backseat of his taxi, cutting through the countryside on my way to Havana. The terrain was tropical and unfamiliar. There were tenement building carcasses, laundry hanging from their crumbling balconies. There was a stoic farmer steering a bull-pulled plow through an upturned field. There were dilapidated schools and uniformed children giggling in the littered schoolyards. There was a city bus, impossibly full, arms and faces hanging hot out of the open windows. There were three people on a motorcycle and six in a ’57 Chevy. There were weathered men smoking cigars on the sides of the road, trying to flag rides with smiles.
Nobody was wearing sunglasses.
It was illegal for me to be there.
Within minutes, we entered the city. My driver motioned to a bus station on our right and said something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. We passed the Plaza de la Revolución. My driver told me in broken English that the large stone monument in its center stood, like the airport, in honor of José Martí. We made a left turn and wove through the neighborhoods. There were strange faces in the narrow streets. The buildings were Spanish colonial, old and falling down. Children playing stickball on the pavement. Old men smoking on the balconies above. Vintage cars rattling by. Golden era Cadillacs. Buicks and Fords. I rolled down my window and lit up a cigarette. I felt like I was in a time warp.
This was good.
Later that night, I found myself seated at a table in a nightclub. On the advice of my hotel concierge, I had wandered over to a place called the Oasis, on the Paseo de Martí. The Oasis consisted of a long, loud room. There was an eight-piece band on a small stage, and the dance floor was packed with salsa dancers. I was drinking my third mojito. There were girls everywhere. Most were prostitutes, most were dressed in skimpy outfits, and most were very young—teenagers and girls in their early twenties.
Here’s how you make a mojito:
Ingredients:
3 fresh mint sprigs
2 tbsp. lime juice
Dash of simple syrup
Club soda, chilled
1.5 oz. light rum
Mixing Instructions:
In a tall, thin glass, muddle mint leaves with simple syrup.
Add ice, rum, and lime juice. Top with soda and stir. Garnish with fresh mint. Serves one.
According to article 302, law no. 62, of something called the Cuban Penal Code, prostitution in and of itself was not illegal in Cuba. However, acts related to prostitution—such as the exploitation of prostitutes by others—were forbidden by law. Those caught engaging in such ancillary activities—pimps, for instance—faced prison sentences of four to ten years.
sentence n.
1 A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or, as in imperative sentences, understood, and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb.
2 Law:A court judgment, especially a judicial decision of the punishment to be inflicted on one adjudged guilty.The penalty meted out.
3 Archaic: A maxim.
4 Obsolete: An opinion, especially one given formally after deliberation.
The sexual energy in the Oasis was overwhelming. I could practically smell it.
People were emitting pheromones in there.
pheromone n.
A chemical secreted by an animal, especially an insect, that influences the behavior or development of others of the same species, often functioning as an attractant of the opposite sex.
To my left, in the corner, a pair of tourists was getting it on. They appeared to have zero inhibitions. The guy was sitting in a chair, and his girlfriend had mounted him, fully clothed. She was kissing him with tongue and writhing in his lap. Maybe they were French. The French, from what I’d heard, have few reservations about engaging in public displays of affection. They lack American self-consciousness and puritanical attitudes toward sex.
The Puritans were a group of hard-core English Protestants from way back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who, generally speaking, considered pleasure and luxury to be deeply offensive.
I couldn’t stop smoking cigarettes.
In the classic film comedy National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985; Amy Heckerling, director), bumbling middle-American father Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his dysfunctional family win an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe. While dining in a Parisian restaurant, they encounter a young honeymooning couple from the United States. Deeply in love, the newlyweds are taking full advantage of the social freedoms afforded by France’s lax attitude toward public displays of affection, freely engaging in aggressive physical intimacy while waiting for their food, oblivious to fellow restaurant patrons, including (but not limited to) the Griswold family, seated at a nearby table.
It is at this point in the movie that the following exchange takes place between Clark Griswold and his impressionable teenage son, Rusty (Jason Lively):
RUSTY
Dad, I think he’s gonna pork her.
CLARK
He’s not gonna pork her, Rusty. Just eat, okay?
RUSTY
I think he is, Dad.
CLARK
He may pork her, Rusty. Just eat, okay?
I had just ordered my fourth mojito from a voluptuous waitresswith a large brown mole on her cheek.
The French couple in the corner was oblivious to the waitress, the band, and all fellow patrons.
I was pretty sure he was going to pork her.
I hadn’t porked anyone in a long time.
I had never porked a prostitute before.
My fourth mojito arrived. I lit another cigarette. Across the room I saw a beautiful girl. She was sitting on the lap of a middle-aged man who appeared to be of middle-American descent. The man looked fifty. The girl couldn’t have been a day older
