FOOTSTEPS

TAKEN SHORT – A CHAPTER FROM MY BOOK ‘SOUR MOUTH, SWEET BOTTOM’, AVAILABLE FROM GOOD BOOKSTORES, AND AMAZON.

In 1974 I was managing the Spanish singer Junior. He was signed to RCA and they decided we should go to their annual Latin conference in Mexico City. The previous year Junior’s song ‘Perdóname’ had been the best-selling Spanish single of the year - number one right across South America with twelve million copies sold. And since I’d co-written it with him, that rather pleased me.

So off we went, flying fancy in Iberia first class and getting ourselves put up in the rather magnificent Gran Hotel Ciudad in the centre of Mexico City.

For three days there were typical conference things to be done− panels to sit on, people to meet, PR to be dealt with and eventually a gala event in the hotel ballroom. The night before that there was an event at which RCA artists and bigwigs would mingle for a special dinner, a couple of hundred of them, all big names in the business.

This was held in a large restaurant in the centre of town. It was a good evening, mainly with tables for eight. Ours included the Mexican singing star Estrellita, who we weren’t too pleased with.

In Mexico, unlike every other country in South America, although ‘Perdóname’ had been number one, the version released hadn’t been by Junior but by Estrellita. Now we found ourselves sitting with both her and her manager, plus the A&R executives at RCA Mexico who had decided the company should release her version rather than Junior’s despite our requesting them not to.

Good professional he was, Junior chatted with Estrellita and appeared amiable, though inside I’m sure he felt less so. As for me, I felt distressed. But for a different reason.

It was probably the street food I’d had in the market at lunchtime but my tummy was telling me it wouldn’t last much longer without a trip to the loo. When the waiter next passed, I asked him where the toilets were and he pointed to a row of doors next to the double doors into the kitchen at the centre of the room through which waiters flowed endlessly, trays in hand. A particularly painful tummy rumble told me my time was nigh so I upped and moved swiftly across the room and into the nearest of the three toilet doors. And,dammit, it was a footsteps one.

Mostly in Mexico they’re not, but sometimes they are. And it was too late to try one of the others. Explosion point was upon me.

I don’t trust these squat toilets. I first encountered one when I was twelve years old on a trip to Paris. Uneducated in their use, I did what I thought was required, stood with my feet on the porcelain footsteps, bent forwards, lowered my trousers and deposited the goods. Luckily, on that occasion it was just a single unit and firmly formed. But on looking down to check, I found it had landed plum in the middle of the hammock created by my underpants stretched between my knees. Due to its excellent consistency it was quickly manoeuvred into the water hole between the footsteps and no great damage was done. But ever since then I’d been extremely wary of squat toilets and had long learnt that the best way to deal with them was to strip naked, taking off all your clothes and hanging them on a hook, including your shirt so that it wouldn’t accidentally dangle into the water hole.

This I now did in something of a panic because my final moment of self-control was fast approaching. But just as I had everything nicely hanging on the hook on the wall, the door flew open.

Somehow I’d not secured the catch properly and there I was, totally unclothed, mid-centre of the restaurant, with the door swinging outwards, and not twenty feet away from me the table at which José Feliciano sat with his entourage, together with John Denver, and Ken Glancy, the head of RCA, with whom I had a meeting the next morning.

Naked, I was going to have to step out of the toilet and into the dining room, grab the door-handle and pull it back closed. And with Armageddon imminent, this was no time to be shy, so I stepped out and grabbed the handle.

Just as I did so, at the VIP table John Denver glanced up and we locked eyes. It felt like an hour but was probably half a second; then I was back inside, the door firmly shut. And I released my grand finale.

Afterwards I stayed longer than I needed. If possible, I’d have stayed till dinner was over and everyone had gone home. But that wasn’t an option. So I took a deep breath and walked outside.

No one even noticed. And when I got back to my seat, ready to cover my embarassment with a couple of well-prepared jokes, everyone was chatting, unaware I’d even left the table. Today, in a cell-phone world, it would already be on social media.

That was the great thing about those days. Accidents could still be contained.

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