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Sunday, Oct 12, 2008
"Hello, I am Aracelys." A brown girl with smooth black hair looked up at me with a sweet face and the social ease of a debutante. I shook her hand, glad that we would be able to talk in English. My Spanish is weak.
"Are you a friend of Hans?" she asked. He was one of the Germans.
"I just met him tonight", I answered, then amplified, "Solo esta noche. Somos in un palador insieme."
Her face lit up. "So you no ... " and here she wiggled her hips, "... with Hans?" The debutante aura collapsed abruptly.
"No, no," I replied with genuine shock. "Solo un amiga nueva. Mio novio es in Nueva York," I lied. The notion of a liaison with the pallid whore master appalled me.
"Hans very good man," Aracelys observed.
"Si, claro," I allowed.
Aracelys began to tell me of her refrigeration technology studies, but just then Hans joined us, sweeping her up in a bear hug. She clung to him and whispered something in his ear. He whispered back, then she moved away, clearly disappointed. Soon she was dancing with another girl, obviously trolling for a man.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" Hans asked.
"Yes, but I'm tired. I was at the beach today. I think we'll be taking off soon."
I am rarely tired. I was angry. Did these men ever wonder whether the little Cuban girls were enjoying themselves? Whether the sex was good for them, too?
I have led an adventuresome life with a lot of casual sex. Mainly it has been pretty good, even very good. When you make impulsive decisions to go to bed with someone you usually at least pick someone you have chemistry with, if not someone whose character you will come to admire. But sometimes it wasn't good and I had to get out of it, hopefully without destroying the man's ego.
What would it be like to have to continue to have sex with one of those men, if I wanted to eat? What if I were getting $5,000 a night to fuck him? Wasn't that about what $50 translated into here? Could I learn to like the bad sex, or at least persuade him that I did? Why had Castro beggared his nation and put a generation of young women in the position of learning to be whores? Did the daughters of the Cuban leadership have to wiggle their butts in nightclubs? What color were those girls?
In the cab back to the hotel, Beth, who like me is old enough to feel protective of the Johnny's girls, blurts out, "I would like to pay those girls $50 not to go home with those men!"
Beth and I are both staying at the Hotel Nacional ($110, or ten months' wages for the average Cuban, or the price of three girls from El Rio). It's a deal; the place would cost three times as much anywhere else in the Caribbean.
There is an argument to be made that this is politically incorrect, because the money goes to the Cuban government. If you stay at a casa particular, a private house, as I have sometimes done, the money, less some taxes, goes to the family that runs it. You can bring Cubans there to have sex. They can't go above the lobby at the hotels. And the private houses are cheaper. Lucy, a part-time editor on a budget, is staying at a nice one for only $25 a night.
But the Nacional is very beautiful, with a lawn that runs down to a view of the harbor, and there are two pools where I can swim laps and a tennis court where Beth and I can play for $4 an hour. Besides, I had traveled in China and stayed at government-run or -sanctioned hotels without concerning myself with the politics of the situation.
When I enter my room, Perrito is curled up in a ball on top of my beach tote bag. He is the size of a large sandwich. Fleas still hop on his back, but fewer. Perhaps I should bathe him again tomorrow. I force a little of the yellow milk down his throat. He doesn't seem to be able to sip from the saucer yet. He's so helpless, so adorable. I contemplate bringing him back to the States.
When I call the American Interests Section the next morning a nice Cuban woman says she thinks I would have to put Perrito in quarantine if I take him back to the States. That would be a death sentence to so young a puppy.
The next evening I go with my friend Tom to another nightclub, Palermo, in Havana's Chinatown. This part of town, just a couple of hundred yards from the central shopping district and a few of the nicer hotels, has a forlorn, ragged feel that reminds me of Mexico City. Maybe I have just traveled too much, for the circular bar also reminds me of somewhere else, the East Village's Vazac's. Like El Rio, this is filled with many girls and few men, the opposite of the usual American joint. It's a rougher place than El Rio, and accordingly the women are darker.
"Every girl here is for sale," Tom told me. "At one time, before I was married, I could say I'd sampled a fair percentage of the regulars. One night I did two doubles and one single; I think that was my record. You take them across the street, rent a room for $30, fuck them all night."
"Do you miss it, now that you're married?" In Cuba on business, Tom was being good, this trip.
"My wife and I fuck all night; we have a great relationship." That was more than I wanted to know, and Tom, sensing my discomfort, went on:
"One night I went to the room of this girl who, well, maybe was 16. I felt bad about it, but that added to the thrill, of course."
What were men like Tom thinking when they told me these stories? Now every time I saw him and his wife at a party, I'd be picturing him -- 40-ish, short, balding -- humping an exquisite little 16-year-old mulatta.
A tall brown girl, well dressed by local standards, with the narrow body and small features of a model, put her arm on Tom's shoulder and invited him to dance. I had to stop myself from glaring at her -- Tom had been in the middle of a sentence. He was soon back. "I explained that I'm with you, that I'm just here for the music tonight," he said.
"Not that you were married?"
"No."
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