Exotic Dreams

On Charo, Kris Kristofferson and Faraway Places

After writing about books a couple of weeks ago, my friend Anna mentioned to me how much she treasured her copy of James Michener’s ‘Hawaii’, mainly as an object of love, for its exotic cover. I was similarly transported by my own copy of the same (‘A Powerful Novel of Great Adventure!’, ‘Hawaii’ was everywhere…especially every thrift shop in town ) along with the sultry ‘complete and unabridged’ ‘The Gold Of Their Bodies’, the story of Gaugin in Tahiti, told pulp style. ‘The Revolt of Mamie Stover’ chronicled a desperate, troubled actress who runs away to Hawaii and after suffering all kinds of indignities, eventually makes a fortune and gets her revenge on the world with the overflowing coffers generated by her wartime brothel. These torrid book covers offered real portals into another kind of shimmering world, of steamy afternoons, endless sands and shady palm fronds and moonlit waves. 

The books to which I owe my exotic fantasies

My exotic fascinations run deep, all the way back to Toltoy’s Jenny the Jet Setting Qantas Air Hostess, who sported a tropical floral patterned uniform designed by Emilio Pucci, still in my opinion, the ultimate day dress. I’d like a wardrobe with seven of them and little else. Jenny looked slightly deranged or maybe like she’d just had a couple of cocktails, and she had a terrible shag haircut and bad shoes but she also came equipped with a hula skirt and bikini and took off all around the world to exotic locations like Japan! Vienna! and sowed tiny tropical seeds within my heart and a love for the idea of far flung locations and travel.

Jenny The Jet Setting Qantas Hostess, her hula outfit and her bad shoes, and those perfect Pucci uniforms

As a child I spent a lot of time glued to ‘The Love Boat’ mainly in the hope that guitar playing Spanish-American star Charo would turn up. The odds were pretty good, as she was the most popular guest star on the show with ten appearances across its run of nine seasons, as the outrageously sassy Mexican stowaway April Lopez. A.P.R.I.L is actually a simplified Anglicisation for Angelina Patricia Ruiz Inez Lopez. I love this detail.

I was spellbound by her vivaciousness, her accent, her wit, her larger than life hairstyles and spangled costumes. Mostly I loved the episodes where her incredible guitar skills were on show as she performed in the lounge for the guests, always dropping her joyful signature catch-phrase ‘Cuchi cuchi coo!’, which seems to mean everything and nothing, and all of them somehow naughty. She has reportedly said ‘I still don't know what the hell 'cuchi-cuchi' means. But hey, it works for me!’, putting paid to the concept of finding one thing and do it well.

Charo truly lives to entertain and make people smile. When I discovered she was on Twitter, sharing workout tips, good news stories, costume fittings (Shorter! Tighter!) and recipes (Be Careful This Salad Might Get You Pregnant!) I couldn’t stop smiling. There’s a story on the internet about a woman in hospital, waiting for open heart surgery, terrified, alone. Charo appears on her TV and just her flickering presence makes the woman feel better. When she recovers, she writes Charo a thank you letter and sends it to her, simply addressed to Charo, Hawaii. It gets to her. 

She has spent much of her adult life headlining on the Vegas strip, even marrying bandleader Xavier Cugat at Caesar’s Palace in 1966. But I always associate her with Hawaii, since discovering that she moved there in the late 70’s, opening her own bar/restaurant, called, of course, Charo’s (what else would you call it?) and performing there whenever she felt like it. That’s a dream I can really get behind.

Matchbook from Charo’s Restaurant & Bar

I’ve only been to Hawaii once, and just the airport, for one hour. I was a teenager. It was back when planes had to stop there to refuel on the way to LA. I wandered around that balmy, industrial airport, with its single concession stand and couldn’t believe I was actually in Hawaii. I was sure I could smell Reef oil and hear the strains of a steel guitar above gently lapping waves. I bought myself a packet of Frito Lays. American food! It was blander than expected but the packaging was bold and cool and it was the most exotic thing I’d ever eaten. I smoked an American cigarette inside the terminal and marvelled at the passing parade of accents and cowboy hats while I waited to board my next flight, vowing to myself to come back to this Paradise on holiday some time when I was a glamorous adult. 

Honolulu Airport 1980s

Pink and green should always be seen - Honolulu Airlines

As I grew older, I amassed a small but beloved collection of Hawaiian dresses (always searching for the ultimate Pucci day dress) and postcards and records, eventually discovering Arthur Lyman and Martin Denny and that whole Exotica sound. Deep tropical vibes, whispering seas, sunsets, cocktails, Arthur Lyman, bamboo shadows, steel guitar, mysterious fonts, this dreamy kind of music suits my langorous blood flow.

I bought Charo records I found in my travels and was amazed to discover that although her version of the Rolling Stones ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ was a campy, vampy, propulsive, sugar drenched suggestive treat, she was actually one of the world’s best flamenco guitarists, studying hard from age 9, even training for a while under Andres Segovia, icon of modern classical guitar music, who gave Charo and ‘a bunch of kids’ lessons, for free. She said watching his big fingers play and hearing his instructions was a beautiful experience. Discovering her seriously impressive artistry, excellent business acumen, and the relentlessly positive vibrations constantly emanating from her has just made me love her even more.

Finding that Kris Kristofferson lived in Hawaii with his wife and hundreds of kids made me love him more too, if thats even plausible. So many of my favourite lines in songs came from inside Kris’s mind. He just has this remarkable ability to put you right there inside a dark room or kicking a can down a street with him. It’s like his songs are an actual place you can visit, the pictures inside them are so intimate and cinematic all at the same time. Kris says ‘I never feel separated from them, and I never will, from the songs I wrote. To me, they’re the only reason I’m on the planet—to write those songs and sing ’em.’ 

I think its entirely possible that I fell in love with my husband because he once shared a dressing room with Kris when they were both in the Paul Cox film ‘Molokai, the Story of Father Damian’ filmed in Hawaii, and he has a picture to prove it, both their names, stuck together forever on a door. It’s a beautiful sight but I can’t find the photo. I think its also possible that he fell in love with me because I had a dog called ‘Hockey’ and he’s a hockey obsessed Canadian, but our romance somehow survived when he discovered that my dog’s name was actually a bastardised shortened version of Pocahontas, named by five year old Holiday, and I realised he didn’t actually live in that magical Hawaiian dressing room of my mind with Kris sitting in the corner strumming his guitar all day and night, just waiting to write songs with me. Anyway I digress. Kris has lived in ‘one of the last unspoiled Hawaiian frontiers’ since 1970, a remote, laidback East Maui community called Hāna, with no traffic lights.  He spent time in Hawaii when he was a little kid, courtesy of his dad’s work for Pan American, and loves living there because the prolific grapefruit trees and vegetation strangely reminds him of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, near where he grew up.

Willie Nelson also lives part-time in nearby Maui, where all the houses apparently use solar power. A tourist guide who drives curious visitors by Willie’s house describes it as ‘Not super fancy shmancy but ….pretty cool’. There’s a local old school down-home bar called Charley’s, operating since 1969, thats been described as ‘the kind of place you'd expect old retired country crooners to hang out, and they do’. Kris and Willie are both known to drop in unannounced and a sing a tune. All the locals love them. Even a girl who cleaned house for Kris for a while told a reporter he’s really nice. Charley’s and Hawaii in general really sounds like the kind of rock’n’roll tropical dream retirement village of my dreams.

I had a band called Automatic Cherry and the front cover of our album ‘Slow Burner’ featured my attempt at an exotica album cover, cooked up with wonderful photographer Kristyna, taken in a darkened basement in Surry Hills but full of tropical intent. There’s a song on there called ‘Desert Island Dream’, complete with congas, maracas and the singer’s friend, the shaky egg.

Its Sunday morning here in Australia, I’m in the thirteenth week of pandemic induced hard lockdown in a Local Government Area of Concern and dreaming of faraway, foreign places in my dressing gown seems like the right thing to do….

I wish you all exotic thrills, lazy Sundays, tropical vibes, large cocktails with little paper umbrellas and maraschino cherries on top, great freedoms and rock’n’roll retirement villages. Stay home for now and get vaxxed so we can all get back on with the good stuff and get on with entering the New Golden Age of Travel soon. ..

Aloha x

PS: If you’d like to read more about Charo this NY Times article is great.

For more on Kris (and Willie) this Rolling Stone story by Ethan Hawke is great.

Lovely article about a Hawaiian ephemera collector here...

Here are some of the book recommendations I was kindly given:

‘Weird Fucks’ by Lynne Tillman (winner of Best Title award for me)

‘Stoner’ by John Williams 

‘Greene on Capri - a Memoir’ by Shirley Hazzard 

‘Salvage The Bones’ by Jesmyn Ward

‘In The Fold’ by Rachel Cusk (winner of my Best Book Covers award)

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