Lock up the hookers in Havana

Friday 22^nd February 2013

One of the girls rattles the bars of the gate which locks her into my rented apartment in Havana. Call the police if you want to leave. Or give me 30 pesos, I insist, lounging on the sofa, eyeing these poor scroungers desperate for a quick buck but with no concept of providing a service in return, or honouring agreements. Another clutches a bag of random cosmetics she’d found amongst my luggage - we could be at a half-price shoe sale for all the intensity of grabbing going on.

 

I’m sort of keen to have the police round, for a laugh really, but also want to sleep soon so drop the bail to 20 pesos and I’m done with them. They’d insisted on upfront payment (or "gift" as it must be called here), which is always a bad sign. Technically I had a threesome for 40 pesos which would have been a good deal were it not both the worst, and second worst sex in my life. Concentrate, one of them insists just seconds into the proceedings. I’m thinking, no, you concentrate on making a f#cking effort you useless whores – first raise the flag the whole f*cking way then jump on board. The half-hearted, half-masted efforts were aborted after minutes as one of them abandoned ship to continue pillaging for cheap cosmetics in the other room.

I think I learnt something from this, in the same way you can learn something from a kick in the balls that says “you’re a dick”. Except it didn’t hurt too much, and I did get plenty of sleep in the end.

This was not to be the only time on this trip that my innocent intentions were demolished by the phenomenal power of the Cubana booty shake. A very average Cuban girl can hypnotise any normal bloke with only a few gyrating beats of her beautiful behind. Thereafter he remains her playful puppet, her nodding dog.

Warning: alcohol + gyrating Cubana derrière = trouble.

 

In Camaguey one evening I was determined to take a rest and just have a sensible night out. All had been going well  and I was simply enjoying conversation with a friendly and intelligent woman. And just to make sure I had explicitly stated I was not here for business. But then she started to gyrate her lower regions in that delectable Cuban manner, and as I saddled up to her she pressed herself onto me, and every now and then, as the music moved her, she pulsated with an intense vibrating rhythm, that, had I been 20 years younger would have put a soggy end to my performance right there on the dance floor. Instead it just turned me into her puppy dog. She was a nice girl though, there was neither pillaging nor talk of money, though of course I did give her a tip “for the taxi home” and she gave me her number and an obligatory “Call me”. If I have one complaint it is that motels in Cuba should have streaming Reggeton as essential accompaniment to proceedings. That music was invented for f#cking.

 

Back in Havana on my last evening before heading out to tour the rest of the country, I was strolling along the Malecon seafront which whilst trumpeted by the Lonely Planet as an essential experience, was in fact a dump and strewn mostly with fairly ugly people. But a couple of reasonable looking girls passed by - a classic good girl/ bad girl combo. The bad one moved in and we got chatting, whilst the good one sat at a safe distance. They seemed nice enough, I had nothing better to do, and half a kilo of fresh prawns in my fridge, as it happened, so I invited them round for dinner. They claimed to be studying gastronomy so I put this to the test while I cracked open a couple of beers. Results were good as in we all ate well and they didn’t try to steal anything from my apartment. So with that test passed I invited them to join me on a short tour heading west of Havana. Really I had no expectations, I was just keen to have some non-pillaging local company to enjoy a few days with, with the off-chance of some nooky but not a requirement as there would no doubt be other opportunities.

 
 
 

The girls accepted and we made arrangements - and they turned up at my door as planned the next morning looking all fresh and pretty. Off we went to pick up my hire car – an expedition in itself, but finally successful and we were off on the road to Viñales that afternoon, arriving in time to hire some horses for a quick local tour of the region. I’d only ridden a horse a couple of times before, but this one was by far the scariest – a racer apparently, and with my bare-footed attempts to balance I felt I only just made it back in one piece. Meanwhile the 16-year-old boys who looked after the horses were more than happy to ensure the girls didn’t come to any harm.

That evening we hit the town, one of the girls tries to teach me to dance, and we generally have a good time. There’s a sexual barrier though, which I’d expected from the selection process, so heading back to our shared room was going to be interesting. It’s all pretty light-hearted and playful, but going no-where so I quit to get some sleep - playtime over.. or so I thought. I'm about to drop off when the good one asks if I'm asleep, which I translate as "fancy a shag if you play your cards right?" so I get back into their bed and have another go, but the bad one drops a hint about money if I want the sandwich which I’m suggesting… una tabla which I learn means 100 pesos. This puts me off - they want to have their cake and to eat it, but moreover this raises an insolvable moral dilemma in my mind and I sleep badly.

 
The good... and the bad...

By the morning I’ve let it go, and feel strangely well. Maybe it was a prayer I’d thrown in. Maybe it was just doing the right thing. Either way the day works out well, and we have a lovely time on probably the most beautiful beach I’ve ever been on. But at the end of the day I’m happy to pack them off back to Havana with a “taxi” payment. They were good fun, but highly deluded about their marriage prospects. Perhaps they could do with some Brazilian training on how to look after men.