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On Friday July 31, 2015

100^th PLAYBOY STORY

MR. SPEAK

The Quirky Brilliance Of The Head Guru

A light hearted profile of the man who put together Playboy, month after month. Nuts and bolts. Brick by brick. The one and only, Arthur Kretchmer.

Tags Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, Bruno Bonnel, Christophe Sapet, Europe Telematique, French Telecom, La Bonâme de Bruno, Lyon, Minitel, Patrick Magaud, Travel

Categories Dictatorship, France, Lyon, Memoire, Minitel, Playboy, Travel

THE TRAVELING AGENT EXTRA-ORDINAIRE

January 13, 2015 //

Too Good For His Own Good

Haresh Shah

I am sitting in the Lufthansa city office in the center of Barcelona across from the petite German blonde staring at her computer screen while leafing through my four-booklets-thick-stapled- together ticket. She is tap taping her keyboard accessing my original itinerary and then checking it against my neatly handwritten used and the remaining ticket coupons. She looks confused and she looks amazed. One thing she doesn’t look is sure of herself. I have been on the road now for almost three weeks and have practically been around the world with my original itinerary that reads: March 25, 1979, Chicago-Los Angeles-Santa Barbara-Los Angeles-Sydney-Melbourne-Sydney-Bombay-Rome-Zürich-Barcelona-Munich-Düsseldorf-Frankfurt-London-Chicago. April 12, 1979.

I am on the final lag of my journey and am there to re-route my flight back to Chicago via Munich and Frankfurt instead of via Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, London. Normally a simple switchover. But that’s not the problem. It’s no restrictions ticket valid for twelve months.

I watch the blonde shake her head and murmur something to herself.

‘Who wrote this ticket?’

‘Why? My traveling agent in Chicago, Satya (Dev), who is also a friend.’

‘This is really fantastic. But a bit complicated and I need to figure out how he came to the fare base he did. It’s gonna take me a while. Can you leave the ticket with me for a while?’

What Satya had actually done was this: Instead of the real and the obvious Sydney as the turning point of my around the world flight path, to calculate the fare, he had me turning around in Jakarta, Indonesia, a fictitious turning point. Totally legit, and by doing so, he was able to reduce the total fare by as much as a thousand bucks. Cheating himself out of at least $150.- in commission. Something didn’t matter to me and the accountants at Playboy certainly wouldn’t have cared. And the reason he had me return to Chicago from London was because by writing the ticket on the British Airlines stock, he would add to his volume with them and therefore get an extra percentage or two commission from them. Knowing well that I hated the idea of connecting in the congested chaos of London’s Heathrow Airport. But I agreed to do it as a small favor to him. You can always switch to Lufthansa or KLM when in Europe, he would say, the two of my most favorites on the trans-Atlantic route.

‘Your traveling agent must be brilliant. We couldn’t have figured out the fare the way he did.’ The blonde tells me.

●●●

Playboy had in-house traveling desk represented by a woman from the local traveling agency by the name of, I think Mary. The only time the in-house agency had to issue my ticket was a three way Chicago-Munich-Chicago-Munich ticket when I was first hired by the company and promptly shipped off to Europe. Beyond that, I was handed a corporate TWA Air Travel and an American Express cards. By the time I was brought to the corporate offices to work and live in Chicago, six years later, I had mastered ins and outs of how airlines worked. I always booked my own flights directly from the airlines and picked up the tickets at the airports just before boarding the plane. While still living in Santa Barbara, I would book my flights over the phone and take a bike ride to the little airport only a stone’s throw away from my home and pick up my ticket from the young man I will call Joe, at the United counter. He was quite pleasant and we would have good visits. It was a one man operation in which Joe did everything – checking you in, loading and unloading the baggage, taking your flight coupon and whatever else that needed to be done.

But when my itineraries began to get longer and a bit complicated, once with a friendly frown he hinted, why don’t you have one of the local traveling agents issue your tickets? It wouldn’t cost you anything and I am sure they certainly would appreciate your business.

Enter voluptuous Debbie Kaufman and the Professional Travel. I would still book my flights and Debbie was quite happy to issue my tickets. But then I relented and let Debby also book the flights. Carolyn and I even had her over for an Indian dinner one night.

When we moved to Chicago, the house rule was to book our flights and hotels through Mary. But I was so used to and in tune with the international travel that I plain ignored this rule. Also because by then Satya had approached me. He and I were never close friends, but we were classmates from the first through the fourth grades – growing up in Borivali, a northern suburb of Bombay with no running water and no electricity. Beyond that, over the years, we would run into each other sporadically, while I was still in India and later during my visits back home. And then one day I get a call from him in Santa Barbara. He too had made his tracks to the United States and was now living in Chicago working for a traveling agency. Eventually he would open his own Blue Skies Travel. I began to give him my business.

Curiously, no one ever questioned my taking care of my own traveling needs. I think Mary once brought it up, but then realizing that I was better at the international routing and the flights than she ever could be – and when I pointed out to her that I had gotten a better deal for the same flights she had booked for my boss Lee (Hall) on the Varig flight to São Paulo, she must have decided to leave me alone. So Satya became my de facto personal traveling agent.

For Satya, the intricacies of the airfares and routes had become an obsession and a challenge. Finding all sorts of options became for him like computer games. Sometimes he would hold me on the phone for quite some time, and every couple of minutes come up with different fares and different itineraries. Mind you, this was before the arrival of the internet and before the fares were ruled by algorithms.

But he was more than the finder of better fares and the itineraries. He was an old fashioned traveling agent who also took care of your visas and other necessary paperwork. Would often show up at the airport to see you safely off. In those days, there were only the First and the Economy classes. So the upgrading from the Business to the First didn’t come into the picture. But when he hand delivered the tickets, he would show up with a variety of airline goodies. An Aerolineas Argentinas backpack, Lufthansa’s weekender sturdy little suitcase and the matching garment bag, KLM’s large ticket sized genuine leather wallet, Pan Am’s classic flight bag, Japan Airline’s poster sized framed world map with the round clocks mounted on the top, showing four time zones across the globe.

More importantly, he would build you up so much with the airline that at every connection the computer would flash the letters VIP right next to your reservation. Not because the business Satya brought to them would have amounted much to their bottom lines, but he had brilliantly managed to establish congenial personal relationships with many of the Chicago based airlines sales people, especially with the foreign owned airlines with small offices in the city.

Always impeccably dressed in his navy blue three piece suite and shiny shoes, he would show up with a big smile on his face and often treat them to Indian meals at one of the Indian restaurants in town. And he was good at dropping names. In the beginning, Haresh Shah wouldn’t have meant much to them, but he would build up my status at Playboy and spin the stories of how we knew each other practically since we were still in the diapers. And perhaps even drop a hint that in theory he could talk the company’s other executives that traveled abroad frequently into begin flying their airlines. Over a period of time, he did indeed started getting business from my then boss Bill Stokkan. Through Satya I got to know and meet many of the sales people as well and at least with Lufthansa and KLM I had become an instantly recognized name among the city and the airport staff.

So much so that I was almost always upgraded. Once when Lufthansa wasn’t able to bump me up, the station chief Herbert apologized profusely with: Extremely sorry Mr. Shah. The flight is fully booked, But wait before boarding. Just in case someone doesn’t show up. As I wait at the mobbed gate, I sense someone approaching me with, You must be Mr. Shah. Standing in front of me is a very tall and distinguish north German looking man. Perhaps seeing a question mark on my face, he continues.

‘I am Werner Kellerhals, the regional manager for Lufthansa.’

I had never met the man, but remember his name being mentioned by Satya. We exchange pleasantries. Clasped in one of my hands is the blue boarding card. I notice that his card is red for the First Class.

‘Can I have your boarding card for a sec Mr. Shah?’ And he gently snatches it away from my hand and walks over to the check-in counter. Soon he returns and hands me a red boarding card and the one in his hand is blue.

‘No Mr. Kellerhals, I really appreciate it, but I just can’t…’

He cuts me off.

‘No I insist. You’re one of our best customers and paying for your seat, while I am traveling gratis!’

Once when I arrived in Rio, they announced my name on the PA system to be met by Varig’s PR lady just to say Welcome to Brazil Mr. Shah. Other time I was traveling with Anjuli on the United and connecting in Miami on our way to Brazil. I hear my name announced just as we were deplaning. Waiting at the gate was the United’s station rep to welcome and escort us to their Red Carpet Lounge. As we are walking through the airport, he hastily tells me that we have upgraded you and Ms. Shah-Johnson to the First – hope it’s alright with you? Once we’re seated in the lounge, Anjuli breaks out in a smile, No, it’s not alright. She is all of twelve years old and this is all too exciting for her. Incredible! And I had paid for Anjuli’s ticket with my mileage.

Of course, he was able to do this also because I traveled extensively and paid full First/Business class fares. But even so… He walked that extra mile for you.

I remember the time when Christie (Hefner) and I flew back together from Taipei to Chicago. By then they had long introduced Business Class and the company policy dictated that we travel Business. Christie to her credit wouldn’t make an exception for herself. On her outbound flight from Chicago, she was upgraded, and was told by the travel desk that so we would be on our way back. Before we approach the check in, she takes my ticket and rushes to the counter. The girl behind the computer screen checks in our baggage and hands her two Business Class boarding passes. Christie looks at them and handing back to the agent tells her we are supposed to be upgraded.

The girl punches a few keys on her computer: ‘Nothing here says about upgrading!’

‘Did you look at Christie Hefner?’

‘Yes. Nothing.’ This would have been unthinkable in the States or perhaps even in Europe. But the young Chinese girl behind the counter has absolutely no clue who Christie Hefner is! I could imagine how humiliated Christie must feel. So I step up with let me talk to her! Christie steps back. Almost whispering, I ask the girl,

‘Don’t you know who she is?’

‘Who?’

‘Christie Hefner, the President of Playboy Enterprises. She is here to promote Taiwanese Playboy, haven’t you seen her on the news or read about her?’ It draws a blank on her face.

‘I am sorry.’ She answers.

‘Okay. Look. If this would help!’ And I pull out the upgrade certificate issued by the United, something Satya made it his business to acquire and deliver to me along with my ticket. I was holding it back, thinking why waste it if Christie had been guaranteed an upgrade for us?

The girl scrutinizes the upgrade certificate and plugs it into the computer and prints out another boarding pass and hands it to me. She has upgraded me to the First.

‘No. You have to upgrade both of us.’

‘Yeah, but you only have one certificate!’

‘I am sorry, you don’t understand. She is my boss, I can get fired!’

The girl is still not sure and I don’t see her yielding. Not to make further fuss, I give her back the both boarding passes.

‘If you can upgrade only one of us, then upgrade her!’

I see a confusion and conflict cloud her face. She picks up the phone to call someone – probably her supervisor. After letting the phone ring for a while, she puts back the receiver. Resigned, she relents and issues the second boarding card now with both of us upgraded!

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, January 23, 2015

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS

As glamorous as the life at Playboy could be, you would never imagine the kind of hazards lurk behind such publications. The most recent example being the cold blooded massacre at the French publication Charlie Hebdo.

Tags Airlines, Bill Stokkan, Blue Skies Travel, Friendship, KLM, Lufthansa, Professionalism, Satya Dev, Travel, Traveling Agent, Werner Kellerhals

Categories Friendship, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Travel

A NIGHT OUT IN TOKYO

May 1, 2014 //

A Postcard From London Carrot

Haresh Shah

Keiko (Shirokawa) of Ray Falk’s office takes me out for what I thought to be the most expensive Chinese dinner. Apparently, what is French cuisine is to us in the West, in Japan, Chinese cuisine is considered a notch above any other kind – exquisite and exclusive.

After dinner, we stop at a cozy little whiskey bar. It reminds me of the Booze & Bits in Chicago, located right in the heart of the hubbub of Rush Street, invisibly tucked away behind an inverted L-shaped narrow passage north of Oak Street. Must have been a storage room turned into a nice little watering hole for the people in the know. A bunch of us at Time Inc. used to hang out there frequently and collectively we all had incredible crush on Sherry – the blonde bombshell of the bartender. No one could ever touch her, but she did well with her smiles, excellent service and bit of a coquetry thrown in.

Back to Tokyo. The bar we are in is a private club and every member has his or her own bottle lined up on the shelves. They are all filled only with whisky containing every known and some unknown brands. Majority of them are the different grades of the two top Japanese labels: Suntory and Nikka. Bottles are all outfitted in variety of clothing, most of them custom made, but you can also buy them ready made in the department stores. Some of the ones in my line of vision are adorned variously with a white furry puppy and black cuddly teddy bear. Short Chinese silk jacket, the like of what Suzie Wong wore and the long Japanese kimono and even a frilly floor length white bridal dress. Keiko’s bottle is dressed a bit differently. It’s wrapped in a maroon colored suede cowboy jacket, with frills and all. Cute! I look at Keiko sideways and could easily imagine her wearing a grown up version of just such a jacket, over a checkered blue shirt, wrapped around which a blue paisley bandana, tight leather pants, cowboy boots and the cowboy hat, riding a wild horse, tightly held reign in on hand and flaying lasso in the other.

Five some years later, Japanese Playboy editors host a dinner for us – myself and the staff of four from Ray Falk’s office – the Americans. After dinner, Ray and his crew excuse themselves leaving me alone with the BOYS. They are to take me out on the town. Kayo (Hayashi) winks at me and wishes me luck. The editors I am left with barely speak any English, except a word here and there.

We all pile into Mr. Nanao’s Nissan.

‘Do you like Turkish bath Mr. Shah?’ Sugimoto asks. I don’t know what he is leading at, but as tired and jetlagged as I am by now, I wouldn’t have mind also to have left with Ray and company and crash. Alternatively, a nice serious oriental massage wouldn’t be bad either.

We’re driving through Ginza, which is a mob scene, the kind I have never seen in any other big and crowded city. The streets are swarming with people like hoards of ants climbing on top of each other over a lump of sugar crystal. And they are loud. Many drunk out of their minds and absolutely out of control. A group laughing and screaming has one of their men lifted up above in the air and they are swinging him up and down like a hammock in the storm, while a group of women standing on the sidelines are laughing and applauding.

And then suddenly, Mr., Nanao hits the breaks. For a small moment everyone and everything comes to standstill. As if to observe a moment of silence in honor of someone or something. We’re at the crossroads at the multiple streets merging on a large square. In an instant the square is completely emptied out. Not a car in sight, nor a human being. And then I see tidal waves of pedestrians rushing forward upon it from the eight different directions – crossing the streets in swarms, crossing each other in a hurried but at a uniform pace. And then it’s all over. Mr. Nanao puts his car back in gear and we’re on our way. Just like in that first scene of My Fair Lady, which begins with a peaceful dawn – not a thing or a creature in sight, empty streets and the store fronts, deserted stalls – the damp looking streets lying lifelessly in slumber. And then the morning kicks in. There is a flurry of motion. Every empty space is occupied. The frenzy of the day begins. I’m told that what I just saw is called sukuramburu kosaten – the scramble crossing. And the chaos resumes.

Now I see a man slung over the shoulders of two women, barely able to walk. The women are practically carrying him. And here is the winner! A young man has unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis and begins to pee right in the middle of Ginza, the district wide awake and full of bars, clubs, the late night shops and all. He is quite oblivious of the people skirting around him. No one noticing him as if it were the most natural thing to do, like a stray cow letting a long string of a stream out on a street of Bombay.

We cut through all of that and arrive at what looks like an office building. We take a smallish elevator up to the seventh floor and enter what looks like a cocktail lounge, which it is. But there is a difference. A different kind of a private club, it’s a hostess bar. The place is filled with business men, most dressed in their dark suits and ties. And there are a stable of young hostesses, who sit next to and entertain men, pouring drinks, dancing with them and converse as if the customers were their long lost friends.

The atmosphere is relaxed, even though the hostesses hop from table to table or run to the new arrivals to greet them and to bid bowing goodbyes to the ones departing. But their attention to details and to each individual is incredible. They don’t push, but make sure that everyone’s glass is full, like any attentive host would. It’s not like damen unterhaltung’s places in Germany or the rip off joints of Rush Street in Chicago. The girls are employed by the place and receive a fix monthly salary. The price of drinks include the company of the ladies on the premises.

The girls don’t try to dry hustle you or make you buy them expensive drinks. Their clients are big corporations, who maintain an account with the establishment. Every girl seems to know every customer who comes in. They refer to them as their “friends”, and it shows in their congenial hospitable behavior.

The place is called London Carrot, its ambience is definitely English, with the colors and the lighting somber and sophisticated. I am their regular friends’ guest and being bestowed extra attention. The first two hostesses that snuggle up to me on the couch, try to converse with me in less than rudimentary English, depart after a short spell, replaced by the third one, who stays with me through rest of the evening.

Nana is her name and her English is better than the others, which is not saying much, but she seems to have infinite amount of patience and the curiosity and genuine interest in what I have to say. As difficult as it must have been, she is still interested in hearing about my impressions of her country and the people. To make sure she understands what I say and that I understand what she does, she repeats every single word I say, like my five year old daughter Anjuli does at home. She is barely twenty one, a bit on the plump side with the rounded baby fat on her frame. She asks me to dance with her, and we dance a couple of slow songs while the editors gently pull at my coat sleeves.

‘Time to go to another place, Mr. Shah”

Nana politely releases me and bids me goodbye, extracting a promise from me to return to London Carrot the next time I am in town. And she asks me for my address, telling me that she would write me a Christmas card.

All the girls are lined up at the exit, and bowing, bid us goodbye, domo arigato and sayonaras are exchanged and we are out back on Tokyo street.

Most everyone excuses themselves, leaving me alone with Sugimoto and Oniki. They hail a cab. We are in Ginza, which is the south east part of the city, the cab is to take us diagonally across the city to the north-western Shinjuku. The cab drops us off in a quiet residential neighborhood. Not much going on. I see a couple of rundown buildings that are being renovated and their construction work is blocking the way to where they want to take me. We walk around the construction and enter a very narrow, dark and dingy entrance, which reminds me of the crumbling old tenement buildings of Bombay. The cage like tiny elevator takes us to the third floor and delivers us in a strip of a dark hallway.

Another hostess bar. But this one is dark and dank. Even a bit sleazy. Hostesses are not as pretty or as nicely dressed. They are still restrained and polite in the Japanese way. They serve you and keep company with you. But then when their turn comes, they rush to the stage. In addition to being a hostess bar, it’s also a small cabaret. The girls preform comedy skits on the little squeezed-into-the-corner stage. They are more sparsely dressed than their sisters at the London Carrot and from the frequent and what I perceived to be lecherous laughs from the crowd, tell dirty jokes. It all goes over my head of course, except the lewd physical motions that accompany their speech. From what I can tell, they are pantomiming various acrobatic contortions of the sexual positions. The one I still remember is three of them huddled together in a chorus moving their hands made in the fists that come out of their crotches and move upward in vertical rainbow, suggestive and jerking their fists as if masturbating a giant cock. And then they would look at each other and burst out in lewd laughs. The place is crowded with flesh pressing against flesh. By then I can hardly keep my eyes open, let along pretend to enjoy the show. By the time the editors drop me off at my hotel, it’s past three in the morning. I hit the sack. Feeling I’ve had enough education in the rituals of the night life in Tokyo.

Switching back to the gentler of the two clubs, towards the end of the year, I receive a Christmas card in the mail bearing a postage mark of Tokyo and on the top left of the envelope is the red rubber stamp of London Carrot.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, May 9, 2014

FOR THE LOVE OF MARY JANE

When I arrived in America in 1968, pot smoking was already around, especially amongst the young and the “hip”. Something I never got into, other than having tried it here and there as I would a menthol cigarette – without inhaling. Honestly:). While it was still a hush-hush backroom and the campus phenomena in the east, when I arrived in Southern California some years later, it was offered openly and abundantly at most of the parties. Fresh, dynamite and homegrown!

Tags Hostess Clubs, Japan, People, Tokyo, Travel, Whiskey Bars

Categories Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Travel

THE BOSS’ DAUGHTER

April 24, 2014 //

The Impossibility Of Being Christie Hefner

Haresh Shah

‘What do these conferences mean to us?’

It’s a legitimate question. I have gotten to the meeting room earlier as usual to make sure things are set before everyone else begins to stumble-in in another half an hour. Only other person fussing around is Mary (Nastos), and then there is Christie Hefner. The two of us standing in the middle of the conference room on the lower floor of The Pontchartrain Hotel, New Orleans’ old European charm. I have been organizing Playboy International Publishing’s conferences now for years and no one has ever asked me the question. It was something that was handed down to me when I was re-hired by Lee Hall ten years earlier in 1978. I hadn’t given any serious thought to the question Christie posed – now the president of Playboy Enterprises.

‘Well, it’s mainly for all our editions to come together with their counterparts from around the world and discuss the year since they met last and establish some understanding of what lay in the future. From these meetings some international projects of common interest have been born and accomplished. The Soccer World Cup pictorial in 1986, which we produced in the host country Mexico and the Miss Playboy International Beauty Pageant, broadcast live in Hong Kong.

‘More important is they offer a venue for everyone to come together and bond. Even though we do have a formal agenda, what is more important in my mind are the informal dinners and other social activities. For four nights and three days, they are all together 24/7, and the relationships formed and enthusiasm generated are priceless. They go home with a feeling of belonging to a close-knit global family with us at head of the table. But most of all, for me, this is our Thanksgiving, having them all under the same roof gives them a feeling of belonging. Something only parents can provide.’

Not exactly in the same words, but that was the gist of what I felt and said in answer to her question. It seemed to me that she was skeptical about reasons other than the ones I mentioned, but I could sense a trace of agreement and understanding about us being parents and the concept of Thanksgiving. My answer must have satisfied her, because I never heard anything more about the conferences as I continued doing them year after year I was with the company, and as I write this in 2014, twenty one years since I left, another conference was concluded in London last summer. And soon they would begin planning one for this year. Now completely organized by Mary.

But this simple question did put me on guard. She as the president of the company must have been thinking in terms of the cost-benefit ratio of +/- $60,000.- an average cost to us to host the event every year.

●●●

I first met Christie in February of 1977. She was then twenty four years old. Fresh out of school and in the process of learning the ropes of the business her father had built. Lee had set up luncheon for us during my short stop-over in Chicago, en-route to Mexico City.

Strange, I don’t remember where we had lunch, but must not have been that close by. Because what I remember is a spark of static cracking when she touched the back of my hand in a gesture of parting before getting off the cab. I don’t remember what we talked about or what we ate. What I remember is: I was quite taken by her. I saw her as a charming young woman. Attractive, still in process of shedding her baby fat. I perceived her to be simple, friendly, unpretentious and congenial. Warm and a likeable.

Five years later, at the age of 29, she was named president of PEI. In the meanwhile, I had re-joined the international publishing division as its Production Director. Depending on how the company was organized and re-organized over the next years, I was at least two, if not three rungs below Christie – leaving me not having to interact directly with her. Playboy was still headquartered at 919 N. Michigan Avenue in Playboy Building with its bold white PLAYBOY letters lighting up the Chicago sky up above the Drake Hotel’s outlined in red neon sign. Our offices there were spread out over several floors, our paths hardly ever crossed. Except at some company functions and at the international conferences, at which she would be our star attraction.

By then I had become the department head with the corporate title of Vice President. Even so, I never reported directly to her, it became inevitable that I attend many of the management meetings and be the voice of the International Publishing. Something I didn’t cherish, but it came with the territory. Up until then, I successfully operated under the radar, did my job happily and never had to worry about the politics of the corporate life. But no longer.

But that’s not why I am writing this. The thing is: how could anyone ever begin to write Playboy Stories sans Christie Hefner?

●●●

I got to know Christie bit-by-bit. Her corporate side was always on guard. Always watching her P’s and Q’s and jumping over every hurdle of tricky questions asked of her. Having graduated summa cum laude from the prestigious Brandeis University, she was equally as bright in her day-to-day dealings. Her answers were brilliant. Her spellbinding ability of public speaking would have even the most averse listener in the audience in awe, or like Bill (Stokkan) used to say, he would get goose bumps whenever he heard her speak. How can you not marvel at her saying something like my asset goes home in the elevator every night at five?

She would do it without notes and without any prompting. How else would you claim to be a feminist and get away with running Hugh M. Hefner’s empire with Playboy magazine as its flagship? How do you even begin to stand up and defend your father frolicking with women so young as to be his grand daughters? But she did, and did it with aplomb. Her well articulated answers un-armed the person asking those questions – if not to their satisfaction, to realize that to stay on the same track was futile. They saw something intimidating in her friendly but firm demeanor. So they would let it be for she commanded enough respect to have earned that.

I am not easily intimidated. But I must admit that I often felt uncomfortable in Christie’s presence for no apparent reason and whenever possible avoided any un-necessary encounter with her. So much so that it never even crossed my mind to invite her to the opening night dinner for the mini-conference of the selected editions I held at my home in Evanston. Soon as Gary (Cole) mentioned that Christie was quite miffed at not being invited, did I immediately realize what a faux pas I had committed, remembering that one of her most favorite Indian dishes was chickpeas curry? Not much I could do about it. Something I have always lamented.

Christie was an asset so invaluable to be ignored. It’s been said that if there were no Christie Hefner, Playboy Enterprises would have to invent her. For she was the public face of the PEI. Easily accessible and unpretentious. For what she signified, Christie lived just like anyone of us. She traveled by herself like the rest of us would, hail a cab off the street, dined in the neighborhood restaurants where you could run into her or have informal meeting over a lunch. She drove her own car in stark contrast to once being picked up by a limo from her school to bring her to the rendezvous with her dad. Every summer she would throw a party at her rooftop apartment in the heart of Chicago’s Gold Coast and invite her top managers and their companions. Let her hair down and be the most gracious hostess.

She was our secret weapon, the flesh and blood persona. To Hugh M. Hefner’s illusion, she was our reality. Often perceived of as an all business and no fun, she would let her hair down during my international conferences, be it at Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or Corfu, Greece to New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. She would get up early and not unlikely to be found in the meeting room while I’m testing the sound system in Lake Geneva and everyone still remembers fondly how she blended-in in New Orleans and swung to the crazy Laissez Faire Cajun Band – lifted up in the air by our German advertising director, late Wolfgang Robert and charm the skeptic Dutch during the sight-seeing boat ride in Amsterdam. The Dutch hosted a wonderful meal in her honor at… you guessed it: de Hoefslag.

When we launched the Chinese language edition in the spring of 1986 to come out of Hong Kong, our local publisher Albert Cheng, came up with the idea of beaming Christie Hefner live from Chicago to his press conference in Hong Kong. What’s today a child’s play, back in 1986 was an elaborate and expensive undertaking. Just the technicality of the multiple satellite uplinking and downlinking between downtown Chicago and the center of Hong Kong in itself was awe inspiring. And because of thirteen hours time difference she would have to be in the studio a little after three in the morning and be ready to greet the citizens of Hong Kong at seven in the evening their time. Fully aware of the possibility of hundreds of things going wrong. Fortunately, the transmission at both ends and in-between went well without a hitch. And the Chinese loved it. Probably even more so than had she been there personally. And Christie must have felt a pioneer of the sort for being able to demonstrate the dawn of the new technology. The first time I ever heard of the concept of pay per view, was from her. I must admit, I was quite skeptical about it. But she was our new generation.

I got to know her really up close when she so gracefully agreed to take a long trip to Taiwan to help us boost Playboy’s image. Even though I personally wasn’t totally convinced of the merits of dragging her along on a day long journey, each way; when I hesitatingly asked her, she said yes with I know how difficult it must have been for you to ask. And it was. But my Taiwanese partners felt strongly that her sheer presence would make all the difference.

At the personal level this gave us an opportunity to be together practically 24/7 for six days. During which she graced several meetings, held a press conference, partook in the celebration of the first anniversary of the edition, sat through twelve course Chinese meals, played tourist visiting Chaing Kai-shek Memorial, Taipei Concert Hall, National Palace Museum and even Taipei’s Huaxi Street Night Market popularly known as the Snake Alley. And one night after dinner, joined a group of us hit a Karaoke and let our talents shine. We posed together in the front of Madame Chaing Kai-shek Soong May-ling’s shiny black Cadillac. And she even photographed me in front of a Taiwanese Barber Shop.

The day we were to return to Chicago, the city of Taipei was a big mess. It’s the beginning of Qingming Festival – a long holiday weekend and the traffic arteries of the city are clogged to its limit and beyond. We’re on our way to the airport for our flight back home. Inbound, she had to travel by herself because I was flying in from Brazil. This is our first trip together and with the change of planes in San Francisco it would take us almost a whole day and a night.

With all the traffic to the airport moving at snail’s pace or not moving at all, it wasn’t starting out too well. While I’m not that easy to succumb to anxiety, especially over something that I have no control over, I could sense Christie getting a bit anxious as we were getting closer to the checking-in time. But with intermittent moving forward we make it to the airport and have checked in more or less on time. We’re standing in the very slow moving immigration line. Irritated, she is visibly nervous.

‘Don’t worry. They won’t leave without us.’ I tell her, but it’s not enough for her to stop looking at the ticking clock. As much as I have traveled, I know that once checked in, they just won’t leave without everyone on board – certainly not leaving behind two of their first class passengers. Even though flight is not yet listed as being delayed, with the mob scene as the Taipei International Airport is that afternoon, not many planes are likely to leave on time. Delayed by an hour or so wouldn’t make much difference, if any to our long haul flight.

To make matters worst, now that we’re in front of the line, I realize that missing from my passport is the departure slip that immigration had handed me upon my arrival. No departure slip, no departing. This makes her even more nervous watching me fumbling into all of my pockets and inside my briefcase and not finding it. I watch her waiting impatiently and irritatingly.

‘Why don’t you go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.’ I tell her. It’s already a few minutes past the departure time.

‘Are you sure?’ She doesn’t want to leave me stranded.

‘Positive. Please go ahead. I promise, the flight wouldn’t leave without me.’ Suddenly I am relaxed and in a playful mood. After all, an international airport is my ultimate stomping ground.

‘Well, okay. I’ll just do that.’ And she is gone.

Now with no one making me nervous, I dig into my pockets some more and out comes the departure slip. I know there are still many passengers booked on our flight waiting for the immigration clearance. I even pop into the duty free shop and take a leisurely walk to the departure gate. When I walk into the cabin, I see Christie well settled at the window seat. I arrange my carry on in the overhead bin and as I am about to sit down, the captain has picked up the microphone.

Ladies and gentlemen, captain speaking. We’re still waiting for many of our passengers in process of clearing the immigration. It may be another half an hour before we push back from the gate. But we should still arrive in San Francisco on time.

Now settled, I give Christie a sideway look. Didn’t I tell you? She is not amazed at my smugness. Soon the stewardess brings us flutes of champagne.

‘No thanks. I’ll have some sparkling water.’ She tries to hide her frown. But still!

‘Come on Christie. Please have champagne. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.’ I must have looked pitiful as I plead. It pleases me that she picks up a glass of champagne from the tray.

We have a very pleasant journey together and some very good talks. Our different visions for the future of my division, disagreements and all.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

OTHER PROFILES

I DANCED WITH DONNA SUMMER

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

FACE TO FACE WITH HUGH M. HEFNER

Next Friday, May 2, 2014

YET TO BE DETERMINED

Because I am not sure which one of the two posts I am working on right now will be ready to go next week. Or as it often happens, something else will strike my fancy and a sudden inspiration would make it jump the line. Just wait and see.

Tags Albert Cheng, Christie Hefner, Playboy, Taiwan, Travel

Categories Corporate Matters, Memoire, Playboy, Profile

THE STRANDED BRIDE

March 27, 2014 //

Lost In The Labyrinth

Haresh Shah

I am at Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport, temporarily delayed because of the cancellation of Alitalia to Frankfurt, which is where I was to connect with Lufthansa’s overnight Frankfurt-Johannesburg flight. They have re-routed me on British Airways to London and then connecting there to onward journey to South Africa. Suddenly I have a couple of hours to kill. I avail myself of the first class lounge, leave my belongings there and venture outside to check out the renovated expanse of the airport. As I am walking down the glass walled passage bridging two wings of the terminal, I hear a timid female voice trailing me.

‘Uncle, uncle. Please! Please!’

I turn around and see that striding behind me hurriedly is a skinny young Indian woman – sort of pretty and petite, probably weighing no more than 90 pounds (41 kg.). In her early twenties, she is dressed in the traditional sari. She is almost limping, trying to keep balance between what seems like a heavy carry on bag on one shoulder and her purse dangling down from the other. Both of them are precariously close to slipping off her shoulders and thump on the ground. She is wearing a pair of red chappals – the light weight Indian sandals. I notice the orange-red outlining the bottom of her feet and intricate mehandi motif applied to the top of them. Her hands too are mehandi covered on both sides. Climbing up her hands almost up to her elbow are clanging multi-colored glass bangles intermingled with thin gold bracelets. Her forehead is daubed with overlapping multiple vermilion tikas, to which a few grains of rice still adhere.

I stop and respond ‘Yes?’

‘Help me uncle, please!’ she looks scared and disoriented, giving me a confused look. Sensing the question what? on my face, she somehow manages to put down her carry on and fishes out of her purse a crumpled little booklet of the old fashioned hand written on flimsy sheets of the paper flight ticket and hands it to me.

‘See, please see!!’ It becomes apparent to me that she doesn’t speak much of English, so I switch to Hindi. She seems to understand it a bit better, but not quite. From her darker skin and the features, I place her somewhere in the country in Maharashtra, outside of Mumbai. She is from Pune. I switch to my limited fluency of Marathi to which she responds with a sigh of relief. I glean from her itinerary that she boarded the Air India flight from Bombay bound for Rome, and from here she is to continue on to Montreal. I look at the departure time on the ticket and realize that her scheduled flight has long left. I quickly glance at the flipping departure board, it’s already close to five in the afternoon and there are no more north America bound flights scheduled that day. Actually, there aren’t many flights scheduled to go anywhere for a while. Other than a lone passenger walking past here and there, it’s just the two of us standing in the middle of the wide passage.

‘You know that your flight has already left?’

‘Has it? No, it can’t be.’ And then I see the expressions on her face change from disbelief to dismay to I don’t know what to do helplessness.

‘Uncle, uncle, please help me.’ She urges. Her face contorted on the verge of breaking down in a cry. She obviously has no clue as how to negotiate her situation and/or what to do next.

‘It’s alright. Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.’ I try to comfort her. I still don’t know what though! But as we stand there for a couple of undecided and uncomfortable minutes, the whole scenario unfolds in the front of my eyes.

She is newly married. Probably plucked hastily from a bevy of eligible suitable young candidates by a newly graduated and a year or so in his well paying job as an engineer in one of the western countries. The usual routine would be: a brilliant young man graduates from prestigious school in India, enrolls and is admitted for the post-graduate studies abroad, most probably in America. Alternately in England, Germany or Canada. Earns his Master’s degree, probably with honors and is offered a job. It takes him a year or two to feel settled, acquire his Green Card or an equivalent thereof from the respective country, and has saved up enough money to take a month long trip back home in quest of finding a mate. His family has lined up several prospective brides from other compatible families for him to see and to consider.

I imagine him making rounds of their homes in company of a close friend and couple of his own family members. I imagine one of them being the home of the young woman, standing in front of me, whose name I know from her ticket is Kajal. Sitting in her parent’s living room is the man she may or may not marry, depending on how they like each other, and if from a conservative family, whether or not their astrological charts concur.

Even though it’s a hundred degrees outside, he is dressed up in his suit and a tie. His brother and his friend accompanying him not so. Only slight comfort from the heat comes from the ceiling fan whirring up above. They are surrounded by the male members of the girl’s family, involved in animated chit-chat about the way of living between the east and the west. The young man, let’s call him Manoj, is, if not exactly nervous, is a bit fidgety. After all, this is one of the most important moments of his life that would define the rest of it.

Waiting in the inner room and in the kitchen are the females of her family. Kajal is dolled up in her best sari and the glittery jewelry like a Bollywood starlet. When an appropriate amount of time has passed, as if on a stage managed prompt, she walks slowly towards the living room with other women following. Her hands slightly shake as she tries to balance a snack tray with cups of tea already poured in, and little dishes and bowls filled with Monaco crackers, Glucose biscuits, home made chivda and sev, penda and other sweetmeats bought from the best Punjabi halwai.

Anxious, her heart is filled with the fear of unknown and yet she feels incredibly excited as she walks across the hall and places the tray on a low table next to the man who could become her husband. Her head is partially covered by the end of her sari. Her eyes are lowered. She raises them as discreetly as she could to get a closer look at the young man she has already seen photos of and glanced at from the slight opening of the door from the inner room. He is allowed to be a bit more obvious in raising his eyes and taking her face in and whatever else he is able to discern of the rest of her torso covered by her sari.

Whatever the outcome, this has got to be one of the most thrilling moments of their lives. They may choose to meet once again and sit face-to-face in a café for small talk, mostly accompanied by a friend or two, who may discreetly excuse themselves for a short while, giving the two some private moments.

Let’s suppose that everything goes well and both families pop a rock of sugar in their mouths to celebrate forging of this new lifelong union. Now there are only a couple of weeks left for Manoj to hurry through the rest. First of all, to get married. As importantly, to apply for the papers for now his wife to come and join him in Canada. Both of the families switch to the whirlwind gears. The wedding is arranged, hundreds of friends and relatives have blessed the couple. The days filled with lots of laughters and happiness. And then they see him off Mumbai’s Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport. His face smeared with vermilion, flower garlands hanging around his neck and a coconut in his hands, which he must discard before landing at his destination. Go back to his job and wait for the immigration formalities to clear and wait for his bride to join him.

‘Come with me and let’s see what we can do.’ I say and pick up her shoulder bag and return to the lounge with Kajal in tow. The receptionist is hesitant to allow her in but seeing that I am Lufthansa’s gold status Senator, she reluctantly allows me to bring her in as my guest. Settling her on a couch and getting her some chips, nuts and Coke, I let her tell her story.

I have guessed it right. She is indeed a newly married bride on her way to join her husband in Montreal where he works for a large multinational corporation as one of its engineers. She has landed in Rome several hours earlier and has managed to get lost in that vast labyrinth of an international airport. It is because of her limited knowledge of English and sheer timidity – afraid to ask anybody and confused about the time difference and finding herself in an environment totally alien to her, she is totally disoriented. Scared, she looks helpless like a wounded bird fallen to the ground, its wings fluttering, but disabled, not able to rise even an inch off from where it has fallen. Soon as she sees me walk past, a face familiar to her and someone recognizably from her country, does she dare open her mouth. In the meanwhile, not realizing how much time has elapsed and that the plane that would take her to her husband has already left without her.

When I explain all this to the receptionist, she softens and even tries to see if there is any way she could help her get on her way.

‘I’m afraid nothing today. The best option for her is to spend overnight in Rome and catch the same Air Canada flight tomorrow afternoon.’ Easier said then done. Whereas she has failed to even make it on her own from one gate to another within the confines of an airport, how would this woman ever manage to go outside, find a hotel, stay there by herself and come back tomorrow? To further complicate the matter, even if it were manageable with some help, that’s not an option for her. She has no Italian visa to even venture out of the airport.

It takes me back to that chilly late August early morning when I was on my way to London to begin my studies, when the Swiss immigration officer yanks me off the train in Basel. Basel is uniquely complicated tri-border town where Switzerland, France and Germany meet. I have arrived on a German train that slides along the German platform. I will connect to London train from the platform that is in France. To get there, I must walk through the Swiss platform, for which I do not have a visa. But that’s yet another story. Only the receptionist notices my momentarily frozen face.

Her gaze pointed at me, she continues: ‘I don’t know if they would let her stay here overnight. They probably shut down the airport after the arrival and the departure of the last flights.’ I tell Kajal all of that. She is beside herself and understandably so, because where is she going to go? In the meanwhile the time is ticking and soon I should be walking to the gate to make my flight to London.

‘Don’t leave me here by myself uncle. Please, please.’ Her pleas are heart breaking and as torn as I am I really don’t know what else to do.

‘I doubt it, but perhaps someone from Air India or Air Canada is still around the terminal. After all, she is their passenger!’ I hear receptionist say. When she notices the hopelessness on my face, she taps on her computer. ‘You still have thirty five minutes.’

So I take Kajal practically by the hand. ‘Let’s go see if we can find someone.’ The banks of the service counters that are within the international departure areas are all absolutely empty and deserted. No one in sight. Won’t hurt to try the other wing. So I walk with her through the passage where she had first stopped me. We cross the passage, and I notice a lone young man, curly black hair, chiseled dark face. An Indian!! He is going some place, his gait is harried and swift.

‘Excuse me!’ I scream. I have managed to stop him in his tracks. He turns around to look at us. His breast tag identifies him as an Air India personnel. He rushes towards us.

‘Here you’re. Kajal Kamat. We’ve been looking for you for hours now!’ I don’t even wonder how he recognizes her right away. Who else could she be? When he looks at me, I give him a quick rundown on how she happened to be with me.

‘They waited for her and even delayed the flight for about fifteen minutes calling her several times on the PA system.’ But then he realizes that she couldn’t have understood a word of it. As lost and distracted as she is; she couldn’t have recognized even the sound of her own name. Seeing that I am looking at my watch; ‘You go ahead sir. We don’t want you to miss your flight as well. Thanks for helping her. I’ll take her from here.’ Before darting out, I put my hands over Kajal’s shoulders and wish her luck. She doesn’t say thank you, instead she brings her palms together and bows her head.

‘Bless me please, uncle.’

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

BY THE TIME I GET TO AMSTERDAM

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Next Friday, April 4, 2014

QUICK CASH

During my hiatus in Santa Barbara, I meet up with Playboy Germany’s first editor-in-chief Raimund Le Viseur in Los Angeles. He is there following the promotional trail of then the First Lady, Betty Ford and wants to get together one evening. He is accompanied by the photographers from the news agencies Sygma and UPI. We together go out looking for the Stars.

Tags Arranged Marriage, Bride, Culture, India, Indian Customs, Marriage, Travel

Categories Culture, India, Love Story, Marriage, Memoire, Travel, Women

IN THE DEPTH OF HIS EYES

March 13, 2014 //

The Spanish Civil War Looped Into A Gaze

Haresh Shah

Sebastian Martinez is my first encounter with Spain. We have never met before, but he seems to have recognized me instantly as I emerge from the customs’ sliding doors of Barcelona’s yet old but functional airport. It’s the summer of 1978, scant two some years after Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s death. The air is still thick with the repressive regime of Franco that lasted for almost forty years. Trampled and suppressed during his ruthless decades, supported full heartedly and under the stringent conservative principals of the Catholic Church, it would have been impossible to even dream of the existence of an edition of the “derelict” Playboy in Spain. But the times they do a change!

By now I speak good Spanish. Sebastian welcomes me with bien venido a España, as much to welcome me as to test my Spanish. I answer with plain gracias. He has been told by Lee (Hall) that I speak the language fluently. But Sebastian is not the one to take anyone’s word for it. It takes him a couple of days and me speaking in Spanish with the people he introduces me to, does he admit that I indeed do. If with a bit of a soft lilt in the way the Mexicans speak it. I myself have a hard time getting used to Spanish Spanish or the way it’s spoken by the Catalans. I find Mexican Spanish sweeter. Well! Sebastian might question my taste as he does everything. In this case, it would be the way British dismay at the way they demolish their language across the pond in America. He is the most skeptical person I have known. He would never accept anything on its face value.

Sebastian would be my counterpart in Spain and therefore I would be his charge. As different as we are, we get along famously. Based on his pre-conceptions of the Americans and a bit of an exposure with some of them, he has this European stereotypical and cynical view of them. It helps that I am an American born in India. Years later, still in our Playboy days, the best compliment anyone could have given me turns out to be my super skeptical friend Sebastian Martinez. You’re the human face of Playboy.

He is as secretive about his private life as he is skeptical in his day-to-day dealings. I feel lucky to be taken in by him and know this much – he is married to Berit, a Swede, and they have a young daughter Maria – four or five years of age. They live in a modest two bedroom apartment in the center of the city. I don’t know anything about his parents and whether he has any siblings. I think he is the only child. Over a period of years that we worked together, I would be a frequent dinner guest at his home and later at his weekend cottage a couple of hours drive from Barcelona. And he would be ours during his visits to Chicago. The two or three times he comes to Chicago, I try my best to expose him to the American life and the people that run contrary to his preconceived image and the opinion of the country. At times he is impressed. Others not so much.

Beyond that, I can say Sebastian is a true bon vivant. He has good taste in food and wines. Even though he makes fun of me sprinkling generously the best sea food paella in the world with Tabasco, like the most Americans he has seen dousing everything in ketchup – he forgives me my – this one horrendous sin. So do the maître de and the old time waiters at the restaurant Quo Vadis, tucked away in a dark alley behind the wide strip of the famous pedestrian zone of Ramblas. For in all other things culinary and otherwise, I am an ideal open minded American, who is willing to and tries everything. Be it drinking Jerez from a streaming beak held up above your head at an angle, drinking cognac over teeth crushed pomegranate seeds and the juice lining inside of your mouth to enjoy eating basic bar foods, such as tortas de papas, Spanish ham, the different varieties of sausages and a whole slew of tapas served at the counter.

We’re a good pair at and away from work. Normally of the stern demeanor and a permanent frown on his face, his eyes squinting behind his rimless glasses, you never know what he might be thinking. Does he feel happy? Unhappy? Indifferent? Anyone’s guess is as good as mine.

Not that I ever try to dig deeper into his personal life or into his past, but as guarded as he always is; when and if the subject comes up, he would answer: it’s not that interesting! And then you see his eyes suddenly go still and sad, fogging up the inside of his glasses and assume a distant look as if staring in infinity – somewhere far far away. I don’t think he is aware of it. Seems he is turned off momentarily. And then, as if suddenly waking up from a deep sleep and realizing the silence that has fallen between himself and the person he is talking to, he emerges from the frozen frame of his face and shakes his head. Like someone with apnea having stopped breathing for a moment and then springing back to life. You notice the lower part of his body shudder a bit. He removes his glasses, pulls out the handkerchief from his pants’ pocket, wipes his eyes lightly, gets himself together and shaking his head again, this time sideways, goes well! and picks up where he had left off. More often than not, I have observed him mesmerized by the twirling bulbous glass over the flame of the silver cognac warmer, his eyes and the frozen look reflected in the whirl of the liquid gold. I could almost feel and see the tumult he must feel watching the swirls inside the glass rushing like wild waves of an ocean.

I don’t want to say that this ever bothered me beyond the moment, but something I often think about without ever reaching a conclusion.

One afternoon, we’re taking a leisurely walk through the dark alleys of Ramblas. It’s likely that we’ve just emerged out of Quo Vadis after a long sumptuous Spanish meal, even fueled with my favorite sea food paella washed down with a Rioja and have had chilled huvas – grapes served in a bowl placed on the bed of ice, gulped down with freshly warmed cognac. He seems to be in a nostalgic mood and is pointing out buildings where he used to play when a kid. The bodega where he would accompany his mother to buy the produce, the cafes that he used to go with his dad. The neighborhood bakery, the cobbler shop and all. Along with it all, he suddenly stops on a narrow side walk and points at the gate across the alley, and spits out just like that.

And that’s where they shot my Dad. I was walking with him. I was just a kid! And I see on his face the same distant look that I had often encountered. Looking far far away. I am trying to imagine the scene. Going through my mind is the brutal history of the two and a half years of the Spanish Civil War and the years of atrocities that stretched beyond and up until the end of the second world war in 1945 and for another thirty years until Franco’s death in 1975. Franco ruled his country with the iron fist, crunching anything and anybody on even an inch left of his ideology. And all of it instantaneously coming undone. But the fear and the stories and the aftermath of it all remain even in the shards of that immediate past shattered to smithereens. I see it all summed up in the depth of my friend Sebastian’s frozen and framed eyes. I see them fogging up, there may even have been a tear or two streaking down his cheeks, followed by his head shake and the body shudder and then with a deep sigh, retreating back into the moment with his Well!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

I DANCED WITH DONNA SUMMER

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Next Friday, March 21, 2014

AN INDIAN AMONGST THE INDIANS

With the passing of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988, that allowed the American Indians to open and operate the casinos on their land had them suddenly bathing in the wealth and prosperity they couldn’t have imagined even their wildest dreams. In 1995, Playboy Netherlands assigned me to travel across America to some of those casinos to find out how after centuries of suppression, they were striking back at the “white man”.

Tags Food & Wine, Francisco Franco, Sebastian Martinez, Spain, Spanish Civil War, Travel

Categories Friendship, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Spain, Travel

TENDER TRAPS

March 6, 2014 //

Sweet, Silky And Slippery

Haresh Shah

I flash my room registration card at the receptionist who is busy talking to a young man and a sort of pretty, short dark haired young woman in white, both of whom stood on the other side of the counter. ‘Room 416’, I tell him. He hands me my key. I throw a quick glance at the girl, making perfunctory eye contact and walk to the elevator. As I press the floor button, I notice the girl waving at me as if to wish me bon voyage. But the sliding doors have already closed and I am on my way up. I see her smiling face through the transparent glass door and wave back at her.

I am staying at the hip Hotel Americain in Amsterdam. I am not too impressed with the place, but built in 1900, it’s listed as one of Amsterdam’s landmarks with its turn of the century art deco and the roaring twenties atmosphere and because of its proximity to the theatre DeLaMar, it has an illustrious history – something I am often attracted to. And it’s frequented by the actors, directors and other art types of the city.

The window of my room looks down on the most popular town square, Leidseplein, which is filled with hoards of people engaged in multitude of activities. Rock & Roll band blaring out the sounds from their portable amplifiers, a group playing African drums, the flute players, a magician, the lone guitarist strumming in the early morning rain and an audience as attentive as it is appreciative. It feels like a multi-ring circus, a happy carnival. The grinding of the gears and the screeching of the trams somehow blend in harmoniously with the sounds of the street side shows. Wafting in through my room windows is the sad soothing sound of a violin. The lukewarm breeze carries-in with it a mild fragrance of the pink roses that Playboy Netherland’s editor designate Jan (Heemskerk) has so kindly delivered to my room to welcome me to Holland, as I eventually doze off for a while.

Dirk (de Moei), the art director designate and his live-in lady Ans pick me up at nine. We drive a few blocks to the restaurant de Warstein where Jan and his wife Gemmy join us for dinner. Towards the tail end of the evening, we run into the bad boy of the Dutch literature, Jan Cremer of Ik Jan Cremer fame and his girlfriend Babette. Him and Babette join our table and Cremer treats us to a couple of after dinner drinks. It is after three in the morning by the time Dirk and Ans drop me off at the hotel.

The elevator moves upward. I wonder about the girl’s sweet smile as I get off on the fourth floor. Those last two Remy Martins and the entire evening has put me into a very pleasant, if not euphemistic mood and I don’t even feel tired in the least. As I walk towards my room, the key in my hand at ready, I hear a female voice coming out of nowhere

‘Hello,’ it says.

I don’t see anybody around. The entire hallway is deserted. I look around and respond to the voice.

‘Yes!’

A smooth sentence floats in the air like a streamer, which I don’t understand a word of. It sounds very much like French, and now there is a face to the voice. It’s the girl from behind the reception. I am amazed at how she made it up to the floor so fast. She must have jumped right away into one of the two idle elevators waiting across from the receptionist. I stop briefly and turn around to took at her.

‘I thought you might like some company. ‘ I hear her say, with that certain sexy and seductive smile on her face.

I am tempted for a second. But the answer that rolls out of my mouth on its own is: ‘Thanks lady but not tonight! I am just too tired.’ I lie.

‘Maybe tomorrow?’ She persists.

‘Maybe! I don’t know.’ To which she throws a sugary goodnight at me, turns around to go back to her post downstairs.

●●●

Even before I have had a chance to sit down, Luis (Moretti), Playboy partners Editorial Perfil’s corporate counselor hands me a piece of paper. Crudely torn from a notepad, it’s crumpled. I smooth it out on the table and read the scribbles. It says, Rosario, and underneath is what looks like a phone number.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘She wants you to call her.’

‘Who is Rosario?’

‘The girl on the other set of the studio where you were photographed.’

I am in Buenos Aires during my routine South American trip. One of Perfil’s weeklies, La Semana wants to do a profile of me as a part of their in-house cross promotional efforts. They are photographing me with another girl, the skin on whose bare butt I am scrutinizing with a large magnifying glass. On my way out, I notice a buxom blonde with big head of bleached blonde hair fanned out on a pink pillow, scantily dressed in Victoria’s Secret like sexy lingerie, she is curled up seductively on the bed, her voluptuous figure spilling out of her small frame. I don’t remember even having made as much as a quick eye contact with her.

‘What does she want?’

‘I guess she has taken liking for you. You will make her very happy if you called. She said she will be up and around late in the night.’ Answers Luis with a sly smile on his face, a bit envious perhaps?

I have landed in Buenos Aires that morning after an all night flight from Miami and have put in the whole day. I meet Luis for dinner at Las Nazarenas, my favorite steak house in the city. All I want to do is to have an early dinner, walk across the street to the Sheraton, where I am staying and hit the sack. That’s precisely what I do. When in the room, I empty my pockets and out comes the crumpled piece of the paper with the phone number. I look at the phone on the bedside table. Temptations, temptations.. But do the right thing and soon I am snoozing. On that trip, I spend several days in Buenos Aires, and yet never call her. She just wasn’t my type.

Or could it be that my encounter the night after had her pushed back in the obscurity?

The lights are dim. The music is slow and soothing. The dance floor is well-attended, but not crowded. Dancing close to me is Dulce. She is sweet, just like her name. We are dancing close but not too close. I can feel the contours of her female form and then feel her head gently drooping on my shoulder. I pull her closer ever so lightly. She allows herself to be nudged into a slight squeeze. Her perfume is pleasant – not overbearing. She is dressed modestly in a pair of well fitting pastel peach slacks and a black low necked top. Nothing glittery like most other girls in the crowd. She is down home pretty with shoulder length dusty blonde hair that smell of a faint whiff of shampoo. She fits snugly under my arms. It feels good to hold and feel so close her female form. It’s been a while.

The night is young. It’s little after midnight. That’s early for the disco world. The place, if not as crowded as earlier, is still buzzing. It’s Playboy Argentina’s anniversary that we are celebrating at Hippo – the “in most” night spot in Buenos Aires. As we dance to the whatever soft melody they’re playing, I am wondering. Perhaps I get to take her back to my hotel. That would be nice. With every dance and every whisper, I’m liking her more and more. Even falling for her tender, almost motherly ways. When the music stops for a minute, she lifts her face to look at me and I feel a sudden melting of my reflection into her honey brown eyes. When the disc jockey finally decides to take a short break and when I walk her back to the table where she sat with some friends, the booth is empty. I look around for some Playboy people still around. I don’t see anyone I recognize. For a moment we stand there, wondering.

‘I guess our friends have abandoned us.’

‘I think so too. One of them was going to give me ride back home.’

‘I can drop you off by cab on my way back to the hotel.’ I offer.

‘That would be nice. Thanks.’ And then there is bit of hesitation. ‘Don’t you just want to take me to your hotel room instead?’ I see a pleading mellowness in her eyes. Almost heartbreaking somehow. Not up until that very moment does it cross my mind that she could be anything but a young society woman out on the town with her friends.

‘Let’s sit down for a while and have a drink.’

‘Bueno!’ She says and snuggles next to me.

Dulce is a single mother who works in a small boutique on Calle Florida, the city’s most popular pedestrian shopping zone. The job barely pays for her living expenses. She doesn’t walk the streets to make ends meet, instead frequents high end places like Hippopotamus in the ritzy and popular tourist district of Ricoleta as well as five star hotel bars. I like it that she is in no hurry and we’re able to talk. I appreciate what I perceive to be her honesty.

But taking her back to my hotel room is no longer an option for me. Not that I have never been out with one of them, but a couple of times that I did was at the end of the long nights of eating and drinking and with a friend or two having wandered out kind. I don’t regret those outings, mainly because those women and the experiences were pleasant. But as a matter of not even some moral principal – but the sheer fact that I am very romantic at heart, I just wouldn’t/couldn’t bring myself to forge such a liaison.

I am being honest and I tell her how very much I like her and was even falling for her charms and the sincerity, but taking home a profi wasn’t something I did.

‘Pero soy buena!’ She urges. ‘But I am good!’ Even sounding like a saleswoman in a boutique.

‘Lo siento!’ ‘I am sorry!’ She doesn’t say anything to it, just scoots closer to me, takes my hand in hers and lets her head fall on my shoulder. It feels good that she feels at ease doing that. That perhaps in my small way I am a comfort to her as she is to me.

‘But I can still drop you off if you want?’

I get out of the cab in front of her home to see her off and press into her fist a $50.- bill.

‘It’s not much, but…Gracias!’

‘Gracias.’ She echoes, and gives me a quick hug. I watch her opening the front door and disappear inside her building.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

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Next Friday, March 14, 2014

IN THE DEPTH OF HIS EYES

Up until my first trip to Spain in the fall of 1978, I only had a vague knowledge of the Spanish Civil War and how Franco ruled the country for almost forty years with his ruthless iron fist. In fact it was the dictator’s death that would make possible even to think of bringing any western publication in to the country, let alone a local edition of Playboy. A poignant personal account.

Tags amsterdam, Buenos Aires, Dirk De Moei, Hotel Americaine, Jan Cremer, Jan Heemskerk, Ladies of the Night, Prostitution, Travel

Categories Memoire, Playboy, Prostitution, Relationships, Travel

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

February 20, 2014 //

The Domestic Arrangements South Of The Border

Haresh Shah

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

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Next Friday, February 28, 2014

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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.

Tags Aztec Culture, Friendship, Mexico, Mexico City, Night Life, Pyramids, Travel

Categories Artist, Culture, Friendship, Mexico, Profile

LOVE, LIES AND THE LATIN LOVERS

January 30, 2014 //

Haresh Shah

How Can You Not Fall In Love With Them?

‘And now ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching the home of one of the most colorful characters of our country: Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, the adventurer and the author of the Republic of Venice and the autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), which is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. But as many of you certainly know, he is mostly known as the great lover of women. Yes, the great lover and the great liar.’ We are on a gondola site seeing tour navigating through the narrow canals of Venice. On our right is a long curving three story flaming rust colored brick building with elaborate balconies protruding out of the walls and huge windows overlooking the the canals down below.

I am crisscrossing Europe with my friend Ranjan from Bombay, and of the cities in Europe we have seen so far, Venice certainly takes us to a dreamland like no other. I notice a self-congratulating chuckle on the face of the gondolier for having said something so clever as to pair the great lovers with the great liars. Perhaps more true of the Latin lovers than the others. The reputation they must have earned from the speed with which they move forward, totally infatuated in pursuit of the objects of their desire.

My friend Irene in Chicago is head over heels in love with Bruno – a handsome singer guitarist playing at a Lincoln Park venue around the corner from her apartment. He is good looking for sure, soft spoken, charming and a smooth operator. Irene believes in whatever lies he tells and the promises he makes. And before any of us realizes, Bruno has moved in with her. We actually like Bruno and are even charmed by him. But we are protective of Irene. She is particularly vulnerable and we don’t want her once again to be hurt. We suspect all along and tell Irene that he is probably happily married with kids back in Mexico. But something as trivial as that never stopped Irene from her amorous escapades. And then he is gone. As we had suspected, before departing, Bruno confesses to Irene that he indeed has a family in Mexico and is in Chicago to make a few fast bucks. Whether Irene expected him to leave his family and stay with her, I don’t know. But she is devastated nevertheless. Like others before Bruno, Irene manages to move on with time. Though I know, he was for her more than just a fling.

Fortunately, in most cases, it’s just that. A fling. Short and sweet. Just like one of the two American Playmates I had invited to come to Mexico some years earlier to help us promote the local edition. We are in Acapulco and have an afternoon off. We linger at the beach front bar restaurant long after lunch. While one of them decides to waddle through the sand with a juicy paperback in her hands and stretches out on her stomach, baking under the sun, the other decides to be adventurous and signs up for parachute jumping. So off she goes with an instructor. Young, svelte, gleaming bronze tan and of the body toned like an iron statue – Roberto is certainly handsome. He speaks reasonably good English and is probably tickle pinked that he gets to help this American beauty – a Playmate, no less. He is vivacious and charming as he buckles her up and snaps in the parachute. Gives a little push on the small of her back, she taps her feet on the sandy ground and struts towards the approaching waves. The parachute unfurls and she is airborne. Roberto shades his eyes and watches her pulled up and away.

By the time she comes back down on the earth, she is exhilarated and giggly. Roberto unsnaps her and helps her undo her gear. Free of constraints, he gives her a congratulatory hug and like a true galan, escorts her back to us. All of these couldn’t have taken more than total of ten minutes. But for a true Latin lover, that’s more than enough time to hook his prey. I can just imagine his squeezing in hola guapa, que bonita eres and don’t you want to have a drink with me? along with other phrases of endearments that Latin languages are so rich with and come natural to them. How can you even begin to compete with te amo and eres mi corazon, or ma chérie amour and j’taime in French or ciao bella and bellissima in Italian? In comparison, you’re beautiful, i love you and ich liebe dich sound absolutely hollow.

The next morning, we meet again at the same table and are waiting for the Playmate to join us for breakfast. As punctual as she normally is, it seems a bit strange that she isn’t there already. She is about half an hour late when we see her making her way towards us, swinging on the arm of, who else? Roberto. They part with a quick peck on cheeks and as she approaches us and as if in answer to the big question mark on our faces, she is all smiles. No need for her to elaborate. Her smile and how radiant she looks tells us all. We all smile back the knowing smiles. Thinking: Good for her. Knowing well that it’s just a passing fling and there is nothing for us to worry about. And so it was. Some months later she is married to a good American boy back home.

So when during the Mexico World Cup shoot in Puerto Vallarta, Jan (Heemskerk) and Michaela (Probst) are stood up by Alfonso, because he was busy with our Pat (Tomlinson), none of us actually gives it a second thought and we immediately write it off as a vacation fling south of the border. This was the first week of March. We all return home towards the end of the week. Pat and some others may have stayed over the weekend before coming back. But little did we know, from there on, things must have progressed at the speed of a bullet train.

Barely three weeks later, Pat stops me in the corridor and hesitantly but happily tells me that she was getting married that weekend, on the Easter Saturday on the 29^th. The groom to be? Alfonso! I don’t know whether it’s the shock that I feel, but it certainly jolts me a bit. It makes me feel quite uneasy. Alfonso was brought in by our Mexican publisher to help us with logistics of our photo production but was not a part of the regular staff. I didn’t know much about him, if anything. Handsome, tall, dark hair, tanned skin and a fast talker. I didn’t really think much of him, also because as charming and affirmative as he was with his always positive si como no! attitude, things that he would promise or said he would take care of, he didn’t or didn’t quite.

The speed and urgency with which it’s planned feels like a shot gun wedding. It’s not going to be in a church or anything. It is to take place at her sister’s home in the north western suburb of Barrington. I am not sure whether it would be her sister or someone else would perform the ceremony. And then there would be small toast to the newly weds followed by dinner at home.

Even though Pat has worked with me on several projects over a period of years, we are not exactly close enough for her to invite me to her wedding. ‘I know what you might be thinking. But it all happened so fast. I never thought I could fall in love at first sight, you know! We’re both very happy.’ She pauses and continues, ‘It’s just my immediate family. I would love it if you and Carolyn could come. To have someone who was there when I met Alfonso. It would mean a lot to me for you to be a part of it.’

When Carolyn and I arrive at her sister’s home the night of the wedding, there is a distinct cloud of doom covering everyone’s face. I say perfunctory hola to Alfonso, who looks petrified and distressed. The place itself looks helter-skelter as if a bunch of rambunctious kids having turned it upside down hunting for the hidden Easter eggs. Everyone frantically looking for the missing wedding band Alfonso has brought along to slip on his bride’s ring finger during the ceremony. He swears to have carefully tucked it away into a small pocket of his carry on duffle bag. Could it have fallen down and rolled away somewhere in the house as he unpacked? It was also likely that it fell off when the customs officer opened it to inspect its contents? The room is filled with the cacophony of multiple possibilities on the fate of the dainty little wheel of the precious jewelry meant to bind them for life for the better and the worst. Pat is besides herself and is on the verge of breaking down with a cry. Before things get any gloomier, someone suggests that we should just go ahead with the wedding ceremony anyways, the ring’s got to be somewhere around, and must show up sooner or later. Rest of the evening is blurred in my memory.

Fast forward to me running into Pat once again in the corridor of our offices. That marriage didn’t last too long and as it turns out, Alfonso was already married in Mexico and there was never a ring.

Something to be said about the wisdom of the Venetian gondolier having described the great lover Casanova to be also a great liar.

The good news is: Whatever suffering Pat may have endured, she flashes a pragmatic smile and tells me that since then she has found herself a true soul mate and is now happily married.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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PORK, DUMPLINGS AND CABBAGE

I was one of the early ones to enter the countries of the former Eastern European countries almost as soon as the Iron Curtain was lifted and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first three editions to be launched in the region were Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. In the early years, my predicament always remained, what to eat?

Tags Casanova, Love Story, Lovers, Mexico, Puerto Vallrta, Romance, Travel, Venice

Categories Culture, Mexico, Playmates, Romance

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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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

MY WINTER VALENTINE

November 21, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Of Pinot Noir And The Burlaping in Boonville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s that?’ either Jan or I ask.

‘That means…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. Just needed bit of fresh air.’

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

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

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

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, November 29, 2013

“HE’S A SON OF A BITCH’

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

Tags Boontling, Boonville, Breaking Up, California Wines, Haresh Shah, Jan Heemskerk, Napa Valley, Pinot Noir, Relationships, Romance, Travel, Wine Farmers

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

LA DOLCE VITA

September 26, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

The Strike Italian Style

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

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

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

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

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

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

●●●

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

●●●

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I don’t know that!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Are you a passenger to Munich too?’

‘Yes.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Back to the civilization!’ I say.

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

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

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

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

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, October 4, 2013

THE TAIWANESE BARBER SHOP

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

Tags Celeste Huenergard, Farewell Parties, Haresh Shah, Italians, Italy, Linate Airport, Malpensa Airport, Milano, Strikes Italian Style, Travel

Categories Italy

HOLA Y ADIOS AMOEBAS

September 19, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Usurped By The Occupational Hazard

Pascual at the Hotel Ritz reception in Barcelona hands me my room key, and along with it a few folded telexes and messages from my mail slot. I walk a few steps to the elevator and as the tiny old timer cage rises, I unroll the letter size message. It says HAPPAY BIRTHDAY HARESH. Repeated umpteen times inside a white Playboy rabbit head computer graphic on the grey background. The margins are annotated and signed by everyone in my department. As slow as the elevator is, it’s still a short ride up to the fourth floor. Something about that electronically transmitted birthday card on a flimsy fax paper triggers an enormous emotional and physical outburst into me. My hands are shaking as I slide open the folding metal door of the elevator. I rush to my room, barely manage to open the door. Slam it shut and I have a total breakdown. I throw my weight in the middle of the bed, and sink into the hollow of the sagging old mattress. First I start sobbing uncontrollably. Then my whole body begins to shake violently and I feel cold sweat oozing out of every pour of my skin. And then I feel hot, like a pre-heated oven, ready for baking. I pull the blanket over, try to control my convulsions and break out into wailing sobs and a desperate cry.

It’s November 4, 1988. My 49^th birthday. I am in Barcelona with Bill and Debra (Stokkan). We together have been on the road for two weeks now, visiting our editions in Munich, Rome, Istanbul, Athens and now Barcelona. This is our last stop before we would board the plane tomorrow afternoon, heading back home to Chicago. I have spent a wonderful day celebrating from the moment I got up. We have sumptuous sea food lunch at La Dorada, hosted by our Spanish partner Jose Manuel Lara of Editorial Planeta. We drink his favorite Marqués de Cáceres. And then suddenly Bill’s nose begins to bleed. Embarrassed, he sits there with his handkerchief pressed under his nostrils. Goes back and forth to the wash room. It takes a long time before the bleeding slows, if not completely stops. Jose Manuel Lara is kind and understanding.

Following the lunch, Bill runs back to the hotel, I head to the editorial offices where Sebastian (Martinez), Jose Luis (Cordoba) and Rosa (Oliva), along with the entire editorial staff are waiting for me to pop a few bottles of champagne. There have often been times when my birthday has become a cause célèbre to my total amazement. And so it is today. Not much I can do about. After two weeks of back-to-back meetings, being wined and dined and hopping on and off the planes, running to and checking in and out of hotels, packing and unpacking, all three of us are beginning to feel bit of fatigue settling in.

Must have been around half past six or seven when I come back to the hotel and experience total collapse. As I lie in middle of the bed, sinking deeper and deeper in the human indentation, and when finally the shakes and chill and the fever I felt earlier subsides somewhat, I know I can’t just turn over and go to sleep. The finale is yet to come. Playboy Spain’s publisher, Fernando Castillo and his wife Anna are to come pick us up from the hotel at nine. This is our last night in Spain and its my birthday. He knows that I love Paella, especially at my favorite restaurant Quo Vadis in Ramblas But he has his own favorite and wants to take us to Lauria. I somehow manage to compose myself, and get out of bed and take a refreshing shower. Feeling just a little bit better, but not well enough to go out on the town and sit through an entire evening and be my old social butterfly self.

Fernando has pre-ordered Paella for me. Its sitting there, sizzling in its traditional pan, the lobster tails shining orange and the little shrimps with tails staring at me with their ink black eyes. The rice is beginning to simmer and I don’t even smell the pungent Spanish saffron. I want so bad to dig in and devour this succulent, most delicious and exotic of the Spanish delicacies. But instead, I find myself staring at it as if the Paella pan were an objet d’art. Soon the waiter brings whatever the others have ordered and dishes out some Paella and gently serves a portion in my plate. I pick up a fork-full and put it in my mouth. I can’t taste it at all. Fernando is looking at me with anticipation and somehow I manage to say, esta sabrosa. I am thankful that there are also Bill and Debra and the burden of making the conversation doesn’t fall entirely on me. But still! I have a choice of facing up or take a couple of more bites and risk throwing up. I face up. I don’t feel too good. Bill and Debra aren’t feeling that hot either. We somehow manage to wing it.

I feel a bit better in the morning and manage my last meeting in Spain, have breakfast with Roger Aguade, the advertising manager. In the afternoon we are on our way back to Chicago via Amsterdam. The upper deck of the Business Class is practically empty so the three of us spread out. During the nine hour journey, we barely exchange a few sentences with each other, each one of us nursing our personal pains, mostly caused by the super fatigue. When we arrive, I am glad that Carolyn and Anjuli are there to pick me up. Bill and Debra brush them by with perfunctory greetings and are gone. Must have been in more pain than I had realized. When we get in bed is when Carolyn realizes my body feels hot like freshly baked potato right out of an oven. I am running the temperature of 102 °F (38.9 °C). We write it off to me being overly tired.

But the fever is here to stay. Over the next three days the temps swing between 102 °F (38.9 °C) and 103°F (39.4 °C). I am floating in our king size water bed like a whale squirming with extreme pain flipping up and down. I have no will to do anything. I have no appetite. I feel certain loss of my basic motor skills. Normally, Anjuli would have walked home from school, but on the third afternoon, its raining heavily. I get dressed, get into my car and drive two short blocks to pick her up. I feel the car sway sideways and realize I have lost my power of coordination. Fortunately we make it back home and I crawl back into bed. Realizing that perhaps my fever was more serious than we thought, Carolyn finds the primary care physician for me. Dr. Anne Niedenthal. She prescribes Ceclor and then has me x-rayed and has my blood tested. My white cell count is high at 13,400 to the normal range of 4,300 to 10.800. I hallucinate. My water bed bursts and I am struggling to stay afloat with my arms and legs flailing, the water splashing, with only my bopping head managing to stay above the deluge. No, I am not drowning. My entire body breaks out first in cold and then hot sweat. I am alone at home. The temperatures refuse to budge.

On the next day, Dr. Niedenthal orders me to meet her at the central registration of Evanston Hospital so she can get me admitted immediately. I am upset. Anjuli begins to cry. Carolyn retains her professional posture, but barely. I am hooked up to multiple tubes and the TV monitor up above blips endlessly. They monitor me all night long at regular intervals, taking my temp and blood samples. The next morning, I open my eyes to four interns huddling over me along with Dr. Francine Cook , who specializes in contagious diseases. In addition to the tubes sprouting from my arms, he prescribes heavy doses of Flagyl and Ceftazidime-Dextrose. While I am still roasting, I am aware of everything that goes on around me. They have not yet been able to figure out what it is that maybe wrong with me. It must be dire. Carolyn is a staff nurse in the hospital and she has access to and understands all that’s being discussed. I am told later, that Anjuli and her went home and cried. All reports point to my early exit from this material world. Curiously, not once did the possibility of me not getting out of the hospital alive crosses my mind.

I go through a battery of tests to include blood, urine, ultrasound and ultimately, the cat scan of which I write interesting. On the third day, the temperature begins to subside. On the fourth, the tubes are removed, which gives me an ultimate sense of freedom. Now the visitors begin to pour in. I have no dietary restrictions. Having tasted hospital food for a couple of days, I realize that irrespective of what I ask for, it all tastes the same, smelling predominantly of the dirty brown plastic covers that breathe over every meal delivered. So Carolyn and Anjuli bring me BigMac with heap of fries. Chinese chicken fried rice. Still barely palatable.

Now that I have the freedom of the movement, I go and talk to the nurses at their station. They allow me to sit with them in their lunch room and eat with them. I go down to the gift shop in my long burgundy terry gown with black and avocado stripes. On impulse, I buy for Carolyn a handmade two piece suite for $250.- . Talk with the sales ladies in the shop. But I am bored stiff and can’t wait to get out of the hospital. But Dr. Westenfelder (Grant O.), who, giving the benefit of the doubt to my illness is the first one to pronounce what I have to be a possible Amoeba infection. He guesses it right and treats me accordingly with Flagyl. Perhaps too heavy a doze and for too long of a period, which has left me with tingling and some loss of grip in my ten toes, with the name of peripheral neuropathy.

Three months later, I am in Mexico City – my first trip since my return to Chicago. At my friend Ignacio Barrientos’ urging, I go see Dr. Bernardo Tanur. Just within minutes of talking with me Dr, Tanur knows that I had amoebas. They treated me with the right medication, but for three times as long. You never give Flagyl to anyone for more than one week maximum. Its mainly a tropical infection, something I couldn’t have picked up living in the Northern Hemisphere, and Dr. Westenfelder could not have treated many similar cases, if any at all. Could it be that I picked up amoebas during one of my earlier trips to Mexico? They laid dormant until my immune system was overspent and attacked it soon as they knew it would be an easy knockout? But in my mind, I connect it with something vile I tasted in that sweetbread they served at the restaurant Florian in Barcelona on Playboy Spain’s 10^th anniversary dinner, just the night before. Whatever the cause, I guess the peripheral neuropathy, which I still have, is a small price to pay for still being alive and living to tell the tale, twenty five years later.

Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

MY INTIMATE ENCOUNTER WITH EROTIC OYSTERS

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Next Friday, September 27, 2013

LA DOLCE VITA

Italians are the people like no other. Easy going and the lovers of sweet life and delicious food and wine, proud of their history and heritage. It’s hard not to have good time when visiting their country. That is: until you find yourself suddenly stranded at Milan’s Linate International Airport and at their mercy.

Tags Amoebas, Barcelona, Bill & Debra Stokkan, Dr. Anne Niedenthal, Dr. Bernardo Tanur, Dr. Grant Westenfelder, Fernado Castillo, Haresh Shah Birthday, Jose Manuel Lara, Sebastian Martinez, Spain, Travel

Categories Illness

STRANGERS ON THE PLANE

August 1, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

In The Journey Of Life One Meets Only To Part

strangerplane2

When I first notice her, she is standing next to me in the check-in line, fidgeting and shifting her weight from one foot to another. Her face looks pretty in profile. With Milan’s Linate International Airport fogged-in, we are bussed to their standby Malpensa, which is in a big mess as ever. Despite the throngs of crowds and the chaos that normally prevails, and amidst the multiple delays, things somehow work out at this remote airport.

I check in, go through the immigration and the security check and on to the other side of the security wing. Pick up some duty free booze, look around for a while and with the first call make it to the gate # 7. And there she is again. All wrapped up in her leopard skin coat and her knee-high black boots. Her pretty face floats in the air propelled by her swan like long and delicate neck. On the second call, we move closer towards the gate to get on the bus.

I notice her staring at me. I stare back. They have called the flight for the third time and the bus still isn’t anywhere in sight. Us just standing there, waiting, our eyes discreetly catching a fleeting gaze of the other. I want to strike up a conversation, probably so does she. But we maintain our demeanor. The fourth call and the bus still hasn’t arrived. She looks at me and lets a slight smile cross her lips. I smile back. Neither of us says anything. We continue to steal glances at each other every few moments.

A few more minutes have elapsed and the bus still hasn’t arrived. Everyone is getting antsy, with the possible exception of us two. We are enjoying our little charade. I watch her fiddle with her pink boarding card. The lady is traveling in first class. She sort of looks rich all over, from her head to her toe. It is sweetly awkward just waiting and stealing glances at a stranger. She has moved sideways, bringing her a couple of steps closer to me. I want to move even closer and talk to her. But don’t know how to break the ice. The way we are taking each other in is discomforting. And yet, there seems to be an unspoken insinuation between us that its alright.

It isn’t that warm in the departure hall, but while waiting, she decides to undo her coat buttons. Underneath, I could see that she is of a slender frame and of delicate built. Don’t think she has much on her chest. She stands still for a while with her coat unbuttoned and then finally takes it off. When I see a pair of lascivious breasts bounce off her form fitting turtle-neck sweater, the sight takes my breath away. A white pearl necklace dangles down from her neck, with its knotted loop snuggly resting in the cleft of her cleavage. She is wearing a knee-length black velvet skirt and a three inches (6.6cm) wide black belt, separating her tight sweater from the skirt. Averting direct eye contact, I let my eyes traverse down from her knee high black boots up to her head, her hair bunched together with a glittery hair clip. I observe that her breasts aren’t as big as they seemed, except that they stand out on her shapely petite frame. She is a beauty! A tempestuous one at that.

They call the flight once more, but where the hell is the bus? Our heads automatically turn towards each other, our eyes lock.

‘They probably don’t even have the plane there!’ I say.

‘Probably not.’ The ice broken, she responds.

‘Sind sie aus Deautschland?’ I ask in German.

‘Ja,’ she answers, ‘und sie?

‘Zur zeit.’

Finally, the bus has arrived. We walk in together. She finds herself a corner seat, I stand next to her. ‘hier gibt’s noch ein platz’ she points at another folded chair next to her. The plane is only about twenty meters away from the gate, we could have walked. We get off the bus and walk a few remaining steps to the plane.

‘It’s going to be pretty lonely in the first class!’ I say, quickly scanning the small cabin of the empty first class.

‘I guess so.” She agrees and in hurry explains that she had to get the first class ticket because there were no seats left in the economy.

‘Perhaps we can sit together?’ She asks.

‘I would love to, but I don’t think they would let us.’

We walk into the plane. She hands over her pink boarding card to the stewardess and asks her if I could possibly sit with her. Yes, if I paid the difference in the fare.

We start with champagne and a nice meal. This is my first time ever, traveling in first class. Not too hard to get used to. The stewardesses keep refilling our glasses. It is a shame that we only have such a short distance to travel.

The mutual infatuation between us is apparent. Before we know, we have switched to addressing each other with familiar Du. Our faces so close, our hands overlapping on the arm rest, they find each other and our fingers entwine on their own. We talk and we flirt. Holding hands, looking deep into each other’s eyes. Her face is a perfect combination of Ingrid and Gisela, two of my prettiest German friends. An exotic mixture that reminds me of Queen Farah Pahlavi of Iran. Really a beautiful woman, I say to myself. Deep green eyes, jet black hair, thin lips and dimpled cheeks.

Her name is Chantal – unusual for a German girl. I have a Francophile mother. Chantal is married to a fifty eight year old entrepreneur from Hamburg. She herself looks like about twenty seven. They now live in Ascona, Switzerland, with their four month old child and three servants. Her parents live close to Düsseldorf, but she isn’t flying there to see them. She tells me that she is going there on “business”. Sure! I give her a cryptic smile. She smiles back and concedes that she is actually meeting a “friend” there.

‘In fact, we were supposed to have a nice dinner together.’

‘You did have a dinner with someone nice anyways.’ I respond.

‘Of course,’ and she smiles, squeezing my hand. ‘I think it’s more romantic with a total stranger than with someone you already know.’

We talk for a while about me working for Playboy.

‘Would you ever consider posing for the magazine?’ I ask.

‘In the nude?’

‘Well, we’re talking Playboy!’

‘I would love to. But I don’t think my husband would be too thrilled!’

‘Schade!’ Too bad. She is sooooooooooooooooo gorgeous. I think.

Not the nudes, but she would certainly be open to a fashion shoot. If not exactly for the pictures, but more so because such an opportunity would enable her to get away from her day-to-day chores of being a rich man’s wife.

She tells me that in two days she was returning to Ascona and the whole “family” of six was going to leave for Spain on Friday morning to spend the winter months in a new house that her husband had bought in warm and sunny Costa del Sol. Spending six months in a small town swarming mainly with the German tourists is not her idea of excitement. She asks me if I would write her a letter on an official Playboy letterhead inviting her to come over to Munich to do a fashion shoot. It would be just an excuse she needs to get away from her husband.

‘He doesn’t mind my seitensprung (literally a sideway leap – those clever Germans!) ab und zu. How do you call it in English? Extra something…?

‘You mean extra curricular? Extra marital?’

‘Ja genau. as long as I am discreet about it’ – the word she uses is diplomatic – so lange ich diplomatisch bin. A trophy wife, I think. And she knows it!

And she certainly knows how to indulge a man’s ego. ‘ I think Playboy has the right kind of a man in you. You’re not only good looking, but you’re also charming, warm and have a friendly personality. You can make interesting conversation and the people feel nice being with you.’ I am flattered, of course! Thanks. Same to you lady.

Her hair clipped at the top, I wonder what she would look like if she let it down. She obliges. The long tresses unfurling, she tosses her head until they softly rest and caress her shoulders. I gently brush it with the back of my hand. She nuzzles her neck backward and flashes that certain smile which has me unarmed. She looks much prettier with her hair down. More sensuous. Encouraged, I tell her, I’m sure you’ve got great looking legs! She gives me a bewildered but a pleasant look and then bends down and if a bit hesitantly, unzips her boots and removes them. I feel like I am undressing her bit by bit like in a slow motion striptease. My fingers reach down and lightly touch and caress the silky smooth skin of her legs.

She tells me that her friend is picking her up at the airport.

‘I wish he didn’t.’ I say.

‘I wish he didn’t either.’ She sounds sincere.

We exchange addresses and telephone numbers. However remote the possibility that we would ever see each other again.

‘Maybe I can come over and see you in Spain?’ I wonder out loud.

‘Please do,’ she answers, ‘but bring along a friend or a model with you, my husband loves pretty girls.’ As if I didn’t already know.

We are already on the other side of the Alps. We only have fifteen to twenty minutes remaining before the plane touches down in Düsseldorf. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach at the thought. As the plane descends, we just look deep into each other’s eyes, mesmerized. And hold hands in a tight squeeze, our fingers tensing over each others. I bend down sideways and impulsively kiss her lightly on the mouth. Her lips flutter. A dismay crosses her face like a floating cloud. She raises her hand and gently wipes off the lipstick smears from my lips with her dainty fingers.

‘Maybe we should make a baby together. Would look beautiful. Wow! my own baby with dark skin and brown eyes!’

I am touched by the wistful look in her eyes focused on mine. Up until then I haven’t thought of having a child of my own. It feels surreal to imagine having one with this stunning beauty sitting next to me. Overwhelmed, we hold the gaze, unblinking, lest the spell be broken – like two teenagers in love for the first time.

Time elapses faster than it should. We are already in Düsseldorf. The landing strip is only a few hundred meters away. I move my eyes from the approaching runway to her face again. I squeeze her hand hard.

‘Hey, look at me one more time before we touch down.’ She does and kisses me lightly with the side of her lips to avoid her freshly applied lipstick from smearing.

‘Let’s just say auf wiedersehen right here’ she says, ‘because I want to be the first one to get off the plane.’ It makes me sad, but I understand.

‘Auf wiedersehen.’ I whisper.

‘War schön – verführung im erste klasse’ – it’s been nice, seduction in the first class – and she laughs a nervous laugh. Soon as the plane pulls up at the jetway, we look at each other one more time with an unbearable longing. And then she is gone!

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

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Next Friday, August 9, 2013

WRITE OFF OR NOT

For most people, expense account is a perk to be envied. I have often heard people say: Oh, you’ve gotten expense account! As if it were a bonus of sorts. What they don’t realize is that an expense account is the reimbursement of the money spent on the company’s behalf. And it’s a hassle keeping track of and account for monies spent. But then, people wink at you, you know, they are thinking of some of the creative ones who can actually turn an expense account into a handsome perk.

Tags Chantal, Infatuation, Milan, Romance, Romantic Encounter, Travel, Women

Categories Love Story, Romance, Rommance, Women

SEX EDUCATION À LA JAPONAISE

April 18, 2013 //

Haresh Shah

Lessons In Interactive “’Bout The Birds And The Bees”

My brain is still busy processing what I had just seen, when I see flailing hands of the several young men in the front row. Yastaka Sasaki explains to me that they are playing rock, paper, scissors. The winner would then get to climb up the stage and get to fuck the girl who has just concluded the “second act” of her striptease routine and is now waiting in front of the sparse post-lunch time crowd of young “salarymen”. Completely naked, she is squatted there on the stage floor on her knees, legs spread wide apart, the spotlight still focused on the exposed glistening inner layers of her vulva peeking through her dense and dark, artfully manicured patch of pubic hair. Her face wears a contemptuous frown with a forced smile on her lips. Staring intensely at the faces of the men in front of her, as if daring the one who would take her as a prize right there on the stage with everyone in the audience watching. Having eliminated the rest, about six of them, the winner eagerly climbs up the stage, and honest to God, there they are, just a few feet away from our eyes – her lying down on her back, opening her legs wider, her knees pointing upward like a dead duck on a kitchen table waiting to be stuffed. Her hands resting on sides, as if preparing to lift her slight frame into a bridge position for a gym routine.

The man, having hastily removed his clothes wedges himself between her open legs, tugging at his penis, possibly to give it an extra bit of hardness, slips on a condom and then plunges it into the girls’ already waiting and well lubricated vagina and begins to pump. He doesn’t last long. A minute, two at the most, before falling by her side. What I remember still the most is the cryptic smile crossing the girl’s thin lips. Her little fish eyes fluttering, her getting up, picking up her discarded clothes from the stage and walking away.

I am in Japan on behalf of Playboy. One of the enticements my boss Lee Hall had dangled in front of me to tear me away from the sunny Santa Barbara, California to the cold and cloudy Chicago, was an assignment in Japan.

Lee made good on his promise and sent me on a short exploratory trip to Tokyo within the first months of my moving back to Chicago in 1979. But it wasn’t until the mid 1985 that he actually assigned me in earnest to the project. In his opinion, though the Japanese had started out wonderfully well ten years earlier, now the sales had began to go south and something needed to be done. On their part, our partners Shueisha had brought in a whole new editorial team and Lee felt that I could form a part of that team, and help them lead in a fresh editorial direction, thus helping them gain back some of their lost readers and hopefully find some new ones.

Flattered as I was, technically I was still the division’s Production Director. Perhaps because I had proven my editorial impulse, working with Playboy in the Netherlands, two years earlier, he must have felt that I could do the same with the Japanese. But Japan was not little Netherlands. Plus I had lived and worked in Holland for several months and had some idea of what the country and its people were like. But Japan seemed like a completely different planet. The two times that I had been there for short visits, I couldn’t say with any certainty that I even had a least sense of what the Japanese were all about. Even those two short trips had made me realize that the Japanese were like no other people I had ever known. I needed to know more about the country, the people and its culture before I would take on the challenge. Lee didn’t only understand but totally concurred with me

He recommended that I read Edwin Reischauer’s The Japanese – in his opinion, one of the most defining books ever written about the country and its people. My first sense of Japan came from reading Ek Zalak Japan Ni (A Glimpse at Japan) by the most prolific Indian artist and writer, Aabid Surti, who has since become a close friend. I had also read the Japanese novelists that included Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima. I added to them, Behind the Mask by Ian Buruma and Pictures from the Water Trade by John David Morley. Several months later, I felt prepared enough to board the Northwestern flight to Tokyo. But I still wasn’t ready to be face-to-face with the Japanese editors and the executives of the giant Shueisha Inc., who held the license to publish the magazine. What I wanted to do first of all was to get to know and experience Japan on my own.

●●●

I arrived in Tokyo on Monday night. Checked into the Imperial Hotel. Got a good night’s sleep, dumped my baggage in the hotel’s storage. A duffle bag slung over my shoulder, I ventured out accompanied by our Tokyo rep Ray Falk’s assistant Yastaka Sasaki. We boarded the outbound Hakusana #1 – Japan’s famed Shinkansen – the bullet train, that would take us from Tokyo’s Ueno to Kanazawa.

There we checked into an old world charming inn, Miyabo Ryokan. And for a week crisscrossed the country, visiting campus in Kanazawa, hanging out at student cafes and bars, eat at all night Japanese restaurants, browse bookstores, interview students in their club, go discoing in a place called – of all things, Maharaja. Visited Meiji Mura – the open air architectural museum and also spent some time watching middle aged housewives amidst the deafening clanging of Pachinko Parlors, their gazes fixed on the pinball machines and their hands frantically pulling the handles as if on auto pilot. Absolutely amazing! Staying always at Ryokans, the traditional Japanese Inns with tatami mattresses on the floor, with the center of the tiny room serving as the spot where you lounged, slept and dined. Eating dried fish, sticky rice and green tea for breakfast which tasted awful, but still! On the trains we ate box lunches and in towns stuck to eating at down home sushi, yakatori and tepanyaki restaurants.

The idea was to observe, experience and absorb as much as one humanly can of the country, its people and their lives within six short days. Also to see places and people where our readers are most likely to be. Perhaps even glean some insight into them. Basically, experience first hand the smells, the sounds and the sights of the land of the Rising Sun.

‘There is something else that you must know and see about the Japanese young men,’ Sasaki said, if a bit hesitating.

‘Sure.’

So here we are in Toyota city of Nagoya, sitting in a small dingy and dim lit place called Tsurumai Theatre Live Strip Show. Its no bigger than a large living room with a small round stage at the other end, in front of which are several rows of randomly placed individual chairs with vending machines on the wall behind the audience. Machines are stocked with Coke and other soft drinks as well as an assortment of Japanese beers. Unlike what one would expect in a place like this, the beverages are prized the same as they would in a company cafeteria. There is no bar, neither the girls coming out in the audience to hustle. I remember, the entrance fee being an equivalent of US$ 12.- which even by the standards of 1985 was cheap, very cheap by the Japanese standards.

Not much different from the striptease joints in Soho district of London, except the audience and no hassle ambience. Most every one here is plus or minus twenty five years of age, compared to me at forty five and Sasaki a bit younger, we would be considered dirty old men. If not quite the middle aged geezers of London. Other than a bit of commotion at the end of the performance, with the men in the front row playing scissors, paper and rock, audience is extremely well behaved, almost reverential. They are all dressed in their young “salarymen” uniform of dark western suites and mostly white shirts with appropriately somber ties.

But what is different is the show itself. No holds barred to say the least. The dance routine as mechanical. The girls would strip in the standard, one piece of clothing at a time till she is completely naked. Normally, this is where the show must end. But no, it serves just a warming up for more routines to follow.

The spotlight is focused on the center of the girl’s wide open legs, she inches forward to the edge of the stage where the heads of the scissors, paper, rock crowd is bopping up and down to get a closer look at the innermost anatomy of the other sex. She puts her index finger and the thumb on either side of the skin surrounding outer lips and stretches them open even farther, looking over the heads of half a dozen or so men now hovering over her crotch. And then she moves her hand and extends it to take one of the men’s outstretched hand in hers. Has him fold rest of his fingers and let the index finger stick out. A pack of condom appears in her hand, which she tears open with her teeth and slowly sheaths the man’s finger with it, holds and guides it slowly inside her vaginal canal, guiding him to vacillate it in and out motion and then lets him do it on his own. It is no longer erotic for me. If I did feel aroused earlier in the act, now I could feel my arousal deflecting. And yet, as outrageous as it is, its absolutely fascinating. The girl guiding the man’s finger in and then allowing him to explore on his own, as if handing your little kid the house key and teaching him how to open the door

The music changes and another girl saunters on the stage. This one is dressed like a nurse in starched white uniform, head piece and all, carrying a small emergency kit, a white box with the red cross painted on the lid. The same routine. Removing of the clothing from the head piece down to the shoes and eventually the skimpy pair of panties. But even while the dance is in progress, I notice something in the background, which I presumed to be just a mesh screen to cover the wall. Nope! Now the back of it is lit up and one could sense something else going on behind the screen. It now looks like back-lit silver threads, hanging from the ceiling down to the top of the stage and behind that is the silhouette of a couple frolicking in the nude. I give Sasaki a sideway glance.

‘One of the losers of the scissors, paper, rock can buy her services by paying extra.’

Set up in the background is a rudimentary bedroom with a full size mattress on the floor. The young man is lying on it on his back, the girl is leaning down and massaging his cock and when she has brought it up to its full glory, she pulls out a pack of condom from her little purse lying by the side of the mattress, tears the foil open and slips it over his penis in what seemed like a ritual manner. She ties her hair in a pony and then plunges down her open mouth to engorge him and begins to oscillate, as if also to the rhythm of the music being played for the stripper in the foreground. A smile breaks out on my face as I once again look sideways at Sasaki, amazed and shaking my head. What I am thinking is: So these are our readers!! And this is in the country where they hire kids to blotch out pubic hair in imported magazines?

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE