"You Dance Good"

He was Cuban, homeless, and a Tolkienian dwarf of a man; round paunch, bulbous nose, bald-head but plenty of hair around his ears and on his face. I sent the student in to interview him but he shooed her away and continued to shuffle back and forth in the hallway making a nuisance of himself and hogging the community telephone. Earlier that day he and his wheelchair had taken a tumble down some stairs. His knees were bloodied and his back was sore. Drawn in by his charm and his elfin impishness, I needed to know his story. As for my patient, finally, he had a captive audience.

His father, a military officer, bought him a car, “because you make good grades!”

He said to his mother, “But I don’t even have a license. I’m only 14!”

Her response, “Everyone knows you are my son! That alone will vouch for your character!” As if character was sufficient experience to drive a car.

With his new car, he drove straight to the whorehouse. And back and back and back he went. At 77 years of age, he had fathered 17 children with 16 different women. Once, when he was 18 years old and in New York City (pre-Castro), he looked out his hotel window and an older woman, in a hotel across the street, waved back to him. The next day he looked out and she was standing naked in the window. The third day, he stood naked in his window while she stood naked in her window across the street. On the fourth day he went outside, grabbed her by the wrist and took her to his room and they proceeded to make love for 4 hours. She, the older woman, had been with a Negrito (his words, not mine), her boyfriend, on the day he grabbed her by the arm. Several years later he discovered she had returned to Cuba with the Negrito and given birth to his son. Before immigrating to America, he met this son while he was in jail. Comically, he had judgment in his voice as he lamented his son’s incarceration. As though he would have been the better parent. My patient, too, had been to jail, for gambling. The judge gave him a choice; serve 4 years or forever be banished to Florida with all of his family. He chose the latter. His family never arrived in Havana to sail with him on that steamer ship to Miami. The judge had lied. That had been 41 years earlier and he never saw his parents or his family again.

He had 3 wives. I couldn’t tell if the 3 wives had been consecutive or concurrent, but it didn’t really matter. His children lived in Miami and Orlando and New York and San Francisco and Germany but he spoke with none of them. Not only did he have wives but he also had a series of girlfriends with whom he’d have sex for hours. “I never have troubles getting an erection. Every morning I have an erection. I don’t know. I just never have troubles.” He wasn’t bragging. He was simply stating a fact, a piece of medical history for me. He sold newspapers for $50 a day and some nights he’d go downtown on Main Street and dance with women for $10 a dance and on these nights he could earn another twenty to thirty dollars. He could dance the tango, the salsa, the mambo, the cha-cha-cha. But what he liked the best was Benny More and the danzon.

As though this had been the most fantastical part of his story, his dancing abilities, I asked him to prove to me he could dance. The student was trapped in our interaction, this dance of our own, and I made her fetch my phone. I played the music he mentioned; the danzon and the Benny More that just a minute before I thought he had been confabulating. And we danced.

“You dance good” he told me. “Give me your phone number so I can take you dancing.”

“My husband wouldn’t like that.”

“But your husband is a modern man. I’ll talk to him. It will be okay.”

After 30 seconds of dancing he was winded; short of breath with a twinge of chest pain. We had to stop. Once again I was the doctor and he was the patient. We were no longer in Havana but room 7 of the ER. My shift ended that night and I signed him out to the following provider. I looked up his record the next day, to see what had happened to him. He had been kicked out of the ER like he had been so many previous times. I’m sure he’ll be back.

For the record, I don’t think most of his story was true. It wasn't the many wives or the sexual prowess or the innumerable children that made me suspicious. If his story had been true he wouldn’t have needed that nitroglycerin while we were dancing. No one on Main Street is going to pay $10 for half a minute of dancing.