By Myles Ludwig
There are lost opportunities in life, those moments when you wonder why you were oblivious to the possibilities.
There are also lost friends, lost because of some difference of opinion that seems petty in retrospect or even a bond-busting betrayal that, seen through the telescope of time, seems no worse than the unruliness of trying to catch some sleep lying across three coach seats on a long-haul flight. And there are those relationships ruptured for no reason you can call to mind.
But are those friend really lost for good or just filed away in the recesses of memory where there is no past, no future and barely a hint of the present?
The recent tech extravaganza in Las Vegas reminded me of a couple of those. There were no poison apples in that show. The big high-tech news of the week was made by former President Clinton, using the finger he wagged at the nation when he said, Monica who?, using that finger as a magic wand to wave across the screen to go from app to app, kind of like the Wii. Talk about a roving eye.
And the retro-tech was white smoke at the Sistine Chapel.
But back to the show in Vegas. It reminded me of a less jaded time when I went to the summer consumer electronics show in Chicago nearly 40 years ago.
I flew there with Avril Lund, quite the comely Irish lass with a perfectly matched set of distinguishing characteristics (substantial enough to straddle the borders of both parts of the Emerald Isle), Barbie Lewis, a statuesque Polish blonde from the Midwest who was as sweet-hearted as she was shamelessly naïve, and another wonderfully attractive and kind girl named Luba whose lilting British accent seemed at odds — lovely as those odds were — with her intensely dark skin that seemed to glow from within like an ember.
Avril had displayed those distinguishing characteristics on the cover of Penthouse, where I was working, with an attitude of insouciance suited to the times. She was the Pet of the Year in 1974. Soon after Barbie’s pictures appeared in the magazine, she lost job as a teacher’s aide in a suburban Milwaukee. Luba never made the magazine, though she was certainly beautiful enough, and looking back, I think, as pioneering as Penthouse considered itself to be in some areas, it was way behind the curve on the color line.
Head phones and pocket calculators were high-tech, stereos and speakers ruled and something resembling a PC was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics as a DIY kit for $395. It might have been made of balsa wood like the model airplanes my Dad and I used to make. Of course, gas was 55 cents a gallon, Nixon would soon fly away admitting nothing (where was Oprah when we really needed her?) and genius-to-be Steve Jobs was at Atari to make a superior Pong.
Avril’s cantilevered profile was, I think, both a burden and a blessing. She moved with a pronounced lean, but never complained. She had a caring nature and had been a student nurse at a psychiatric facility in England before Bob Guccione swooped her up and made her famous, after a fashion. She and the other two girls were to be “booth babes” at the show. Their job was to lurk in front of our advertisers’ display booths in scanty costumes to lure in tire-kickers and prospective customers. I was along as a kind of chaperone.
We were met at the airport by a Slurpee-straw-thin guy. Many years later, I recognized him as the Hollywood private eye who made headlines by fixing celebrity embarrassments and quashing their indiscretions in a less than forthright way. He announced himself as our driver. He was jittery and the girls said he made them nervous. They wanted to get away from him.
The four of us, the girls and I, stayed at the Ambassador East, and after dinner in the legendary Pump Room, with its walls adorned by framed and autographed glossies of celebrities, we set out to go dancing in one of the clubs that dotted the Loop then. Of course, we made a noticeable entrance, at the one we chose, a funky kind of place, particularly Avril whose most prominent features were tucked into a strapless white bandeau top and tight black stretch pants: an ur-Kardashian look.
While we were dancing the frug or jerk or something with an equally silly name we would come to regret as adults, Avril suddenly had what is commonly referred to nowadays as a wardrobe malfunction. After one particularly emphatic jerk, she found herself billowing out of the bandeau. In minutes, we were surrounded by a gaping, but polite crowd.
Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the movie that practically invented the papparazzo, came out in 1960, but the phenomenon — aside from Ron Galella — was still new in the U.S. Cellphone cameras didn’t exist and privacy had a different meaning then. The last time I was in Hollywood, a flock of low-flying photogs were hovering above the parking lot of the Pilates studio, hoping to make a buck off someone else’s exercised image.
Avril was unperturbed. She simply wrangled herself back into place and we continued on dancing.
No fuss.
Since then, I’ve been fortunate to find many long lost friends, but not with those young ladies. I’ve searched for them, but found only traces. Nevertheless, Avril, Barbie and Luba — wherever they may be now — are still quite alive in my mind.
Some friends give you gifts you don’t appreciate at the time they are given, like lost opportunities. I think Avril’s gift to me was a gentle sense of poise under pressure.
Myles Ludwig is a media savant living in Lake Worth.