would smoke the occasional joint in her presence but she never participated. At the SoHo gallery party, the pot smoke was thick and there were many Rastafarian’ s around that were smoking cigar joints.
I had never even seen this but for me it was cool and for Mimi it was awful and she was very nervous. Growing up in Singapore, the mere mention of marijuana and they put you in jail if not flogged first and possibly hanged later. We walked over to the drinks table and next to the many bottles of all types of booze was the most amount of cocaine that I had ever seen. Mimi was now very anxious as this is the first time she had ever seen cocaine. We immediately walked away from this and had a seat and then we saw, what looked like the famous artist Andy Warhol. We hadn’ t been in the gallery for more than 10 minutes and Mimi wanted out and I obliged. We quickly left and walked to my car that was parked nearby. As we got in, one of the Rastafarian’ s from the party said to me,“ Hey Man, can you give me a ride Man?” I said that we were going uptown and that was where he was going so he hopped in the back seat. But then he lit up one of his cigar joints and asked me if I wanted a toke. The look on Mimi’ s face said it all and I asked him to please put it out and he complied. Needless to say, we declined invitations to other such events!
We were watching the sky as it displayed an array of delightful colors. The sun was setting over the Caribbean Sea and the waves were crashing on the nearby beach. Mimi and I were sitting in an elite restaurant in Montego Bay on the north side of Jamaica drinking our chilled white wine. We were indoors but it appeared as if we were also outdoors with a rattan fan gently moving overhead. It was our first night on the island and so far it was one of the most romantic undertaking that we had every experienced. We had both ordered the local fish with a spicy marinade and we were looking forward to it. The mood was right, in fact it was perfect in every way. The sun finally went down and eventually the stars and the moon came out and made the Caribbean glisten so beautifully. Wow, we thought. This is a great place to spend our week long vacation and we were so pleased that we had gone through the effort to get there. Then two waiters showed up with our meals and they were carrying the dishes over their heads. They waived past both of us simultaneously and then placed our dinners in front of us. Mimi and I looked at each other and knew that there was a strong and awful odor in the air that was coming from both of the waiters. Yes, it was body odor that was off the Richter scale and it had turned the perfect night into a nightmare. We could barely eat the food as the smell seemed to have lingered. We wound up getting out of there and walking down on the beach and I think that we had some fast food there. A live band was playing Reggae music and although we didn’ t know how to dance to it, we faked it and had some fun.
The next day we went on some local tour and as soon as we stepped out of the hotel, so many locals came up to us to sell us something. They literally swarmed us and it was the first time that we had encountered this before. During a short local walking tour, I took a walk away from the group with my camera to take some photos and I came across a black guy who said to me in a very Jamaican accent,“ Man, I’ m going to take your camera now, man.” I then ran back to the group for safety and he did chase me for a short distance. Mimi and I decided to stay within the hotel grounds for the rest of the vacation except for one brief hike into a nearby waterfall. Just north of Jamaica is Cuba and I always wanted to see it, mainly for photography. I understand that there are vintage cars that are driven around and some of the locals have real character. Perhaps one day I will get there.
BARRY STEVEN EPSTEIN- PhotoAutobiography DRAFT 55 of 156