Cuba

 

I met Lucia in Havana while she was working at El Gato Tuerto as a bartender, a lively place where Cubans close dance to Afro-Cuban music.

I order a bottle of Crystal beer, Lucia ignores me. To get her attention I say, 

I’m Henry Lucowski, I work at the Gringo Times writing feature articles on Cuban baseball and boxing. Excited Lucia asks, 

are the entradas free? 

Yes, gratis.

I meet my future wife after midnight in front of El Gato.

We walk to the Wiggle Club, she enjoys poll dancing. 

At 2AM, we're tired so we take a taxi home. 

 

In my 3rd-floor rental, we flop on the living room sofa, and she tells me,

I like long hair on guys, I ask her, 

do you have a bush? 

No, I shave it.

Sitting up naked in bed we page through the Kama Sutra, trying out a few positions, careful not to cum.

We sleep through the night and all day, waking at 5PM. I make a choriza omelet, and toast Pan Cubano, buttering it. Wearing my robe, Lucia takes her dress to be dry cleaned.

That evening at Mojito Mojito, El Fredico Blanca is on stage playing his composition El Brujo on a Japanese piano.

The're no open seats so we stand in the back.

After the concert, we go to a local place in an alleyway. Sitting on plastic chairs and tables we eat shredded pork, tortillas, black beans, drinking watermelon soda.

It's a cloudless night so we walk home. Lucia points at the sky saying, 

mirar, el Cazo grande y pequeña, there's Pegasus.

I ask if she can tell fortunes by reading the stars and she says, 

no.

At the apartment I play discs on my boombox, most likely the only one in Cuba, maybe Fidel had one, 

The average Cuban couldn't afford a record player so they listened to state-sanctioned radio, all news and classical music. 

I slip a disc in, the machine pulls it, spins it, bathing it with laser light to get sound.

It's Bob Dylan's Pledging My Time's, Lucia loves it, asking emphatically, 

who…..is….. that, Querida?  

Bob Dylan, 

she has never heard of him. 

I put on Leon Russell’s album, Americana— it’s country and western music and she says, 

gringo Musica hasn't made it to Cuba, there’s a US embargo, people are lucky to have a telephone. 

At noon we go for lunch in downtown Havana, eating at Van Van, it feels like Amsterdam inside, and there’s an open-air beer garden in the back. It’s secluded— bushed, treed, and flowered.  

Sitting at a picnic table, a teenage waiter with a waxed mustache and hair greased back take our order, Lucia like him saying,

guapa, a pitcher of fresh guava juice with 2 glasses and ice. You're built like a bullfighter, darling. 

Lucia massages my leg under the table, my cock swells some, a half-off, half-on hard-on. I tell her, 

baby not now, I don't want to soil my pants. 

When the guava juic comes, Lucia pours it into mugs, adding ice, spitting in them for good luck.

At 11PM we catch a taxi home.

We drink fresh brewed coffee in the morning then pack a bag for the beach. outside waving down a taxi, I tell the cabby,

amigo, take us to Campo Florida. 

At the beach, I buy a bikini for Lucia, I'm wearing boxer shorts. 

A large Cuban family is drinking beer and barbecuing chunks of fatty pork and chicken parts, they've set up an army tent under the palms.  

Lucia and I eat peanuts and drink Coca-Cola. 

She puts on her bikini in the bushes— she's all

tits and ass like a Columbian woman.

We run and dive into the sea, swimming out to where the water is over our heads, treading water. 

She takes off her bikini panties and then pulls off my boxer shorts, putting them on my head, it’s great fun. 

The hot sun's draining so we put on large Ts and walk to the taxi. 

Our taxi driver is asleep in a hammock strung between 2 trees. 

On the road to Havana, the cab's air conditioner goes on the fritz so we open the windows, the sea breeze flurries our hair.

That night we talk in bed all night, Lucia wants to get out of Cuba. 

At the American Embassy, we queue for 2 hours to talk to somebody.

The Embassy is no help. 

In the Coffee-Museum Revolución, we meet a dentist who knows a guy named Franky who can take us to Mexico in his speedboat. 

A few days later we meet the dentist at his office and he drives us to Mantanza Bay. His motive is unclear. 

We wade out to the speedboat with our suitcases on our heads with 2 other couples.

The boat is equipped with V8 Mercury outboard engine Franky bought in Mexico. 

It's dark out, Franky turns the navigation lights off. He can outrun the outdated and heavy boats of the Cuban Navy.

In the middle of the dark muck of the Sea of Mexico, he throttles the engine to low, refueling it with jerry cans full of petrol. 

Before sun up we are on the outskirts of Tampico Mexico, we know the drill, we wade ashore with our suitcases on our heads.

In Mexico City we stay at the Holiday Inn for a few days, this time having better luck at the US Embassy, the authorities agree to give Lucia a temporary visa.

We fly to Key West, my Friend Ringo picks us up in his Jeep. When Lucia get inside, she say, 

I love it a real yeep. 

It is imperative we marry so we go to the Key's County Court House and tie the knot. 

We are joined together at the hip, Siamese twins