The Ludmila Confessions

I have to clarified what was not clear in my last blog. La Negra Maldonado is a daughter of a large Hacendado of a coffee plantation in San Lucas Toliman, Lake of Atitlan. After the bike accident they took me there, to the only  Dr. available around this mountain area of the lake, without going to the other site of the lake,  where all the tourist area are. Jose meet some friends walking with La Negra, while I was with the local Dr. and they all agreed  that I will be better in  her Hacienda because I would be much more comfortable there, with servivent etc. which Jose did not have in his small cabana.

Grant and Ludmila going to the stables in Hollywood to horseback riding.

After my motorcycle accident, I could not walk, nor do modeling, but I could be a makeup consultant, with my large experience in cosmetics and makeup. I was very good  at it, so I landed a  fantastic job, on the  top floor of a gorgeous salon in one of the most famous stores in Beverly Hills.

And the another picture that was before,  that  did not make sense in my story,  was the one me laying on my living room floor with drinks,  plenty of them and pain pills,  with my left leg immobilized, watching Grant remodeling my little  horrible nightmare house that I purchased for a very good price.

I start feeling that familiar feeling that I was on my own, alone, no one to protect me like Jack used to do- I used to feel so secure with him!

I don’t really know how that made me feel because I was always medicated with alcohol,  so in a way I reverted to some degree, confronting myself and taking responsibility of myself. Now that life showed me this, I am back starting where I began at birth!

I remember it well!  This insane house purchase. Well, at the time it seemed like a good idea!

Jose and Ludmila sitting in the street of Guatemala

Before I  left  for Guatemala, I purchased this house without even seeing it, just so we would have a house when we came back. Well, now Mr. Grant Lesley was working on remodeling this horror, and he was handsome, but short, with blond hair, blue eyes and an outgoing personality. Just what the doctor ordered, jajajaja!  He was very charming, so he convinced me to remodel this little garbage house into a mini-jungle in the guest room, wall-to-wall paper with jungle animals, tigers, panthers and lions, orchids and palm trees in the living room (for real) so you could not see on from the street but I could see out.

In the main bedroom was a white wall-to-wall carpet, white walls, white silk bedding, a white  fox fur imitation  bad cover,  a night table with a red base, and white and red roses, and a large mirror reflecting the light of the window and plants from outside there was a mini garden  out their, plus  a white rocking chair.

Taking a ride whit Bud Harrod after modeling

Today, I realize that Grant was a really good friend:  he took my mind off  Jose, my injuries,  and the pain of mourning I was going through. (Thank you Grant–I hope your are reading this wherever you are. You were a fantastic decorator, carpenter, designer, everything !) The living room was Mexican with large wooden furniture made by him,  in front of the new design  red brick fireplace,( replacing the one I almost die by the night I arrived)  with a large red hardwood mantel,  the kitchen head a  table which stuck out of the counter of the dining area with a bar behind at an door to the small garden and garage and the other side to the living room and the hall away to the lef.

Well, I spent most of the money from the divorce settlement, but I had a showplace that I loved and that made me grow. It was the most romantic place, tiny but enchanting! The hallway to my room was  full of books on each side of the walls. I could had almost any fantastic book, some that I lugged with me from Venezuela.  (How strange now I rarely read anymore!)  from Thomas Mann to all the collected works of  Winston  Churchill,  philosophers all the way back to Socrates and Plato. (Socrates did not write, of course, he spoke and Plato wrote down his dialogues his ideas and philosophy)..

Smoking a tabaco pipe

Grant and I become more than friends, lovers of course,  but with no attachments. We had a lot of fun remodeling this ugly duckling into our fantasy of beautiful fairy tale home.  I loved it and everyone who came to my home loved it too. I had some really good parties. Jack came by with his new girlfriend Joy who he married later on, Jeff Cooper, and many other famous people and of course movie stars…

Then when I got better I went back to work, with my favorite designer Bud Harrod, who at one time was my boyfriend– and the only man that ever put a diamond ring on my finger! it was over a one karat rock that had belonged to his father. Not for a proposal, because he was scared of marriage after his last experience.  But we worked well together, in harmony you could say, and we went in to New Years to Las Vegas and many other US cities for designer week– New York, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas. On one trip to San Francisco, I saw William again for the last time. He was back from Hawaii, and we had a farewell dinner at the Saint Francis hotel. We talked about his Cafe Imperial, the coffee I helped him sell door to door in L.A. It was a fantastic idea, but it did not sell at that time.

My set of friends had begun to change, and I was moving more into the business world instead of Hollywood showbiz. I was thinking about starting my own line of beauty products, facial creams, so  I contacted my ex-lover and dear friend Buck Rogers, who by then was living in Mexico City instead of Acapulco where I met him..  Then in LA I was introduced to a Clairol executive.