Don't Get Too Comfortable Page 3
There are those who might argue that the materials focused on—cotton, salt, oil, water—are themselves so basic, almost beneath notice, so much the opposite of a ski chalet in Gstaad, for example, that such epicurean monasticism is itself an act of humility by association. The temporal and vulgar rejected in favor of what really matters most in life. And what is it that matters most in life? Here's a hint: it's a pronoun that can be effectively conveyed without any words at all. Just take your index finger and point it to the center of your chest, an inch and a half from your precious, precious heart.
I TUTORED ADULT literacy at a men's shelter for about two years a while back. Have no fear, this isn't going to be one of those Capraesque anecdotes full of lachrymose inanities like “There are those who might say that I taught Tito. But if you ask me, it's Tito who taught me.” I only want to tell the following story: Christmas was coming, and Sylvia, the amazing woman who ran the career center, mentioned that a lot of the guys in the program would be going to see their kids, wives, and girlfriends, etc., for the first time since getting back on the road to recovery. All of the men had histories of drug abuse or alcoholism, a lot of them had been homeless. Their families had really gone through hell and Sylvia thought it would be nice to somehow arrange it so that the men weren't showing up empty-handed. Even a small token would go a very long way in repairing relationships that had been sorely tested over the years. I called up my friend Rory, who raided the giveaway closets of the various glossy women's magazines at which she works, eventually filling up two large boxes with fancy cosmetics and toiletries. More than enough for all the men to arrive bearing gifts.
Since the program had both a strong recovery and a Christian foundation, Sylvia went through the boxes, setting aside those things she thought might be less than suitable. Anything boozy or overtly sexual—bourbon-flavored massage oil, for example—would be out. When I looked over what she had discarded, I saw that, without exception, she had taken out the big-ticket, really expensive items.
“They're not going to understand that these are fancy things,” she said, indicating the exorbitant bottle of witch hazel with its unadorned, text-heavy label like a purgative tonic from an old dispensary, and the bar of soap resembling a rough, gray river stone wrapped up in brown paper and tied with waxed string. “They're going to think the guys got them medicine from the drugstore. It would look like the exact opposite of a present. These things just look . . . ,” she searched for the word, “poor. They're already poor. Why would they want to be reminded of that?”
Clearly Sylvia and the men of the mission had no appreciation for the soul-cleansing charms of Kiehl's blue astringent. It's also a safe bet, given the mission's cafeteria-style dining hall, that the austere and rustic appeal of Le Pain Quotidien—a small chain of restaurants in the city where you can enjoy your salade niçoise sitting at a long unvarnished table beside your fellow New Yorkers as if you had all just come in from reseeding the north forty—would also be lost on them. What would they make of other such high-end examples of commodified faux poverty, like Republic Noodles, which looks like a Chinese Cultural Revolution–era reeducation facility. For models.
Or the wallpaper from Scalamandré called the Rogarshevsky Scroll, named after the family who occupied one of the apartments in the building that now houses New York's Lower East Side Tenement Museum? The design is a faithful copy of the fourteenth layer of paper found when they renovated. A pretty floral pattern, it must have put up a valiant fight against the grime and cold-water squalor of the place. It's nice to think that those Rogarshevskys fortunate enough not to have had to pitch themselves out of burning shirtwaist factory windows were cheered by the sight of it when they returned from their fifteen-hour piecework shifts. Might an immigrant family employed in one of Manhattan's sweatshops that still exist today have access to the same visual solace? Not likely. The Rogarshevsky Scroll is available to the trade for upward of $80 a roll. And how about the armchair designed by Brazilian brothers Huberto and Fernando Campana out of a seemingly random assemblage of hundreds of pieces of wooden lath? The ingenious and counterintuitively comfortable chair is called the Favela, named for the jury-rigged, destitute, crime-ridden shantytowns that climb the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro. According to the International Finance Corporation, a public policy organization associated with the World Bank, the average monthly income for a family in the Brazilian favelas is two hundred reais, or roughly $72. The Favela armchair retails for over $3,000.
Oh Sylvia, I want to say, don't you know that if you curl your lip enough, you can make “poor” sound just like “pure”?
It's nice to have nice things. Creature comfort is not some bourgeois capitalist construct, but framing it as a moral virtue sure is. It's what the French call Nostalgie de la Boue: a fond yearning for the mud. Two things have to be in place to really appreciate this particular brand of gluttony posing as asceticism. First, you have to have endured years and years of plenty, the mud a long-distant, nearly forgotten memory. One must have decades of such surfeit under your belt that you have been fortunate enough to grow sick of it all. (Using this economic model, Russians thirty years hence might pose less of a threat to the imperiled world supply of Versace and sequins.) And second—and this is what really separates the men from the boys—in order to maintain a life free of clutter and suitable for a sacred space, you'll need another room to hide your shit.
And it is shit, ultimately. Or some corporeal, effluvial cousin thereof. This sloughing off and scouring down to the walls is about a denial that has little to do with doing without. It is not so much the forgoing of one's fleshly desires as much as a terrified repudiation of the essential nature of what we are: great sloshing, suppurating bags of wet, prone to rupture. Mortal messes just waiting to happen.
And who wants to be reminded of that? An apocryphal story attributed to Diana Vreeland tells of a young woman working as an editor who is done dirt by her man, who turns out to be a crumb, so she throws herself in front of the rush hour IRT. She sustains only minor physical injuries and is packed off to some place like Payne Whitney or Austen Riggs where she can get better. Returning to her job months later, repaired but shaky, she is called into Mrs. Vreeland's office. The arbitrix of style rises from her chair and taking the wounded bird's hands in both of hers, says consolingly, “My dear, here at Vogue we don't throw ourselves in front of trains. If we must, we take pills.”
THE COURT OF Heian Japan, which existed a thousand years ago, was a society of exquisite indolence. Nobles might spend hours choosing the perfect shade of silk underrobe, barely an inch of which would be glimpsed from the gaping sleeve of a kimono. Days passed in splendid idleness playing arcane word games where one had to match the first half of an ancient Chinese epigram written on one clamshell with the second half written on another (yahoo!). Hours were taken up composing erudite mash notes to one's lover of the moment. Sei Shonagon, a lady of the court, kept a “pillow book,” a compendium of her rarefied observations and impressions. It is an amazing volume, covering a wide range of topics, about all of which she had very strong opinions. Although it was written a millennium ago, its frequent blazing triviality and tone of aphoristic certitude on matters aesthetic can make it seem eerily contemporary and magazine-ready: “These are the months that I like best: The First Month, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth, The Seventh, the Eighth, The Ninth, The Eleventh, and the Twelfth.” “Oxen should have very small foreheads . . .” “Things That Should Be Large: Priests. Fruit. Houses.” And this entry from Unsuitable Things: “Snow on the houses of common people. This is especially regrettable when the moonlight shines down on it.” Simplicity, it seems, has always been wasted on those who simply cannot appreciate it.
SESIÓN PRIVADA
Close one eye and block out the stand of tattered palms with your thumb, and the tiny San Pedro airport, battered by horizontal sheets of rain, has some of the gray, hardscrabble charm of the Scottish coast. But unless you are featuring the gray, hardscrabb
le charms of the Girls of the Scottish Coast, this is about the last thing you want for a Playboy shoot. You certainly don't send a still photographer, videographer and crew, and three centerfolds to equatorial Belize looking for weather like this. And Sesión Privada, the Latin American Playboy TV program that is due to start shooting the next day, is at least partly about weather. In addition to featuring “the unrivaled beauty and sensuality of Latin and Brazilian women,” the show also highlights some of the prime tourist destinations of our neighbors to the south. Sesión Privada is a combination of lingering views of nude female flesh interspersed with slow pans of the Caribbean landscape. Apparently those shots of white sand, lapping waves, and swaying palm trees all provide some necessary downtime for the average viewer. According to the producer, men can look at naked women for just so long. This is news to me. I don't mean that snidely, it is simply news to me. I don't look at naked women.
Past Sesións have been filmed in places like Fortaleza, Brazil, and Tobago. This episode will be shot on Cayo Espanto, an exclusive resort off the Belize barrier reef. Cayo Espanto is a private island with just five secluded villas, each of which goes for about $1,300 a night. Guests range from the merely filthy rich to the seriously affluent: sports-team owners, friends of the George and Barbara Bushes, and the like.
Any unfettered display of hedonism is on hold until the stormy lowering skies clear up. So far, only the photographer and I have made it. The three lucky women who will be featured, the winner and two runners-up of a Playboy beauty contest held the previous night in Acapulco, have yet to arrive. The photographer is an almost ridiculously handsome Finn—tan skin, silver-blond hair, and ice-blue eyes. He resembles one of those cyborgs from the movies, developed in a secret mountain enclave laboratory who, as his wrappings are taken off, is introduced by the evil genius who created him with a portentous “Gentlemen, may I present, the Perfect Killing Machine!”
We are escorted to the nearby San Pedro boat slip by one of Cayo Espanto's staff, who radios ahead with our drink orders. The downpour has turned the town of San Pedro into a bog of muddy destitution. Or at least a very good imitation of it. I am assured repeatedly that what I am seeing is not abject poverty so much as the aftermath of the devastation of Hurricane Keith, which blew through in October 2000. The improvised, ramshackle nature of the town is only the result of the houses that were reassembled from the salvaged lumber.
By contrast, Cayo Espanto, a five-minute boat ride across not unpleasantly sulfur-scented water, is a scant three acres of immaculately raked white sand and evenly spaced palm trees. It is a serene and lovely antidote to the debris-strewn urbanity of San Pedro. That I should feel such relief calls up its own uneasiness, which is only amplified by the eight staff members who have come to greet our arrival. They might easily take shelter from the rain under one of the two palm-thatched palapas at the end of the dock, but are instead obediently lined up in the drizzle like the von Trapp children being disciplined. The long dock is edged on both sides with conch shells, their furled pink openings facing out. Appropriate for the weekend photo shoot, like a landing strip at Georgia O'Keeffe International Airport. Incoming vaginas!
A young man holds an umbrella over my head and escorts me to my villa, the Casa Olita, or Little Wave House. This is Obed, my personal houseman. Obed will spend the next twenty-four hours at my beck and call, announcing his presence with a dulcet “hello” a deferential ten feet from the louvered doors of my private house.
Let me say that Cayo Espanto is really beautiful and everyone with whom I came in contact there was endlessly solicitous and very nice. A few days prior to my arrival, I had been sent a three-page questionnaire about my likes and dislikes in food, bedding, activities, do I prefer to be spoiled with attention or to be left alone, etc. If you have a large gunnysack of disposable income and you are looking for pampering and relaxation, you simply cannot find a better place than this tropical paradise.
It's just that I am not big on pampering and relaxation. I can't help feeling that the world's laziest coal miner is probably in greater need of a vacation like this than the most dogged CEO. As for myself, I haven't put in anything resembling an honest day's work in years so I am uncomfortable, to say the least, with being given a servant.
The playmates arrive later in the afternoon. I walk down to the dock to greet them, taking my place in line with the staff. The girls have no idea who I am, but as I am the only one holding a notebook and not wearing a uniform, all three ladies see fit to kiss me hello on both cheeks. We have no real common language so they settle on telling me just their names and countries of origin. They are Alejandra from Venezuela, the contest winner, and her two runners up: Vanessa from Argentina, and from Brazil, Patricia, or Patty for short, which in her own liquid-mouthed pronunciation of it sounds like the word “party” said by a lugubrious Brit. They are very sweet and seem quite pretty, but at twenty-three, twenty-three, and twenty-one years of age, respectively, and not yet sporting their Playboy makeup, they also seem ridiculously young. Exhausted from their long trip, they go off to bed, leaving me behind to have my full Cayo Espanto experience.
An experience best shared by two, it must be said. Everything is designed for coupled isolation here: the pair of teak deck chairs at the end of my long private dock, the intimate dining table at the foot of my king-size bed. The five villas of the island are invisible one from the other. The reality TV show Temptation Island filmed its “dream date” sequence on Cayo Espanto for a reason.
But I am not on a dream date, indeed as I almost never am. Rather, I am Charles Foster Kane in the final reel, standing by myself looking out at the ocean from beside my personal splash pool. My very good supper is a meal for one, eaten while staring out at the black sea. At one point, in the palmy shadows just off of my veranda, a man in full mariachi regalia plays guitar and sings two plaintive songs just for me. I don't speak Spanish, but I'm pretty sure the chorus of one of them is, “David, you will die alone.” The mosquito netting is prepared around my bed and I retire, the aging tycoon lulled to sleep by the rhythmic pumping, pumping of his oil wells.
I wake at sunrise with my usual need to pee that graduates to desperate as I try to find my way out from under the mosquito netting, a ninety-second procedure to untangle myself from what must conservatively be forty yards of fabric. The rain is gone and the day has dawned cloudless and blue, the ocean an expanse of celadon. It is Playboy weather. At only 8:00 a.m., the sun is already beating down like a bell clapper and the temperature is climbing steadily. I make my way a hundred yards across the sand over to where the girls are staying.
All is happy industry here at the Casa Aurora (House of the Rising Sun, heh heh). The ladies have made themselves at home. Clearly someone is studying English, but it seems like the classic Playmate stereotype when I spy the two books on the small coffee table: Pinocchio and the Whale and I Love Boats! The music blares, Vanessa is tanning and doing her nails on the deck, Patty is having her hair done. Alejandra is going through possible outfits with the producer and photographer. The entire wardrobe for a two-day shoot involving three women could fit into your average dopp kit. The bed is a flimsy profusion of marabou-trimmed panties, bras, and see-through tops.
Alejandra is included in the deliberations as she tries on various ensembles. “This is it?” she asks, rather disappointed in the cream thong and sheer cream crop top. “It's too simple.” She's right, actually. Even I can see that there is something a little austere and athletic about the getup. More J. Crew than Playboy. Finally settling on a black thong and a bra with looping arcs of hanging jet beads, Alejandra looks like a Victorian lampshade. A Victorian lampshade with enormous knockers. Impressive rack notwithstanding, however, Alejandra has the virtually hairless, slim-hipped build of a twelve-year-old boy.
Thoughts of twelve-year-old boys aren't really out of place. Their hormonal spirit is the guiding aesthetic force behind Sesión Privada. The show is predicated on that horny preteen-male belief that, even
better than seeing a naked woman, being a naked woman would be the best thing in the whole world. One's privada moments would involve little more than standing in front of a mirror, gazing at the intoxicating proximity of your hot, nude, nude, totally nude lady self.
Patty is the first to demonstrate, as she stands wearing a see-through top and thong in the striped sunlight on the deck of a villa, undulating pre-orgasmically to no apparent stimulus. She looks into the camera, her beryl-green eyes closed to fiery slits. There is no come-hither in her gaze. No one else need ever show up. Holding on, Samson-like, to the louvered doors, she arches her back and throws her blond mane.
“Ah, the Playboy hair toss. Never seen that before,” says the producer.
I take refuge in the shade. Obed appears with an iced towel for me to put against the back of my neck. Small lizards skitter back and forth while a hermit crab makes achingly slow progress across the sand. I strike up a conversation with the hair-and-makeup guy. He tells me about the competition these women have won. It was just a garden-variety beauty contest with one glaring difference.
“Okay,” he murmurs conspiratorially, pitching his voice somewhat lower and leaning in, “these are not girls from the United States. They don't wax, they don't tweeze, they don't pluck. I was exhausted.”
In truth, I'm not sure that bushier eyebrows or unmodified treasure trails would have changed anything, really. Hairy or smooth, the antics are fairly banal. It's a pretty uncomplex transaction.