casi completamente ficción (i)

One thing he noticed was that his Spanish improved the more rum he drank. This surprised him at first, until he realized it was probably because the rum shut off the part of his brain that cared about sounding stupid. Actually, it was just the same as when he was just speaking English. Some joke, he thought.

He lost count of the number of times he had walked down the street from the hotel, past the memorial to someone he had never heard of and past the little club there on the circle, down the narrow street to the big concrete park surrounded by restaurants and what the locals seemed to anachronistically refer to as a “discoteca”, and then back again. In all of these places — the discoteca, the club on the circle, the street to the hotel — there were girls. There were girls, and men asking if you wanted girls. “¿Chicas? ¿Chicas?” they would ask. Or taxis. Bicycle taxis. “¡Amigo! ¿Taxi?” He assumed that the purpose of the taxis was to take you to places with more chicas .

The chicas didn’t say much, but their methods were fairly forward, compared to other places he had been. He had been to plenty of places where all a hooker had to do was dress like a hooker and stand there, and that was the only message that needed to be sent. But here in Cuba, at least in this city, the waitresses and hostesses and regular women just walking around the street dressed so provocatively that it was difficult to imagine how the prostitutes might distinguish themselves. Wearing more revealing clothes was probably not an option. In fact, he noticed that many of the chicas dressed more conservatively than the waitresses. Instead they send their message by softly touching your arm as you walked past them, which he liked, or loudly hissing “PSSSSSSS! PSSSSSSSSSSS!” after you had passed, which he didn’t like. Being una prostituta is no excuse for being rude, he thought.

Some joke. He should probably have taken that attitude as a hint that he wasn’t really cut out for this business at all. But walking in circles in Cuba and looking at chicas and feeling bad was better than sitting in a hotel room and drinking rum and feeling bad. So he drank some rum and he walked the narrow streets in circles and he listened to the “Psssss” of the chicas and every once in a while he would stop and talk to a girl for a minute in his bad Spanish and later regret not saying “yes” when he saw that same girl walk off with some guy back to his hotel or a different hotel or someplace else entirely.

A few times he had decided — it’s definitely that one there that I want — only to never see that chica again that night or the next. To make the decision and then still not have anything happen was way worse than all the not-deciding and it made him feel bad but in a way that he was familiar with for years and years, so he still kept walking.

He thought back to one night when he was only a little more than half the age he was now when all that circling and indecision ended with one very bad decision that involved a pair of handcuffs and a night in a jail cell and a trial that eventually got thrown out because prostitutes generally aren’t the most reliable witnesses to show up in court. Some luck. So even though nothing came of it, ever since, he was always nervous about having the wrong talk with the wrong chica at the wrong time. And it made him nervous how many Policia there were in Cuba. Almost literally on every street corner. Communism. It would seem like a good idea if he had seen one building that didn’t look like it was about to fall down. But none of the Policias seemed to take much notice of the chicas so he thought that maybe it wasn’t a problem to walk and sometimes talk to one. Still, when a Policia walked by him on the street and asked if he was looking for something, even though he was awfully polite compared to how a police officer in New York would have been, it still made him feel plenty nervous and it took the wind out of his sails for the rest of the night. He made a few more circles anyway but the evening had pretty much ended at that point and he knew it. He couldn’t really explain why he circled two more times after that, but he did. On the last circle, one of the chicas that had he almost decided to take back to his hotel earlier spoke to him as he walked. She was wearing a black tanktop with “SEXY” sequined on the front and she said something he didn’t understand at first. “¿Cómo?” he responded, because he recently remembered that it was more polite than ¿Qué?. She responded in slower, more distinct Spanish suitable for Americans and this time he understood.

“I’ve seen you walking around a lot. You like to look, no?”

“Si. Me gusto mirar.”