/ 13 May 2008

A quickie in Havana

I love a country where having a mojito at 10am is perfectly fine. Muy chévere. Have another one. Otro mojito. And one Cuba Libre, please.

Cubans start drinking whenever it pleases them. No hang-ups, just hangovers. Such a nice way to while away the time in this Jurassic Park of 50-year-old technology that still works — Soviet-era tractors, washing machines and typewriters clanking on.

Equally wonderful is that, on this island of contradictions, people are as ready for sex as they are for booze. Muy caliente, sí. That is, if you can find a place to do it. Half a century of communist economic policy has left a housing shortage of 700 000 units. Homes are crowded. Every room is taken (and shared) and finding privacy in Havana is as hard as getting an internet connection.

But things could become a bit easier with last month’s relaxing of tight controls on tourist hotels and beaches. Cubans can now frequent them, although few can afford them on an average monthly salary of less than $20. Foreigners staying in privately rented self-catering apartments are allowed one Cuban guest per stay and both must produce IDs, which the owner then takes to the local police — all in a vain attempt to control sex tourism.

Plenty of uniformed and plainclothes policemen patrol the beach and parks. This means you won’t get mugged or raped, but you won’t get shagged either. So Cubans resort to the last resort: home, la casa. The collective home, with a capital C.

Let me tell you about my Spanish friend, Marita. She divorced her Cuban husband last year and has been hanging around La Habana on a one-woman campaign to support the transport sector. Heaven knows it needs help.

Marita’s boyfriends are all taxi drivers. This translates into a great variety, for many and wondrous are the ways of getting around La Habana: almendrones, the 1950s American gas-guzzlers with breathtaking fins, that are only for Cubans; bright yellow, coconut-shaped three-wheelers; pedicabs; horse-drawn carriages; modern Chinese buses; old, orange French school buses still sporting École on the side; and the camello, two buses welded together behind a tractor engine.

Marita keeps finding romance among the companéro taxi workers and shags in their homes, with Granny and Mami and assorted family members just a thin wall away. This is known as Un Corto en La Habana (a quickie in Havana).

The family doesn’t mind. Marita doesn’t lose concentration while Mami yells to neighbours from the balcony and the children’s babble drifts over the plywood partitions. I couldn’t do it. I would be distracted.

Instead, I had a true Soviet-era experience. Overlooking the magnificent bay of Cienfuegos, a city second only to La Habana in splendour, I had sex in an old red Lada. An almendron would have been roomier, but at least we had privacy, parked on an isolated country road. When a local guajiro (farmer) approached, we rolled up the tinted windows. Pronto. Still, the Lada was better than the forced intimacy of La Habana’s homes.

Sex in casa fits well, though, with the strong Cuban sense of family. In bed men moan ”ay mami” and women ”ay papi”. Can you get more oedipal than that? Who wants to be reminded of their parents during orgasm? Hello Sigmund. Please return and explain.

I consult a world specialist on early acquisition of language. Why this hang-up? ”Hmm,” he says. ”Must be archetypal, from the time when childbearing ability was crucial to the survival of the species.” Well, maybe. Who knows? I am baffled.

One of Marita’s boyfriends drives me to the airport. Evaristo is a gym instructor and a judo black belt, with a body to prove it, cool shades and tight jeans. At night it takes half an hour to Jose Marti airport. We chat. Evaristo earns more money driving a yellow cab than teaching martial arts. He does not have a computer. Internet cafés are few and expensive.

Evaristo has a tiny apartment, but most days he visits his mother, dines with her and sleeps at her home. He is 34. How oedipal can that be?

We had a last mojito at the airport and he drove into the steamy night, to his mother’s flat, I guess. Too bad I was on my way out: otherwise I could have rented his flat to have sex with someone else.

I boarded the flight to Madrid and on to Johannesburg, was upgraded to business class (where the reclining seat had 20 more positions than the Lada) and arrived in South Africa, where finding a king-size bed in an air-conditioned room is easy.

Some things come with a price. Some are priceless. I would happily trade the business-class seat and Sandton’s Michelangelo Hotel’s rooftop suite, which comes with champagne breakfast for R50 000 a night, for that old red Lada. Ay papi. Otro mojito.