Cleo Odzer

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Cleo Odzer (true first name Sheila[1], born 6 April 1950, died 26 March 2001[2] in Goa) was an American writer, with books on prostitution in Thailand, the hippie culture of Goa, and cyber sex.

She was originally from Manhattan, New York, from a wealthy Jewish family.[3] Early on she wrote about music groups for a New York village newspaper. She met Keith Emerson, then member of the rock band The Nice and later of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and they got briefly engaged. A Times article of 1969 described her as one of the rare "Super Groupies".[4] The Groupies is a 1969 record (later also released as mp3) featuring interviews with Cleo and her friends, describing her groupie adventures.

In the early 1970s she traveled in Europe and the Middle East and worked as a model. She spent the late 1970s in the hippie culture of Anjuna, Goa. Her experiences there, including heavy use of cocaine and heroin, the drug smuggling used to finance the stay, and her resulting arrest, would later form the basis of her second book, Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India (1995, ISBN 156201059X). For a time she followed the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in India.[5]

After her return to the United States in 1980, she underwent drug treatment. She then entered graduate school and eventually obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology from the The New School for Social Research with a thesis on prostitution in Thailand. Beginning in 1987, she had spent three years in Thailand to research this topic, and her experiences there were described in her first book, Patpong Sisters: An American Woman's View of the Bangkok Sex World (1994, ISBN 1559702818). 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, she worked at Daytop in New York, a drug rehabilitation organization.[6]

Her third book, Virtual Spaces: sex and the cyber citizen (1997, ISBN 0425159868) deals with cyber sex.

From 1995 to 1998 she produced several dozen episodes of her show Cleo's Adventures for Manhattan Neighborhood Network public access TV. She appeared in episode 1.21 of SexTV in 1999, with a segment on cyber sex.

She returned to Goa in 1999, where she was still using cocaine. The old-time hippies there disliked her because her book had brought publicity to the scene. She died in 2001 and was buried in Mapusa without a funeral. Her doctor later stated that she had been suffering from AIDS.[3].

The 2002 documentary Last Hippie Standing covered the Goa scene and featured some of Cleo Odzer's old super-8 footage from the 1970s. She was interviewed for the movie in Goa shortly before her death:

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.

The film was dedicated to her memory.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (PA), 5 June 2003
  2. ^ Social Security Death Index Search results for "Cleo S Odzer"
  3. ^ a b Arun Sladanha. Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race. p. 83. University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
  4. ^ The Groupies, Time, Feb. 28, 1969
  5. ^ Ma Prem Madhumaya
  6. ^ Urban Desire contributors

[edit] External links