Salon.com > Alysia Vilar

Havana honey, Part 4

Fri, 23 May 2003 19:24:00 +0000

My bags are on the curb.

My landlady, Pilar, won't open the door, but tells me through colonial wood and hinges that I'm no longer welcome, that my friends are scum, diente de perro, that the neighborhood-watch types have been talking.

She'd taken a month's rent the night before.

I sit on the curb and look around. The air is thick, different. More pungent. A discomfiting silence permeates the normally chatty streets. Absent are the hucksters and girls in too-tight Lycra. Discos have been shut. Cubans walking with foreigners are being shackled.

The world may be worried about dissidents, but everyday folks here have more immediate concerns. Namely, the police. And how to fly under radar.

There's a Dutchman at my side, or maybe he's from Belgium, I can't remember, though I'm trying to keep it straight now that European states seem more distilled -- France is good, Germany is OK, Spain is not. Allies of the distant war in Iraq don't get my time or attention. Which is fine, because men who herald from poorer countries have no interest in my skin tone. They want their beauties dark, with pronounced African features.

Havana honey, Part 3

Thu, 22 May 2003 19:20:00 +0000

"Dahling, I want her pussy shaved."

Richard is calling from England. He's to arrive in the evening, and I'm charged with having Dayanara, his va-va-voom teenage Caribbean princess, toned down. No glitter. No Flashdance-inspired slashes in her jeans. He has sent in bags from Harrod's: strappy shoes, Yves St. Laurent makeup, and a tailored gown of red sequins.

His girlfriend lives in a dirt-floored shack with 14 cousins, uncles and aunts.

"They do have such places, for waxing one's privates?" Richard asks. "Certainly, considering the hirsute nature of the Latin female ... "

He roars with laughter. I roll my eyes. Hair sprouts from every follicle, but a Cubana's idea of shaving is stopping the blade midthigh. Most of them, when naked, look like they're wearing biking shorts.

"We'll have it taken care of," I say, anxious to hang up. "See you tonight." I had been in Havana, by the pool at the Hotel Nacional, a few months ago awaiting a Cuban claiming to have information on my father's identity. The guy never showed, but I met Richard, who bought me a cafe con leche after a conversation in grateful English.

Havana honey, Part 2

Wed, 21 May 2003 19:46:00 +0000

At 10 p.m., Camilla rings the doorbell as I'm touching up the dark on my lashes. We're bound for a trendy salsa club packed with rich tourist men. I look at myself in the mirror, a strange confidence reflecting back at me. I've made up my mind. With my bank account dwindling, and employment here impossible, I've reluctantly joined the ranks of the Cuban demimonde. Educated. Professional. Hopeful. And part-time hookers. With Camilla as my mentor, I'm going dancing.

The jockey has an outfit. A whip. Riding boots. Jodhpurs, the breeches with reinforced patches at the knee and thigh where the rider's legs grip the beast. "Jinetera," the Spanish word for a female jockey, means much more in Cuba. It's a fitting metaphor for what many educated and beautiful Cuban women do after hours to feed their families as well as their dreams. I'm American, but I'm also Cuban. And to live on my island home, the place I was born, the land where my family surely resides, I've little choice if I want to stay. So I jockey. I ride the beast. I control the beast.

The beast is the tourist man.

At the dollar shoe store in the Havana Libre I'm standing like a stork in front of the foot mirror, wobbling on a new pair of four-inch heels and looking every bit the Cuban equestrian.

Havana honey

Tue, 20 May 2003 19:45:00 +0000

I feel his hand on my bare shoulder, and it's all over.

In the oppressive April afternoon, another's touch has the chilling effect of ice on a radiator. I've been sitting alone, in a cafe in Havana near the former Hilton hotel -- the one ransacked by communists and renamed Habana Libre. Free Havana.

The stacks of papers on my table are askew, some stained by the cafe con leche I chain-drink to keep my spirits up. He approaches me from behind. I look up, into a tanned face and silky blue eyes framed by deep lines. Late 50s, I guess, and not unattractive. He asks to sit. I shrug casually. He asks if I speak English. I nod. Then he asks for advice -- best bars, best beaches. My advice warrants a rum over ice, or so he measures, and he offers to buy me one.

I sigh. The papers are in a fantastic mess in front of me -- evidence of my baneful investigation -- and today has not been revealing the clues I'd hoped for. I pile the papers neatly. What the hell. A rum would be nice.

He smiles. I pretend, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, that I'm a first-world girl in a first-world city being offered a friendly drink by an attractive man. That at the end of this exchange, we will trade business cards and a flirtatious smile and in a few days I'll find a message on my cellular and, who knows, there might be dinner and maybe a movie or a stroll and, you know, a date.