Cuba Libre

The night out had been glorious, and as I was waiting in the train to depart and take me home to SFG the next morning, I still had that dazed feeling of pure tranquility, which seems to be one of the side effects of letting go on the dance floor the night before and dancing till you don't feel your legs anymore.

Reni and me grooving the night away at the Boa Club in Benztown. God, we look fucked.

I looked out the window. There was a billboard advertising a beach in surreal colours, complete with straw hut and well built machos ascending from the crystalline water. 'Come to Cuba' it said, and I thought, damn that was fast, Castro just having resigned a short week ago, and already we're turning it into Disneyland. I smiled as I congratulated to having done the Cuba thing already, as long as the old man still had had a firm grip on power, and then my thoughts wondered to Heidi and Arnd, the German couple we had met back then, and how they had complained and complained - and how we had made fun of them. Sure, it had not all been perfume and roses, but we had enjoyed, no, loved our Cuban adventure, gotten to know a few people, gone done a few roads less traveled, and nothing serious had happened to us, whereas those two had taken every precaution and had been robbed inside their own car, being left with nothing except what they were wearing.
I snickered at the thought that actually those things always happen to those people who deserve it, and there was a whistle and the train set into motion. Why was it, my personal train of thought gathered momentum, that nothing like that had ever happened to me? Neither pickpockets in Barcelona, nor thugs in Berlin... while everyone around me had experienced that frightening violation of their property or person, I seemed to be having a guardian angel of some sort, or just some very broad shoulders or apparent self-confidence to ward off all evil. And while I was self-contentedly congratulating myself for my positive attitude and good fortune, I gradually remembered, that oh, yes, I had my car broken into, and moreover, had the whole car being stolen , ludicrously, from under my eye, and even almost caught a bullet on that day in Cape Town. How come I hadn't thought of that? And a tiny voice inside my head said, well, you know, these things always happen to people who deserve it.
And I laughed out loud at my own silliness, and some of the passengers turned their heads and looked at me as if I were mad.