He’s not a “male prostitute” he’s just a “guy who works real hard to get ahead,” he tells me with a strange sense of pride that feels more like a rationalization, a childish defensive strategy.ĭuring our conversation, other young men like him walk the streets, from one corner to the other. He’s dreamed of having all that a thousand times.
He shows me the picture of a beautiful little kid next to a brand-new car, in a distant country. Something like that happened to his brother. He speaks of the future for his wife and children he dreams of. “Maybe one of the people who pay for an hour with me will decide to take me with them out of the country one day,” he says to me, with different words, and begins to describe to me what his life would be like somewhere else. There are days in which Daynier doesn’t even make a penny, but then he gets a run of good luck, especially in high tourism seasons, when he can take back home the clothes and things he was never able to buy with his previous salaries. All he had to do is stand at a street corner, put himself on display and wait for someone to approach him. It was his brother – a pinguero like him – who introduced him to the “trade.” In one night, just from selling his body, he managed to earn much more than what he did working for the State the entire day. Even though he found work in agriculture – skirting the law that regulates the internal movements of people in the country – he still wasn’t making enough to live on. Desperate, he decided to move to the capital. He had to support his family and couldn’t find a job that gave him enough, not even to buy food, clothing and rent a small house where he could see his children grow up. He was born in Niquero, in Cuba’s eastern end. “It’s a job like any other,” says Daynier, a young man who tries to explain to me the difference between a male prostitute and him, who also does not accept being called a pinguero, which is what the young men of the sex trade are called in Cuba.ĭaynier is twenty-six years old. With a pair of jeans and a tight-fitting shirt over a buffed-up body, one can get enough to live on, and even to support one’s family. To sell one’s body near the Payret cinema, one need not be as sophisticated as the taxi-boys that abound in the vicinity of luxury hotels. The crowd looks fairly uniform, but it is in fact made up of well-defined groups of people: those who have, those who have little and those who hope to get lucky that afternoon or late into the night. Just about everyone passes through those two areas: tourists who have their pictures taken in front of the Capitolio, where the Cuban Senate once convened, common Cubans who wait for hours for a bus to take them home after a day at work (which was just as exhausting as the wait), others who have a bit more money and go into and come out of stores or line up at the entrance of a luxury restaurant. In contrast to La Rampa, located in the very heart of Vedado, or the more popular discos in Miramar, the Payret and Parque Central sidewalks are the areas where Havana’s cheapest prostitutes work. If they don’t, they are sent back to their provinces of origin in the interior, and there isn’t much they can do there, at least nothing to feed their hopes that they will one day be able to stop selling their bodies. They also have to pay to be there, making a buck. They have to buy the documents they need to stay in Havana for at least six months and bribe the police so they won’t detain them for harassing tourists.
They have to eat and pay the rent, after all. They are willing to do whatever is asked of them.Ĭubans are charged a little less than yumas (foreigners), but these working kids will bargain with anyone if they’ve gone many days without taking in enough. When a group of tourists nears, the young men and women prepare for battle: they straighten out their clothes, take out cigarettes, ask for a light, smile, make suggestive gestures. An hour or an entire night of pleasure, or all the time needed to satisfy the lustful cravings of those who pay.Īs night falls, the crowd begins to grow and the competition becomes more intense. The young men and women sell themselves for nearly nothing. HAVANA TIMES - The afternoon settles in Havana and young people who sell their bodies begin to throng on the sidewalk in front of the Payret cinema.
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