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PLAYBOY STORIES ARE FOREVER

This post marks the 100^th Playboy Story. When I began blogging them in the fall of 2012, I thought I had about twenty five stories to tell, at the most. And here we are… I still have a list of about a dozen more and can’t tell how many unlisted would pop up along the way. But the stories that don’t compel me to write, are the stories that are not yet ready to be told. Basically, stories tell themselves, an author is just a medium – the facilitator. For now seems they are going on to an indefinite hiatus. But I am sure one or more of them would pop up and compel me to return to the screen. Hope you all will still be there to receive them. In the meanwhile, I have some other writings that I want to do and the stories that I want to tell. Stay tuned.

Can’t thank each one of you enough for your staying with me for almost three years and keeping me inspired and motivated to roll them out week after week. And you would agree with me that this blog wouldn’t have been as complete as I have tried to make it without my illustrative partners in crime, Celia and Jordan. I feel absolutely lucky to have stumbled upon them.

So long my friends until our wiedersehen.

Tags Arthur Kretchmer, Bill Stokkan, Editorial Director, Jan Heemskerk, Karen Abbott, Lee Hall, Mary Nastos, Playboy, Profile

Categories Arthur Kretchmer, Editor, Memoire, Playboy, Profile

THE DELICATE BALANCE

May 7, 2015 //

Flying Free Like A Hawk

Haresh Shah

“You’re doing a good job if you manage to piss us off fifty percent of the time, and piss our partners off another fifty.” Our boss Bill Stokkan would often tell his managers, usually during one of his pontification sessions. More true of his international divisional heads who had not only to deal with the products but also with the cultural nuances of the people from several countries. In my case, it also worked to my advantage that I was not an American born American. Especially the people I worked with from the non-European and Asian countries felt that I understood them better just because I was born and grew up in India. That I brought a different sensitivity to our working together. Equally so with my American management, because by then I had spent as many years in the West. As difficult as it could be sometimes, I had developed a close rapport with the people on both ends and had earned their confidence and the respect.

Even more so for our Yastaka Sasaki, who handled Playboy account for our Tokyo rep Ray Falk. Not only was his job to interpret the language portion of our communications with the editors and executives at our Japanese partners Shueisha, but also of making sure that what one of us said or wanted didn’t upset the sensitive cultural differences. Sasaki, as everyone called him, spoke fluent English. Almost instantly, he had earned my respect and if not exactly having become close friends, us two had established a certain honesty and trust into each other that went beyond simply working together. Those five days we spent together crisscrossing Japan sealed our bond which never weakened till the very end.

The last I saw of Sasaki was at my home in Evanston, October of 1993. Officially, I had already departed Playboy, but had invited for one last hurrah the group that had come to Chicago to partake in that year’s International Publishing conference. Turned out to be so much fun that it had to be repeated at the tail end of the conference. No more cigars, bemoaned Jeremy Gordin, the editor-in-chief of about to be launched South African edition. I had cooked Indian food and had caterers supply the rest. Everyone was spread out across several rooms of my house. I remember Sasaki and I, along with the Japanese editor-in-chief, the suave Suzuhito Imai sitting around the glass topped breakfast table in the corner, Jan (Heemskerk) standing by the kitchen counter and looking on. As Jan remembers it, placed in the middle of the table is a bowl full of fire red and deep green ultra dynamite Thai chili peppers. Sasaki picks up the red one and is about to take a bite.

‘Be careful, it will kill you!’ I warn.

‘I don’t think so. I am used to eating hot food.’

‘Yeah, but this is not hot food. This is the killer Thai pepper.’

‘Don’t worry, I can handle it.’

Our hands on our chests and our breathing momentarily suspended, we watch him bite off a chunk bigger than even I ever would dare. As if pierced by a sharp arrow, suddenly his face turns red and then contorted shriveled up fig. Tears begin to roll down his eyes. He runs to the sink, but it’s too late. Like three sadists, Jan and Imai and I laugh our butts off. I told you so. I want to say, but I spare him that bit of insult to his injury.

Beyond that, we may have stayed in touch for a while, but nothing in particular that I remember. Six years later I am living in Prague and am now editor-in-chief of successful Serial magazine, which as the name suggests, is focused on the popular television series. Suddenly, not the prime time, but the Sunday morning cartoon series Pokémon is all the rage on the Czech television. We decide to do cover story on the show. But as with other shows, the information and the images available through the local television network is limited to the press material, which everyone else too has. But I want to do an in-depth, but entertaining and informative feature on the show. I am specifically interested in the character’s creator, the elusive, Satoshi Tajiri. There is not much known about him and there isn’t a single photo of him available to accompany the text. Sasaki somehow manages to send me an old black and white shot of the man. We have a local artist do a color illustration of him.

Sasaki is pleased and amused at us re-connecting: and I thought you had faded away in the sunset after Playboy! And here you are, well and alive and no less than are editor-in-chief of a successful magazine in beautiful Prague! I can’t help but sense a certain amount of pride he must have felt at my well being post-Playboy. I obviously feel flattered and pleased at the fact that how pleased he sounds at his Shah-san not having disappeared behind the clouds of the past.

Barely little over a year has passed when I receive a mail from Mary (Nastos) in Chicago. It brings the sad news of Sasaki’s passing on March 20^th, 2002. A shock to say the least. I immediately write to his wife Miki and to Ray Falk. Even though I remembered having briefly met Miki once, her husbands’ death prompts long email correspondence between us two. In the correspondence, she describes in poignant details the last days and the last moments of his life and death. In-between the lines I could see how much love there must have been between the two. And yet, their relationship could not have been without ups and downs, in which unbeknown to me, they must have been divorced. The response that came from Ray Falk reporting on the funeral service for the man who had joined him right out of college and worked for him practically till the end, ends with: Mr. Sasaki’s wife who used to work in our office remarried her former husband before his death—-to ease his days—-a wonderful gesture.

As I re-read Miki’s e-mails sent to me soon following his death, there is more than just a wonderful gesture. There is genuine love and an enviable closeness.

In January of 2001, Sasaki is diagnosed with the cancer of esophagus. He is subjected to six weeks long chemo and radio therapies, which helps kill the bad cells along his esophagus. He goes on camping and fishing trips over the Golden Week in April-May holidays. Miki and him take another trip to the mountain lake in June. He suffers a relapse in July. The cancer has metastasized to his liver in multiple areas.

The real battle begins. He submits himself to a new drug in its first phase of the clinical trial. He continues to work and manages his day-to-day life. Going out to eat, going to the movies. And most importantly continues indulging in his passion of fly fishing. With some hopeful moments here and there, on February 28^th, 2002, he is told he only has a month left to live. The decision is made to admit him to St. Luka’s International Hospital to receive palliative care to ease his pain instead of seeking a cure. He is moved to the hospice ward on March 7^th. The last days of his life ticking off. And yet he fights tooth and nail. When not sedated, he is able to eat soft food, drink juices and water, suck on the ice cubes and go to the bathroom on his own. No needles or tubes sticking in or out of his body.

Flanking his bed are Miki and his childhood friend Ted Teshima, with whom he went to the elementary school in his hometown of Kobe. Only thirty minutes to go, he asks Ted to give him a back rub. Sensing that the end is very near, Ted calls Sasaki’s younger brother Yasuhiro in Kobe. And also calls a close colleague Mike Dauer, while Miki and Ted hold his hands on the either side of the bed and thank him for all he has given them and to wishing him the peaceful journey, his brother and Mike fill his ears with their soothing voices. Tears are rolling down Sasaki’s eyes as he slowly and peacefully retreats in the beyond. It’s Wednesday, March 20^th, 2002, the time 19:15. His earthly journey has lasted for 45 years, 3 months and 1 day.

The funeral follows. He is cremated and he came back home in a small box in my arms, writes Miki. Months later in August, Miki along with her uncle and Yastaka’s friend Mike travel to lake Nikko, where Yastaka and Miki used to go fishing. They scatter some of his ashes around one of his favorite spots in the river. At other time, Miki and Mike spend hours fishing at a smaller lake nearby, and sprinkle more of his ashes. They don’t catch any fish. They begin to raw back to the shore. There is a hawk hovering up above their heads. Just as they are about to reach the shore, they watch the bird dive down to the surface of the water very close to them and snatch up a big fish in its claw and fly away. Stunned, Mike and Miki decide the hawk is a better fisherman.

On a different stretch the next day when Miki is fishing alone, she notices another hawk lingering up above and then suddenly diving into the river in front of her, passing just above her head, the bird catches a brook trout and off flies up, up and away. It must have been Yastaka. Thinks Miki. The thought of him turning into a hawk and flying freely in the skies of Nikko from the mountain to mountain and to the lake to the river is really soothing and nice to me.

Fittingly, Ray Falk wrote to his friends in his brief report about Sasaki’s funeral. The picture of Sasaki at the funeral featured a big fish—-Lake fish were his favorite. There was a fishing rod near the coffin and a guitar at the other end.

Shah-san, I remember my husband talked about you sometimes. Very recently (like early February). The episode that I remember well that he told me was the trip that you and my husband went to Kanazawa city in northern Japan many years ago. You two had no interest what-so-ever to the touristic spots like the very famous historic Japanese garden which most tourists usually visit when they go to Kanazawa, but you two headed straight to the local market where they sell all the fish and vegies and interesting stuff. Shah-san loves market hopping anywhere he goes, that’s what he said, if I remember correctly, reminisces Miki.

In response to my mail to Ray Falk, he writes back:

Dear Haresh,

Thanks for your interest in Y. Sasaki!

If you had not left PLAYBOY, this might not have happened. He was a great Haresh Shah fan and would have listened to your advice on life and living.

That’s a heavy cross to bear, but flattering nevertheless.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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On Friday, May 22, 2015

TO HELL AND BACK

When I was fired for the second and the last time from Playboy, included in my severance package was a stint with one of the most expensive outplacement firms. Not knowing exactly what the hell they did for you, I plunged into it head first, to the extent that I must have been the only executive to have a unique distinction of being fired by an outplacement firm. And the rage that erupted. Thinking of it still gives me shivers 🙂

Tags Culture, Death, Friendhsip, Homage, Japan, Mike Dauer, Miki Sasaki, Profile, Ray Falk, Reincarnation, Ted Teshima, Yastaka Sasaki, Yasuhiro Sasaki

Categories Friendship, Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Yastaka Sasaki

THOSE EYES

February 19, 2015 //

I Went Home And Cried

Haresh Shah

Sitting across from me in a small windowless meeting room of the Holiday Inn in Warsaw is stunningly beautiful Beata Milewska. She is dressed in a conservative grey dress with the sharp U shaped neckline, trimmed with black satin ribbon. Underneath the geometric U are black brass buttons that run down to and below her breasts. Blonde, she wears fashionably shorter hair, reaching down just a little above her neck. Her eyes are sparking blue and smiles are amused but slight and measured. I guess her to be in her late twenties or the very early thirties.

Sitting next to her is Tomasz Raczek – supposedly to translate from English, but Beata herself is quite proficient in the language, so other than some whispered consulting, Tomasz is there more as an observer who would eventually be the editor-in-chief of the Polish edition. On my left is our Hungarian Publisher Deszo Futasz and on my right is Rolf Dolina, the man who has gotten us together in hopes that I would be positively impressed by Beata and her ability to gather a qualified team of professionals to create the Polish edition of Playboy.

After landing in still the old and the dilapidated Warsaw-Okecie Airport, as we drive into the city, I witness the remnants still of the city heavily bombed first by the German Luftwaffe in 1939, and then by the Russians in 1944 to quell the Warsaw Uprising. Both sides of the road are lined with the communist era’s drab and dark harsh apartment blocks. Making them further sinister is the shroud of the cold and the cloudy month of January. I cringe at the thought of the lives lived and of deaths and destruction and the dismay that still must permeate the day-to-day lives of its citizens. After all, it’s just little over a year since the fall of the Berlin wall.

Up until then, this is what I know about Beata. She is from Danzig – once the autonomous city state on the Baltic Sea, Gdańsk, nearby to the port of Gdynia . She is currently publishing a woman’s fashion magazine, Bea, in the image of Germany’s Burda Moden, named after its editor and publisher Aenne Burda – likewise she has named the magazine after herself. It speaks of her definite self confidence. Beata is publishing her magazine with very limited or no resources at all. Rolf has come to know of her through his regional manager Wlodzimierz Trzcinski. Beata had approached Wlodzimierz in hopes of selling ad pages to Fuji in her magazine. Instead, Fuji offers to supply all the films Bea needs in exchange of the byline that would say: shot on Fuji films. Not exactly what she is looking for, but the money she would save on films is still substantial – a sort of win-win situation. Rolf is impressed by this young, tenacious and hard working “businesswoman,” – as much as he is with her looks, smarts and sophistication.

The meeting proceeds well. With exception of the others present making their small contributions here and there – it’s basically Beata and me interacting while the rest look on. As we go through issues of Playboy page by page, me explaining and defining them, then throwing questions at Beata. She answers them with earnestness and precision. She seems not only to understand and know the nuts and bolts aspects of building a magazine from cover-to-cover, but also has a genuine feel for the product and its target audience. She has studied various editions of the magazine and has given serious thought to what kind of Playboy she would help create for her country.

As relaxed as the meeting seems, with Tomasz and I drinking beer and everyone else sipping on their coffees, the general air in the room is somewhat tense. Like that in an examination room. Me playing the part of a serious academician conducting orals to Beata’s doctoral candidate. While I am being my natural professional self as I a try to make important points, I am equally as aware of the fact how attractive the woman sitting across the table from me is. She exerts a certain aura that blends in well with her professionalism and very serious business woman demeanor. Her total attention to the every word I utter and her precise responses to my questions and the comments are refreshing. She has certainly done her homework. I can’t help but admire this young woman.

As much as we try to be discreet, frequent eye contacts are inevitable. Every time it happens, I see in her eyes a certain spark and a purple burst of light rays flashing across the table like from the old fashioned revolving flash cubes of the Kodak Instamatic camera. And yet, I know, and Beata is well aware that whether or not we would do Playboy with her hinges upon if I am impressed by her and her answers and have positively gauged her ability to pull it all together.

At the end of our meeting, that lasted a little over two hours, I feel drained. But I still have a long day ahead of me – a quick visit to Rolf’s Fuji operation in Warsaw. Have initial chat with the rep of another Polish prospect, Jerzy Mazur, who has flown in from Gdańsk. Rest of the day, I spend with Deszo and Rolf, have dinner with the Fuji crowd and by the time I return to my room late in the night, I am totally and positively wiped out.

As I hit the sack and think of the busy busy day and the people I have met, is when I realize how impressed I am with Beata. And how I am also taken by her overall beauty and the intelligence – what keeps flashing in my mind is the sparkles of her eyes and their penetrating gaze piercing through mine. As if we two were alone in that room shrouded in the darkness like that of the double apertured camera obscura with twin cones of lights rushing towards each other and colliding mid stream in a fusion. I suddenly feel spent by the undercurrent of the intensity of those two hours.

●●●

In Rolf’s opinion, Poland has the potential of being the bigger and the better market than already existing Hungary and soon to be launched Czechoslovakia. But we are in no hurry to move yet. This is January of 1991 and we have ahead of us the launch in Czechoslovakia. And Rolf’s focus is still to first strike an accord with the Czech license holder Vladimir Tichý. We have actually snuck out of Prague for a day just to get a feeling.

Now months later, smitten and encouraged by the success in Czechoslovakia, Rolf and I once again begin to talk Poland. In the meanwhile, on a quick visit to Gdynia in October with Rolf, I have a chance to see Beata again and meet her partner Tomasz Zięba, whom she would eventually marry. I feel quite comfortable with them. Once again, should we go with it, through his Autraco Holdings, Rolf would bankroll the edition. This time around, now I no longer remember, but believe at Rolf’s suggestion we discuss and for the first time Playboy agrees to go into a joint-venture with Autraco Holdings as one of the two major share holders – Beata and Tomasz would manage the company and would also become its minor shareholders. All the logistics in the place, we begin to work on creating the Polish edition.

Of all the editions I have been a part of launching, the early days are the fun most. There are no pretentions, no pressure. No real deadlines. Something I always insist upon – it’s a NO GO until we are well and ready. I want us to work simultaneously on three issues. Agree on the details and the definitions of the contents, assign the contributors, make dummies and then revise everything. Plan promotions and advertising campaigns, work on the launch details. This is the time when I excel in my role as the teacher and this is when the team is its most enthusiastic. This is when the adrenaline flows and the creativity takes place. This is when I am hardest on them. The suggestions turn into heavy discussions and the discussions into serious arguments. All work for the good of the magazine, because when we’re ready to launch, almost everyone is in sync. Nothing is more satisfying than the feeling that we have done the best that we could. We have created something we all could be equally as proud of.

This is when we all spend most of the time together, we bond or not, crowd the restaurants and taverns. Brain storm all the while. Still in the formative stage, we barely have proper offices. The publisher finds a space, a few desks and a couple of phone lines, a fax machine and we begin to buzz.

What they have found as our offices is a quaint single family row house on a quiet curved street away from the hubbub of the city center. The two story house is renovated with wood paneled sky lighted loft and exposed beams and the brick walls. The roof is red tiles. The admin offices are on the main floor and up above is editor-in-chief Tomasz Raczek’s office, which is where I am usually parked. Frequently joined by the celebrated artist and the art director Andrzej Pągowski. I love the cozy homey ambience. Once in a while I would climb downstairs and talk with Beata and Tomasz Zięba and their associates about the details of the launch.

Intense, and yet, they would be nice and easy days. The afternoon I still clearly remember as if it were only yesterday is when Beata and I are sitting at the edge of her desk, oblivious to the hurried steps crossing the hallway outside her office door, we are talking in whispers. Not exactly the business. And somewhere along the line we are holding hands, not unlike lovers. We have developed a special kind of rapport in which I wrote in my journal during one of those early days – we are becoming to be good friends – buddies if you may. Now she has longer hair that billow over and caress her shoulders. She is dressed in casual slacks and a loose fitting top. Her face wears her usual friendly and seductive smiles. Things are moving along fine and we’re relaxed – sitting side by side on the edge of her desk. We are reminiscing about that first time when we had sat across the table from each other at the Holiday Inn conference room, now a year and a half in the past.

‘Do you remember still?’ Beata asks.

‘How can I forget? I had immediately fallen in love with you, you know? I was so taken by how beautiful you were! And the blinding sparkle of your blue eyes! But I had to maintain my professional demeanor and concentrate on doing my job.’

‘While I was a nervous wreck.’

‘I know, it was tense. But nervous?’

‘And then your intense gaze! As if you were looking right through me. Your deep dark brown eyes, penetrating like two sharp arrows. It was difficult controlling myself.’

‘No!!!’

‘Yes.’ She responds. And then there is sudden silence between us.

‘I came home and cried!’ I hear her whisper.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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TABLE OF CONTENTS – The list and the synopsis of all 90 published blog posts.

Next Friday, February 27, 2015

ONCE BITTEN FOREVER SMITTEN

Yup! That’s the power of cuddly Bunny for you. A story of the young man’s falling in love with the idea of publishing Playboy in Poland, while having no clue what it really takes to create a magazine. But when you’re in love?

Tags Andrzej Pągowski, Beata Milewska, Friendhsip, Janusz Lekzton, Poland, Profile, Rolf Dolina, Tomasz Raczek, Tomasz Zieba

Categories Eastern Europe, Entrepreneurs, Memoire, Playboy, Poland, Profile

THE KING OF COCKTAILS

May 22, 2014 //

The Beginning Of The Longest Cocktail Party

Haresh Shah

Dieter (Stark) is tickled pink. He s standing behind the kitchen island, swinging the stainless steel cocktail shaker back and forth in his hands. Equally as handsome, he looks like Tom Cruise would behind the bar years later in his movie Cocktail. Surveying the scene and the mood of the night. He is feeling absolutely no pain. His face wears a glow of amazement at the mission accomplished as he looks down at all those bottles of booze lined up in front of him like miniature Chicago skyline. Most of them are half gallon bottles of just arrived Kentucky Bourbon, Scotch Whiskeys, Bombay Gin, Bacardi Rum, Absolut Vodka. There are smaller ones of the mixers containing of red and white Martinis, Crème de Menthe, Grenadine, Tonic water. Open cartons of orange juice, some Coke and 7-up bottles stand ready to be poured in whatever cocktail he would end up concocting. He must feel like a kid let loose in the liquid candy store. Innumerable possibilities, the night not long enough!

●●●

Dieter and I worked together as repro photographers for Burda Verlag in Offenburg, Germany. My early days living and working in the town of Offenburg in southern Germany were some of the loneliest. It didn’t help that I spoke no German yet and the little bit that I did, I misunderstood more than did I understand. I must give credit to the people I worked with in doing their best to communicate with me. But by and large, I was lost like a babe in the woods in that provincial south western German town that boasts of being the gateway to the picturesque Black Forest.

More than me, Dieter, who came from the town of Bad Dürkheim along the German Weinstrasse, some 87 miles (140 kilometers) north west of Offenburg, was like a fish out of water. The job was good. Burda was an excellent company to work for, but what would a young single man away from home do there after work? He hated Offenburg and called the town Apfenburg – the monkey town and often made fun of their dialect and accent. He hated the simple mindedness of the people whose lifelong ambitions he would sum up in three short sentences – auto kaufen, haus bauen und lotto gewinnen – buy a car, build a house and win lottery. I wouldn’t have known the difference and didn’t have any pre-conceived ideas about the place or the people. I was happy just to be out of London living and working on the continent. For practical purposes, both of us were outsiders and that’s what must have attracted him to me.

In the department full of camaraderie, lots of laughs and beer drinking, Dieter remained aloof and removed from such activities. Tall, his curly blonde hair cut short, easy going, soft spoken, Dieter believed in working hard, but not too hard. There was something very child like the way he spoke with his perpetually pouted lips. He could talk without really opening his mouth. Until you got used to his manner of speaking, you would think he was talking to you like one would to a toddler. In my case, it must have also been something to do with my lack of fluency in German and he wanted to make sure I understood what he said and punctuated his speech with the local gel? more often than did others.

Though he never learned to speak English, my German was getting better every day and we would somehow manage to communicate. He must have also taken liking for me, in that we would meet outside of work and he would regularly give me ride home in his flashy metallic gold Opel Record Sports Coupe to the village of Schutterwald, a six kilometer stretch. He maintained a small room in Offenburg, but come Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, depending on the shift we worked, he would be gone and spend the weekend with his girlfriend Uschi and allow his mother to pamper her only child. This left me to my own devices over the weekends – in other words an extended loneliness which I spent solo walking the streets of Offenburg or the forest, even the local cemetery – which was quite peaceful.

One of my fondest memories of our early friendship is his taking me along to Bad Dürkheim’s traditional Weinfest, known as Wurstmarkt – literally the sausage market. I got to meet with his widowed mother Annemarie and his girlfriend Uschi. His father apparently never returned from the war and was listed as missing up until they closed the books on December 31,1945, informing the family that he had died.

Around the same time as I left to come to the States, he got himself transferred to Munich. We stayed in touch on and off which had trickled down to once a year Christmas cards. Who knew that within short five years I would be knocking at his door? Not only we would end up living and working in the same city but that he worked for the repro house Weissenberger, who did lots of reproduction for Playboy and other Munich based magazines of our partners Bauer Verlag. And within the matter of months, his company moved from their original Leopoldstrasse location several block away to Augustenstrasse 10, right across the courtyard from Playboy offices in the front. Small world?

It took me a while, but when I finally located Dieter a couple of months after I had already been living in Munich, he realized how lonely I must have felt during the Christmas holidays. Suddenly he was there for me. Dieter took me along with him, his girlfriend Monika (Kunfalvi) and his Indian friend Kamal (Chanana) to everywhere they went over the weekends. Sometimes I found myself being picked up for breakfast and came home just to sleep.

My Buick arrived separately a couple of days earlier. When Dieter sets his eyes on it for the first time, he goes in his typical wry humor pout: Jetzt Du hast von zwei autos Park Platz we genommen. Now you have taken away two parking spots. In consideration of living in a big city, Dieter had gotten rid of his Opel Sports and bought himself a Volkswagen Bug. And when my stuff from Chicago arrived and he was helping me unpack, his eyes lit up like fireflies when he saw coming out of a couple of boxes half gallon bottles of the premium booze only partially consumed. All left overs from the going away party I had thrown for my Chicago friends just two days before the movers showed up.

In theory, the movers weren’t even supposed to pack them, it is illegal to transport alcohol across the ocean as a part of your household stuff. I had no time to give it all away to my Chicago friends, so I offered the four of them to take those bottles home with them. They politely declined. Considering that there was so much of it, they took pity on me. If someone asks, we don’t know about it. And let’s hope that the German customs isn’t as witless. Lo and behold, they didn’t even attempt to open the container, let alone any of the boxes inside. Seeing that I could practically open a small bar with all that liquor that was piling up on the counter, his face lights up.

‘I got an idea. Let’s throw a party. Moni, Kamal and I will invite all our good friends. You can invite some people from your work. We will have some beer and wine just in case, but I am sure they would all want to drink American cocktails – because they are “in” right now, but they are so very expensive here and you can order them only in exclusive places like Harry’s Bar. It will be a big hit.’

But the problem is, cocktails need ice. In Germany, not something you can run down to a nearby gas station or convenience store and pick up a bag or two. Dieter scratches his head and then snaps his fingers: “Jim”. His friend who once worked for the restaurant chain Mövenpick. Jim comes with a big bag of ice acquired from his bartender buddies.

Voila! It costs me ire of my landlady and the dirty looks from my ehrenwertes – honorable neighbors. Thus hastening my looking for another apartment, which landed me at Johanclanzestrasse 49. And suddenly I acquired all the friends I possibly could.

Some boxes still unopened, we set up my state of the art Fisher Quadrophonic sound system, spread out all the booze and my TWA set of cocktail glasses on the kitchen island – I pull out my Time Life book of Wines and Liquors which came with a small spiral bound booklet containing recipes for all the American cocktails – starting with basic Dry Martini to Manhattan to Whiskey Sour and Rob Roy. Dieter takes over the job of the bartender. Follows the recipes for a while, but for not too long. Now the Chicago skylined counter top looks more like a chemical lab than an in-house bar. He starts mixing them ad-lib, tastes them and then holds the mixing glass against the light to watch the kaleidoscope of colors they would create. Absolutely infatuated, he would try his concoction with different quantities of liquor the colors and the ice cubes.

The guests must have loved whatever concoction he is creating for them. The party is now in full swing and everybody is having good time. Every now and then when I am in the vicinity of Dieter, he would go guck mal Haresh, ist es nicht super? Probier mal doch! – look Haresh, isn’t that super? Here, try it! And then he would let out a hilarious laugh. And then stare at the swirling glass like an alchemist would at a test tube in awe of the clouds and colors and the taste he he has just created. I have never seen Dieter this giddy. He is having time of his life. And so am I.

The night is still young. It’s inching towards eleven and the party has just began to swing with the music and the dancing in the living room. There are people swarming every room and every corner of the apartment, experiencing various stages of happiness. Surrounded by all those people, mostly the friends of Dieter-Kamal-Monika trio and soon to be mine – suddenly I don’t feel lonely. From Playboy, I have invited Rainer and Renate (Wörtmann), and the photographer Jan Parik, who comes with his wife and some of his cool friends. Rainer is amazed at the fact that I have barely arrived in Munich and how quickly I have made so many friends?

As the night begins to wind down, there are still quite a few people scattered around the apartment while some of us are dancing in the living room. Jerry Butler is singing, Never gonna give you up. And I am dancing intimately with Hella, Dieter’s friends’ friends’ friend. We’re swaying ever so slowly in the middle of the floor and kissing, The lighting in the living room is already subdued, but Dieter decides to facilitate even more Hella and me getting into each other. He announces to the crowd: the host wants lights dimmed. Now we are left with only the light pouring in from the street and from the foyer. Dieter is thinking: What can be better for Haresh than for him to have a home town honey? Thanks Dieter! As it turns out, I never see Hella again, but in the real existential sense, that night we lived for the moment – the moment I still remember. As if in the spirit of the Munich fasching – and the carnival of Köln, both of which I would experience soon enough, during which one of the most oft played songs goes like:

Du darfst mich lieben für drei tolle tage

Du muss mich küssen das ist deine pflicht

Du kannst mir alles alles schöne sagen

Nur nach dem name frag mich bitte bitte nicht

(You may love me for three mad days

You must kiss me – it’s your obligation!

You can say all sorts of beautiful things to me

But please, please don’t ask my name!)

In fact I soon forgot what she looked like or what her last name was, and would certainly not recognize her if I were to run into her today. But Dieter had succeeded far beyond his expectations in throwing the party so I could make some friends in what would be my home for some time to come.

Thus began what I would term to be The Longest Cocktail Party. When it finally and abruptly ended two and a half years later, one afternoon when we sat in a beer garden with his visiting mother, feeling sorry for me, she exclaimed! Poor Haresh! He no longer has a job!

‘Mach dir keine sorgen Mutti. Haresh will soon land back on his feet!’ I couldn’t have said it better.

I am still touched by Dieter’s confidence and faith in me. I linger in Munich for five more months that ended with another big bash at my place. The movers once again packed me up – the remaining bottles of good German wines and all and took the container full of my personal belongings to the local storage until I finally figured out where I would end up living. I fill up my Buick with all that I would need until such a time and drive away to Paris and on to the French port of Cherbourg and drive up the ramp of the QE II. The Queen would bring me back to New York and to the United States.

As during my first departure, and my hiatus of three years in Santa Barbara, Dieter and I would stay in touch. True to his prediction, in not too far of a future I would land back on my feet. And before long, come back to Munich a couple of times a year to work with the Playboy people and of course meet up with Dieter and Kamal and his latest squeeze Irmi (Irmengard Rüttinger), whom he would eventually marry.

The evening I still remember very fondly is the time we went to the Oktoberfest, and how happy drunk we all were. I remember having dinner with him and Irmi at their home. Not too long after that, I got a letter from Irmi that my friend Dieter, after having struggled with the abdominal cancer, chemotherapy and surgery, had passed away on September 21, 1984 – at the age of 40. It all happened quick within two short months.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, May 30, 2014

THE 75th PLAYBOY STORY

SAILING THE QUEEN

Once the initial shock and the feeling of insecurity wore off, it dawned on me, why was I in such a hurry to return to the States and begin looking for a job without giving myself a little break and regroup before I found something worth while to commit to? Why not first enjoy all that the beautiful city of Munich had to offer and then instead of rushing back on a nine hour flight, why not take my time and sail across the Atlantic?

Tags Dieter Stark, Friendship, Loneliness, Munich, Parties, Profile

Categories Friendship, Germany, Memoire, Playboy, Profile

THE PEEPING TOMS

February 12, 2014 //

Paparazzi In His Own Backyard

Haresh Shah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, February 21, 2014

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

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

Tags Franz Hermann Gomfers Tribute, Friendship, Germany, Madhu Parekh, Nasim Yar Khan, Playmate Karen Sugimoto, Profile, Wachtendonk

Categories Friendship, Germany, Profile

WHO’S EVER SEEN GOD?

January 23, 2014 //

Body And Soul Union

Haresh Shah

Actually our destination this Sunday is Las Mañanitas, more in line with an all day weekend outing for Playboy executives to spend a leisurely afternoon in the lush gardens of one of the most beautiful hotels and restaurants in the world. Enjoy sumptuous Mexican delicacies washed down with Tequila Sunrises and Daiquiris. Only a short half an hour drive from Mexico City, the town of Cuernavaca is heralded the City of Eternal Spring by the geographer, naturalist and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, is a perfect escape from the dense clouds of pollution, swarms of crowds and the constant dint of noise of Mexico City. It is the pride and joy not only of the town of Cuernavaca, but of the entire country. We sit under the open sky and under the cooling shades of the trees and sip on our psychedelic tropical drinks. We are surrounded by the tall royal birds among them the proud peacocks gracefully prancing up and down with their iridescent tails spread out into magnificent round throne like fans. Prancing along are other long necked beautiful birds swaying and strolling while jumping monkeys frolic up and down the tree branches. It feels like being in paradise, the garden of Eden as one would picture it. The only other time I would come upon such an exotic place would be several years later on my first visit to Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

Feeling euphoric, soon as we are settled, a waiter comes by, carrying a huge blackboard and sets it down on the ground. On it the menu of the day is listed in colorful and curlicued script. We order and then continue with our drinks. In no hurry to go anywhere, just letting ourselves loosen up and enjoy the moment. Time slips by and then we are invited to the table all set up for us on the terrace shaded with bright and vibrant umbrellas. The food! The food!!! This is my very first trip to Mexico, which was originally meant to be just a short orientation thing, but as has been with my life, it stretches into almost three weeks. Work! What else? I am required to dive right into the thick of it, as I had to several years earlier in Germany. And so I do.

The people I am working with are wonderful partners and the hosts. This is the rewards part of the hard work. Our taste buds are treated to the fat succulent camarones con ajos, and fresh red snappers and carne asada replete with Mexican flavors of chili and cilantro and lime. No hard taco shell anywhere in sight, like back in the USA. I didn’t know anything about the TexMex and the CalMex part of what I had come to think of as the authentic Mexican food. Soft shell flautas at McGill’s in Isla Vista washed down with XXX beer is as far as I had come to know of the Mexican cuisine. So it turns out to be the most deliciously pleasant surprise.

I am brought here by Carlos Civita, the partner of our Mexican publishers, Ampudia family of Editorial Caballero. Carlos, of the famed Civita family originally from Italy, but known for their publishing empire Editorial Abril in Argentina. During the political upheaval there, the family just decided to cash in and leave. His father, Cesar Civita is now living in New York City while Carlos has taken up residence in Mexico City. The delightful bunch, some of the most wonderful people I have ever been fortunate enough to know. Carlos basically takes me under his wing and the very first weekend that I am in Mexico City, he just hands me the keys to his little Renault, so I get to explore the city on my own. Now when I think back, it could well have been a disaster. Because driving in Mexico City is not exactly like driving in Chicago or even New York. Its more like Bombay and Saigon where the chaos and survival of the fittest reigns supreme. Not to mention extra attention I needed to pay to the car’s manual transmission. I remember, how the little Renault shuddered and came to a stand still right in the middle of a square with hundreds of cars zapping by and not paying any attention to stranded me. Not even the cops nearby directing traffic budge an inch. Somehow I survive and get the thing going again. I won’t even mention how many times I got lost during that weekend.

But the weekend after, he wants to show me around and picks Cuernavaca and Las Mañanitas as our destinations, accompanied by his visiting parents, and makes it in to a family outing. They pick me up from my hotel around ten. Early for Mexico, because the lunch is never served before two at the earliest. But before we settle down and splurge at Las Mañanitas, he wants us to attend that morning’s mass at Cuernavaca’s Catedral de la Asunción de María. That seems a bit odd because Carlos and his family are not exactly what I would call religious folks. Plus, they are born Jewish, though Carlos’ wife Marta is Catholic. But he has heard so much about the uniqueness of the mass performed by the Bishop of Cuernavaca cathedral, and how uplifting his sermons are and how they are devoid of religious dogmas.

The Bishop is more like a secular philosopher and a teacher than a Catholic priest. Apparently very popular among his followers, majority of them very young. He seems to have a rock star status within his congregation whom I end up naming the Pop Priest. His manner of conducting the mass is nothing like I have ever experienced. Flamboyant and colorful, his words that I don’t understand, sound so uplifting and optimistic. And he has built himself a reputation that surpasses that of the historic cathedral – a proud landmark of Cuernavaca that rivals even Las Mañanitas. Thus making them the perfect twins in balancing the material world with the spiritual life, symbolized so appropriately by its revered Bishop.

Probably in his late Fifties or the early Sixties, he wears an easy smile Wrapped over his white cassock is a green shawl. And his choir is made up of a six piece rock band, containing of three guitarists, two violinist and a drummer. They all wore long frizzy hair and are dressed in their blue jeans, t-shirts and such – tops normally worn by teenagers. His voice is gentle and natural. His congregation is dressed not in their Sunday best, but in their ordinary street clothes. At this point, my Spanish is non-existent, but I like the soothing and even tone of his voice vibrating in the air.

Post mass, he stands outside the front gate greeting the exiting crowd, making small talk. He breaks up in a smile when he sees me emerge from inside and folds his hands together in traditional Indian gesture of namaste.

‘How did you like the mass?’

And we converse for a while. He asks me about India and refers to Buddhism and Hinduism and tells me how the message remains the same; be it Jesus or Buddha or Krishna. Devoid of any theatrics, what strikes me the most is that unlike other services I have attended, he certainly does not talk or constantly repeat the name of Jesus in vain. He doesn’t make you feel that unless you believed in Jesus you were doomed to be engulfed by the long and thorny tentacles of the wild hell fire. Likewise, I don’t once get a feeling, the one I normally got in the past from the priests whose message was loud and clear: Jesus is the way and the only way. I see in him an image of Gandhi – who though extremely religious, and very much into his Hindu beliefs and rituals, never lost the sight of the fact that there were other beliefs and they had to be revered and respected. Like my own dad.

My dad remains the most religious person I have ever known. He followed his Vaishnava faith to the T. An entire room of our home was and is still devoted to his in-house temple designated as Thakorji no room. His daily rituals lasted an average of four hours. Longer on the religious holidays. Of us eight siblings, the rest could be said to be more or less religious to the extent that they all follow bits and pieces of my parent’s total devotion, but as for me, it would be fair to say that even for a long while I identified myself as an agnostic, finally I have come to realization that that was a cope out on my part, because what I really am is: an atheist. After holding out hopes for me up until I was in my early thirties, my dad astonished me one night. I had just returned from paying my tribute at the shrine by our house – something I did out of sheer respect for my dad and expressly to please him.

‘You don’t have to go to the temple just to please me. You’re just crowding it and taking a place away from a true believer.’

What he didn’t verbalize was what I read in the look on his face. I know you’re a good kid and that’s all that matters.

Not withstanding occasional and almost always politically provoked sectarian violence in India, especially in it’s most metropolitan city Bombay, is where you also grow up respecting every religion, every culture and every custom. No one ever walks past without bowing his head, be it a temple, a mosque, a church, a derasar, a gurudwara or a Parsi fire temple. As religious and as devoted as my father was in his belief of Nirvana and reincarnation in his worship of Bal Krishna (infant-playful Krishna), he never had anything denigrating to say about other religions. The person with that kind of tolerance and accepting of the other faiths is in my eyes a true Vaishnava.

Just as the Spanish inscription carved in the most modern typeface on the large marble plaque on the wall behind us says:

NADIE HA VISTO NUNCA A DIOS

PERO

SI NOS AMAMOS UNOS A OTROS

DIOS PERMANECE ENTRE NOSOTROS

***

NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN GOD

BUT

IF WE LOVE EACH OTHER

GOD RESIDES WITHIN US (AND SO DOES HIS LOVE)

Atheist or not, I certainly can say Amen to that.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

Next Friday, January 31, 2014

LET IT BE A SURPRISE

Not sure which one of the ones I am working on will be ready to go over the weekend. Just let’s wait and see, because I am afraid that’s how inspiration works! I promise whatever comes out on the top will be GOOD:-)

Tags Bishop of Cuernavaca, Carlos Civita, Cuernavaca, Food & Wine, Las Mañanitas, Mexico, Profile, Religion, Travel

Categories Culture, Food & Wine, Mexico

FACE TO FACE WITH THE MASTER OF MAGICAL REALISM

December 13, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

My Close Encounter With An Angry Nobel Laureate

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

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.

Original Abridged Version

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Tags Gabriel García Márquez, Haresh Shah, Mexico, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Playboy Interviews, Profile

Categories Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Laureate, Profile, Writer

FEEL GOOD SISTER

May 2, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

If Only I Could See Through The Depth Of Those Eyes

Not knowing what it is I want for lunch, I walk over to Briennerplatz and my feet automatically take me down the steps to Ristorante Positano. Just a few blocks away from Playboy offices in Munich. It’s a little before two. The place looks deserted. Thinking perhaps they have already closed for the afternoon, I am about to turn around and leave when I hear some shuffling in back of the wardrobe room. A young woman emerges from the dark.

‘I’ll be just two minutes.’ She says, holding up her hand with three middle fingers raised. While I am mulling over why exactly “two minutes”, I notice her open palm. Didn’t she say two? Confused only for a flash, she turns her palm around, looks at it and slowly retracts one of the fingers. A self-conscious smile breaks out on her face. From what I can tell, she looks Eurasian, with her narrow fish eyes, her smooth round face, and her silky smooth pitch black hair. I see something mysterious hidden behind the depth of those eyes, further intensified by the ambience of that dark corner of the restaurant. This is the image that has remained with me all these years later.

I stop to talk on my way out.

‘Where are you from?’ I ask. California.’ She answers. This strikes me a bit odd, as if California were an independent nation. Might as well have been because I have never been there and all that I have heard about it so far tells me that it must be a place like no other.

I tell her, I too am from the States – Chicago to be precise. The two of us making the most unlikely samples of America, still we feel a certain sense of belonging. I end up inviting her to the house warming party I am having at my brand new apartment. She is delighted and so am I at having accidentally landed a date with this exotic beauty.

Her name is Ann. Ann Unruh Stevens. She is a mélange of Japanese mother and American father of German descent, a Sergeant Major – an army brat. Born in Okinawa, Japan, she has grown up in Hawaii. She is unpretentiously pretty and looks striking in her petite frame. And something about her is quite mysterious. The way she talks in whispers and the way she looks at you with kind and friendly way, somehow makes you feel special. I feel a certain spell unfurl and fall upon me through her gentle gaze. I am thrilled at the prospects of seeing her again. And I find myself already building sand castles in the air.

She is on the phone a day or two before the party. She tells me how she is excited and how very much she is looking forward to coming to my party, thanking me profusely for inviting her. It makes me happy that she lingers on the phone, just making idle chat.

‘I was wondering if I could bring “my man” to the party?’ She asks in a voice that is hesitant and barely audible. My sand castles suddenly crumbling and all my enthusiasm deflated, I am thinking: shit, why would I want “your man” at the party? Weren’t you supposed to be my date? That is like kebab main haddi – literally, a bone in kebab. Nothing can sour more the silky smooth savor of juicy minced lamb delicacy.

What am I supposed to say? ‘Of course, by all means! What’s his name?’

‘Mark (Stevens). I really appreciate it. I’m sure you two would like each other.’

Like? To Ann’s chagrin, we hit it off right away. And how?

If I had to profile Jesus Christ, I would describe Mark. A tall, handsome, permanently tanned Californian with shoulder length wavy blonde locks, carefully trimmed beard and the eyes as blue as coral, filled to the brim with and intelligent kid’s curiosity of the universe. His easy smiles and warm friendly demeanor has me absolutely disarmed.

Fast forward to four years. I am now living closer to them in California. While Ann is at work in the evening, Mark and I hang out frequently. When finished working, Ann would meet up with us, mostly at their place or mine and find us two twirling our snifters filled with Remy Martin, blowing clouds from our cigars and lost deep into whatever it is that we are talking – totally oblivious of her arrival. Probably talking women. Soon as we hear her footsteps coming closer, we would abruptly shut up – communicating only with our eyes, holding back our amazement with expressions on our faces like that of two cats just having swallowed the canaries. Ann, shifting her gaze back and forth, feeling left out and alienated. I remember that one time when she must have felt so humiliated and frustrated that she focuses her gaze sharply on Mark and furiously stamps her foot on the ground: But he is my friend!!!

●●●

But let’s rewind back to Munich. Like a whole bunch of other young Americans, Mark and Ann too are doing their stint in the old world. Along with Gary and Michelle, Dieter and Monika and Kamal, they too become a part of my intimate circle. Just hanging out, sweating out pores in the sauna, go swimming and then sitting around on the floor, some times sin ropas, drinking beer and wine, them also smoking pot, with candles flickering and the wisps of incense in the air – feeling mellow, we form a permanent bond which would eventually bring me to Santa Barbara, California, and into the living room of their funky farm house, calling ourselves feel good brothers and a sister.

At this phase in my life, being in Santa Barbara turns out for me to be in the right place at the right time. The early months are difficult and lonely and I often feel lost. Having succeeded in luring me to the end of the continent, Mark and Ann not only felt responsible for my well being, but for a while I also became their mission. Between them two, they initiate me into the southern California life – step by step. Introducing me to new people and new places, breaking me into hearty walks and health foods. Make me enjoy the nature and the pleasure of watching sunsets. We would take off and go up the mountains to Solvang, hang around Mark’s parents’ trailer house up on Lake Cachuma, go skinny dipping in secluded natural grottos. Eating fresh fish and get to appreciate California wines. They break me into completely new laidback lifestyle, devoid of what was until then for me go-go-go kind of existence.

The house itself is small. There is a long driveway parallel to the farm right off Hollister Avenue that leads you to the small structure. At the back of the house is a fairly large greenhouse where Ann grows vegetables and they also grow their own marijuana. There is only one bedroom. The problem farm toilet with septic tank in the backyard. Not to mention 1975 water shortage of California with the consciousness hammered into everyone: If It’s yellow, its mellow. If It’s brown, flush it down. Even sleeping in the living room, I am comfortable. I feel welcome and wanted and loved. The house is furnished with bits and pieces of hand me downs or the garage sale stuff. Funky but warm and cozy. There are afghans and Indian bed spreads and lamps, all with some personal touch.

My wake up call would be Ann futzing around and getting the pot belly stove going before I would flip the covers over and start my day. Mark works for the city – running machines that process the human waste and Ann works in the evening as a waitress at the Italian restaurant Roccos in Isla Vista on the campus. During the days, she runs around, doing errands, keeping me company. In her spare time Ann makes jewelry from her own designs – (http://annstevensjewelry.com/) something she loves to do.

There is a bookshelf and also a bunch of books strewn all around the shelf, containing of the volumes of Tolkien’s Hobbit series, Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the kind pegged by the book trade as “alternative lit”. The way books are left all over is just a mess to my organized mind, who has all his books and records alphabetically shelved in neat order. Something that bothers me every time I look at the piles from my bed across the room. So one morning, while Ann is out running errands, I sit down on the floor, take all books off the shelves, line them up on the floor and re-shelve them in alphabetical order in neat rows. Suddenly the floor looks spacious and uncluttered, books accessible. Ann walks in while I am sitting on my bed and admiring my handiwork.

‘Hi, how’s your morning going?’ She greets me with her usual exuberance, and then suddenly stops in her tracks. Looks around. The uncluttered and clean floor, the organized bookshelves. I am waiting for her to crack her big smile and say something like: you’re such a doll. Thanks. Thanks very much. Rush over and give me a hug.

Instead, she looks at me a bit befuddled. Welling up on her face is restraint anger turning into a hurt look.

‘Did it feel good cleaning up? She asks and then pauses, to compose herself.

‘Its alright!’ She adds and works at softening the expressions on her face.

What I feel she most probably wants to say is: Why the fuck you do that? Rightfully so, because I have committed a cardinal sin of inadvertently violating their sense of order.

But she is not the one to dwell on such things, so after all, I do get to see a slight smile, crossing her lips.

●●●

Basically, I am well taken care of by Mark and Ann. What a bargain? Two for the price of one! But Ann still remains my (primary) friend. She is there for me always. Cheerleading me, giving out generous hugs, showering me again and again with I love you, and often flirting with me shamelessly. I am absolutely at home.

I still cherish the little things that she would do for me such as her leaving bunches of flowers – freshly cut from her garden – in my apartment in my absence. Leaving little endearing notes. Chauffeuring me around.

To call Mark and Ann pot heads would not do them justice. Their devotion to the weed is more spiritual than its worldly. So much so that Ann would try to seduce me with it in her sweet little ways, by sneaking in and leaving in my spice cabinet a big fat joint or two. ‘Just in case!’ She would say. And be disappointed to see it still there untouched and ignored for months.

And she was there for me to welcome Carolyn and her mother to my house when I was on other side of the world in Australia. She did it better than I would have.

Carolyn and I had not lived together before. We maintain the long distance relationship living four hundred miles (640 kilometers) apart. Her in San Francisco and me in Santa Barbara. She had already moved back east to Minnesota when she found out that she was pregnant.

All this happened very fast. I didn’t know I would be gone for six weeks and Carolyn had packed up and was heading back west, accompanying by her mother, to move in with me. I asked Mark and Ann to welcome them and to make sure that there were a dozen long stemmed red roses waiting for Carolyn in my apartment. Which Ann arranged, but she also added to that a dozen white roses for her mother and attached to them appropriate message from me. Carolyn later told me how overwhelmed and teary-eyed her mother was – not remembering the last time anyone sent her flowers, let alone a dozen long stem roses. But that’s Ann for you. And I got all the accolades:)

●●●

I don’t remember in what context, but I do remember Ann having once said to me that dynamite come in small packages. And not too long after, this petite little femme just proves that to me.

We are riding in their blue Datsun pickup and are about to exit a strip mall with her at the wheel. She has stopped at the incline of the driveway and is moving her head sideways to make sure there are no cars coming from either direction before she enters the street. Just then a slightly bigger pickup coming from behind swerves in the front and cuts her off like a chef chopping off a fish head. And I see her face turning, fury in her yes. She rolls down the driver side of the window, and yells.

‘Hey Mister!!!’ Her hand stretched out, her elbow firmly planted on the window frame and the palm upturned. The driver breaks and makes a mistake of looking back. Her hand springs up in the air and this time its only one – the middle finger snaps up, she flips a violent bird at him and spews out like fire, Fuck you very much! And the driver couldn’t get away fast enough, with his wheels screeching and the breaks grounding and all.

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

Haresh Shah

If Only I Could See Through The Depth Of Those Eyes

I stop to talk on my way out.

What am I supposed to say? ‘Of course, by all means! What’s his name?’

‘Mark (Stevens). I really appreciate it. I’m sure you two would like each other.’

Like? To Ann’s chagrin, we hit it off right away. And how?

●●●

Instead, she looks at me a bit befuddled. Welling up on her face is restraint anger turning into a hurt look.

‘Did it feel good cleaning up? She asks and then pauses, to compose herself.

‘Its alright!’ She adds and works at softening the expressions on her face.

What I feel she most probably wants to say is: Why the fuck you do that? Rightfully so, because I have committed a cardinal sin of inadvertently violating their sense of order.

But she is not the one to dwell on such things, so after all, I do get to see a slight smile, crossing her lips.

●●●

And she was there for me to welcome Carolyn and her mother to my house when I was on other side of the world in Australia. She did it better than I would have.

●●●

I don’t remember in what context, but I do remember Ann having once said to me that dynamite come in small packages. And not too long after, this petite little femme just proves that to me.

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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