Back to Cuba

Posts II and III are up! go to Menu and check it out (it’s under Cuba 2016). More to come…when I can make it happen.

Real quick, before you start reading, I’ll write about this last trip to Cuba in two parts. One now, one…well, soon. Heh.

Me, by myself, back on Cuba

12/20/16-12/25/16, Tuesday through Sunday

Find a cabin on a mountain? Drive to the Eastern edge? It was really better for me to fly back into Havana and find my way to that edge, which is really, well, everywhere on that island. Three days before I left, Aaron told me to go away, he could keep the boys for the week, obviously I needed to go find my kind of peace somewhere right away. I spent that night deciding whether to take his offer as love or spite, and I chose love, which is what it was, I always knew. Basically, in my intertwined heart and brain, I couldn’t think of a better place to go than Cuba. Except maybe Sri Lanka—And Ajit, you know I would’ve clicked that click in a second if only the tickets would’ve come down $2K-ish. So what if I would’ve had approximately 32 hours to see you, meet your mother, and forcefully push you to look off the side of your island—worth it. For me though, this time, it was back to Cuba.

I e-mailed Arturo (the care-taking taxista of La Puma from our trip in June) and asked if, please, he would find what I needed. He got on it right away, and I felt better and better about making my way there. When I got to Miami I took an Uber to the Freehand Miami and listened to my driver all the way to the beach talk about how everything, everything, was better under Batista. You know, Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar, the elected president of Cuba in the 1940s who realized he really liked canceling elections thereafter, because, well, why keep changing presidents when you’ve found the perfect one, the ultimate, the suavest, the one whom the American mafia really likes? mmhm, so this is definitely not going to spin me off into La La Land about Batista vs. Castro, no fucking way (also, this language here in no way clarifies my sentiments of Fidel’s leadership and/or legacy). Ahem. Just saying that my Uber driver, who was born in Cuba and now lives in Miami and never ever wants to go back, really liked that under Batista you could go buy anything you wanted anywhere in Havana. True freedom, right? And no, I didn’t throw my thoughts back at him, but rather asked him to go on, tell me more so you may be heard in this moment and perhaps, just maybe, later I can reiterate these tones to understand better, more, more and better. Selfish of me, really, but not entirely.

I slept at Freehand (it’s so good and should open in every big city) that night and walked the block to the beach the next morning before I went to the airport. My only point of concern from that walk was seeing a seagull the size of, I dunno, a dog. Not Phynley-size but so big that I said goodbye to that beach and went back to scoop my bags from the hotel.

MIA>HAV: I had to take all the batteries out of my checked luggage and put them in my carry-on. It was at this moment when I remembered all of a sudden that I wasn’t ever planning to check a bag. But I had just done it so…easier anyway, right, all except for that two-hour wait in Havana for that one kid to unload the plane. Or maybe it’s a girl on her cell phone, who takes every bag out one at a time in between calls and texts. Oh yeah, and in Miami I thought I should really get a coffee before I got on the plane, but then they had already closed the doors and told me they would let me on only if I promised to sit down right away (uh, okay…and shit! I seriously almost missed my flight—what). So then what: I sit next to a Cuban man making his biannual visit to his family and mistress[es]. Every few minutes he would take my hand and continue on about the beauty of sexual freedom and how young I really seemed. Apparently I need to rework my bit about human relationship assuaging these dystopian breaths of ours—mine, if I must save that projection. This could’ve cleaned up our fuzzy connection, but really maybe not. Anyway, it all worked out since we only had to share a plane for approximately one hour.

LA HABANA

Two hours later, I pick up my bag from the conveyer belt and walk out through a crowd. Arturo sees me, smiles, and then looks back at the exit and asks me where Merry is. Hm. I immediately realized that he thought I was Banning and vice-versa. Ahahaha. He had saved our photos in his contacts incorrectly but said I made a good point when I asked why he hadn’t questioned how Banning had all of a sudden started e-mailing him in Spanish…like a lot of Spanish (Banning does amazingly well with the language, by the way, so don’t ever doubt her proclivity for learning a foreign language). After that’s cleared up, we go find a beautifully clean Puma. I get in and shut the door gently. On the way to visit his mother, Arturo decides I’m too tense and pulls over to a roadside store and buys one cold beer for me and one cold beer for him. Tranquilo, I told him, now it can begin.

Part II to come asap. Until then, look at these photos