Dating Confessions by You "I'm wearing sexy underwear while talking to you online so that I feel confident enough to tell you that I'm into you."
Scanner by Emily Farris Today on Hooksexup's culture blog: We bring you more Dita Von Teese from the German Playboy.
Screengrab by Various Today in Hooksexup's film blog: Holiday special - 35 people, places and movies we're thankful for.
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
After four years of working in journalism in Eastern Europe, I'd come to Cuba expecting the standard template of communism slapped down on the tropics: concrete buildings crumbling amid coconut trees, stray dogs scavenging in the streets, a defeated glaze in the eyes of the proles. The crumbling buildings I got, and even a dog here or there, but the cowed body language of defeat was nowhere in sight. Instead, the people exuded charm and pride, and now I know the truth behind the rhapsodics of any woman who comes back from Havana raving about the city's sensuality. Cuba may be known for its brisk trade in young women, but the men too are a source of national pride and part of a bartering culture with which I was wholly unfamiliar.
Throughout the course of my visit, the taxi drivers, waiters and other natives, filled with a tour guide's desire to impress, recommended not just the rums and beaches but also the horizontal skills of Cuban men. "They're perfect in bed," one young mother told me with a wink. The man who checked my passport as soon I stepped off the plane grinned at me and, glancing at my landing card, said, "You're staying at the Hotel Deauville? Which room?" When I stopped by to visit the former Royal Palace-turned-Museum of the Revolution, a guard invited me out to a discotheque that evening. I told him weakly that, if he gave me the disco's address, I might show up, but he shook his head. "You don't make half-promises like that in Cuba. If you want to come, tell me now. If not . . . " He shrugged and gave me a "you don't know what you're missing" smirk.
I arrived in Havana with Jennifer, a girl I'd met travelling in Mexico, in the midst of Havana's raucous celebration of Carneval. As soon as we hit the Malecón a snaky, stinky waterfront street that runs the length of the city the come-ons began. "Where are you from? French? Aleman? Can I buy you some beer? You want to learn salsa? Hey, beautiful, where are you going? You're too gorgeous to walk alone." Groups of men surrounded us, taking hold of our arms and trying get us to dance. Men with girls already on their arms would stare and grin. At first I thought they were all going for Jennifer a thin, ethereal blond whose natural pallor had a perpetual blush from the tropical sun but soon it was obvious they were coming on to both of us.
Maybe it was the excitement of Carneval, the cheap beer or a tourist's sense of invincibility and adventurousness, but I didn't find the advances creepy or aggressive. In fact I was revelling in them. These unceasing come-ons in a city full of stormy-eyed, dark islanders gave me the horribly delightful, vaguely imperialistic delusion of being a Great White Goddess.
Jennifer and I soon realized it was better to let someone tag along, since once a Cuban man is at your side, all the others back off. Within moments, Jennifer was attached to a lithe, pitch-dark man named Corazón de León, along with another friend of his named Ernesto ("Like Che," he told me, proudly), a dreadlocked, sloe-eyed young thing who told me, with a glint in his eye, that he was an amateur masseur. The two of them slid their arms around our respective waists and led us to one of the stands selling frothy beer in cardboard cups and blaring music not the standard-issue salsa but something with a vaguely hip-hop throb. CU-ba! CU-ba! the music boomed. After a few beers, Jennifer and Lionheart disappeared into the crowd, leaving me with Ernesto, who, alarmingly, began to pull me out into the dancing throngs. CU-ba, CU-ba, I kept thinking to myself, trying not to dwell on how mortifying it was to try to dance alongside Che's liquid hips. "Venga, I'll show you how to dance salsa." He flashed his teeth. I protested too many men have promised to teach me to dance, only to leave me standing stupidly as they show off but Ernesto pulled my waist toward his and locked our hips together. His hands grazed the small of my back. He pivoted his groin into mine so smoothly that I barely realized he was doing it. This, I thought, is why Cubans dance so well they move like they're having the best sex of their lives.
But I wasn't quite there yet, and, typically, I decided it would be less difficult to make out with him than match his dance moves. Within moments, he and I were up against the wall of the Malecón. Ernesto effortlessly moved his arms and hips and tongue in time with the beat. His own muddy, slightly acrid smell tangled with the stench of the brown water on the other side of the wall. Feeling his lean muscles through the worn fabric of his T-shirt, I was suddenly self-conscious of the silver rings I'd picked up in Mexico and the silk wrap I was using as a skirt. This never happened to me in Eastern Europe, I thought, and here I was, the first day off the plane, kissing and groping madly as a dozen conflicting salsa riffs pounded out around us.
Considering I'd touched ground only six hours earlier, I was feeling pretty damn good about myself. And since I'd managed to attract more attention in that time than I had cumulatively in my whole life, I decided, what's the rush? There were at least seven more langorous days ahead of me. When I next came up for air, I whispered to Ernesto that I was retiring for the night, and that I would be at my hotel if he wanted to call me the next morning. He didn't, and in the course of the day's sightseeing (and come-ons) I promptly forgot all about him until Jennifer and I returned to the hotel that evening and discovered Ernesto and a group of his friends on the stoop. According to the bemused woman at reception, they'd been waiting there since eleven in the morning.
I always fall for actions that front as passion. I was charmed by this, and pleased that he looked even better than I'd remembered. I was less charmed when he took both me and my friend by the arm and declared, "You're mine now."
"You were talking with some guys after you left me," he said, smiling. "Are they your new men?" He was trying to be nonchalant, interrogating me with silky, easy half-jokes.
I told him airily that I had a million boyfriends all over Cuba, and if he had a problem with it he'd have to beat every one of them up. "Well, now I'm not going to leave your side, just so that everyone knows who you belong to," he said. His pals whooped with laughter, but when he saw the panicked glances I was throwing Jennifer, he flicked his tongue in my ear and bought us yeasty pizzas from a street vendor.
A skinny girl among his entourage Ernesto's cousin, she said smirked at me. The whole time, she had been eyeing me and Jennifer with beady disdain and pointedly ignoring anything I tried to say to her. Suddenly, she asked me to buy her cigarettes. I refused, partly because I didn't like her either, but mostly because I didn't have any pesos on me (and U.S. dollars aren't accepted on the street). "I'll get Ernesto to pay you back," she said, with barely concealed contempt. "Just buy me some cigarettes." When I held firm, she took Ernesto off to the side for a whispered consultation.
Ernesto sidled over to me and starting telling me about his work as a masseur, offering toothily to demonstrate some of his techniques if I took him back to my hotel. "Of course," he added with a leer, "they work much better when you're naked." He looked straight at me. "And if you have some kind of oil that I can use."
My back is already in pretty good shape, I replied blandly. He frowned, then changed tactics. He grazed a finger on my hip. "You know, for my massage to work, I really need some oil to do it right. If you wanted to, you could maybe give me some. Anything. Sunblock, face lotion, whatever." Hand over the duty-free Elizabeth Arden sunblock in my purse? I cringed. "Or deodorant," he continued, now locking both arms around my waist. "If you have some bit of deodorant, you could just give it to me at the end of your stay. It's easy to buy deodorant in the States, isn't it?"
That's when I fully realized he wasn't after my body but my . . toiletries. Apparently, CVS-grade toiletries are coveted luxury items in Cuba. And Ernesto knew that, like any good tourist, I was carrying around plenty. So much for my status as white deity. I was being duped like any other gringo.Like any savvy traveler, I pride myself on knowing when I'm being taken for a ride, but the flattery of walking down the street and feeling like you're parting the waters caught me off guard and I was equally unfamiliar with the custom of being charmed in the hopes that I'd magnanimously hand over my Ban roll-on. In fact, some of my friends later told me how it's common practice for girls on holiday to Cuba to load a suitcase full of shoddy perfume, aspirin, fashion magazines anything that Cubans have a hard time getting. Men may be more resigned to the barter system, more willing to buy a girl a drink in order to enjoy a few minutes of her attention and take the chance that it might go further. I wasn't. I wasn't willing to play the sugar daddy, mainly because I wasn't willing to play the part of what I suddenly realized I was: a sucker.
After great effort Ernesto was nothing if not persistent Jennifer and I lost him and his friends in the crowded streets of the Malecón. I'd tried to act aloof as we left but in truth I was surprised by my hurt. I felt bruised by the encounter, and for the rest of my stay, I made a point to steer clear of any man who wasn't a pensioner or prepubescent. I was baffled by our earlier encounter against the dank wall of the Malecón: when we were making out and groping like starved celibates, I was riding high on my own desirability a giddy pleasure of a kind I had never experienced. I was savoring it. What was Ernesto thinking about? Antacids? All I knew is that when he was grinding into me, breathing heavily and muttering gutturally in Spanish, it felt urgent, animal. We believe, in such moments, that sex is driven by sheer instinct, pheromones steaming off of us like fumes from a hot car, and forget every sexual encounter's subliminal shadings of power race, class, money, prestige.
As for young Che, even after I lost him in the crowds of the Malecón, I got the feeling he wasn't too bothered by it one way or another. In fact, on my last night in Havana, as I was sitting on a streetside bench with the son of the woman who was renting me a room, I saw Ernesto and his crabby cousin. Ernesto called my name; I instantly shrank when I recognized him, then steeled myself and waved. The cousin put both hands on her hips and sneered. But Ernesto looked at me, glanced at my companion and after making sure that both of us were watching flashed me a suggestive smile and winked before he strolled off. Even though the hopes of scoring some drugstore niceties must have long since faded, he still made me feel gorgeous.
"You don't make half-promises like that in Cuba. If you want to come, tell me now. If not . . . " He shrugged and gave me a "you don't know what you're missing" smirk.
and hips and tongue in time with the beat. His own muddy, slightly acrid smell tangled with the stench of the brown water on the other side of the wall. Feeling his lean muscles through the worn fabric of his T-shirt, I was suddenly self-conscious of the silver rings I'd picked up in Mexico and the silk wrap I was using as a skirt. This never happened to me in Eastern Europe, I thought, and here I was, the first day off the plane, kissing and groping madly as a dozen conflicting salsa riffs pounded out around us.
but when he saw the panicked glances I was throwing Jennifer, he flicked his tongue in my ear and bought us yeasty pizzas from a street vendor.
Like any savvy traveler, I pride myself on knowing when I'm being taken for a ride, but the flattery of walking down the street and feeling like you're parting the waters caught me off guard and I was equally unfamiliar with the custom of being charmed in the hopes that I'd magnanimously hand over my Ban roll-on. In fact, some of my friends later told me how it's common practice for girls on holiday to Cuba to load a suitcase full of shoddy perfume, aspirin, fashion magazines anything that Cubans have a hard time getting. Men may be more resigned to the barter system, more willing to buy a girl a drink in order to enjoy a few minutes of her attention and take the chance that it might go further. I wasn't. I wasn't willing to play the sugar daddy, mainly because I wasn't willing to play the part of what I suddenly realized I was: a sucker.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
