We then went on to ski jobs in St Anton am Arlberg, Austria – me shivering all day on the lifts, Floot working as a housemaid in the home we were staying in. When she was asked to clean up the senile grandfather’s shit, we decided life’s too short!
As the van had Dutch plates we decided to go to Amsterdam to sell it. When we were twenty-three kilometers out, the police pulled us over, checked under the van and told us it was too rusty and they were going to take it to the nearest town and destroy it! Which they did! We caught the train to Amsterdam – which was especially memorable because when we walked in the door of a backpackers, that was the first time I heard Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’
That wonderful traveler’s combo of places, people and songs. Unfortunately they played it over and over and over again …
Having gotten no money for the van, we were almost broke, so Floot and I went back to Ann Arbor to look for work. We landed a job as houseparents in a halfway house for mentally disturbed women. Yes, we were only twenty-three and yes, Michigan had a progressive mental health policy. At any time there were eight patients ranging in age from seventeen to sixty, Floot and me (the only male). Some had tried to kill, some were young and abandoned, all were a constant challenge. I started writing about this extraordinary life and made up little plays, pertaining to their situation, for the women to perform. I learned a lot about women in our nearly two years there – but as I sit here many years later, I know that a lot is never really enough.
After this stint Floot and I decided to use the money we’d saved to travel overland from Istanbul to Australia, and off we set. Just about everywhere was open then on the so-called ‘hippy trail’ – how lucky we were – Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Hindu Kush, Kashmir, Burma, all accessible – not Vietnam as the war was still on, but Laos and Cambodia too.
I am so glad to have stood at the feet of the giant rock Buddhas of Bamiyan that the Taliban have since blown up, and I am almost glad to have taken a certain bus ride in Laos. We were going from Vientiane (a sleepy French colonial town then) to Luang Prabang (a very sleepy village). There were just locals on the bus. Somewhere in the mountains, within the bus – I can only describe it as an unspoken collective vibe – we all started to duck our heads, and then an automatic weapon strafed us, shooting out some windows, but we were all on the floor before the first shot hit. No-one was hurt – they said it was the Pathet Lao – but what intrigues me to this day is how we all felt it coming.
I had used the flute in Europe as the portable icebreaker that it is and was looking forward to joining with all the musical cultures that we would be meeting along the way. Before we left Ann Arbor, my teacher Sam told me that jazz musician Paul Horn had played his flute in the Taj Mahal and that each note stays for fourteen seconds. ‘You need to do this for both of us,’ he said (in E flat).
The first thing we noticed outside the entrance to the Taj Mahal was a sign saying ‘NO FLUTE PLAYING!’ These days I’m sure there’s a flute-metal detector but then we were able to easily walk in with the flute in its pieces tucked away on our bodies. I assembled the flute as far away from the guards as possible and started playing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 2. I’ll never forget those first sounds as the majestic echo of the dome kicked in. The guards came running of course – but then a wonderful thing happened. Lots of tourists pleaded with them, offering money – which they took and signaled that I could play for a few minutes. I was hearing so many notes (indeed chords) by this time that I started to play less and just jammed along with the echo – I’m smiling even now, remembering the gift of those precious moments.
We noticed a lot of fellow travelers were coming down with anything from dysentery to hepatitis. Floot and I had a rule that we would willingly eat all the street food but never drink the water (not even a fast-flowing Nepalese mountain stream). In those days at the end of a twenty-hour Afghani bus ride all you could get was warm Coke or Fanta – no bottled water. We used iodine tablets in a canteen, which tasted horrible, but in our whole trip Floot never got sick once and the only time I came undone was when I had severe runs while crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan through the Khyber Pass! (Yes, the irony!) We were warned of rebels in the area, but I made the bus stop and ran over a hill to relieve myself. When I looked up from my grateful squat I saw men on the nearby ridge cradling guns and laughing themselves stupid. I ran back to the bus.
Sadly, another place you can’t go today is the Swat valley in Pakistan. Floot and I took bus rides following the Swat River northwards. We never saw another Westerner till we came back down again. The dangerous rides had ‘is it your time now’ waiting around every corner as the road wound with the river, across rickety wooden suspension bridges. After a few days, Floot said, ‘Have you noticed the further we go up the valley, each village has more and more men and they have henna in their hair and beards?’ By the time we reached the top, into the Hindu Kush, these red-headed men made up about eighty per cent of the population at the last village we stayed in. I’ve never found an explanation.
Floot and I decided to take a cargo boat from Singapore to eastern Malaysia (three days of rank fish soup), then we took a rubber boat up the Rejang River in Sarawak because we’d heard that the Iban tribespeople (ex-headhunters) lived in huge longhouses on stilts and they welcomed you, if you just arrived there. We spent a night on the boat sleeping on squishy rubber slabs and then traveled all day to well into heart-of-darkness territory. In the late afternoon we got off onto a longhouse to puzzled looks from the Ibans and a grinning rubber boat captain as he went back down the river.
Nobody knew what to do – clearly we weren’t very welcome – and we all just stood around in an uncomfortable no-language void. The longhouse was huge, all the village lived in it, over 500 people. It had wooden and bamboo sides and a thatched roof and went on forever. Floot was making some headway with sign language about the women’s adornments when we heard the faint sound of a wooden flute. I took the flute case out of my pack and when I opened it there was a collective gasp from all around – the three silver pieces shone in the dying shafts of the sun and completely captivated the Ibans. I put it together and started to play something similar to what I was hearing. The astonishment surrounding me was just so sublime – the wonder of these silver sticks put together and now making music caught me up in that magic as well. People came running from everywhere and led us into the longhouse.
We had a very simple meal of fish and rice as the longhouse was lit with candles and lamps. After dinner, musicians assembled with flutes and various percussive instruments and drums and we played together and Floot danced with the women – she looked so beautiful in the golden light. When it was time for bed we were given a spot near a major support pole and left alone.
After a time a man walked by and pointed up at the top of the pole and went on his way. Floot and I took the tip and found footholds and climbed to the top and sat on crossbeams. From there we could see the whole longhouse – families separated by hessian curtains. We stayed up there for hours watching the comings and goings – hearing the soundscape of babies, lovers, snorers – feeling the nightly pulse of the village.
After traveling through seventeen countries over nearly two years we made it to Bali.
Floot’s brother was getting married back in Michigan and her mother had arranged a flight out of Bali for her – I think fearing that if she made it to Australia she might be gone forever. Even Kuta beach was not much more than a collection of shacks then, and that’s the Bali I like to remember.
I went on to Australia and became a filmmaker.
I still have the flute, but never play it – the last time it was played was by my niece at her grandfather’s funeral.
And Floot? Ah, well, that’s another story.
Dolphin Love: A Brazilian Romance
DANA DELANY
Dana Delany has been nominated for five Emmys and won two for China Beach. She has also appeared in the films Tombstone, Light
Sleeper and Route 30, the TV shows Desperate Housewives, Pasadena, True Women and Wild Palms, and the plays Dinner with Friends and Translations. She can currently be seen in Body of Proof on ABC and in the film Freelancers with 50 Cent. Her passions are acting, art and travel. Send her a first class ticket and she’ll meet you anywhere.
It was 1985 and I had just moved to Los Angeles to perform in a play at a tiny theater in Santa Monica. I had done the play off Broadway in New York and the playwright, Nick Kazan, had graciously asked me to be in the LA production. I thought, why not? I actually got to arrive in Hollywood with a job.
And it got even better. Several casting people came to see the play and after several auditions I landed a job in a movie. Not just any movie. One that was shooting in Brazil. I have loved travel since I was a child. I still get excited arriving curbside at any airport. It doesn’t matter that one has to deal with security or lines or people in sweatpants. I’m going somewhere! And that to me means romance and adventure.
The movie was called Where the River Runs Black. It was based on a Brazilian legend about a little boy who is the child of a beautiful young woman and a pink dolphin. I guess that would be the true outcome of ‘dolphin love.’ The boy was raised wild in the Amazon and can swim like a, well, dolphin. I was to play a nun in the orphanage where the boy is taken.
Flying to Brazil on Varig airline was the height of luxury. And I was Flying Down to Rio! It was everything I dreamed of – movies, exotic locations, first class! We changed planes and took a smaller one to Belém, which is the capital of the state of Pará and sits at the mouth of the Amazon. When I got off the plane and walked across the tarmac, I experienced what would later get me my next job in Brazil a year later with Paul Mazursky. ‘When you get off the plane, the heat goes right to your crotch,’ I told him. And it did.
I have since heard that Belém has had a building boom and become quite urban, but that would come later. In 1985, it was still a sleepy colonial town with beautiful mango trees and quite a bit of poverty. I had never experienced that kind of begging on the streets, despite having lived in New York. But Belém was teeming with life and vibrancy. And even innocence. Because it was so humid, the local people wore very little clothing, but what they wore was colorful and almost childlike. And there were children everywhere. It was a town filled with families. I saw mothers lead their young children to the edge of the sidewalk to pee in the street. And no-one cared. It was quite remarkable and liberating.
The actors were staying at the American Hilton, which was an air-conditioned oasis in the Amazon because you really couldn’t last more than an hour in the heat. The Hilton had a dark bar and an oval pool. It turned out that I would be working very little on this movie over the course of a month, so I had some free time, which suited me just fine. I was blessed to be working with Charles Durning (playing a priest), who is a world-class dancer. He taught ballroom dancing in New York after World War II. We would go out for feijoada and caipirinhas and then dance. I have never met a man who could dance a samba with such delicacy. During the day, I took trips to the seaport where the wharf was stocked with seafood fresh off the boat. One weekend I went to Ilha de Marajó, a small island that sits exactly where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean. I was happily sunbathing nude on the sugary sand when I heard a rushing noise. The Atlantic tide was coming in and threatening to drown me at a rapid pace. I quickly doggie-paddled to higher land with my clothes over my head. Just part of the adventure of Brazil.
But the most romantic one was yet to come. I spent a good deal of my time by the pool at the Hilton, waiting to hear if I would work that day. I lay in the sun (on the equator, mind you) in my leopard-print Norma Kamali one-piece ready to quickly don my nun’s habit. It was the tannest I have ever been in my life and the last time I would ever sunbathe. What was I thinking? I blame it on Rio. Or Belém.
One afternoon I glanced up from my book and saw a Greek god complete with tousled golden hair walk out to the pool and lie down on a chaise. I went back to my book. Then he got up to go in the pool and I lost my place. I noticed that he had left an open book with his towel. I casually got up to see what language he was reading in. It was English and he was reading Ulysses by James Joyce. Who reads that at a pool? He got out of the water and I scooted back to my chaise. When he gathered his things to leave, I decided that if he walked towards me I would say something, otherwise it was not meant to be.
I regret to say that my opening line was weak: ‘Where are you from?’
‘Ireland.’
‘Really? You don’t sound Irish.’
‘You should hear me after a couple of pints of Guinness.’
‘Ha ha ha.’
I can’t remember if he suggested the drink in the bar later or I did. I hope it was he.
When I arrived, freshly showered, I saw him standing at a distance, in a blue Oxford cloth shirt at the bar, and I actually gasped. It was my ‘Hubbell’ (from The Way We Were) moment. We sat, ordered drinks and started to ask questions. It turned out that he was traveling solo through the Amazon on a motorcycle. It was his Indiana Jones fantasy. Belém was his last stop before he headed to Rio and then back to school.
I said, ‘School? How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Why, how old are you?’
‘Twenty-nine.’
‘What? I thought you were sixteen. The cheek of this girl to pick me up.’
Thus started my lifelong relationship with younger men.
Cameron was on break from Oxford and due back in a couple of weeks. He was indeed Irish, well-known Irish, as his father was a very successful businessman. We spent the next few days enjoying Belém together. As I said, the city had a wonderful mix of innocence and eroticism and it was the same with my movie location romance. We went to a local carnival and rode the Ferris wheel. I remember sitting at the top, looking over the lights of the city, thinking life can’t get much sweeter than this. Or stranger. One of the local highlights was a wooden roadhouse where all the families went on Saturday night. There was a big boombox, and young girls would get up and perform dances to hits like Paul Young’s ‘Every Time You Go Away,’ which was popular at the time. And then they would take their clothes off. Completely. And the families would applaud. I think maybe it was a whorehouse on the side.
And of course we knew it would end, like all movie romances must, which made it even sweeter. He went to Oxford via Rio and I finished the movie as a very tan nun. It was everything I had fantasized about as a child. Exotic location, romance with a handsome stranger who rode out of the jungle on a motorcycle, and a chance to act with Charles Durning! Little did I know that most of my foreign locations to come would be in Canada. Not that it isn’t a lovely country.
Postscript: Cameron and I did stay in touch. I spent Christmas with his family in Ireland and we dated for a while. He is now happily married and we spoke just last spring. Brazil is still one of my favorite countries to visit today.
Honeymooning with Sharks
Rick Marin
Rick Marin started out as a journalist before taking up film and television. He wrote a bestselling memoir, Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor, and has worked at the New York Times and Newsweek. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and writing partner, Ilene Rosenzweig, and their two boys, Diego and Kingsley.
Thwaaackk!
A fresh swath of blood smeared the whitewashed walls of our jungle hideout.
‘Got him!’ Ilene exclaimed, standing on a rattan chair in the lingerie of a paid assassin.
That was my blood. The bastard. He deserved to die.
‘Kill them all!’ I commanded, cowering under the bedclothes while my newlywed bride re-rolled her copy of Hello!, took aim at a mosquito the size of a Prius and … spplaaaat!
Did I mention I have a crazed fear of mosquitoes? They’re my Room 101 (1984 – look it up). If I hear them whining in my ear, I go mental. Their bites turn into enormous w
elts. They crave my flesh. When we showed up at this rain forest eco-resort on Australia’s Daintree River, it had just poured for nine straight days and the ‘mozzies’ were out in force. The moment we arrived, the resort director hosed us down with industrial-strength DEET. Or napalm. Whatever toxic pesticide they freely use to ward off the bloodsucking pests that have plagued this land since the Aborigines owned the place.
I wondered: when Nietzsche wrote ‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger,’ was he honeymooning in Australia? Or was he already mad with syphilis by then?
After the logistical and emotional D-day of a wedding, most newlyweds are content to lie on a beach, high on postnuptial bliss, umbrella drinks and what a friend of mine calls the ‘Jamaican vegetable.’
Not my wife.
We got married in Italy. At a sixteenth-century abbey outside Portofino. We could have hopped a train to Tuscany for two weeks. But no. We had to fly halfway around the world for an ‘Extreme Honeymoon’ that would test not only our marriage, but my role in it as, well, the Man.
Ilene had always been hard to get. That was her rep and it had taken my full repertoire just to persuade her to go on a date, much less spend the rest of our lives together. But it worked. She was wearing the ring. Well, she actually wasn’t, but that’s another story. This Extreme Honeymoon thing felt like the final test, even though we were already married.
‘Come on,’ she coaxed. ‘It’ll be more fun.’
‘Yeah, sure. Fun.’
I knew what was going on here. A template was being set. A gauntlet dropped. Every hotel we stayed at, every adventure we booked, I took as a challenge to my manhood. The sexual dynamics. Power struggles. Gender role-playing. Could I provide? Could I protect? Could I … represent? This was how it was going to be for the next thirty, forty … fifty years. Was I a guy who could tough out the inevitable trials of a shared life and family – for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health? Or was I going to cower under a musty, malarial comforter at the slightest sign of trouble?
Lights, Camera...Travel! Page 2
