Sunday, August 9, 2009

'It was different then," the freckled Irishman rasped nostalgically. "There were women in the street all touching you, fighting for you."

The biannual visitor to Havana was talking with me about Cubanas -- Cuban women -- over an illegal breakfast at a Cuban friend's apartment. Illegal because Cubans are not allowed to feed tourists unless their household is registered as an official casa particular (or guesthouse) and the state gets a cut.

This law, thankfully, is frequently broken, although I have a fear of confiscated tortillas (omelets) anyway.

"It was quite a boost to the ego," continued the sun-spotted Danny O'Boy (not his real name, of course). He was talking about before the Cuban government cracked down on prostitution, which was especially rampant in the Periodo Especial, the Special Period, when the Soviet withdrawal from the island nation left Cuba basically destitute.

Hungry, desperate Cubans hounded tourists for money by any means, and as always, there were tourists who took advantage of it.

I have an inalienable contempt for "sex tourists." Stay home and use your imagination, for God's sake, instead of other people.

But of course I didn't say that to Danny O'Boy, in my new and wildly successful interview tactic of keeping my mouth shut.

"Boost to the ego," he had said. How could someone take desperation as flattery?

But wait, I thought, he's right -- accidentally, of course. It is flattering to the ego, which is all about external appearances. It appeared that the women loved him, no?

It's the far-too-common "the Stripper Really Loves Me" delusion.

You may not like this aging sexist so far -- but wait for the rest of the story.

"I had a very bad experience," O'Boy tells me. Here we go.

"About five years ago, I fell completely in love with a Cubana. I came to visit as often as I could, I sent her money, I brought her and her family all new appliances -- I even managed to get a new house built for them."

He looks down at his grainy espresso. "I really loved her," he says, the few light-red wisps of hair carefully combed over his balding head.

"We got married here in Havana," he says. "I thought her brother was a little pushy, aggressive about asking for money, but I thought if I got her away from here it would be better. She'd be away from them, away from Cuba, and we could have a lovely life in Ireland."

He worked on the immigration paperwork from Ireland for months while she waited in Cuba.

One day he got an unusual call from the island nation -- it was exciting news! She was pregnant!

O'Boy was happy, too, for her, after quickly doing the math and realizing he could not be the father.

That didn't end the long-distance marriage, though.

"I thought, well, she's alone there most of the time, and I'm no angel, so I said, well, I don't care anyway. I said to meself, now we'll have a proper family, even if it isn't mine.

"I don't even like children," he snorted.

He was still in Ireland nine months later.

"The baby looks just like you!" the Cubana's brother exclaimed over the phone. "Pelo rojo y ojos azules." Red hair and blue eyes.

An odd claim to make to an Irishman who knows he hasn't fathered the child and is headed there in a few weeks.

O'Boy arrived in Havana. The baby has black hair and brown eyes.

Unbelievably, nobody mentions it.

The new little family heads off happily ever after in Belfast, but turns out the brother's pushiness and greed reaches across the pond.

Three uncomfortable years go by before it's discovered that the Cuban brother is actually the Cubana's real husband, and the rest of her "family" has been on the take for the entire time.

"We call that a long-term investment," a Cuban translator explained to me later.

That Cubana is long gone, but O'Boy keeps comin' round.

He looks out on the sunny balcony where his friend Seamus is entertaining two chubbyCubanas in tight jeans, bandeau tops and an abundance of spilled-over flesh right down to the gold lamé high heels.

"But this one," he says, leaning in and inclining his head toward the patio. "This one really loves me."

srodriguez@keysnews.com