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Nothing Personal
Thirsty heart
For The Boss, it's gotta be Hellmann's ... and orange bubbly. Plus: More mammarial madness from photogenic Scientologists! And: David Duchovny takes umbrage.
By Amy Reiter
[03/24/00]

People Feature
Why do elephants paint?
Well, because there's a shortage of jobs in the logging industry these days. And, no, as a matter of fact, they don't sell their canvases for peanuts.
By Elizabeth Bukowski
[03/23/00]

People Feature
Blame Canada? Hell, let's declare war!
It's a vile, cold, wooded wasteland populated with propaganda-spewing lumberjacks and their irritating ilk. Who needs it?
By Lance Gould
[03/23/00]

Nothing Personal
Hugs 'n' drugs
Mackenzie Phillips: "My father taught me how to shoot up"; Halle Berry: Why do bad drivers happen to good dogs? Plus: Mariah Carey says ninth-graders are hotter than she is!
By Amy Reiter
[03/22/00]

People Feature
Where the boys are
A new wave of films shows a fresh element in filmmaking: The sexualization of the male actor by the female director.
By Jessica Hundley
[03/22/00]

Complete archives for People

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I am full up with Miller right now. For the 10th time -- or is it the 12th? -- I am wallowing in "Tropic of Cancer." I tell you, there is no one like him: He has such a sense of mission. He wants to communicate to us the lust for life and the lust for love and the lust for words -- all in one novel.

This is the third in a series of dispatches from our correspondent in coastal Mexico. Read the previous article in the series, "Fred's dead. Or is he?"

But I had forgotten -- until this reading -- the role of hunger in the Miller panoply. He is all over the streets of 1920s Paris with an empty belly. But he's also hungry to read, hungry to write, hungry to screw. "I have no money, no resources, no hopes," he tells us: "I am the happiest man alive."

"Dropped in at the Cronstadts," Miller says. "They were eating a young chicken with wild rice. Pretended that I had eaten already, but I could have torn the chicken from the baby's hands. This is not just false modesty -- it's a kind of perversion, I'm thinking. Twice they asked me if I wouldn't join them. No! No! Wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee after the meal. I'm delicat, I am! On the way out I cast a lingering glance at the bones lying on the baby's plate -- there was still meat on them."

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Every Sunday evening I go over to San Sebastian to eat with Jesus, his wife and his baby. Not long ago, Flor, Jesus' sister-in-law, was there, eating with us. Chicken relleños, frijoles and tortillas.

Flor is almost 17. The name is right: She's a flower -- a dark rose, say; the rose of Castille. Delicate, long black hair that comes down to her waist, eyes large enough for you and me to drown in. And above her mouth, at the very upper edge, a slight dark down that some of us find to be irresistible.

I was talking to her about her school, and since we were just sitting down to eat, I asked her what they fed her at school.

"Nada," she said.

"No hay nada para comer?" (There's nothing to eat?)

"Sí, pero no puedo." (Yes -- but I can't.)

Why not?

She giggled, looked at me as if it were the most obvious thing on earth. Finally, she said: "Porque no hay dinero." (Because there is no money.)

She didn't say it with shame, or with malice. It's just a fact of her life. There's no money, so she doesn't eat lunch.

Foolish of me to ask, wasn't it? Flor's family is the poorest of the poor, even poor by the standards of San Sebastian. Her father's in jail in Oaxaca. He's been there for almost 10 years. He's a drunk, and in the midst of one of his attacks of delirium tremens, he thought his mistress -- he had been cheating on Flor's mother -- was casting spells on him. Brujas count heavily here. He slashed at her with a machete, left her bleeding. They don't know when he'll get out.

Flor's mother sells tamales at the public market. Her older sister does sewing, but the rest of her brothers and sisters are too young to work. Mostly they eat tortillas and salt -- and when there is a little money, beans and rice. That's it.

The thought of Flor, my lovely and gentle Flor, going to school hungry drives me bats. So later in the week, I give Jesus' wife some money to hand over to her each week for lunch.

I was there in San Sebastian not long ago. When Flor came in, I asked her if she was eating now. "Yes," she said, matter-of-factly. "I get food at school now. Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays."

How about the rest of the week?

"We gave it to Juan." Juan is her brother, now 11 years old. "He gets the food on Tuesdays and Thursdays," she said.

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Attack of the killer ants!

The place where I park my trailer in Puerto Perdido is called La Huerta. It's the stuff of paradise. It's a couple of acres that I've been renting for several years. It's heavily shaded, with towering mango trees, palms and frutales -- orange trees, grapefruit, satsumas. When it is very quiet, we can hear the thrumming of the ocean in the distance.

There are three nacimientos -- springs, and we've dug channels in the dark clay so the water can flow everywhere in the orchard. The longest of these "canales" has been named El Rio Grande -- the Big River -- which is a fine joke, since it's about 6 inches across.

We've built a series of brick pathways for my wheelchair -- complete with a cantilevered toll bridge made of bamboo over the Rio Grande so I can travel up and down the slopes, from one end of the orchard to the other. We've also installed a couple of open-sided huts -- palapas -- with palm fronds for a roof.

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