Brothels, bordellos, madams and the prostitution profession in general have long intrigued me. Even prior to writing about Heidi Fleiss the Hollywood Madam , one of my first paid gigs as a scribe, I was a proponent of legalizing and regulating prostitution. I know some countries have taken certain steps towards this with mixed results β legal houses in Amsterdam; Sweden penalizes johns instead of prostitutes β and there are no easy answers. These fill a very specific need here since homes are overcrowded, while privacy is a luxury reserved for the very privileged.
Posadas are easy to identify. You know those little blue symbols on Cuban homes which signify that they rent to foreigners? All those rooms have holes for peeping or filming. Fast forward to last week and where do I find myself? In a posada in Santa Clara. He found something affordable, a bit outside the city center, but we had transport. When we entered the room β no window, no toilet paper, no hot water, one pillow, one towel and an Igloo cooler on the floor filled with ice β I collapsed on the double bed, but sleep was elusive.
The stench of cheap air freshener permeated everything β the sheets, my hair, our clothes, even the stale air stank. We slept with the door open to provide a shred of relief from the olfactory assault. Luckily the room faced a brick wall β to keep out prying eyes. At am sharp, a cherry red Dodge with blacked out windows rolled into the interior patio and out stepped a bleached blonde temba a woman of my age more or less in platform heels and a puss on her face.
We rode away and I was ready to get as far from the stench of chemical flowers as fast as possible. Too bad it still stuck to my skin. Two days later, we got caught in a mountaintop rainstorm, quickly scrapping the idea of camping.
Instead, we headed to the closest big town to look for a room. We rolled in to Cumanayagua at about 9pm, wet and tired after an all-day hike and were directed to a corner on the outskirts of this bustling rural berg. We rented the ground-floor room and once again were assaulted by the cloying stench of cheap air freshener. Was there some lucrative business selling this shit by the gallon to posadas , I wondered? The bed was flanked by golden gilded mirrors and even tackier curtains without a purpose; a TV on a retractable arm like they have in hospitals pointed towards said bed.
