Jagged ribs jutted through a tattered t-shirt. Needle tracks dotted her bruised, bony arms.

And smeared lipstick created a permanent smile on a face that had been bruised one too many times.

She loomed over my table at Kingdom on Biscayne Boulevard, her body illuminated by the full moon rising over the eastern horizon.

“What are you writing?” she asked.

“A poem. At least trying to,” I responded.

“About what?”

“About this. About life. About Biscayne Boulevard. I don’t even know yet.”

I was on my third Heineken and had been hoping the alcohol would loosen the words that had been trapped in my subconscious mind. Words that would be flowing out of me like an unhinged beer tap had I been standing in the shower, driving down the street or laying in bed trying to get to sleep. Anywhere except in front of a damned computer screen or staring at a blank notebook page.

“Will you read it to me?”

Usually my answer would have been no. I don’t like sharing my unfinished work. And I get annoyed when people look over my shoulder as I write. It’s no different than when people walk into my kitchen and peer into my pan as I cook. Just sit the fuck down and enjoy the final product. You won’t be disappointed.

But on this night, all I had were two lines. Two good lines. Two solid lines. But two lines that were going nowhere.

I looked down at the Moleskine notebook I always carry in my back pocket and cleared my throat. Then I read those lines aloud.

“Under a full moon on Biscayne Boulevard”
“Drinking a beer at an outside bar.”

I recited these lines in my spoken word voice; an urban drawl emphasizing the words “moon” and “beer” and “bar” and the last syllable of “boulevard”.

“Wow, that’s pretty good,” she said, repeating the word “boulevard” with the same drawl. “I like it.”

“I don’t know where I’m going with this,” I admitted.

“You should write about me,” she said, momentarily primping herself.

I was bored. I was lonely. I was curious. So I invited her to sit and offered her a beer. And I asked her to tell me her story.

She looked at me for a second to see if I was kidding. Then she sat down and offered a gap-toothed smile. And for the first time, I realized how young she was.

I had a flashback of an interview I conducted with a street prostitute a couple of years earlier in Phoenix when I worked for The Arizona Republic. That seemed like such a lifetime ago.

**********

It was the spring of 2003 and somebody had been killing prostitutes in Phoenix. After several had turned up dead, it became a hot story. I had been dispatched to Van Buren Street, one of Phoenix’s most crime-ridden streets, to interview prostitutes about their reaction to the ongoing murders.

I drove down Van Buren until a prostitute waved me down. I parked on the corner and as she sauntered towards my car, I stepped outside, prompting a quizzical look from the woman and a raised eyebrow from the pimp across the street. They probably thought I was a cop.

I told her I was a reporter and working on the story about the prostitute killer.

“Oh, you mean the crackhead killer.”

The killer had a moniker. The moniker became my lede. The story made front page headlines the following day.

But at the time, we had no idea the crackhead killer was also a necrophiliac. That was a detail police were keeping to themselves.

**********

She told me she arrived in Miami from Maryland two years earlier and had been working the boulevard ever since.

She told me about an abused childhood. About her nasty drug habit. About her controlling pimp. And about the scary men she “dated”.

“You seem really nice,” she kept saying as I jotted her story down in my notebook.

She told me about her dreams to be a model. A mother. A model citizen who would keep her kids off the streets and out of trouble.

But first she needed to get off the streets herself. And she needed to quit the drugs. And maybe even get back to school.

“I like to write,” she said. “I used to write a lot of poetry in high school.”

When I told her I was a photographer, she perked up and asked for my business card. She said maybe I could help her get famous. She even struck a pose.

I lied and told her I did not have a card on me.

**********

“Here is my business card. Call me if you hear anything,” I said to the prostitute I just interviewed on Van Buren Street.

I drove back to the office with a notebook filled with lurid details about a woman’s struggle on the streets. About how the twisted arm of fate can send one’s life spiraling down an empty abyss. About how innocence is never lost, only robbed.

But my editors were not interested in any of that. All they cared about was the quote about the “crackhead killer”, which they injected at the top of a story written by another reporter on the serial killer.

“Nobody cares about the personal life of a prostitute,” an editor told me.

**********

I continued asking her questions about her life, her goals, her dreams, about the men she “dated” on the boulevard.

She said she feared the streets but the drugs helped her get through it. The crack enabled her to walk the streets at night. The smack enabled her to sleep all day.

She said she carried a knife and was not afraid to use it. She said she had sold her body to lonely men, violent men and crazy men. And even a few evil men.

Her cell phone rang and she answered, her face getting serious and scared, the barking words of her pimp emitting loud and clear through the ear piece, ordering her back on the boulevard.

She hung up and forced a smile. And asked the question she had been dying to ask.

“Do you wanna date?”

“No thanks.”

“I didn’t think so.”

She finished her beer and stood up, primping her hair again, flashing that gap-tooth smile again.

“I’m in room 217 at the Vagabond if you ever want to see me.”

She strutted down the Boulevard, disappearing into a car with pitch black tints. I finished my beer and thought of the five women who had been killed in Phoenix during that spring of 2003.

I ordered another Heineken and opened a fresh page in my notebook and started writing my poem, the words flowing out of me as fluidly as the beer going down my throat.

**********

Under a full moon on Biscayne Boulevard
Drinking a beer at an outside bar

The girl on the corner is selling her body
She walks up to me, do you want to party?

I ask her how much, she says fifty bucks
I shake my head, that’s too much

She said make me an offer, you got a nice smile
It’s been a while since I had a fine guy

I say girl stop lying, stop talking that jive
I know you say that to all the guys

Then she busts out laughing and covers her mouth
She gets a look in her eyes like a scared little mouse

Under a full moon on Biscayne Boulevard

She said she was twenty, she looked thirty-nine
When she told me her story, I understood why

She was a biracial baby from Baltimore
A teenage runaway turned crack whore

Her father had raped her
Her mother had blamed her
The brother who raised her
Killed himself with a razor

So she packed up her bags and hit the streets
Looking for solace from this misery

And she was lured down south by a fast-talking man
A crotch-grabbing con who would make her a star

With tales of modeling and posing in Vogue
He told her this is where you get your start

Under a full moon on Biscayne Boulevard

But she kept her head high, believing the lie
Thinking of the day she would make Ocean Drive

And she developed a habit and it made her rabid
Rapidly killing that spirit inside

Now the girl wasn’t stupid, maybe naive
As she recited to me her philosophy

This is the boulevard of the broken dreams
Where James Dean been replaced by methamphetamine
Where every fiend is a friend
And every trick may leave you dead
But this is the price I pay to get ahead

She disappeared from the streets one day
Her body was found the following day
Gagged and tied with four sliced veins
In a urine-soaked alleyway

The man who killed her was an impostor cop
A necrophiliac who had served in Iraq
He returned to the scene of the crime that day
Wearing her panties with her DNA

But what gave him away was the blood on his boots
The ones that matched the bruise on her face
He was one of these guys that would get a rise
About seeing fear in a woman’s eyes

He blamed the war, he blamed the press
He said he did it because he was depressed
But his history showed he was always a whack
A psychopath who had slipped through the cracks

But he was able to get away with his crime so long
Because he kept his lust to the underclass
Preying on women who had lost all hope
Walking like zombies on a dead end road

Under a full moon on Biscayne Boulevard

The girl was buried in a pauper’s grave
The story was buried in a forgotten page
And the man who killed her pleaded insane
To the seventeen girls he killed the same

So next time you’re driving down the boulevard
With your windows rolled up and your AC on
With your stereo blasting and your blinders on
Just remember, she’s not the only one

Under a full moon on Biscayne Boulevard

© 2005 Carlos Miller

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By Carlos Miller
A loaded Colt .45 was tucked neatly in the waistband at the small of my back. A Canon 10D was strapped around my neck. The African drums were pounding furiously beside me.

And the lady with the microphone was asking me to step up and introduce myself.

It was Saturday night in Liberty City and I was the only non-black person in a room filled with spoken word poets.

As the smell of incense permeated the air and the smoke created a foggy haze, I accepted the microphone and told them I had no poem, but I had a story.

The drums came to a simmering beat as I told them that I was born and raised in Miami. That I lived away for ten years. That I returned only a few months ago and was on a mission to rediscover my city.

I admitted that back in the day, I would never have set foot in this place. That the only time I would even come to Liberty City was to cop weed. And that I had even been skeptical about showing up that night because I was unsure at how I would be received.

Then I thanked them for having received me with open arms, literally, as a poet named Lady Divine gave me a giant hug and told me to make myself at home after I told her I wanted to photograph the poets.

But I never got a chance to thank them for introducing me to the literary goldmine that I discovered in Miami’s underground spoken word scene.

I never got a chance to thank them for inspiring me to start writing and reciting my own politically conscious poems in front of crowds.

And I never got a chance to thank them for breaking down some of the stereotypes that had been instilled in me since childhood about Liberty City.

It was the summer of 2005 and I had recently returned to Miami after a 10-year hiatus. Feeling jaded from almost a decade of writing for corporate newspapers, I had enrolled in a creative writing class at FIU taught by James W. Hall.

Hall, who has always been one of my favorite writers, dedicated half the semester to teaching fiction and half to poetry. Although I had not been interested in the poetry portion of the course, I enrolled in the class anyway because it’s not too often you get to take a class taught by one of your favorite writers.

As it turned out, I had a natural knack for poetry. And it quickly became an outlet for my political rage.

My first poem was titled A Texas Clod and dedicated to George W. Bush. My second poem was titled The Media Circus and dedicated to the corporate media. My fellow students, many who were half my age, would frequently compliment me on my poems.

One day, an African-American student with dreadlocks who was known for his intense and rapid-fire political poems invited me to the Liberty City poetry sessions.

He told me they were held every Saturday night in a health food store in Liberty City. He described the drums, the vibe and the skill of the poets. He said my poems would be well-received.

I was still unsure about my poetry, especially about reading it in front of new audiences, so I told him I would be interested in photographing the poets instead.

That night, as I prepared my camera gear, I slipped a loaded Colt .45 pistol inside my camera bag because this was, after all, Liberty City, one of the most notorious neighborhoods in the United States.

I never brought my gun again after that, even though I attended three more sessions that summer. It wasn’t that Liberty City had gotten any safer. It was just that there was a certain community respect during these poetry sessions where I knew there was no need for a gun.

No drugs or alcohol were ever allowed inside. People of all ages - and races - were always welcome. Praise for the black woman was a common theme from many of the male poets.

Nobody was rhyming about bling-bling, bitches, ho’s and pimps. These rhymes were about struggle, pain, survival and hope on mean streets during lean times. These were the real voices of the hood. Ghetto voices that had long been ignored.

I started reciting my poems during my second session and my fellow student was right; they were well-received. There’s something inspiring when your audience responds vocally and passionately during key points in your poem.

When I showed up a fifth time that summer, I arrived to an empty room. The health food store had been forced to close down due to rising rents. The poetry sessions had been canceled. Another victim of Miami’s “boom economy”.

Lady Divine was carrying a few remaining pieces of furniture to her vehicle. I gave her a large print of the photo above in which she is reciting poetry in front of the poster of the African man.

I also gave her a large print of the photo at the top of this post; a homeless man that went by Gypsy who would write poems on food wrappers found in garbage cans. She assured me she would give it to him.

The summer of 2005 ended with Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans and I couldn’t help but dedicate a poem to the Big Easy. My delivery of the poem, the voice of the poem, was heavily inspired by the Liberty City poets. You can check it out here.

Since that summer, I’ve performed poetry in various venues throughout Miami, including The Literary Cafe, operated by Will “Da Real One” Bell, a Liberty City native who has been featured various times on HBO’s Def Poetry.

One of the most powerful - if not the most powerful - poems I have ever heard is called “So I Run”, which was written by Bell and never fails to raise goose pumps each time I hear it. Check out the video.

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By Carlos Miller
They throw the word “libre” around like we throw the word “freedom.” There is the Habana Libre Hotel (called the Havana Hilton during the 1950s), the Cuba Libre cocktail (which the locals will quickly tell you es una mentira) and signs displaying the words “Viva Cuba Libre” next to the Cuban flag are plastered throughout the city.

But only in the parts of the city where most tourists don’t venture. As if serving as a reminder to the Cuban people that they are free to purchase all the freedom fries they want, as long as they use Peso Convertible as opposed to Moneda Nacional.

After all, there are two currencies in Cuba. Two economies. The tourist economy and the local economy. The Peso Convertible is supposedly equal to one American dollar, kind of like a Disney Dollar except the Cuban government only gives you 80 percent for every dollar. Part of Castro’s cold war against Bush.

But Cuba is anything but free. If it were free, the Cubans would be allowed to walk down the street by my side without a police officer demanding their papers. They would be allowed to enter the hotel lobbies and get on the Internet, providing they are able to pay for it.

They would be able to buy a flight out of Cuba at a moment’s notice without having to go through an entanglement of bureaucracy that ultimately denies their request. Of course, not many of them would be able to afford the flight even if they had the freedom to come and go as they please. A doctor makes $30 a month and a college professor makes about $20 a month.

And if the United States were truly free, then I would be allowed to travel to Cuba without breaking the law. But that was one of the reasons I was there in the first place. To commit an act of civil disobedience. To protest the U.S. Government’s restrictions on Cuba. To send a big Fuck You to George W. Bush (more on that later).

It was my first time in Cuba, a country I have always wanted to visit because I had grown up in Miami hearing the Cuban old-timers (as well as my non-Cuban dad who used to live in Cuba in 1959) rave about the beauty of the island. And that week I spent in Havana confirmed everything I had heard.

It is a beautiful country; a magical country; a proud country; and an intoxicating country. It’s easy to fall under its spell. The laughter. The music. The climate. The vibe. The spirit of the people. Las Cubanitas.

Cuba never stops singing. Songs of joy and sadness fill the Malecon, the ocean wall where the waves never stop crashing, sometimes fiercely as you will see in these photos.

While the tourists prefer to drink $4 Mojitos in Old Havana, the locals prefer to share a bottle of rum on the Malecon. And as I learned, nothing beats this. Especially at sunset when the sun sinks into the ocean and the sky turns all sorts of colors, including blue, red, orange, yellow, purple. It was during one of these moments where I realized the main difference between the Miami Cubans and the Cuban Cubans.

In Miami, the Cubans want it all; the latest car; the largest house, the trendiest clothes. Miami Cubans are generally more materialistic than other Latin American subgroups. But even when they get it all, they are never content because they don’t have what they really want.

They don’t have Cuba.

In Cuba, the Cubans don’t have much. Many ask you for spare change. Their faces light up if you give them some of your clothes. And many live in homes that would be condemned in the United States.

But they have Cuba.

But through all the magic and joy and laughter and song and dance on the island, there is a sense of desperation. They want change, but they are afraid of change. The revolution is in its 47th year. Most Cubans have known no other form of government.

They complain about working all the time and not getting paid.

They complain about the constant police surveillance and how they are constantly stopped and asked for their papers.

They complain about not being able to leave the country to travel the world even if they fully intend to return to Cuba.

They blame the system. They blame the police. They blame the embargo.

But they rarely blame Castro.

He is their savior, their messiah. Their daddy. Their Big Brother.

“Castro may not be perfect but if he enters the room right now, I will be yelling ‘Fidel, Fidel’,” said one 27-year-old woman I met in a restaurant/bar.

“Fuck Fidel,” said the woman’s mother, looking around to see who had overheard.

“I don’t think he is a good leader, but I think he is a good person,” said a 24-year-old Cuban bagpiper I met on the Malecon who knew six languages even though he had never left Cuba.

Another man told me 70 percent of the people in Cuba are against Castro. Others told me it was about half that.

The Cubans do have free health care even though they are constant medical shortages. And they do have homes, even though it might consist of a single room behind a ragged curtain inside a former two-story multi-room house turned apartment building.

And they do have free education even though the doctors are forced to drive taxis to provide for their families and the college professors ask you for spare change after giving you a tour of the campus.

But if you ever have any medical trouble in Havana, have no fear because there is always a doctor in the house.

The best thing to do is buy Canadian Dollars or Euros and then exchange them for Pesos Convertibles. And then if you are brave enough, venture into the non-tourist areas where they accept Moneda Nacional. When I was there two weeks ago, it was 25 pesos nacionales for each Convertible Peso.

Once I caught on to the local economy, I started to save money. With tourist money, I was spending more on a Cuban meal than I do in Miami, a truly WTF moment. The problem is, it’s hard to find good food in the Cuban sector. The restaurants in Havana that serve the locals run on bare minimum.

Just because it’s on the menu doesn’t mean it’s in the kitchen. And just because the sandwich contains ham, cheese and pickles in the photo on the menu, doesn’t mean it will contain cheese or pickles once they give it to you They never seem to run out of ham, but it’s virtually impossible to buy any form of beef in Cuba (at least beef that is not mixed with pork and flour and passed off as a hamburger). Yet I saw cow pastures on the way to the airport.

While Cuba doesn’t have the extreme poverty I’ve seen in Colombia and in Mexico, the people do struggle. And although Cuba prides itself on its classless society, there are economic divisions within the country.

Those Cubans with family in the United States that send them money are better off than the Cubans who have no family in the United States.

Those Cubans that work in the tourist industry are better off than those who don’t work in the tourist industry.

And those Cubans who are approved by the government to rent their homes to tourists make more than those who were not approved.

And while there is not the violent crime that has plagued Colombia for decades, if you’re not too careful, some of the Cubans will swindle you out of your money, especially in the restaurants and bars. The best thing to do is pay for your drinks after each round because if you wait for them to bill you at the end of the night, you might get charged for everybody else’s drink in the bar. Maybe that is what they mean by Cuba Libre.

I was part of a group of Americans, lead by a New Yorker named Benjamin Treuhaft; a piano tuner who has delivered almost 300 donated pianos to music schools in Havana since 1995.

Treuhaft is also a political activist, the son of social critic and writer Jessica Mitford and California labor activist Robert Treuhaft. And he is extremely media savvy.

He had contacted CNN and other news organizations about our trip, setting up a press conference in Havana upon our arrival and a press conference in Miami International Airport upon our return. I was looking forward to it because I wanted to give Bush a piece of my mind on CNN. Unfortunately, we missed both press conferences because the plane arrived in Havana three hours late and in Miami, much later than that. We had flown on BahamaAir to and from Nassau and La Cubana from Nassau to Havana. Both planes tend to run on a lethargic/laidback Caribbean schedule.

But Treuhaft’s Cuban friends who had picked us up at the Havana airport confirmed the media had been there waiting for us. And CNN, Reuters and the AP showed up to one of the music schools in Havana to do stories on Treuhaft.

Most of the Americans on the trip came from the west coast on separate flights. I was traveling with Treuhaft and David, an African American Jazz musician who loved Benny More (famous old-school Cuban musician).

These guys made great travel companions. On our return through the Bahamas, as we waited in line to get processed through Homeland Security, we drank from a bottle of Cuban rum, preparing to test our fate with the feds. On our Customs Declaration form, when we were asked if we had traveled to any other country while we were in the Bahamas, we wrote “Cuba” in bold letters. After all, lying to a federal officer is a felony.

The three of us were immediately whisked aside as we stepped up to the first fed and he read that we had gone to Cuba. Then a tall African-American fed started lecturing us about the illegality of traveling to Cuba. Treuhaft told him the law was unconstitutional.

Fed: “So just cause you don’t agree with the law gives you the right to break it?”

Treuhaft: “If Rosa Parks didn’t choose to break the law in the early 1960s, where would the Civil Rights Movement be today?”

Fed: (Turning to point to a picture of George W. Bush) “The policy was set by the President of the United States, who was elected by the American people.”

That is when I stepped in.

Me: “That president stole the last two elections. He was not elected by the American people.”

Fed: (to another fed) “Take this guy to the back room.”

So I found myself in the backroom where I was ordered to put my luggage on a table so they can search it. I got a sudden sense of deja vu of when I was a long-haired teenager and was pulled into the back room on my return from Colombia one year.

Then one of the feds started threatening me with the absurd notion that perhaps I would not be allowed back into the United States because I had traveled to Cuba, which made me laugh and mock her.

They kept stressing that it is “ILLEGAL” to travel to Cuba. I felt like I was in one of those notorious immigration debates on DU. “What is so difficult to understand about the word ILLEGAL?”

At one point, another fed brought David, the jazz musician, to the back room and began searching his luggage. Meanwhile, Treuhaft was made to pour out the rest of the Cuban rum. I was ordered to fill out a questionnaire, and was informed that I will be receiving a letter in the mail and possibly a fine.

An hour later, we were boarded on a plane back to Florida with Treuhaft bragging that he managed to sneak in a half-smoked Cohiba, which he lit up in Miami.

Despite all the inconveniences and threats, I was never scared. I knew I still had my rights. I knew I would not be jailed for speaking out against Bush (at least not permanently).

But I also knew that if I had been a Cuban citizen and these were Cuban federales, I would have most likely been jailed after accusing Castro of stealing every election since 1959.

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It was 1958 and my dad was 37 years old. A World War II veteran. A University of Miami graduate. And a confirmed bachelor with a taste for Latinas. And who could blame him?

The Virginian native had immersed himself into Cuban culture to the point where he could maintain an in-depth conversation about Cuban politics in Spanish, even if he did it in a strong gringo accent. It was from these conversations that he developed a deep resentment against President Fulgencio Batista.

So on New Years Eve that year, when it was announced that Batista had fled the country, my dad was partying on the streets with the rest of the Cubans. And he continued to celebrate on the streets with hundreds of Cubans when Fidel Castro rolled into Havana eight days later.

But as history shows, the party was short-lived. It wasn’t long before Castro started wielding his iron hand against the Cuban people. And it wasn’t long before Castro wielded his iron hand against my dad, deporting him out of the country at gunpoint.

The way my dad told it years later, as we sat at his kitchen table sharing a bottle of Bushmills Irish Whiskey, he knew things were changing for the worse when he landed in jail one night after chatting up a Cuban woman, whose boyfriend turned out to be a “Fidelista”.

Once he was in jail, he learned that the Fidelistas had taken on an extreme anti-American sentiment, which was surprising because it was only a few weeks earlier that he befriended a bearded Castrista at el Floridita, the nightclub that was reputed to have invented the daiquiri.

Not only was the Floridita said to be Hemingway’s favorite bar, Esquire magazine listed it as one of seven of the world’s most famous bars in 1953.

My dad was released from jail the following morning, but when they handed him back his wallet, all of his money had been removed. He protested to no avail, but Castro’s police force claimed the wallet had been empty when he was arrested.

My dad was never one to bite his tongue; a trait he passed to his only son. He spent the rest of the day and night telling everybody that “Castro es un ladron”. It was still early in the Revolution so many Cubans had not yet learned this. But many were beginning to see it for themselves.

Before the crack of dawn the following morning, my dad was jarred awake by loud banging on his door. A group of armed uniformed and bearded Fidelistas entered his room and ordered him to pack up his bags because he was being deported.They didn’t even allow him to shower.

They whisked him into a car and drove him to Jose Marti International Airport. Still holding their guns on him, the Fidelistas walked my dad to the stairwell of the airplane, ensuring he stepped on that plane. Once seated, my dad looked out the window and noticed that they were not about to leave until the plane left the ground.

The forced deportation from Cuba did nothing to quell my dad’s wanderlust; another trait he passed to his only son. A few years later, he started making frequent trips to Colombia, where he eventually met my mother; a Bogotana who was more than twenty years younger than him.

They married and settled in West Miami, a working class municipality that eventually became a Cuban neighborhood. I was born a few years later, hearing the stories about Cuba from my dad and los viejitos in my neighborhood. I learned about Castro about the same time I learned about George Washington.

My dad shared many traits with the Cuban exiles in our neighborhood. He was stoutly anti-communist. He appreciated good rum. And he loved picadillo.

Once, when I was a child, he told me that JFK was a communist. I repeated his opinion to my third grade glass the following day, only to be berated by the teacher.

I spent the first two decades of my life clashing with my dad. He was a conservative, I was a liberal. He wanted me to join the Marines, I wanted to join an acting troupe. He listened to the Andrews Sisters. I preferred Twisted Sister.

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that we both realized he had more similarities than differences. We both shared a disdain for authority. We both shared a skepticism about organized religion. And we both shared a global curiosity.

After graduating college, I pursued my own wanderlust to Europe, where I stayed for two years, visiting various countries and gaining my own travel experiences, which I will eventually share on this blog.

Then I returned to the United States, settling in the Southwest, where I stayed for eight years, writing for newspapers in New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Meanwhile, my father had passed away. He was 83 years old. A life fulfilled. By that time, he was the only Anglo living in the neighborhood.

And the neighbors loved him because he always would talk to them about the old times in Cuba. Like them, he vowed to return one day. Like many of them, he never made it.

And after ten years away from Miami, I returned to my native city on a cross-country road trip that lasted three weeks, enabling me to see a part of the United States I had never seen.

But I knew my travel experiences would not be fulfilled until I had visited Cuba.

So in 2006 when I learned that an activist group from New York was planning a trip to Havana in order to restore old pianos, I jumped at the chance. After all, I had not only spent a lifetime hearing about Cuba from my dad, I spent a lifetime hearing about Cuba from los viejitos.

It was barely my father’s Havana, but the Floridita was still there. I even went inside and looked around, wondering what part of the restaurant sat my dad that night.

At first, the bartender eyed me as if I were a Cuban, but then he noticed my camera. For in this restaurant, the only Cubans who were allowed were the workers. I scanned the menu to see if I could afford a beer, just to say that I drank at the same bar that my dad and Hemingway did.

But there was no way I was going to pay six dollars for a Bucanero beer when it cost only one dollar at the Cuban joint only a few blocks away. And there, at least, I could talk to real Cubans instead of English and German tourists.

So I walked back outside and snapped a photo of the sign displaying the famous name. And made my way to the corner joint where Bucaneros were a dollar and the jukebox never stopped playing.

Considering that I was the only foreigner in the place, it wasn’t long before I was talking to a family of Cubans. And it wasn’t long before I was immersed in an in-depth conversation about Cuban politics.

And it was here that I found my dad’s Havana.

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