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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Love stories / Romance
- Subject: Art / Music / Theater / Dance
- Published: 08/21/2013
THE TAUNTING MELODY OF MIDNIGHT
Born 1969, M, from Herten, NRW, Germany.jpg)
Playing Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins in “Elvis – The Musical” in Hamburg gave me many interesting experiences. The number that gave me all the attention Blue Suede Shoes. Getting the audience to stand up and dance to the tunes of that song gave me a kick every night. My number had one function: getting them in a dancing mode when Elvis’ big medley of silver screen hits began. That would eventually take him to Priscilla. An Australian played the girl girl that was the spitting image of his ex-wife. Eerie.
All in all, the musical was a homage to Elvis and the other artists that began their careers at Sun Records Studios.
The show examined what became of them after rock ‘n roll turned into pop music.
I was happy to get all this attention. Being first cast in a role in a big musical in Germany was exactly what I had needed. It was important, though, for me actually to do something completely different in the time off that I had.
So, in my hours off I wandered the streets of Hamburg and ate in restaurants and met friends. I went to the movies and I ordered take-out pizza and Chinese food, watched videos and invited people for dinner.
The most rewarding thing in Hamburg, though, was walking along the harbour and just seeing where these spontaneous walks would lead me. One day, it lead me to my destiny.
That Sunday evening, I finished early. We had started at six p.m. and so my nine p.m. free time came like a wrapped and warm welcoming-gift. My dear costume dresser Adrian was always fun company after the show and people like Koffi and Shane kept me laughing just because they amazed self irony.
We took the boat across the harbour along with the guests and gazed at the lights emanating from other ships that glittered and shone in the water. We sailed across in the big boat that had the text “Elvis” written all over it and we felt like kings.
On shore, we parted from a chuckle and as I strolled down in the direction of the city I felt lucky. I lived close to the airport, but today I wanted to saunter a bit. The storage district across the river always smelled of spices and coffee and so these smells felt like a habitat. I had grown up in Gothenburg, Sweden and the shipyards were a common area to me. They had served as a perfect breeding ground for bicycle adventures with my dad.
Across the street that day in Hamburg and under the subway bridges were the Scandinavian churches and Portuguese restaurants. I remembered these with joy, recollecting many a lovely meal and ceremony there. I, however, was heading along the other side of the river, not to sing in a church, but to rediscover the city.
Soon enough, I was alongside of the railway station. I stood there for a bit and contemplated going in for a pizza in the open hut of dough. I wanted no more than to eat a slice of pepperoni, but Mönckebergstrasse seemed too much of a lure right now.
Sunday was a calm day in Hamburg, preparing for the next day’s work and my one free day. My thoughts gathered toward the seduction of Thai food. There was a these restaurants near by that served fantastic lemon grass soup, but as I was heading passed Karstadt and the large church to the left I saw the grand City Hall and beyond it the Irish pub. That would be my first stop, as always.
I went in there for a Guinness and spoke to the Irish barkeeper named Kevin. He advised me to eat at his pub, but before long I was heading across the bridges in direction of Gänsemarkt, where I had sung at the Christmas markets last year.
So I found myself by the opera gazing at the audience leaving the theatre from what I gathered was a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin set in a school class. Tonight’s Ortrud was Eva Marton, who looked a little too taut in her girl’s uniform.
I past my throat doctor’s office and crossed the street toward the movie house. Then I suddenly recalled one of my favourite restaurants: Bolero. They had great Mexican food. I had a good book about Christopher Columbus with me to read. I was ready for some hot sauce and some cool Latino salsa. “Bartender, give me a beer!”
Humming Gershwin’s song “Shall we dance?”, I entered the consign after a brisk stroll and was promptly greeted by Carlos Gueteres. His smile always made me grin and so, because of my grin, he gave me my usual place not far away from a window and yet somewhat in a corner. I sat down and got my usual drink, a large beer, and began leafing through the menu.
Being rather hungry, I settled for the complete benchmark: mixed starters, a steak with taco sauce and a dessert. I ordered it all to be delivered in a slow speed and picked up my book.
It felt like my wonderful rock ‘n roll show this evening was slowly but solemnly taking a respite, letting the vibrating volumes be exchanged by chronological attitude.
My book gave me the necessary escapism. Christopher Columbus by Fabian Franzén told me about a young weaver from a village close to Genoa. This adolescent youngster started working on ships at age fourteen and sooner or later fell in love with the enchanting supremacy of gold ingots. His interest in the Vikings made him spellbound by what they had actually discovered across the great ocean? The magic land of wine and women? India? The new world?
As I turned a page in the book, engulfed by its’ wonders, I glanced up for moment. In through the access came a female so dazzling that my book nearly fell to the floorboards. She stood there for a second, waiting for the maitre d’ and was more or less on her way out again when Carlos came running up. They had a quick tête-à-tête and he took her to the table right next to mine.
The woman sat down, straightening out her blue dress and made herself comfortable. I tried my best to focus on my book. It was complex, because I kept wondering if her husband was going to come walking in a flash. She ordered her food and I detected a slight hint of an American accent.
The husband didn’t arrive. She sat there, reading Fortune magazine, her expensive silver jewellery rattling around her neck and her decorated nails shining blue and white on sexy, long fingers. This girl was dynamite.
I cleared my throat, not being able to concentrate on Commodore Colon’s desperation in finding a sponsor for his trip. I was reading about Columbus’ contacts with a certain Dottore Toscanelli. This man really got him started in understanding that there might be another way to India. The woman looked up at me and smiled. I nodded.
I was going to ask her if she came here often, but she had the faster orifice and that was something I had at many times seen in women. She winked at me.
“Hi there,” she swooned, “how are you doing?”
“All right,” I responded. “What are you reading?”
“Fortune magazine,” she answered.
“Do you subscribe to that?”
She shook her head, closing the magazine.
“I invest in stocks, so I try to keep in touch,” she flirted. “Do you come here often?”
She put the magazine away.
“Yeah,” I answered, “Hamburg is a good town for eating out. I tend to try out different places. This one has good food. What about you? What brings you here?”
“I am holding lectures at the Radisson,” she said.
“About what?”
I pictured her as a financial expert telling business men how to manage their finances.
“Acting,” she said.
I smiled. “You are an actress?”
“I have an acting school in L.A., but I also work as a biologist and that is my little niche. I try to combine the two.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “Biology and drama? How?”
“By trying to prove that certain human mechanisms can be used as thespian tools. You can tap into certain techniques: walks, talks, movements, mimicry, gestures. Center of gravity is big issue. My students here are mostly businessmen.”
“I am an actor, too.”
“Where do you work?” she asked.
“Elvis – The Musical in the harbour. I have a big number in the second act as Johnny Cash.”
“That sounds like a good gig,” she smiled. “How long have you been in Germany?”
“Three years. I was in Munich before doing some shows. Originally, I am from Vermont. My name is Peter Davies.”
I stretched forward my hand and she took it.
“Pamela Gingrich, Vancouver. I live in L.A.”
I shook her hand and noticed how soft her hands were.
“How is your success with the suits?”
“They are good actors, believe it or not,” she laughed. “We are part of a two week long education course in order to teach company executives about the art in business and how it can help them become better business men,” she said. “Our course is called The Biology of Acting. We have courses every day for two weeks and end it all with a small performance by the business students themselves, who have to perform a small scene from a play and then hold a lecture using the performing skills that they have acquired.”
“How did you combine biology with theatre?”
I really was interested here.
She shrugged. “I hope I don’t bore you, but that has sort of a pre history.”
Our drinks came and she ordered the drinks to be brought to my table and we started talking face to face, me with my beer and she with her wine.
She told me how she had received a scholarship to study at the UCLA and majored in two subjects: biology and acting. She waited tables in the evenings and performed in the weekends. It was a rough time. She struggled with her nervousness and soon understood that trying to use the physical aspects of the acting technique she was being taught would help her become calmer during the shows.
She repeated her lecture. Centre of gravity, different walks and facial expressions, connections to emotions, entrances, exits, introductions, transitions between scenes, thinking outside of the nine dots, the fourth wall, types of people, techniques in handling nervous situations.
Pamela emphasized that the main core of thespianism was the interpretation and the feeling, but with this so called biology of acting one could actually reduce the nervousness to the necessary minimal.
This conversation kept on going all through our three courses and by the time we had arrived at the aperitif we were on our third drink and enjoying our second brandy.
We walked out on the street a half hour later and we were laughing and drunk and giddy. By the time we arrived at her hotel, the feeling overcame us and we literally jumped on each other. We kissed and hugged and almost stripped down naked.
It didn’t take long for us to take the elevator to her room and throw off our clothes. We were very intoxicated and very excited. It had been boiling up inside us all night and now it came out.
I think what seemed like a half hour of the most intense sex I have ever had in my life actually was three hours. Luckily, we were both free the next day. We woke up the next morning with fierce hangovers, but we realized then and there that we wanted this to be more than just a one night stand.
We went to the art gallery, followed by kissing by the Alster lake and eating in a Thai restaurant. After a long session making love at her hotel, we ate some ice cream in the garden Planten und Blomen and finished off the day hearing a concert in the Musikhalle. We heard the Hamburg Symphony perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Mendelssohn, Dvorak’s A New World Symphony and Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. Robert Stehli conducted the Klassik Philharmonie with such grace that we ended up humming the tunes.
It was a romantic evening. We kept on laughing our heads off that we would be gaining thirty pounds by spending such a large amount of time together. Our classical evening consequently ended at McDonalds. As we devoured our second Big Mac, we were speaking about Dvorak, but as we rushed back to the hotel we were wondering if the reception actually had noticed my presence.
I realized that I hadn’t been home since yesterday at four o’clock, but didn’t care. My accommodation was forlorn and tedious. Pamela was compassionate and sexy. She vowed to tell the reception I was her boyfriend and was needed at the seminar as an acting assistant.
The receptionist was very friendly about this. Obviously, Pam was sort of a star at the hotel. The boss therefore spontaneously decided that I could sleep in her room in her double-bed free of charge for the remainder of the week, if I was working as an assistant.
Well, I must admit that this week was quite fantastic. I spent no time at home at all and maybe that was the great thing. My work week had no extra rehearsals for cut versions, no sound checks, no understudy run-throughs or promo gigs. It was a work week with six evening shows and two afternoon performances. Pam saw me perform two times and spent both gigs dancing her pretty tush off.
I spent most of my days working with stiff businessmen and tried to make them improvise scenes, pretending to be doorbells or cats, walk through rooms like Caesar or make looking suave look believable. I then did my musical show.
I rushed to the hotel after my shows and found my dear girl having slept two hours in order to be able to give me some hot, sweet loving around midnight. There is nothing like a girl saving all her love for you. Even Whitney Houston knew that.
I do remember that we came back to her room after she had seen my show on Thursday and made love five times. She was free the following morning and had her first lesson at three o’clock. This gave her a delayed potential sunrise likely to nap through. I had a show at seven thirty, so that left us free to create reverence. We spoke about our favourite painters between sessions. I think we covered all possible positions and all possible techniques. My love actually spent the lesson at three giggling her way through a very serious scene from Othello. Desdemona had never been so frilly as Pamela.
Just as two business people were trying to act a hard scene between Othello and Desdemona, she whispered into my ear that she had pain down there and wanted more of that pain tonight.
The week was tremendous, but we knew that letting one another go that following Monday would be just as tremendously hard. She had to go back to L.A. for more work in the school. She was leading and some analytical freelance work at biological labs, a job she did at her free time as a biologist.
We both cried as she passed through the airport gates and disappeared.
The gap she left behind was wider than a canyon. I think I spent that day filling my face with pizza and desperately calling someone to be with in order to forget that I was alone and petrified. I finally found a couple of people from the show and together we went to see a Bond flick. The tortilla chips tastes awful, although my colleagues said they were great. The coke was bland, but my friends love it. The movie was mediocre, although my buddies said it was the best Bond movie they had seen.
The next day at eight in the morning I received a phone call from Pamela. She was suffering from jet lag and had waited until now to call because of the time difference. She missed me so much she was crying all the time and had a really hard time keeping up with work. She needed to see me again.
I said that I still had three months left of my contract. The show closed on June 24th and I was first cast. Maybe I could arrange for my second cast to fill in for me for a week.
It was May when we saw each other again.
I spent a wonderful week in L.A. and we rarely were seen without each other. Her parents had arrived from Vancouver that previous night. It was an unusual situation. In-laws are not always a lucky mix. This time, the mix was fabulous. Pam had taken leave off work and so there was plenty of free time.
Pam had a vacation hut in the Rockies. After her folks flew back to Canada on the third day of my stay, we drove off toward the mountains. She scrambled my loom and rode my scale. I discovered her canyons and swam in her river, tasted her cherries and devoured her asparagus. She gave me her oyster and I returned her my banana split under the setting sun.
On the last night of my stay I had a very spontaneous apparition: I asked her to marry me. She said yes.
It was almost too perfect.
We spoke on the phone every day and, needless to say, our phone bills went peak soaring along with our deep-river love.
I knew that I was moving to the U.S. again this summer. My parents were blissful that I was going to be living in the States again. I was on the other coast, mind you, but within the same country. The marriage date was set for September and a wedding coordinator from Palm Beach was hired. We were living in a dream.
Now, my dear Pamela was going to spend a couple of weeks in Hong Kong in July. There was a hotel there that had become interested in her acting courses and had booked her. That gave me enough time to give up my furnished flat and get rid of some stuff. I was quite busy that week trying to pack things and call people and say good bye to various friends. I knew that I was going to leave for the U.S. on the 17th of July and spend some time with my parents. I would return to California just when my sex goddess was back in L.A.
I was in Vermont at my parents house when it happened.
A hotel in New Delhi had booked Pam for another week and this postponed her return.
Her parents knew where I was and so we spoke every day, knowing that we would be seeing more of each other as time went by. Pam’s folks were already planning a trip Vermont on order to to meet my folks.
The day we received the unusual phone call was a Saturday and it became obvious very quickly that this was no social call. Steve, Pam’s dad, sounded very upset. He said that they had just heard from the airport of New Delhi that the plane that was supposed to have arrived from Hong Kong had crashed in Tibet.
I turned on the news and saw the pictures everywhere. The plane had obviously malfunctioned and hit a storm when it had to perform an emergency landing in a canyon between mountains.
There was very little left of the plane itself, but apparently there were fifty survivors. The pilots were dead, it was said, but a list of people still alive would be assembled and a hotline for the families posted in the net.
I do not know exactly what happened next. I just know that the next day I was on my way to Asia. I was going to save Pam, if it would be the last thing I would do. What if she were dead? No, I could not imagine that. I prayed all the way to Tibet. I flew to Los Angeles and then changed planes to Hawaii. In Honolulu, I found my way to a plane that took me to Tokyo. I was in Singapore on Tuesday and found myself in Tibet on Wednesday. I kept contact with my parents and my in-laws all the way. They kept telling me that Pamela was among the survivors, but that all of them were trapped in a cave close to the wreck.
Having communicated with the survivors by way of notes on paper, they found out that all of the people still alive after the crash had tried to walk away from the wreck when the cave wall collapsed on top of the plane.
Luckily, the plane had managed to land halfway into the cave and there was a storage of twenty flashlights there. The only living flight attendant had teamed up with a doctor among the passengers and was handing out the food rations. Pamela Justine Gingrich was among the living. The survivors were keeping warm by ripping up the seat covers and using them as blankets and making fire with left over lighters.
There were songs being song and stories being told.
Everything to keep the spirits alive.
I somehow managed to get myself to the nearest city of the crash. Finding a team from the red cross there, I learned that they had joined together with a team of sherpas, or mountain-guides in English, that regularly took trips over to the wreck to communicate with the survivors.
All of them spoke English, so it was easy for me to speak to them. I told them that my future wife was among the people trapped in the cave. After much talk, I managed to persuade the leading sherpa to take me along on his next trip to the wreck.
That following day I was given a crash course in mountain climbing and then we set on our way. It was an unbelievably strenuous road and I felt lucky to have a profession where I could see where I walked and use my mind and my body to tell a story.
This business of spending days without eating much and walking hours through the snow made me shiver in anticipation what was waiting for me when I got to the cave. When we did get there, me and the sherpa and three other people, I found that two survivors had already got out. We camped in the shivering cold for a day before we heard that ten more had been pulled out of the cave unconscious. When I heard that, I rushed to the cave before my sherpa arrived and received the loudest verbal bashing I had ever heard.
Since this man, a bloke named Chin Lam Thay, spoke the for Tibet unusual idiom of Thai and broke out into a frenzy of rage at my disobedience.
Apparently, he had asked me if was a moron taking such a huge risk. There were injured people down there.
It did lead me to my future wife, though.
Pamela was just being pulled out.
There was nothing of that buxom brunette with her C-cup bust left. Her beauty was evident, but she was wrapped in four Singapore Airlines blankets and was full of scars. When she saw me, she began to cry and fell into my arms.
We shared a helicopter to the nearest camp, after which I spent a night feeding her soup in the warmth of a small bed. I think it was a week before we left for Singapore again. The New Delhi gig was long gone and so we decided to spend some quiet days in a Singapore hotel and try to come to terms with all the press that were hounding her. Our parents knew that we were trying to gather back our strength again.
Toward the middle of August we were in California again. CNN, Fox, NBC, BBC, all of them kept on calling and asking for interviews. I became somewhat of a campaign manager that tried to keep a track of which magazines to invite and which not.
What had actually amazed us was that our folks had never stopped preparing for the wedding. They knew our sizes and the clothes we were going to wear were just about ready to wear.
When the wedding took place in September of that year, it really was a media event. Due to the fact that Pamela was an airplane crash survivor, the whole thing was blown out of proportion. The media wanted to turn this thing into a romantic novel. Barbara Cartland presents “Airplane Love Crash – the gripping story of the actor and the biologist trapped in Tibet”.
The buxom and crash-surviving acting teacher marries a musical star. We did not mind the attention. After all, we were stars now.
Where did we go on our honeymoon?
We went to the mountains to her hut for two weeks and we told nobody about it.
What did we do?
We made love, ate caviar, drank wine and never left the house.
Oh, yes.
We did not take the airplane.
We drove there in her station wagon.
Thank Goodness.
THE TAUNTING MELODY OF MIDNIGHT(Charles E.J. Moulton)
Playing Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins in “Elvis – The Musical” in Hamburg gave me many interesting experiences. The number that gave me all the attention Blue Suede Shoes. Getting the audience to stand up and dance to the tunes of that song gave me a kick every night. My number had one function: getting them in a dancing mode when Elvis’ big medley of silver screen hits began. That would eventually take him to Priscilla. An Australian played the girl girl that was the spitting image of his ex-wife. Eerie.
All in all, the musical was a homage to Elvis and the other artists that began their careers at Sun Records Studios.
The show examined what became of them after rock ‘n roll turned into pop music.
I was happy to get all this attention. Being first cast in a role in a big musical in Germany was exactly what I had needed. It was important, though, for me actually to do something completely different in the time off that I had.
So, in my hours off I wandered the streets of Hamburg and ate in restaurants and met friends. I went to the movies and I ordered take-out pizza and Chinese food, watched videos and invited people for dinner.
The most rewarding thing in Hamburg, though, was walking along the harbour and just seeing where these spontaneous walks would lead me. One day, it lead me to my destiny.
That Sunday evening, I finished early. We had started at six p.m. and so my nine p.m. free time came like a wrapped and warm welcoming-gift. My dear costume dresser Adrian was always fun company after the show and people like Koffi and Shane kept me laughing just because they amazed self irony.
We took the boat across the harbour along with the guests and gazed at the lights emanating from other ships that glittered and shone in the water. We sailed across in the big boat that had the text “Elvis” written all over it and we felt like kings.
On shore, we parted from a chuckle and as I strolled down in the direction of the city I felt lucky. I lived close to the airport, but today I wanted to saunter a bit. The storage district across the river always smelled of spices and coffee and so these smells felt like a habitat. I had grown up in Gothenburg, Sweden and the shipyards were a common area to me. They had served as a perfect breeding ground for bicycle adventures with my dad.
Across the street that day in Hamburg and under the subway bridges were the Scandinavian churches and Portuguese restaurants. I remembered these with joy, recollecting many a lovely meal and ceremony there. I, however, was heading along the other side of the river, not to sing in a church, but to rediscover the city.
Soon enough, I was alongside of the railway station. I stood there for a bit and contemplated going in for a pizza in the open hut of dough. I wanted no more than to eat a slice of pepperoni, but Mönckebergstrasse seemed too much of a lure right now.
Sunday was a calm day in Hamburg, preparing for the next day’s work and my one free day. My thoughts gathered toward the seduction of Thai food. There was a these restaurants near by that served fantastic lemon grass soup, but as I was heading passed Karstadt and the large church to the left I saw the grand City Hall and beyond it the Irish pub. That would be my first stop, as always.
I went in there for a Guinness and spoke to the Irish barkeeper named Kevin. He advised me to eat at his pub, but before long I was heading across the bridges in direction of Gänsemarkt, where I had sung at the Christmas markets last year.
So I found myself by the opera gazing at the audience leaving the theatre from what I gathered was a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin set in a school class. Tonight’s Ortrud was Eva Marton, who looked a little too taut in her girl’s uniform.
I past my throat doctor’s office and crossed the street toward the movie house. Then I suddenly recalled one of my favourite restaurants: Bolero. They had great Mexican food. I had a good book about Christopher Columbus with me to read. I was ready for some hot sauce and some cool Latino salsa. “Bartender, give me a beer!”
Humming Gershwin’s song “Shall we dance?”, I entered the consign after a brisk stroll and was promptly greeted by Carlos Gueteres. His smile always made me grin and so, because of my grin, he gave me my usual place not far away from a window and yet somewhat in a corner. I sat down and got my usual drink, a large beer, and began leafing through the menu.
Being rather hungry, I settled for the complete benchmark: mixed starters, a steak with taco sauce and a dessert. I ordered it all to be delivered in a slow speed and picked up my book.
It felt like my wonderful rock ‘n roll show this evening was slowly but solemnly taking a respite, letting the vibrating volumes be exchanged by chronological attitude.
My book gave me the necessary escapism. Christopher Columbus by Fabian Franzén told me about a young weaver from a village close to Genoa. This adolescent youngster started working on ships at age fourteen and sooner or later fell in love with the enchanting supremacy of gold ingots. His interest in the Vikings made him spellbound by what they had actually discovered across the great ocean? The magic land of wine and women? India? The new world?
As I turned a page in the book, engulfed by its’ wonders, I glanced up for moment. In through the access came a female so dazzling that my book nearly fell to the floorboards. She stood there for a second, waiting for the maitre d’ and was more or less on her way out again when Carlos came running up. They had a quick tête-à-tête and he took her to the table right next to mine.
The woman sat down, straightening out her blue dress and made herself comfortable. I tried my best to focus on my book. It was complex, because I kept wondering if her husband was going to come walking in a flash. She ordered her food and I detected a slight hint of an American accent.
The husband didn’t arrive. She sat there, reading Fortune magazine, her expensive silver jewellery rattling around her neck and her decorated nails shining blue and white on sexy, long fingers. This girl was dynamite.
I cleared my throat, not being able to concentrate on Commodore Colon’s desperation in finding a sponsor for his trip. I was reading about Columbus’ contacts with a certain Dottore Toscanelli. This man really got him started in understanding that there might be another way to India. The woman looked up at me and smiled. I nodded.
I was going to ask her if she came here often, but she had the faster orifice and that was something I had at many times seen in women. She winked at me.
“Hi there,” she swooned, “how are you doing?”
“All right,” I responded. “What are you reading?”
“Fortune magazine,” she answered.
“Do you subscribe to that?”
She shook her head, closing the magazine.
“I invest in stocks, so I try to keep in touch,” she flirted. “Do you come here often?”
She put the magazine away.
“Yeah,” I answered, “Hamburg is a good town for eating out. I tend to try out different places. This one has good food. What about you? What brings you here?”
“I am holding lectures at the Radisson,” she said.
“About what?”
I pictured her as a financial expert telling business men how to manage their finances.
“Acting,” she said.
I smiled. “You are an actress?”
“I have an acting school in L.A., but I also work as a biologist and that is my little niche. I try to combine the two.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “Biology and drama? How?”
“By trying to prove that certain human mechanisms can be used as thespian tools. You can tap into certain techniques: walks, talks, movements, mimicry, gestures. Center of gravity is big issue. My students here are mostly businessmen.”
“I am an actor, too.”
“Where do you work?” she asked.
“Elvis – The Musical in the harbour. I have a big number in the second act as Johnny Cash.”
“That sounds like a good gig,” she smiled. “How long have you been in Germany?”
“Three years. I was in Munich before doing some shows. Originally, I am from Vermont. My name is Peter Davies.”
I stretched forward my hand and she took it.
“Pamela Gingrich, Vancouver. I live in L.A.”
I shook her hand and noticed how soft her hands were.
“How is your success with the suits?”
“They are good actors, believe it or not,” she laughed. “We are part of a two week long education course in order to teach company executives about the art in business and how it can help them become better business men,” she said. “Our course is called The Biology of Acting. We have courses every day for two weeks and end it all with a small performance by the business students themselves, who have to perform a small scene from a play and then hold a lecture using the performing skills that they have acquired.”
“How did you combine biology with theatre?”
I really was interested here.
She shrugged. “I hope I don’t bore you, but that has sort of a pre history.”
Our drinks came and she ordered the drinks to be brought to my table and we started talking face to face, me with my beer and she with her wine.
She told me how she had received a scholarship to study at the UCLA and majored in two subjects: biology and acting. She waited tables in the evenings and performed in the weekends. It was a rough time. She struggled with her nervousness and soon understood that trying to use the physical aspects of the acting technique she was being taught would help her become calmer during the shows.
She repeated her lecture. Centre of gravity, different walks and facial expressions, connections to emotions, entrances, exits, introductions, transitions between scenes, thinking outside of the nine dots, the fourth wall, types of people, techniques in handling nervous situations.
Pamela emphasized that the main core of thespianism was the interpretation and the feeling, but with this so called biology of acting one could actually reduce the nervousness to the necessary minimal.
This conversation kept on going all through our three courses and by the time we had arrived at the aperitif we were on our third drink and enjoying our second brandy.
We walked out on the street a half hour later and we were laughing and drunk and giddy. By the time we arrived at her hotel, the feeling overcame us and we literally jumped on each other. We kissed and hugged and almost stripped down naked.
It didn’t take long for us to take the elevator to her room and throw off our clothes. We were very intoxicated and very excited. It had been boiling up inside us all night and now it came out.
I think what seemed like a half hour of the most intense sex I have ever had in my life actually was three hours. Luckily, we were both free the next day. We woke up the next morning with fierce hangovers, but we realized then and there that we wanted this to be more than just a one night stand.
We went to the art gallery, followed by kissing by the Alster lake and eating in a Thai restaurant. After a long session making love at her hotel, we ate some ice cream in the garden Planten und Blomen and finished off the day hearing a concert in the Musikhalle. We heard the Hamburg Symphony perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Mendelssohn, Dvorak’s A New World Symphony and Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. Robert Stehli conducted the Klassik Philharmonie with such grace that we ended up humming the tunes.
It was a romantic evening. We kept on laughing our heads off that we would be gaining thirty pounds by spending such a large amount of time together. Our classical evening consequently ended at McDonalds. As we devoured our second Big Mac, we were speaking about Dvorak, but as we rushed back to the hotel we were wondering if the reception actually had noticed my presence.
I realized that I hadn’t been home since yesterday at four o’clock, but didn’t care. My accommodation was forlorn and tedious. Pamela was compassionate and sexy. She vowed to tell the reception I was her boyfriend and was needed at the seminar as an acting assistant.
The receptionist was very friendly about this. Obviously, Pam was sort of a star at the hotel. The boss therefore spontaneously decided that I could sleep in her room in her double-bed free of charge for the remainder of the week, if I was working as an assistant.
Well, I must admit that this week was quite fantastic. I spent no time at home at all and maybe that was the great thing. My work week had no extra rehearsals for cut versions, no sound checks, no understudy run-throughs or promo gigs. It was a work week with six evening shows and two afternoon performances. Pam saw me perform two times and spent both gigs dancing her pretty tush off.
I spent most of my days working with stiff businessmen and tried to make them improvise scenes, pretending to be doorbells or cats, walk through rooms like Caesar or make looking suave look believable. I then did my musical show.
I rushed to the hotel after my shows and found my dear girl having slept two hours in order to be able to give me some hot, sweet loving around midnight. There is nothing like a girl saving all her love for you. Even Whitney Houston knew that.
I do remember that we came back to her room after she had seen my show on Thursday and made love five times. She was free the following morning and had her first lesson at three o’clock. This gave her a delayed potential sunrise likely to nap through. I had a show at seven thirty, so that left us free to create reverence. We spoke about our favourite painters between sessions. I think we covered all possible positions and all possible techniques. My love actually spent the lesson at three giggling her way through a very serious scene from Othello. Desdemona had never been so frilly as Pamela.
Just as two business people were trying to act a hard scene between Othello and Desdemona, she whispered into my ear that she had pain down there and wanted more of that pain tonight.
The week was tremendous, but we knew that letting one another go that following Monday would be just as tremendously hard. She had to go back to L.A. for more work in the school. She was leading and some analytical freelance work at biological labs, a job she did at her free time as a biologist.
We both cried as she passed through the airport gates and disappeared.
The gap she left behind was wider than a canyon. I think I spent that day filling my face with pizza and desperately calling someone to be with in order to forget that I was alone and petrified. I finally found a couple of people from the show and together we went to see a Bond flick. The tortilla chips tastes awful, although my colleagues said they were great. The coke was bland, but my friends love it. The movie was mediocre, although my buddies said it was the best Bond movie they had seen.
The next day at eight in the morning I received a phone call from Pamela. She was suffering from jet lag and had waited until now to call because of the time difference. She missed me so much she was crying all the time and had a really hard time keeping up with work. She needed to see me again.
I said that I still had three months left of my contract. The show closed on June 24th and I was first cast. Maybe I could arrange for my second cast to fill in for me for a week.
It was May when we saw each other again.
I spent a wonderful week in L.A. and we rarely were seen without each other. Her parents had arrived from Vancouver that previous night. It was an unusual situation. In-laws are not always a lucky mix. This time, the mix was fabulous. Pam had taken leave off work and so there was plenty of free time.
Pam had a vacation hut in the Rockies. After her folks flew back to Canada on the third day of my stay, we drove off toward the mountains. She scrambled my loom and rode my scale. I discovered her canyons and swam in her river, tasted her cherries and devoured her asparagus. She gave me her oyster and I returned her my banana split under the setting sun.
On the last night of my stay I had a very spontaneous apparition: I asked her to marry me. She said yes.
It was almost too perfect.
We spoke on the phone every day and, needless to say, our phone bills went peak soaring along with our deep-river love.
I knew that I was moving to the U.S. again this summer. My parents were blissful that I was going to be living in the States again. I was on the other coast, mind you, but within the same country. The marriage date was set for September and a wedding coordinator from Palm Beach was hired. We were living in a dream.
Now, my dear Pamela was going to spend a couple of weeks in Hong Kong in July. There was a hotel there that had become interested in her acting courses and had booked her. That gave me enough time to give up my furnished flat and get rid of some stuff. I was quite busy that week trying to pack things and call people and say good bye to various friends. I knew that I was going to leave for the U.S. on the 17th of July and spend some time with my parents. I would return to California just when my sex goddess was back in L.A.
I was in Vermont at my parents house when it happened.
A hotel in New Delhi had booked Pam for another week and this postponed her return.
Her parents knew where I was and so we spoke every day, knowing that we would be seeing more of each other as time went by. Pam’s folks were already planning a trip Vermont on order to to meet my folks.
The day we received the unusual phone call was a Saturday and it became obvious very quickly that this was no social call. Steve, Pam’s dad, sounded very upset. He said that they had just heard from the airport of New Delhi that the plane that was supposed to have arrived from Hong Kong had crashed in Tibet.
I turned on the news and saw the pictures everywhere. The plane had obviously malfunctioned and hit a storm when it had to perform an emergency landing in a canyon between mountains.
There was very little left of the plane itself, but apparently there were fifty survivors. The pilots were dead, it was said, but a list of people still alive would be assembled and a hotline for the families posted in the net.
I do not know exactly what happened next. I just know that the next day I was on my way to Asia. I was going to save Pam, if it would be the last thing I would do. What if she were dead? No, I could not imagine that. I prayed all the way to Tibet. I flew to Los Angeles and then changed planes to Hawaii. In Honolulu, I found my way to a plane that took me to Tokyo. I was in Singapore on Tuesday and found myself in Tibet on Wednesday. I kept contact with my parents and my in-laws all the way. They kept telling me that Pamela was among the survivors, but that all of them were trapped in a cave close to the wreck.
Having communicated with the survivors by way of notes on paper, they found out that all of the people still alive after the crash had tried to walk away from the wreck when the cave wall collapsed on top of the plane.
Luckily, the plane had managed to land halfway into the cave and there was a storage of twenty flashlights there. The only living flight attendant had teamed up with a doctor among the passengers and was handing out the food rations. Pamela Justine Gingrich was among the living. The survivors were keeping warm by ripping up the seat covers and using them as blankets and making fire with left over lighters.
There were songs being song and stories being told.
Everything to keep the spirits alive.
I somehow managed to get myself to the nearest city of the crash. Finding a team from the red cross there, I learned that they had joined together with a team of sherpas, or mountain-guides in English, that regularly took trips over to the wreck to communicate with the survivors.
All of them spoke English, so it was easy for me to speak to them. I told them that my future wife was among the people trapped in the cave. After much talk, I managed to persuade the leading sherpa to take me along on his next trip to the wreck.
That following day I was given a crash course in mountain climbing and then we set on our way. It was an unbelievably strenuous road and I felt lucky to have a profession where I could see where I walked and use my mind and my body to tell a story.
This business of spending days without eating much and walking hours through the snow made me shiver in anticipation what was waiting for me when I got to the cave. When we did get there, me and the sherpa and three other people, I found that two survivors had already got out. We camped in the shivering cold for a day before we heard that ten more had been pulled out of the cave unconscious. When I heard that, I rushed to the cave before my sherpa arrived and received the loudest verbal bashing I had ever heard.
Since this man, a bloke named Chin Lam Thay, spoke the for Tibet unusual idiom of Thai and broke out into a frenzy of rage at my disobedience.
Apparently, he had asked me if was a moron taking such a huge risk. There were injured people down there.
It did lead me to my future wife, though.
Pamela was just being pulled out.
There was nothing of that buxom brunette with her C-cup bust left. Her beauty was evident, but she was wrapped in four Singapore Airlines blankets and was full of scars. When she saw me, she began to cry and fell into my arms.
We shared a helicopter to the nearest camp, after which I spent a night feeding her soup in the warmth of a small bed. I think it was a week before we left for Singapore again. The New Delhi gig was long gone and so we decided to spend some quiet days in a Singapore hotel and try to come to terms with all the press that were hounding her. Our parents knew that we were trying to gather back our strength again.
Toward the middle of August we were in California again. CNN, Fox, NBC, BBC, all of them kept on calling and asking for interviews. I became somewhat of a campaign manager that tried to keep a track of which magazines to invite and which not.
What had actually amazed us was that our folks had never stopped preparing for the wedding. They knew our sizes and the clothes we were going to wear were just about ready to wear.
When the wedding took place in September of that year, it really was a media event. Due to the fact that Pamela was an airplane crash survivor, the whole thing was blown out of proportion. The media wanted to turn this thing into a romantic novel. Barbara Cartland presents “Airplane Love Crash – the gripping story of the actor and the biologist trapped in Tibet”.
The buxom and crash-surviving acting teacher marries a musical star. We did not mind the attention. After all, we were stars now.
Where did we go on our honeymoon?
We went to the mountains to her hut for two weeks and we told nobody about it.
What did we do?
We made love, ate caviar, drank wine and never left the house.
Oh, yes.
We did not take the airplane.
We drove there in her station wagon.
Thank Goodness.
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