Hanging On By A Thread

At that point, things admittedly got a little dark. Not so much because I was depressed but because I was SICK! My Cuban vacation had been great for my heart and mind but my body hadn't fared so well. I fought and denied the encroaching illnesses for a couple days to attend a few Christmas parties and enlighten (aka annoy) my friends with all my newfound wisdom about the superiority of everything Cuban to everything Canadian. The parties and the Christmas cheer turned out to be exactly the opposite of the medicine I needed, three days after my return to Toronto, I crashed hard. I was coughing, sneezing and barfing up parts of myself that I didn't know existed, my head ached so bad I was left crawling around my house in an attempt to have the least amount of gravity possible pressing down on it, my mouth got so sore and cracked that I could barely even open it.

My parents (who lived 3 hours away at the best of times) had left the country weeks before to spend Christmas with my expat sister and her family. Most of my close friends had also already fled the city for their various homes and vacation destinations. My cousins invited me to come for Christmas and to recuperate with them...but then changed their minds when they realized the newborn baby in their midst should probably not be exposed to whatever this mystery illness was that was eating me alive. At the beginning of my descent into illness, a co-worker had brought by a care package of soup, crackers, ginger ale and other assorted get-well goodies. But soon I passed the point of being able to get those into my mouth. That was when I realized, I was most likely going to die! Alone!! On Christmas!!! Knowing that the end was near if i didn't get some nutrients into my body, I dropped all pretense of pride and sent out a desperate facebook plea, begging for someone to take pity on me and bring me a straw

About an hour later, a new(ish) friend of mine showed up on my doorstep with a bag of pre-bottled health smoothies and a box of straws. We'd met a few months before at a poetry event and bonded over grammar and inappropriate jokes and had been hanging out off and on since then. We had the same taste in books, the same taste in music, we ran with the same crowds, worked in a similar industry. He had a cool rockabilly style combined with a stable, well-paying day job and, beyond that, he sent me constant, funny emails and made me great mixed cds. Since we'd met I'd been looking for the spark that would convince me he was the perfect guy for me to live happily ever after with.

When I answered the door wearing a set of flannel penguin/polar-bear print pyjamas and a hospital mask, he greeted me with the sweetest smile of affection and sympathy...and I felt nothing. Well, admittedly I was overjoyed to see the straws because I was knew I would die without them, but in the feelings-for-him department I was out of luck. I thanked him for saving my life, warned him not to risk infection by coming too close, said goodbye and slowly crawled back up the stairs to my apartment where I wrapped myself in blankets, self-pity and the thought that there was one man out there, on a beach in Cuba, who could somehow make me feel better.

Decompression

My co-worker and I, along with a couple new friends we'd made on the trip, had not wanted to let the trip end. On the bus, in the airport, on the plane, we kept the party going with Cristal (the Cuban beer...not the champagne), Bucanero and Pina Colada juice-boxes. The rest of the plane didn't seem quite as impressed with us as we were with ourselves but our transformative week in Cuba had taught us not to worry about the judgment of others (or had taught us to be oblivious, drunk tourists...the jury is still out on that one). But when we touched down in Toronto at 2am, tired, sunburnt, hung-over and cold, we had to admit the party was over.

When I rolled into my apartment, I was hit with a feeling of total emptiness (and not just because my roommate had already gone home to Calgary for the holidays). This was an emptiness that was new to me at the time but that would become an all-too-familiar post-Cuba-feeling over the years. It felt like somebody had simultaneously hit me in the stomach with a wrecking ball, turned my skin inside out and filled me up with a frozen yet completely effective painkiller. I assumed this strange combination of extreme pain and total numbness was just a symptom of exhaustion and flopped into my bed. But every time I closed my eyes, Juan's cheshire-cat grin floated up out of the darkness. I cursed his 200 glowing teeth and waited for them to fade away so I could fade into sleep. Sleep eventually did arrive (and lasted well into the afternoon of the following day) but the visions of that ridiculously charming smile of his were not going to be wiped away so easily.

At about 3am, the smile-visions transform from happy memories to toothy hauntings

The following day was a back-and-forth mess of emotions. I played my resort cd on repeat at full-volume, hopelessly trying to remember all the dance moves I'd learned. I posted all my photos on facebook and looked at them over and over and over. I thought about Juan, I told myself to stop thinking about him, I thought about him some more, I told myself to pull myself together and remember that he works at a resort, my 'most amazing week ever' was his week after week after week, a little part of my brain piped up with 'maybe this was different, maybe I was special', my brain's steering committee not only shot down that idea, they shot the little part that dared to think it. I emptied the sand out of my suitcase and a small thistle stuck to my hand, this made me think about when I accidentally got stuck in a patch of beach thistles and he was laughing too hard to help me. I wondered if I should keep this thistle as a souvenir of that time. My brain actually slapped itself at that point.

After a few hours of this I decided I might as well try emailing him, just to say hi, tell him that our time together honestly meant something to me, that I seriously wanted to come back. I knew that he didn't really have much access to email, just a very occasional visit to the 6CUC an hour computer at the resort. I reminded myself that he only made a few CUCs a day, that a lack of response wasn't a sign of anything other than the reality of his financial situation. That I shouldn't be surprised or hurt if I never heard from him again. That I should just enjoy the memory of him and not ruin it by hanging on.That I should...

He interrupted my thoughts with an email. A run-on sentence clearly written at top, limited-internet-access speed. He told me he'd be waiting for me, that he'd make my next trip even more perfect, that he missed me.

I jumped up happily and ran to retrieve the beach thistle from the garbage. At that point I had no idea what I should be clinging to... I just knew I wasn't ready to throw anything away.

The Vacationship

After two and a half years, I have a hard time expressing how exactly this relationship happened. Not because I've forgotten but because I've learned to downplay it. One thing you learn very early on when you're involved with a Cuban is that no matter how special you think your relationship is, no matter how unique and real and storybook-romance perfect it feels, nobody will believe in it. You learn to either preface it with apologies and admissions of all the possible worst-case scenarios or not talk about it all. No matter how love-struck you feel, if you want to avoid people giving you 'just trying to help' advice, you learn to appear logical and detached. The strange thing is, for me, in the beginning I didn't think I was particularly love-struck. 

I have always been the type to fall madly in love at first sight. I go crashing in and out of relationships with equal speed and intensity (and in both cases, usually while drunk). But with Juan (in no way his real name) it was different, I liked him...that we had established. And after we'd established that, we'd found a few more things we liked about each other in my hotel room. By the end of the trip, we had taken a scooter out to tour the area and search for flamingos, we'd joked around and made fun of each other a lot, we'd drank and danced and danced and drank, fallen asleep while cuddling, gone out to a paladar and eaten a meal of something, to this day, I can only describe as disconcertingly-creamy-ham. But the sum total of all this, in my mind, did not in any way equal love.

The remainders of the creamed ham meal

As we ate our final meal together, the aforementioned creamed-meat, watching the clock to make sure I got back in time for my airport bus, we talked about how we both wanted to see each other again. I told him I wanted to see Havana, that I wanted to see it with him. He said he'd go wherever I wanted to go as long as he got to be with me. I told him I didn't want us to make stupid promises, that I wanted us to be friends because I knew that lovers must come and go quickly for him but that friendship could last. He agreed that we should be friends, good friends, best friends even. I got him to write his email address and phone number down and gave him mine. I laughed at myself as I did and said to him 'You'll never call me will you?' He just smiled and grabbed my notebook again, wrote something inside and told me not to read it until I was on the plane.

Back at the resort, I hurried around saying goodbye to the bartenders, the wait-staff, my housekeeper, the gardeners, the life-guards, the band, the DJ, the dancers, the entertainment crew, telling everyone how much I'd miss them and how I'd be back soon. I saved my final goodbye for Juan (I repeat, not his real name in any way). We ducked behind a tree to hug, he reached down beside a flower bush and plucked, not a flower but, a dirty, dried-up weed from underneath it to tuck behind my ear...I cracked up and told him, with real confidence, that I'd be back soon. Then I got on the bus.

As soon as I got to my seat, I opened the notebook to see what he'd written. Just one, simple, misspelled sentence "I can't tell you 'I love you' bot I'll mess you". I immediately started crying as realized, just a little bit, that he may have already messed me.

The most romantic 'I don't love you' letter I've ever received

Believe The Lies That Make You Happy

Of course, there was a guy. Well to be perfectly honest there were lots and lots of guys. From the guy at immigration who winked as he checked my passport to the bartender who feigned a heart attack every time I walked past to the gardener who popped out from behind palm trees to tuck flowers behind my ears to the model who carried me into the ocean when I told him I didn't have a boyfriend to the entertainers who could magically hit on every girl in the room simultaneously to the vendors selling seashells and smiles on the beach, old men, young men, fat, thin, super-hot to downright ugly, all of them had a whistle or a wink. Cuba may be notorious for its shortages in the areas of food, toilet seats and personal freedoms but one thing there is no shortage of is flirtatious men and I was loving it.

I am usually a fairly reserved person but all the attention, not to mention the free-flowing drinks, were loosening me up. I was winking and smiling and flirting back like a pro, I even threw in the occasional lascivious leer for good measure. It was obviously a game but I didn't care. If the attention turned me into a better tipper or more likely to share my food and drinks that was fine...if that was the price of admission for getting to feel like the most beautiful woman in the world, I was happy to pay.

Not to mention how safe it all was. We were guests of the resort and therefore the responsibility of the people who worked there. The happier we were, the more secure their jobs were. When the entertainers took us off-resort at night to go clubbing, they knew they had to get us back unharmed. One entertainer was our particular favourite. He was the clown of the group, constantly cracking jokes and trying to trick us but despite this he still seemed to be the most trustworthy of the gang. He wasn't smooth, he didn't try to be, but he was the most fun. We talked about how we felt a little bit bad for him, how he must always get friend-zoned while girls fall for the ridiculously hot dancers and models. But he wasn't feeling bad for himself, despite the fact that he was short, had questionable style and crazy hair, he marched around like a king.

Around Day 5, we were out at the club dancing when he stopped and looked at me very seriously and said 'I like you'. It was so simple and uncomplicated. There was no winking, there were no flowers pressed behind my ear, there was no comparing my beauty to the heavens, there was just a short, oddly-dressed, fuzzy-haired, hilarious man telling me that he liked me. I didn't know or care what the game was, I didn't know what exactly the appeal was, I couldn't place my finger on his allure...all I knew, very simply, was that I liked him too.

"5/5 BEST TRIP EVER!!!!!"

I brought a lot of books on my first trip to Cuba. We'd picked a small resort town that advertised itself as 'senior's friendly' figuring that would ensure the most laid-back vacation possible. Not that we were seniors, not even close, but we were both looking for calm and relaxation, not a drunken Girls-Gone-Wild-Spring-Break-Reality-Show kind of getaway. On the airplane ride down we talked about how neither of us were interested in taking part in any sort of drinking and partying scene and, though we were both single, neither of us was looking for a hook-up or any sort of vacation romance. It was to be long days of swimming, sunbathing and self-reflection. I figured I'd likely read a book a day, maybe even write one. I planned to be in bed by midnight every night...I had no idea.

The hard work of vacationing

Suffice it to say I didn't read a single book on that trip. I bounced happily from activity to activity without a second thought. I raced to the beach every morning to participate in ocean-based aquacize, stretching classes in the sand, merengue lessons...only to race back to the pool for afternoon darts, ring toss, Spanish lessons, aerobics and salsa. I learned the moves to the club song and danced along four, five, six times a day...wherever there was a club song to be danced, I was there dancing it. For someone who generally shunned group activities, I was a one-woman glee-club. Well two-woman glee club to be exact, my co-worker (now top-shelf friend) was equally, if not more, enthusiastic about the resort lifestyle and was down to participate in every activity those entertainers threw at us. Especially the dancing, you couldn't keep either of us away from the dancing...at the nightly shows and at the club, later, where we bought the drinks and the guys brought the intricate pelvic moves. I never wanted this magical vacation to end.

At the time I knew nothing about tourism to Cuba and its cliches - how people spend a week at a resort and decide that Cubans are the friendliest people on earth and know the secret to happiness, that they want to live in Cuba, that they were born to salsa dance, that life back home feels empty and meaningless after the pure joy of a week in Cuba. I didn't know that it was par-for-the-course to fall for a cute member of the entertainment staff, a charming bartender, a sexy dancer. It wasn't that I was sheltered. I'd lived abroad in the developing world for a few years and knew that in such places on a bad day I was a passport, on a good day a wallet and on a great day an English lesson...but never just a person to be appreciated for my own distinct qualities. I knew that the world is full of hidden (and obvious) agendas. I just didn't know about the Cuban agenda.