bigger than the California King size mattress, which is probably 20” high, placed directly on the floor. It’s covered with shiny white satin sheets and strewn around are several large pillows, also draped in  satin. There are no windows, but floor to ceiling and wall-to-wall clear glass wall with the view of the street. When you draw the heavy drapes over the wall, you get a feeling of being in a submarine moored all the way down below the surface of  the water.

Every inch of the apartment is covered with amply padded and a very high quality tightly woven  off white wall-to-wall shag rug. The kitchen is well equipped and is efficiently placed along the wall and there is just enough room for maximum two people to squeeze in to cook. Rest of the space is covered with an enormous custom made round dining table with the diameter of 6 feet or more, which rests on heavy cast iron stainless steel pedestal. Around the table are very comfy  white dining chairs. Next to the kitchen is the living room. Lushly furnished with soft cushioned couches and arm chairs, also in white. Appropriately placed is the cocktail table and state of the art sound system.

You get a feeling of being placed in a deep cave. The entire place is about 60 feet long and twelve feet wide (approx. 18.3 meters x 3.7 meters). In between there are no walls and/or doors. The rooms are visually divided by the passages designed in the image of the most curvaceous female torso. Recessed lighting illuminates the place.

It is created to play. Every nook and cranny of it screams of now & here. The dining table, the couches, the rugs are all as inviting as the playground size bed, which at some point must feel like too far of a walk when you’re in the mood.

The apartment belongs to Ricardo’s childhood friend, Antonio – a very rich industrialist, whose main residence is outside Mexico City. Probably a hacienda. He has built this man cave in the heart of Mexico City as his pied-à-terre for his extracurricular activities. From what I understand from Ricardo is, at the time, Antonio is going through a particularly dry phase in his life and therefore the apartment remains more or less unused. Not something you can advertise and rent to just anybody. Now to rent it to someone like me, a Playboy executive and a business partner of his childhood friend is another story. I agree to the monthly rent of US$ 500.- as suggested by Ricardo. Lot of money in Mexico and at that time also in the States. I pay less than half that much for my much bigger place in Santa Barbara, California. But then, mere four nights at the Camino Real would cost me more than that.

I couldn’t be happier. Patricia loves it. My young friend Ignacio (Barrientos) adores it. Even Manuel (Peñafiel) with his own super bachelor pad nods his approval. Several months later when things have changed in my life, Carolyn comes to Mexico to spend a few days and thanks to the cozy and intimate Berna 14, she barely gets to see much of the city! It is indeed the most unique place I have ever lived in and is undeniably forms an important part of my Mexico memories.

During my extensive travels and absences, I would let my friends use my apartments, be it in Chicago, Munich or Santa Barbara. I like the idea of someone being there enjoying the place, while also taking care of it, watering the plants, picking up the mail. But I would always be careful who I give my keys to. A couple of colleagues at Editorial Caballero alluded of their interest, but one lesson I had learned from my Lake Shore apartment in Chicago, never to give keys to your married friends for their rendezvous, especially when you also know their wives. A friend’s wife at Time Inc. is still pissed at me because of his clandestine frolicking in my apartment. But the young editor Ignacio is single and we are becoming to be close friends. He probably has as many or more memories of Berna than I do. And I was happy that someone would water my houseplants that I had put in the bedroom to make the place more mine and  homier.

And to water them he did. Like my younger brothers in India, Ignacio too is still living at home, and being a boy, also like my brothers doesn’t have a clue of how these little household things work. So while watering plants, isn’t it better to water more and submerge the soil than leave it not quite saturated? I must have been gone two weeks and when I return, both of my plants in Mexico are promptly drowned and are drooping limply over the edges of their pots. Oh well! At least I don’t have his ex-wife to deal with and have not earned a permanent place on her shit list!

Other than that first meeting, I never have had a reason to see Antonio in flesh and blood until one evening when I am home early and am lying on the couch reading, I hear the elevator door open and someone getting off. Only other persons who had the keys was Ignacio, and Antonio’s manager Sergio, who would stop by every month to collect the rent. But neither of them would ever show up without first having called. A jolt of fear runs through my system, I jump up from the couch and run to the kitchen.

‘I am sorry for barging in on you. I was in the neighborhood and thought come and say hello to you.’ It’s Antonio. Still dressed in his impeccable business suite with an expensive looking leather briefcase in his hand. But other than the perfunctory apology, what I see on his face is the  entitlement he must feel, and okay to barge in on me just because he owns the joint. I don’t really like it, but welcome him nevertheless. Offer him a glass of wine. I sense he already have had a couple of drinks before he decided to wander in. Whatever! We talk about inconsequential things and somewhere along the line he mentions that perhaps we should talk about raising the rent a little bit.

I am not exactly against it, but I think what I was paying to be a fair rent, and I tell him how I paid only $230.- for my Santa Barbara apartment. But he seems to be in a funky mood.

‘You don’t think it makes any difference to me at the end of the day how much rent you pay, do you?’

And then we trail off talking about something else. Somewhere along the line, he picks up his  briefcase, opens it and slides out of it – a gun. He holds it his hands, looks at it endearingly and almost caresses it. Swirls it around his fingers the way John Wayne and Clint Eastwood do in their westerns. The metal of the gun shines like a newly minted penny and its wooden handle is polished to the T.

‘I just bought this. Isn’t she a beauty? You want to hold it?’

‘No it’s alright. I don’t think I have ever held a real gun in my hands.’

He once again fondly looks at it and puts it gently down on the cocktail table in the middle. We continue to talk, but I am no longer as comfortable. What I am thinking is; what the fuck? What does this man have on his mind? I feel a jolt of fear scurry through my spine.

We’re sitting in his time capsule of an apartment, completely sealed off from the outside world. Other than the elevator, there is a door at the very end of the living room that opens at the back of the building, which is double bolted. I know, there are keys in the kitchen, in case of emergency. And what could Antonio have against me? I try to think of the women I have been out with in Mexico City and wish that none of them had anything to do with the man sitting across from me. You know, sort of honor killing. If her were to pull the trigger for whatever reason, no one would hear the bullets popping. His lackeys would get rid of me in a classic Mexican maneuver as if I disappeared in the thin air walking down Paseo de la Reforma. Adios Amigo! My thoughts sound absurd. But they occur to me nevertheless. Outwardly, I stay cool and carry on.

‘Well, I think I better get going so I can be home in time for dinner. By now, the traffic should have eased somewhat.’ He picks up his gun, slides it back into his briefcase, and is gone as abruptly as he had shown up.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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On Friday, May 7, 2015

THE DELICATE BALANCE

How do you manage to remain the nail that manages not to be pounded down and still make everyone feel that your head is as sunk in as theirs, and that you’re one of them and trust you despite the fact that you’re employed by the other side? Indeed a difficult task, but not impossible. Yastaka Sasaki was that man, who knew how to maintain such a delicate balance and yet not be seen as someone who sold out to one or the other. My fond homage to this incredible man who is no longer with us.

  

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Categories Dwellings, Memoire, Mexico, Playboy

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

February 20, 2014 //
0

The Domestic Arrangements South Of The Border

Haresh Shah

aztecqueen

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

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

‘What would you like to do now?’

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

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

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

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

‘How if we go to my place and party?’

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Sure. Why not?’

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

‘Me?’

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

‘No quires ir con nosotros?’ I ask

‘A donde?’        

‘A los Pirámides.’

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

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

‘Entonces si. Me gustaria mucho. Gracias.’

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

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

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

●●●

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

‘She is pretty!’ I say reflexively.

‘Who, Clarissa?’

‘Who else?’

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

‘What?’

‘I guess, I picked her right.’

‘Did you interview many of them?’

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

‘You mean like from a line up?’

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

‘You mean like slaves?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t interrupt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, February 28, 2014

UNDETERMINED

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

 

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Categories Artist, Culture, Friendship, Mexico, Profile

I DANCED WITH DONNA SUMMER

February 28, 2013 //
7

Haresh Shah

A Fond Farewell From A Friend      
donnasummers3b
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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