by Cleo Odzer
Thank you very much. Dandruff. I'm going to get you for this, I thought, while I smiled at him. "Are you all right?" I asked. At that moment I needed a fellow sufferer more than I needed an enemy.
It was still the middle of the night when the jeep brought us to the police station, and our arrival woke the servants who'd been, sleeping on the concrete floor of the courtyard. After depositing Dandruff in an empty cell that said "Lathes," the police escorted me to a narrow room overwhelmed by yellow folders and smelling of an earlier curried meal. "We are having no facilities for you," the inspector told me. "You must be spending the night in this office." He spoke Hindi to a servant who'd scurried in behind us. After producing blankets of the same type I'd seen wrapped around Dandruff, the servant was dismissed for the night "Here, you sleep here," the inspector said as he spread blankets on the floor; one, half under the desk and another, a few feet away. Then came a clanging of chains. "Come, you are lying down now." I sat on the floor and tried to make a pillow of my handbag, bunching it into a ball. He approached me. "I am sorry, I must manacle you. Please, you are lying down." He kneeled near me with a gigantically thick chain that should not have been used for anything smaller than an elephant. "Here. You are putting your foot here." I moved as directed until the bottom half of me lay under the desk. He chained my ankle to its initial leg. Theo he went to the other blanket and turned out the light.
The ceiling fan revolved slowly. I could barely feel the stirred air passing through the top wisps of my hair. Outside in the station courtyard the sounds of activity grew quieter as the servants settled hack down for the night A door slammed at the end of the corridor, and I heard a foreign shout in the distance. An answering shout came in more words I couldn't understand. My shoulder blades dog into the floor, but I couldn't turn to the side with my foot chained to the desk.
I cried.
Chained under a desk, deep inside a police station somewhere in New Delhi, in India, in the middle of the night—I didn't want to think. I wanted desperately to sleep—sleep and let all this go away for a while.
I suspected, though, I wouldn't be able to do that just yet.
And there he was. As the last thump and shuffle moved off in the distance, there was the inspector at my side, right up against me. He stroked my hair and, with a sexual smirk in his voice, said, "You are not having to cry. I can make everything okay for you. I can take away this manacle even, if you are wishing."
The scratchy surface of the handbag itched my neck. How had I gotten myself into this mess? Somewhere along the way I'd lost control of my life. Something somewhere had escaped me. But it had all been so wonderful—hadn't it? I'd created the perfect home for myself in Goa. Goa was my dream community, my fantasy paradise. It represented everything I'd ever wanted.
But I wasn't in Goa at the moment. Goa seemed worlds away. What had gone wrong?
As the inspector fondled my hair, I remembered my mother's night time touch when I was a little girl. She'd sit on my bed and caress me until I fell asleep. Sometimes she'd sing a Song about dolls or a Swiss man who made cheese. This only happened on Thursdays, though, because that was the government's day off.
The only child of a wealthy family, I grew up in a large New York City apartment overlooking Central Park. We had a cook and a cleaning lady. I had a French nanny and went to a French school, driven there in a chauffeured limousine. Nobody in the family was French; but French was chic and the family was very chic. We spent the nasty months of the year in a Florida hotel, the Eden Roc, in which my father had a partnership. I was raised in the good life, destined for JAPHood—the coddled existence of a Jewish American Princess.
As I approached my teen years my father developed Parkinson's disease. Stories of his falling in the subway and being helped home by strangers made my heart ache. During New York's famous blackout, his blank gaze as he sat in his candlelit wheelchair made me realize he was no longer cognizant.
As I watched his mind and body deteriorate, I was unaware that our finances were doing the same. By the time I was old enough to appreciate grandeur, we no longer lived in it. It took my father years to the, years spend as a vegetable. In the meantime, my mother thought it better to let me run wild than to keep me home while he wasted away. And run wild I did.
"What's going on here?" she asked once, entering my room.
A group of us lay on the floor, speechless, enraptured by a swirly design that circled round and round. Marijuana smoke fogged the air, but my mother couldn't identify the smell. I was fifteen.
"Hey, Momsy. Look at this! Psychedelic!"
The guys had long, straggly hair. My mother stared at one wearing a toga and makeup. Over the sound of the Rolling Stones she yelled, "Cook said dinner will be ready at seven."
"We're going for pizza," I answered, my eyes pleading her not to object. She glanced again at the toga. "Momsy, I can't eat here. Please?" She hesitated but, as always, she let me go. She knew how it hurt me to watch my father's spastic body be fed by the nurse, food dribbling from his chin. "And, Momsy, would you dose the door, please?"
Out every night from the age of fifteen, I became a regular on the disco scene. No club charged me admission; everybody knew me by the age on my phoney I.D. At seventeen I wrote a column in Downtown, a Greenwich Village newspaper. "Pop Sounds by Cleo," it was called. I got free concert passes to interview musicians backstage.
Despite the nocturnal pursuits, I did not drop out of school. In fact, achieved my highest grades while at my wildest. I'd always hated being told what to do—when Momsy said be home by eleven, I sneaked out again at midnight—and until my junior year in high school I'd been a terrible student. Three schools had expelled me, the French one and two others. But then I transferred to Quintanos School for Young Professionals. For models, actors, and rock musicians, this school catered to the weirdo. At Quintanos, students weren't required to learn at all. In this atmosphere I flourished. Rarely would I be graded less than an A. With no one forcing me to study, I did it because I liked it.
By my nineteenth birthday, my father had died, the money was gone, and my mother had to move to a smaller apartment with no room for me. Though it had been my idea to five alone, I'd wanted privacy, not excommunication, which was what the Break in standard of living brought me. With the cessation of my weekly allowance, I felt immediately excluded from my previous life. Our old kitchen had been so big it needed a sink at both ends; now all I had was a toaster oven on the bed stand of my rented room.
When I visited Momsy, she took me on a sad tour of the apartment she'd crammed herself into—five huge rooms on the sixteenth Floor of an elegant building on lower Fifth Avenue.
She wailed forlornly, "I don't know how I'll avoid claustrophobia here. And I can only afford the cleaning lady three days a week." The second bedroom had been converted to a library, and she gestured defeatedly, telling of the books she'd thrown out to accommodate the smaller shelf space.
"Momsy, I have a cavity and need a dentist," I told her.
"Baby, I wish I could help, but I just sent the sable to the furrier to be shortened and I haven't a cent left. With short skirts in style, I look retarded in a long coat, and I can't afford a new one."
With my mother barely able to maintain herself. I'd have to make my own way. There wasn't sufficient insurance money to support us both. But what was I supposed to do? I'd been raised to be a rich man's daughter. No one had geared me for the proletariat.
Bootlessly adrift, I felt homeless and even stateless. New York wasn't hospitable. There was nothing for me there. I tried modelling, but my measly five feet three inches disqualified me from the profession. What to do?
Eventually I decided to go away. My bank account totalled twelve hundred dollars, a life's worth of birthday presents from relatives. And so, after closing the account, I left the United States, bought an old car in Paris, and became a free-spirited traveller.
"Where are you going?" the European border guards would ask as I drove up in my co
lourful car. I'd painted a smiling face on the hood; on the roof, a cracked raw egg ran yellow and white into the bright colours of the car doors. A purple ghost on the trunk snarled at riders behind me who objected to my novice driving skills.
"I'm just going," I would answer.
"What happened to your front license plate?" they'd ask next, noticing its absence.
"It fell off. But the numbers are there—see them?" I'd painted the license number in the smiling mouth. It looked like teeth.
During the two and a half years I travelled around Europe and the Middle East, I modelled. In countries without blue-eyed blondes, I did well. In Greece you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing me with a tube of toothpaste or a can of deodorant, and I even performed minor parts in movies. In other countries, though, such as Holland with its lofty blondes, I was again too short to model. When winter made it too cold to sleep in the car, I lived on people's floors or in hippie hideaways in abandoned buildings. Poverty was okay if you were a traveller; then it made it a statement: I'm a rebel in search of a better world. I'm a flower child protesting capitalist values. I'm not part of your system.
"Hi, there. Remember me? Can I sleep on your floor again tonight? I'll be leaving soon for the Sinai in Israel. Heard there's a scene happening there in the desert."
Being "on the road" was a great way to meet people and have adventures. After a while, though, I tired of leaving places. I wanted a home, but I needed a place with people who had my kind of visions, people free from societal mores and the restraints of tradition. So far I hadn't found anything like that.
"Go to India," someone told me. "That's where the Freaks five."
I'd met a few Freaks here and there in my travels. From a variety of nationalities, they were people who'd given up their motherlands and their former lifestyles. They had a creative outlook on life and a collection of utopian ideals—plus an urge to have fun and avoid work.
"Really?" I asked. "Where in India?"
"Goa."
September 1975
I BOUNCED INTO India on an overland bus I'd boarded in Athens. Specks of dirt and dost hovered in the air and covered everything by the time the other young passengers and I crossed from Pakistan via an unpaved road. The flies that’d joined us in Lahore were still with us, though their buzzing couldn't be heard over the blasting rock music. We'd been on the road six weeks, and as one of my feet scraped the floor, it gouged a path through a melange of dirt from Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A sample of this international sniff could also be found in my ears, in my nasal passages, under my nails, and now a chunk of the Indian variety was crusting in the corners of my eves. But this was India—INDIA!—and I was ready and eager to experience the East. Something special awaited me here—I could feel it. Maybe this was where I'd find a home.
In New Delhi, our first stop, some passengers got off and we picked up new ones. The new people had an indescribable quality about them. You could tell they'd been in the East a while. Their clothes hung looser, their mannerisms seemed freer, and they had a certain inner tranquillity. One American couple, Paul and Pam, both with waist-length, wavy brown hair, told us they'd been living in Goa four years. Paul, in white, flowing pants and a white top, stood in the front of the bus and helped with directions. I watched Pam to discover what gave her that "devour."
Whatever it was, I wanted it.
In Bombay, we parked overnight to sleep in the bus near the marble columned Taj Mahal Hotel where two German women and I took a refreshing sponge bath in the lathes' room of the lobby. On the way back, with washed underwear in our hands, we noticed what seemed like oblong bundles of garbage against the hotel's wall. I froze as a bundle moved, half expecting a rat to run out.
"What's the matter?" one of the Germans whispered.
The three of us remained still as we realized the oblong shapes lined both sides of the street.
"Look!" A bit of hair protruded from the far end of one; from the other, bare feet. I pointed to a baby arm sticking out from a tiny one. "They're people!"
"Baksheesh," someone said, suddenly taking hold of my elbow. I turned to see a woman in a ripped sari holding a baby with an oily streak across its face. "Paisa," she said holding her palm out and then gesturing toward her mouth. "Paisa."
Another beggar appeared next to us, and two were detached from their rag bundles and headed in our direction. A child took hold of my ruffled dress and stuffed the edge of a ruffle in her mouth.
Was this where I wanted to five? "Let's get out of here," I said.
The next afternoon we were to leave for Goa. I spent the morning looking for a place to leave my enormous suitcase, so full of clothes they'd called me Hippie Deluxe in Europe. I wanted to bring only the minimum with me—a few outfits packed in a sleeping bag. I also needed a safe place to leave my portfolio of modelling pictures. If I lost that, I wouldn't be able to work.
By ten in the morning, Bombay's heat had baked my bones. Though it didn't take long to find a hotel storage facility for my luggage, I was at a loss over what to do with my pictures. After hours of unsuccessful inquiry. I parked myself in six square inches of shade under a traffic signal. Sweaty and exasperated, I was sure I'd scream if one more beggar touched me.
"You are lost?" an Indian man asked when I remained under the traffic signal after everyone else had crossed the street.
I moaned and stamped my foot. "UH! I don't know where to leave my portfolio; my feet are killing me; it's too hot here; it's too crowded; my bus is going to leave any minute; and these beggars are driving me CRAZY!"
The man smiled tolerantly and gave me his card. "I work for Indian Airlines. You see there—it is just down the roadway. Would you like for me to show you around the city?"
"I'm heading for Goa soon," I told him. "Do you know where I could leave my portfolio? It's my most valuable possession and I don't want to take it with me."
"Why, I will hold it for you if you wish. You can find me in the office every work day. Perhaps on your return to Bombay you will let inc escort you to dinner."
I looked him over—gray tie; pointy, polished shoes. Perfect! Where could I find a safer place than with this nice business man in his nice suit? "Great!"
I handed over the portfolio. He looked so reliable, I didn't bother to ask where he'd put it. Hidden behind a picture were two hundred dollars in traveller’s checks, half the money I had left in the world. I wanted to set that aside for an emergency.
That afternoon our bus began the final lap of the journey. It took fifteen hours from Bombay to the border of Goa and would take another ten to Calangute, our destination. A colony of Portugal until 1961, Goa revealed itself to be different from the India we'd seen so far. No desperate poverty, for one thing. And the countryside—wow! All we'd seen previously had been dry desert land; Goa was green and lush with vegetation. Giant leaves hung over the road, periodically skimming the roof of the bus.
"YEOW!" yelled a surprised passenger as a super-leaf slid in the window and poked her in the cheek. We drove through the oversized greenery in awed silence. Having travelled, cramped and hurled about, for six weeks, we'd finally arrived in Goa.
The road lay bare except for the occasional ox cart, a few bicycles, some cows, and chickens—lots of chickens. At a ferry crossing, we had to get off the bus. From a mound of dirt on the side, we watched the old-timers Paul and Pam direct the big vehicle onto the small boat.
Apparently the government was in the process of building a bridge across the river. Steel structures strode a hundred yards into the water and ended abruptly, looking as if their construction workers head just then for lunch.
"It's been like that for years," said Pam, "and I've never seen anyone working on it." Nothing happened fast in India.
Half an hour after reaching the other side, we arrived at the ocean.
Tall palms leaned over the calm water, and pastel Portuguese-style houses could be seen through bushes. Occasionally, a dog would run out and bark at
us for disturbing the quiet.
In late afternoon we pulled into Calangute. My fellow travellers collected their gear and dispersed in twos and threes. I'd never noticed before—was I the only one travelling alone?
"Bye," I said, waving to the German women as they dragged away a duffel bag. "Ciao," I said to an Italian couple after lifting a backpack onto a back.
Now what do I do?
The blue Mercedes bus seemed friendly and familiar. I hesitated to leave it. I looked around. It was parked in a paved square near the sea. The sun was almost down. Soon the drivers, Tom and Julian, with whom I'd barely spoken during the voyage, were the only ones left by the bus. Tom, an American, with red hair and pale skin, leaned against the rear of the vehicle. Julian, an Englishman with shoulder-length brown curls, stood next to him. I knew they'd been driving Freak buses back and forth from Athens to Amsterdam, but this was their first trip to India. Suddenly alone after weeks with fellow trail mates, I began to find Tom appealing. I looked once more around the empty square and back stepped to where he stooped over a rear wheel.
"Is it okay?" I asked.
He knocked the tire with his sandaled foot and looked up. "Sure. We're just, you know, checking that everything's tiptop for the trip to Delhi."
"When are you going?"
"Tomorrow."
"So soon?"
"We'll be back in ten days. We plan to, you know, return here for a vacation after making a bit more money driving."
I hung around until they locked the bus, and then the three of us went to an outdoor restaurant. We watched the sky darken pinkish over the beach. I leaned toward Tom and asked, "Where are you staying tonight?"
"I guess you know, find a room somewhere."
"Can I stay with you?"
The freckles on his cheeks shifted as his face crinkled in delight. "Sure."
After dinner the three of us took a walk to the beach and then back around the square. Palm leaf shacks, called chai shops, edged the asphalted area. Chai means "tea" in Hindi, and though they probably did have tea, from their many misspelled signs I gathered that they specialized in milkshakes flavoured with the fruit of the season, the current one being mango. The chai shops were full of travellers, barefoot, tanned, with hair that had that bristly, salt-water look. As we strolled, Julian kicked along a coconut shell. A curl fell in front of his eyes when he looked down. Cute. Meanwhile, Tom's arm leaned heavily across my shoulders. Annoyingly, he kept trapping my hair under his arm.