Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  Mom and me on her visit to Paris, 1974. She’d waited a quarter of a century to make this trip, and the city was everything she’d dreamed and more.

  Mom came to visit me at my apartment in Châtelet. It was her first trip to Europe—she’d been about to go on the Queen Mary when she got pregnant with me, so Aunt Helen had gone instead—and I don’t remember her ever being so excited. She brought loads of fancy clothes for partying, and I did not disappoint her. She had waited twenty-four years to get there, and I was going to make sure she had the time of her life.

  First I took her to the South of France (I had a job there), where the highlight of the trip was a visit to the Musée Picasso in Antibes. Mom spent a full day there, just soaking up the genius of one of her favorite artists. When we got back to Paris, we saw all the sights that she’d heard about for years from Aunt Helen and from my godmother, Henriette Metcalf. We walked past the houses where Gertrude Stein had held her famous salons and where Isadora Duncan’s brother Raymond used to live (once, when I was in that neighborhood, I’d gotten up the nerve to knock on the door of Raymond Duncan’s house, and it was answered by Jessica Lange, then just another American in Paris who was studying mime and subletting the place); we visited the cafés and restaurants that Henriette and her circle had frequented; and we ascended to the top of the Eiffel Tower and gazed at all of Paris laid out before us. Most gratifying (for me, anyway) was when Mom purchased a sketchbook and some pencils and began drawing the city’s muted gray beauty one chilly afternoon as we floated down the Seine on the Bateaux-Mouches. It had been years since I’d seen her making art, and my heart was flooded with joy. Thank God for fashion, I thought, not for the first time. Because of all that fashion had done for me, I was able to spirit my mom away from my awful stepfather and bring her to the city of her dreams, even if it was only for a week and a half.

  For the pièce de résistance, we had a night out on the town. Thanks to Antonio and both Juans, I knew plenty of boys, and we had about nine of them as our escorts. Mom, decked out in a long evening dress with a feathered boa, fit right in. We went straight to Club Sept, where we had dinner next to Liberace. When the dancing started, I strutted over and set a candelabra in front of him. He threw back his head, roared with laughter, and gave Mom, who was directly to his right, a big kiss. She was tickled pink. Afterward, we all walked down toward the river holding our champagne glasses, with the boys singing under the moonlight, serenading Mom. Everyone adored my mother, and I never saw her have so much fun.

  A couple of days later, my friend Roz came to visit from the United States, and I prepared a beautiful lunch for the three of us. Can you believe we all got food poisoning? My mom and Roz had a minor case; I got so ill I almost died. All I remember is Mom and Roz crying over me in the ambulance as I was rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped, and me thinking, After almost drowning in shark-infested water in Kenya, this is how I’m going to die—from eating bad fish in Paris? Fortunately, I survived, but the doctors kept me in the hospital for an extra twenty-four hours for observation. Mom had to go back to America the next day, but at least she knew I was alive. As she was leaving for the airport, she told me, “I always wanted to live in Paris, but I never got here until now. Thank you for making my dream come true.”

  “I know, Ma,” I said, still groggy from my ordeal but aware that this was an important moment. Mom wasn’t big on verbalizing her emotions, so I had to make sure she understood that I understood. Hugging her as hard as I could manage, I whispered, “I know, I know. I’m living your dream for both of us. You’re with me every step of the way.”

  Not long after that, Juan left for London, and then I began to feel very lonely. Hans Feurer, one of my favorite photographers (not to mention one of the nicest people on earth), came over sometimes to keep me company. Funny, a great listener, and a fantastic cook—he taught me how to prepare a Swiss fruit dessert according to a recipe that had been handed down in his family—Hans filled a void, and we had some great times together. But what I really hungered for was love.

  In that year of living dangerously—I mean, two near-death experiences (three, if you count the threat of fire in my apartment)—there was one more dicey episode that brought me closer than I cared to be to criminal behavior, though only by association.

  I had become pals with a Venezuelan artist with the improbable name of Victor Hugo (perhaps this connected up karmically with the stolen bread and Juan, the latter-day Jean Valjean). Victor had started out as a hustler and a call boy, but Halston had become obsessed with him and, designating Victor his “in-house artist,” gave Victor the entire top floor of his townhouse to live in. Victor was every inch the wild and edgy Latin artiste, and he was a ton of fun to boot. He loved to do naughty things and never apologized for them. And he was talented in a provocative way. He created daring window displays at Halston’s boutique on Madison Avenue and later worked as an assistant to Andy Warhol at the Factory, where one of his special duties was peeing on Andy’s series of “oxidation” paintings (canvases that Andy coated with copper-laced paint that reacted chemically with Victor’s urine to produce beautifully iridescent, strangely colored imagery). Andy and his minions found this uproarious because Victor was so exceedingly well endowed.

  There’s no question that Victor used Halston, who was a naturally trusting man, but Victor did genuinely love him. Every other word out of his mouth concerned Halston: Will Halston like this? Will Halston be there? This is for Halston. I loved Halston, too; Victor and I had that in common. One day I ran into Victor on the Left Bank just as he was getting out of a taxi in front of a cheap hotel in the Latin Quarter. He was in Paris for a week, he said, and despite the Louis Vuitton luggage he was carrying (it belonged to Halston), he had very little money and couldn’t afford a decent hotel.

  I had no bookings the following day, so Victor and I made a date to see the sights. Clad in our matching black Yves Saint Laurent capes, which were all the rage, we set off the next morning from the lobby of his hotel. Our first stop was the Louvre. We’d been enjoying the art for about an hour when we came to an area underneath the museum where there was a storage room. (Electronic surveillance was in its infancy back then, and it was relatively easy to wander all over in a place like the Louvre without alarms sounding.) Victor told me to wait outside while he had a look around, so I did. Five minutes later, he came out, holding his cape tightly closed in the front. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask, just hurry up.”

  I had no idea what was going on, but he was walking so fast that I just ran along behind him in my high heels, following him out of the museum and back to the hotel. He sprinted up three flights of stairs with me tagging behind, quickly opened the door to his room, yanked me inside, slammed the door, then reached into his cape and pulled out a rolled-up canvas. “I just stole this painting,” he said.

  Whaaaaaaaat? I thought. Who steals a painting from the Louvre? He unrolled the painting, a small landscape with figures whose creator’s name he never divulged (perhaps he didn’t know it), and spread it lovingly across the bed. “I’m the only person in the world who should have this painting,” he announced, stepping back to survey his plunder.

  Flushed with excitement at his caper, Victor grabbed me and began kissing me and tearing off my clothes in a kind of frenzy. What can I say? He was a really attractive guy, and that kind of sexual ferocity is contagious. We paused just long enough for him to roll up the canvas and place it on the desk before we toppled onto the sheets together. Afterward, he said, “I’m going to give this painting to Halston as a present when I get back.” Wait, I thought. Didn’t you just tell me you were the only person in the world who should have the painting? Consistency wasn’t Victor’s strong suit.

  I didn’t see Victor again during his visit, and he left Paris a few days later. As for the painting, that was the first and last time I ever laid eyes on it. Maybe he returned it.
Otherwise—since neither he nor Halston is around to ask—its whereabouts are anybody’s guess.

  chapter 43

  LOVE HURTS

  Being so scantily dressed was a risk in a place where women cover up to their eyes. Luxor, Egypt, 1975.

  Courtesy of Pelito Galvez.

  One of the lasting legacies of my long involvement with Matthew was my continuing quest for spiritual enlightenment. Matthew had turned me on to some of the writings and practices of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, and my curiosity about these traditions stayed with me long after our relationship ended. Unfortunately, the world of fashion was not always compatible with this side of my personality: Many of the people I met during my modeling career cared about very little beyond clothes or their own image. But when I got together with Pelito Galvez, a raven-haired, green-eyed Argentine photographer who was also a devoted yogi, I thought I’d finally found a kindred spirit, someone who shared my own commitment to mindfulness and meditation.

  I’d met Pelito in 1972 when I visited Karl Lagerfeld in Saint-Tropez—that was the trip when I introduced Karl to his life partner, Jacques de Bascher, and first encountered the divine André Leon Talley (then a new college graduate who nervously approached me in the train station to say how much he admired me)—but Pelito and I didn’t become a couple until late 1974. By then I was an acolyte of the esteemed guru Swami Satchidananda and an ardent practitioner of hatha yoga, which the swami helped popularize in the United States. (Remember, back in the seventies, yoga was still quite rare; the only person I knew who did it was my friend Roz.)

  Meeting the swami was one of those life-changing events that happen seemingly out of the blue but in retrospect feel predestined. I was in New York on a business trip from Paris in late 1971 and was coming back after a long day’s work to the Greenwich Village apartment where I was staying with a friend. I was strolling along West Thirteenth Street when a peaceful feeling came over me. Something was drawing me toward a building across the street, so I crossed over and found myself standing in front of a storefront that looked like some sort of hangout for hippies. An Indian-print bedspread covered the window, and the scent of incense wafted over me. In the corner of the window, I noticed a small sign that read “Integral Yoga.” The door opened, and a young man with a welcoming smile ushered me inside. I felt buoyant as I followed him up the stairs to the second floor. There, in a big room, were about a dozen people dressed in white, sitting cross-legged on the floor with perfect posture. The young man asked if I wanted to join them for a class of hatha. I had nothing else to do, so I said yes. I sat in the room with the others, closed my eyes, and tried to relax every muscle in my body. When I opened my eyes, there before me was the founder of Integral Yoga, Swami Satchidananda. His name was an amalgam of three Sanskrit words meaning essence, consciousness, and bliss.

  Swami became my teacher, and for the next few weeks, while I was in New York, I was a regular student, practicing all the postures and breathing techniques he taught me and learning to chant the Om Namah Shivaya (I Bow to Shiva) mantra. Before I left New York, I was considered one of the most dedicated students of hatha yoga at Integral Yoga, so I, along with a few other aspiring hatha yoga teachers, was invited to a private dinner for Swami Satchidananda.

  The day of the dinner, I was stuck until quite late at one of those hectic, frenzied shoots, and there was no time to go home and change. So I went straight from the set to the dinner, which was at an ashram on the Upper West Side, wearing black leather pants, boots, and vest, and carrying my heavy model bag. My face was covered in a thick layer of white powder, my lips were bright red, and my eyes were coated with sparkly eye shadow and three pairs of false eyelashes. I came into the ashram panting because I was late and rushing; the ten other invited guests were already seated at a long table.

  The room seemed lit with a peaceful yellow light as Swami, looking beatific in his white robes, long white hair and beard, and contented smile, entered. Everyone stood and listened to Swami as he welcomed us and urged us to ask him any question, which he would then try to answer. My hand shot up, and Swami bowed his head in my direction. “Namaste, Swami,” I said, bowing with my hands in prayer position. “I have only one desire.”

  “What might that be?” Swami smiled patiently.

  I took a deep breath and screwed up all my courage. “I would like to be a yoga teacher.”

  Swami looked at me and started to chuckle. I thought he was pleased with my question until I realized that I’d forgotten what I was wearing. In all that black leather and makeup, I looked like the devil himself. The other yogis looked on in horror as Swami smiled at me without speaking. I wanted to melt into the floor. Then Swami said, “Are you a good yogi? You can become a siddha if you practice sincerely.”

  “I am,” I said to Swami.

  “Then, my dear, I say to you with all my heart that you could become a model guru.”

  I felt I had failed. What did he mean by “model guru”? That didn’t sound like a teacher. Was he making fun of my profession? Plenty of people knocked modeling as superficial and frivolous. Was that what he believed, too?

  “I see you are a good yogi,” Swami continued, “and you will be a very good teacher.”

  When he uttered those words, my heart felt as if it would burst with joy. He sees the real me, I thought. He sees past all the paint and the clothes all the way to my heart.

  He gave me his blessings, and I bowed and thanked him. And I have carried the jewel of his blessing and his teachings (which draw on many faiths, not simply Hinduism) ever since.

  Given how profoundly affected I was by my interactions with Swami Satchidananda, and how interested I was in yoga, I was understandably drawn to Pelito when I met him for the second time in Paris in 1974. Pelito was studying the I Ching and the tarot and was deeply into yoga and meditation. He was the most exciting man I’d met in ages, and we seemed like a perfect fit in every way, not least because he was a photographer and I was a model. We made several trips to Amsterdam and London, doing pictures for the UK-based 19 and Honey magazines, and everything we did turned out beautifully. All the editors and art directors to whom we showed the photos fell completely in love with them.

  Our life together was somewhat less smooth, most likely (I say this with the benefit of hindsight) because I loved him more than he loved me. Indeed, the word “love” doesn’t even capture how I felt about him, though I was convinced that in him I had found the great and lasting love I’d long been seeking. “Obsessed” is more like it. Whether Pelito realized it or not, I saw him as my spiritual superior—my guru, really—and I worried constantly about pleasing him. Indeed, looking back, I’m staggered at the amount of energy I spent simply trying to keep Pelito happy, to stay on his good side. In the end, nothing I did was sufficient.

  Our big plan, after shooting in various European cities for paying clients, was to go to Egypt together and explore and take pictures on our own, selling them afterward. We were confident we could do so. In London, at the Vogue offices, Grace Coddington and Norman Parkinson were so taken with the work Pelito and I had done for 19 that they gave us bags of Capezio clothes to take to Egypt and photograph me wearing them “any way you want,” and told us they’d find a way to use the pictures. (They ended up liking Pelito’s photos so much that Norman Parkinson replicated them almost exactly with a different model, and Vogue published his photos!) It says everything about our relationship and its balance of power that Pelito unilaterally called off the trip several times before we took off. We had terrible fights, and he would tell me he was leaving. I had to beg and beg, in English and in Spanish, for him to stay and go to Egypt with me as we’d planned. I’m not sure if it was love or pity that caused him to capitulate.

  We started out in Spain, where we took beautiful photos in Ibiza. We had packed all our personal belongings into one small rucksack each, which we had bought at an army shop in a London flea market. (For once, I left my pink Samsonite behind, knowing it would
stick out like a neon sign in Egypt.) Each bag held a toothbrush, black pencils, two changes of underwear, one book (the I Ching, which we faithfully studied), a pack of tarot cards, which we’d learned to read from a teacher in a sketchy part of Paris, and—oh yes—a considerable amount of money in traveler’s checks, supplied by me.

  One thing we did consistently on our trip (indeed, throughout our entire relationship) was meditate; this was a lesson we’d learned in Amsterdam, where I received my first mantra, “I am.” I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but I repeated it every morning.

  Pelito, whose father was a famous racecar driver in Argentina, spoke Spanish, French, and Italian in addition to flawless English. His gift for languages—including, I discovered in Egypt, a smattering of Arabic—was one of the qualities about him that captivated me; his voice and his way with words were like music. He was smarter than I was about so much; he knew where to go and how to get around with ease almost anywhere in the world.

  We arrived in Cairo without a hotel but found one on a side street and went out in search of a drink of strawberry or watermelon juice. It was unbearably hot, but we decided to visit the Pyramids. That was why we were here, after all—to see the sights. We entered the first one crawling on our hands and knees. The space was large enough to accommodate one very bulky person at a time; after that, the tunnel grew smaller and narrower. A German couple behind me turned back when the passage got narrow. I soldiered on. All at once there was no light. Pelito said I was crawling too slowly, so he sped ahead of me, leaving me alone. The guide, an Egyptian man dressed in white linen pants, white robe, and turban, had been in front of Pelito, so I was truly on my own.

  The dust, the darkness, and the tiny space started to get to me. Then the space got even tighter and I was no longer on all fours—I was on my stomach, unable even to arch my back. I inched along, hoping to see light, and you can be sure that I spoke to God, especially when I got to the bend in the tunnel. I called out to Pelito in the blackness, and he didn’t answer. So I kept sliding forward, my entire body trembling, my spine throbbing, for the next ten minutes. I could feel that the tunnel was descending deeper into the tomb, and there was no way to turn around. I was thinking about the vipers and the snakes and wondering what would happen if I encountered one. Instead of a viper, it was a rat that I ended up nose to nose with. Thankfully, the rat scurried away, leaving me with only the roaring drumbeat of my heart and the old pain in my spine, which started to radiate throughout my body. I crawled on, hoping, quite literally, to find the light at the end of the tunnel. Suddenly, I found myself all alone in a large square space with natural light coming from above; I believe it was the king’s chamber, or maybe it was the queen’s.