High life
Wishful thinking
Taki
INew York know you English go for that bowing and scraping and forelock-tugging stuff, but we Greeks with a little• bit of Kraut in us tell it like it is. As the great Sir Leslie Cohn Patterson (cultural attaché to the Court of St James's) once observed — while in the process of asking a Porn where he could get his rocket polished — 'Most of the types one meets in the business arena are as shifty as shithouse rats.'
I was on my way to Havana for the Albemarle wedding, brand-new white linen suit expertly packed by Marga — my originally illegal four-foot Mexican maid, now as American as apple-pie and a lady of leisure at my expense — when I got the bad news from the superKraut, the Austrian princess also known as the mother of Taki's children, that my presence was required in the land of the banks and cuckoo clocks. And tout de suite, too.
What a disaster! Here I was ready to go to Havana with a blonde whose figure would make Liberace behave like Rubirosa, and the next thing I know I'm on an aeroplane with a bunch of wankerbankers heading east with my prospects of getting lucky diminishing by each air mile. If this isn't coitus interruptus, I don't know what is. Incidentally, when Liberace went on to play the piano in the great hall up above, I wrote: 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and if you liked pussy, you'd still be with us.' Someone thought it rather rude, but I liked old Liberace's music. And, unlike the creeps of today, he had talent and could really stroke the old organ.
The only reason I was taking the bazooka-bosomed sheila down to old Havana — like importing a gram or two of happy dust to Bogota — was to stop myself from catching a dose of the clap. It seems a few of the senoritas down there suffer from the same ailment as those who conceive editors of the tabloids. Now it's all immaterial. Fidel can sleep easy, as can the bride and groom.
I was really looking forward to visiting a place that American culture has not as yet visited, but even the poor little Greek boy has to act responsibly at times. Mind you, Rufus Albemarle and his wife Sally could be dodging a bullet. Knowing myself and how I get when I'm given too much firewater. I might have said the wrong thing to the wrong person and ended up in the pokey. This would not be big news in Havana. Copping the vertical suntan would be nothing new to a Cuban or to yours truly.
Last year King Constantine and my childhood friend Spiro Metaxas flew to Havana and spent six hours reminiscing with Fidel. Castro was eager to discuss leaders that he has obviously outlived and whom the King had met as crown prince. People like Eisenhower, de Gaulle, Kennedy and Adenauer. Kings, alas, don't leak, so the only thing I could get out of the Greek monarch was that he had a very interesting talk with Fidel. Which is as interesting as kissing your sister, but there we are.
When I first received the invitation from Rufus and Sally I thought I'd try to get an interview with Fidel because the Greek ambassador to Cuba, George Kostoulas, is a great buddy. Kostoulas, incidentally, was riding shotgun with the Kurdish leader Ocalan in Nairobi when the Turks grabbed him (the Kurd) by the short and curlies and hustled him back to bollocksland. When I rang George in the embassy and asked him to get me Fidel for at least an hour, he said he'd try. Two weeks ago he told me he might be able to help. Now it's academic.
I know that it's not exactly going to kill Fidel not to see me, but Fidel and Taki would have been good together. We'd talk about pussy, the Kennedys, the draft dodger and cigars. Whatever one's politics, one thing is for sure: Castro has survived all his enemies because he was never under the illusion that human nature has changed. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile type of thing. General Pinochet saved his country, called an election and, having narrowly lost it, went along with the so-called will of the people. The result was a catamite had him arrested and he was humiliated by people not good enough to wash his jock. Castro has offered his jock to those who demand elections — and if they refused to wash it threw them in the nick — and as a result has survived.
Moral of the story: never trust the people to know what's good for them. I wish I was in Havana with my sheila and her bazookas.
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