GOOD-BYE TO THE CHICKEN FARM

One day the Revolutionary government published an announcement calling for interested agricultural accountants to take part in a planning course at the University of Havana. We merely had to send in an application and, if approved, we would receive a telegram of acceptance. I received the telegram requesting me to report at the Hotel Nacional in a week. I had no second thoughts. I was leaving behind a farm full of noisy chickens; a world full of malcontent, smelly, ragged, underpaid people; a frustrated love; and Holguín, a town totally devoid of either spiritual or architectural beauty.

At the Hotel Nacional I learned that most of the young men who had graduated as agricultural accountants were there; all had opted for the planning course in the hope that it would provide a way out of the farms where they were working as accountants, some already as administrators. And with good reason: life in those farms was ghastly. Payday always turned into a big commotion, with workers claiming that they were being ripped off, that the timekeeper had not reported all their hours of work. By the way, a Russian technician was assigned to every one of those farms. Ours was Vladimir, a typical Soviet peasant; I don’t know how much he knew about chickens, but he was the ideological director of the farm. Vladimir, I think, was completely chaste; he lived in a chalet with other Russians. In fact, the whole setup of the People’s Farms was run by Russians; we did the work, but the Russians decided what was or was not to be done. Without speaking a word of Spanish, those Russians had quite often become the ruling class for the Cuban peasants.

At the Hotel Nacional we were scheduled to take entrance exams since only about fifty of us were to be selected. Fortunately, I was one of the fifty admitted to the planning course at the University of Havana. We were lodged at the Habana Libre Hotel. I was assigned to share a room with Pedro Morejón, a somewhat misshapen and extremely radical student, and Monzón, the handsome expert in pimping homosexuals. He continued with his life-style, telling me of his adventures with dancers from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, who would pay him up to thirty pesos to suck his cock. It surprised him that he was paid so well to enjoy himself.

I was still faithful to Raúl’s memory, and also very much afraid that my homosexuality might be discovered in Havana, although there was no excessive surveillance as yet. Classes at the university, moreover, took all day; there were classes in political economy, trigonometry, mathematics, and planning. The course director was Pedro Marinello, who I think was either a nephew or a brother of Juan Marinello, the famous Communist Party leader. After some time Pedro Marinello disappeared; he was said to be a CIA agent, the label pinned on anyone who shows any disagreement with Fidel Castro’s regime.

We had a great professor of economic geography who talked, nevertheless, about everything except the subject he was supposed to teach. He would tell us about his trips all over the world; to Africa and the desert, and how he tried to ride a camel that refused to move. He talked about his loves in Paris, of the women who had loved him, or about literature, with quotes from the great writers. He was a humanist, a man of artistic sensibility. His name was Juan Pérez de la Riva. He later lost favor and tried several times, unsuccessfully, to commit suicide. Born a millionaire, he had become a cadre of the Revolution, and one of the few in his family who accepted the social changes and remained in Cuba. He was permitted to visit his family in Paris, but on each trip he would jump from one of the bridges, always trying to kill himself. He was forever in love with his female students but never had any luck with them. His wife, Sara, was also a professor as well as a librarian at the university; I think she loved him and therefore put up with his infatuations. Finally he found a girl who fell in love with him, and then, suddenly, Pérez de la Riva got throat cancer; he no longer wanted to die, but die he did. He did not have to kill himself.

Fidel Castro’s government discovered that it was not practical to have us stay at the former Havana Hilton, now Habana Libre, while there were much more distinguished guests to be put up in those rooms. Then again, most of us were peasants and did not know how to turn off a faucet or how to mix hot and cold water. Some rugs got soaked, some floors almost became swimming pools. Probably the furthest thing from Mr. Hilton’s mind was someday to have his luxurious hotel full of peasants who did not even know how a shower head worked.

We were transferred to new lodgings at Rancho Boyeros, and from there we were taken every day by truck to the University of Havana. I saw that many of my fellow students had sexual relations with each other, and some were quite open about it; a sort of silent toleration existed. We discussed Sartre, and I recall lying on a cot and reading Virgilio Piñera’s Aire frío [Cold Air] for the first time.

One of my best friends was Rafael Bolívar, son of Nancy Bolívar, an old socialist stalwart who, of course, was very much part of Castro’s Revolution. Bolívar openly confessed to me that he was gay and told me about his adventures with young men at Rancho Boyeros, inviting me to join him. I flatly refused; I did not want to declare myself a homosexual, and I still thought that perhaps I could “regenerate,” the word I used to convince myself that I had a defect that had to be overcome. But nature and my real self asserted themselves over my prejudices.

One day I went with Bolívar to the National Library. In the music department he introduced me to all his gay friends. Some of them propositioned me; I was shocked and rejected them. Yet the following evening I returned to the Library.

The Revolutionary government not only wanted us to study “planning”; it also made us work so that in some way we could pay for our classes. I was to work for INRA, the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, which occupied a building erected in Batista’s time, as was the Palace of the Revolution, the National Library, and every other building around Revolutionary Square, where Fidel Castro delivered his speeches.

I started working as an accountant in one of the offices of INRA. At first, the director was Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, and later, Castro himself. Rafael Bolívar* and I rented a room in a boardinghouse not too far away. Men slept there three or four to a room; it was like a place in one of the picaresque novels of Quevedo or Cervantes. There was a continuous flow of people, in and out; transients who could be easily picked up at the corner and brought home for sex. Sometimes the erotic sounds coming from Bolívar’s bed made sleep impossible. He would always find some gay near home and spend the night gasping and warbling in the most fantastic manner.

We were always hungry, because on seventy-nine pesos a month we could not afford to have both lunch and dinner on the same day. So we would get up at night and secretly raid Cusa’s refrigerator. Cusa was the owner of our boardinghouse. She quickly found out and put a lock on the refrigerator, but we were able to pick the lock and eat whatever we found inside. Finally, Cusa had the refrigerator fitted with little wheels so she could hide it in her room. Cusa was a huge old white woman who could easily pull that giant refrigerator into her room every night.

Our lack of money also forced us to move frequently. I remember moving eleven times in one year. It was 1963, and the persecution of homosexuals was getting worse. Many of Rafael Bolívar’s friends had already been sent to one of the UMAP [Military Units for Aid to Production] concentration camps, but I was not yet a confirmed homosexual. I had no sexual involvement with anybody and was very repressed; all alone, listening to the heavy breathing and gasps of pleasure coming from Rafael and his partenaire, I masturbated.

In Cuba we had a typical “cruising” routine, no different perhaps from that of any other country. You walked a few blocks and a young man would follow; you would stop briefly at a corner and he would stop also. You started walking again and so would the young man. Finally, a match, the time, the weather, or the usual question of whether you lived nearby. I met a young man this way and took him to my room. He was good-looking, about eighteen to twenty-one, and more experienced than I myself was. Up to that moment, in my few sexual encounters I had been the active partner, but this young man was not willing to submit. He wanted to “possess” me, and being really so masterful, he did just that and I liked it. His name was Miguel, and we began to see each other often. He even had a car, which was not easy in those days, and we visited friends or drove to the countryside. A hotel room for two men had become very difficult in Havana.

We made love wildly, and Miguel always took the active part. I had switched from possessor to possessed and enjoyed it fully.

Through Miguel I became acquainted with a circle of performers and entertainers in Havana, such as the big-time whores who danced at the Tropicana nightclub show or at Nocturno, another cabaret located then where the Coppelia ice cream parlor is now. Those women, some of whom were very beautiful, had liaisons with high military commanders or government officials, and could get an apartment or a house near the Malecón Shore Drive or in Miramar. I remember a party at the home of one of these women, on the feast day of Saint Lazarus. It was a huge party, and all sorts of performers were there. Even ballerina Alicia Alonso came and touched the huge, brightly lit statue of Saint Lazarus. Famous singers such as Elena Burke were there too. Miguel was well known in that crowd, and I felt sort of strange being the lover of such a popular person.

At night we would go to some cabaret, either the Tropicana or any of the nightclubs at the Capri, Habana Libre, or Riviera hotels. Martha Estrada was the big star of the moment and, of course, Miguel was her friend.

We spent New Year’s Eve 1963 together. At midnight Miguel embraced me, and weeping, he said, “It’s hard to believe that Fidel has been in power for four years already!” The poor fool! He thought four years were too many. He was finally arrested and taken to a UMAP concentration camp. I never saw him again, nor have I heard of him since my exile. Sometimes I think they killed him at the concentration camp. He was short-tempered, undisciplined, and loved life.

After losing Miguel I went back to cruising on the streets of Havana. One day I met a well-mannered older man who took me to his home. His name was Luis Gómez and he was a painter. He became my lover, and I switched back to being the active sexual partner, which is what Luis wanted, though I felt good either way if I liked the person. Luis was sort of a father figure for me; he opened new windows in my appreciation of art, painting, literature. He lived with a man who had been his lover and was now his friend: a second-rate playwright in favor at the time because he had written some monotonous pieces praising the political system. His name was Néstor Bardo.

I stayed with Luis and Néstor. Luis also had a painter’s studio at La Casa de las Américas, where I visited him, and there, among the canvases, we made love, only a few steps away from the office of Haydée Santamaría. She ended up shooting herself, but at the time she ruled in that building.