Cleo Odzer

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Cleo Odzer
Cleo Odzer in 1969
Cleo Odzer in 1969
Born(1950-04-16)16 April 1950
New York, US
Died26 March 2001(2001-03-26) (aged 50)
Goa, India
OccupationWriter
LanguageEnglish

Cleo Odzer (née Sheila Lynne Odzer,[1] April 6, 1950 – March 26, 2001[2]) was an American writer who authored books on prostitution in Thailand, the hippie culture of Goa, and cybersex.

Childhood and time as a groupie

Cleo Odzer grew up in Manhattan, New York City, the daughter of Rena Abelson Odzer and Harry Odzer. Her father, president of a textile company, died when she was 16 years old.[3] She attended Franklin School (now Dwight School) and Quintano's School for Young Professionals, graduating from the latter in 1968. At about that time, she began writing about the music scene for a small Greenwich Village newspaper. Odzer met Keith Emerson, then member of the rock band the Nice and later of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, at The Scene nightclub. After receiving a Christmas gift from Emerson in 1968, she reported to the press that they were engaged. According to Keith Emerson's account in his 2003 autobiography Pictures of an Exhibitionist, there was no actual engagement[4] and Emerson learned about the "engagement" from the same February 1969 Time magazine article that published her photo and described her as a "Super Groupie".[5] Odzer later claimed that the article was the reason for breaking off the "engagement".[6]

Shortly thereafter in 1969, Odzer recorded an album called The Groupies, produced by Alan Lorber, which essentially consisted of interviews with Cleo and some friends describing their adventures meeting (and sleeping with) rock musicians.

Hippie years in Goa

In the early 1970s, Odzer traveled in Europe and the Middle East and worked as a model. She spent the late 1970s in the hippie culture of

ISBN 1-56201-059-X). For a time she followed the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in India.[7]

Return to U.S.; research in Thailand

After her return to the United States in the late 1970s, Odzer underwent drug treatment at

ISBN 1-55970-281-8
). In this work she describes the Thai prostitutes she got to know as quick-witted entrepreneurs rather than exploited victims, sometimes revered in their poor home villages. She also relates her own problematic affair with a Thai pimp boyfriend.

Following publication of the book, Odzer worked at Daytop in New York,[9] the drug rehabilitation organization she herself had attended earlier.

From 1995 to 1998, Odzer produced several dozen episodes of her show Cleo's Adventures for

ISBN 0-425-15986-8), deals with cybersex. She appeared in episode 1.21 of SexTV
in 1999, with a segment on cybersex.

Return to Goa, and death

In 1999, disappointed with life in New York, Odzer returned to Goa, where some of the remaining old-time hippies disliked her because of the publicity her book had brought to the scene.[10] She died there in 2001. A good friend of hers who had been corresponding with Odzer during her final stay in India, "Cookie" (with whom she had recorded The Groupies), reports that Odzer's doctor (who had been away when she died) said she probably died of a stroke related to very high cholesterol and serious circulatory problems that she was being treated for during her final year, and that her body had been cremated after a small service.[11] But a researcher, Arun Saldanha, who interviewed members of the Goa community about Odzer, reports being told by a psychiatrist at the Goa Medical College some ten months after her death that her body had lain unclaimed in a morgue in Mapusa for more than a month until finally she had been buried in Mapusa without a funeral, and that she had had AIDS. Saldanha also reports having seen Odzer use cocaine during an interview he had with her sometime before her death.[12]

The 2002 documentary

super-8
footage from the 1970s. She was interviewed by Robbins for the film in Goa shortly before her death, and said:

I don't know what the future brings, but I know what I don't want: New York is what I don't want, that culture is what I don't want; it's not right. I don't know what is right. I don't think our old life was right. I don't see a new culture that is right, but we have to continue trying, that's the best we can do, that's the best any of us can do, to keep trying. To make something that is peaceful for everybody, that makes people happy, that is fair to everybody. And that's all I want.[13]

The film was dedicated to her memory.

References

  1. ^ New York Times, Birth Notices (April 16, 1950, p. 105)
  2. ^ Social Security Death Index entry for Cleo S. Odzer
  3. ^ "Harry Odzer Is Dead at 62; President of Textile Firm". The New York Times. March 27, 1966. Retrieved 25 September 2018.
  4. OCLC 55104781.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  5. ^ "The Groupies". Time. February 28, 1969.
  6. ^ Interview by Marcus Robbin (January 2000, Goa, India)
  7. ^ Ma Prem Madhumaya
  8. ^ Cleo Odzer, Patpong Prostitution. Its Relationship to, and Effect on, The Position of Women in Thai Society. Dissertation, New School for Social Research, April 1990.
  9. ^ "Urban Desire contributors". Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2006-12-22.
  10. ^ Arun Sladanha, Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race, p. 83-84. University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
  11. ^ Telephone conversation with Cookie, 5 February 2009.
  12. ^ Arun Sladanha, Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race, p. 86. University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
  13. ^ Interview with Cleo Odzer Part Nine: Return to Goa

External links

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