Wherever I go I meet lots of people who find my story fascinating. They often ask me, how did you end up where you are today, in your extraneously large house with your genteel husband and your nanny? How is that you have achieved the position of being driven around all day by someone you barely know? They ask, how can I hitch my wagon to a star that will result in my straddling a foreign European ex-model every morning before I have breakfast on the veranda? They don’t usually say this part, but the implication is, did you get where you are just by being an Asshole?

Well, friends, I wasn’t always an Asshole. My story is a very humble one, and if you have the time and inclination I will reveal it to you in all of its glorious detail. You will, Gentle Reader, pardon the feebleness or my adverbs and the awkwardness of my subjunctive clauses; if only I had experienced the multitudinous life-long privileges and education of the women I go to lunch with twice a week and go on Princess Cruises with thrice yearly (it used to be Carnival Lines ONLY but they’ve gone utterly downhill since they had that engine room fire in the Gulf back in 1999). But I digress.

People look at me (frankly, the years of my early life have taken their toll) and they look at Mr. Husband and they just shake their heads in confusion. They have no idea how a wealthy, European ex-male model with all of the charm and vivacity of someone like…Bob Barker… could end up with a deadweight cow like me.

Once, before I had four mewling little tit pirates and a suburban drug and shopping habit I was very, very beautiful. Men stopped on the street and broke into verse when they saw me passing by, my eyes modestly downcast as I effortlessly balanced my fruit basket on my head as I walked to the local market. Now that I am so far away it is an easy pleasure to miss Cuba–I indulge myself in nostalgia now that my hands are uncallused and tipped with coral pink acrylics.

I was proud to be part of the Youth Army; they needed our strength and idealism to keep Cuba strong. I was fit for so many things; I could have been a painter, a writer of great histories, even a burlesque girl like my childhood friend Tenalita who was called up as a pleasure and distraction for the American GIs who were given free reign in Havana in those days. I cried when the officiales took her away, when they read off their clipboard that my place was in the fields, while Tena’s place was to dangle her breasts in the laps of the Capitalist diablos. My father said, “Who cares about a lazy eye when you could balance a martini on her ass?” but it didn’t matter how he protested, the officiales heartlessly turned away, one of them with his sweaty hand clamped around Tena’s arm as they walked back to the Jeep.

The work was hard, but satisfying. I can never remember how long I was at it, if it was months or even a couple of years, since the days passed and I dropped into bed each night and dreamed only of the neat rows of corn and sugar that had whipped at my brown arms all day when the hot breeze stirred them.

Some of the selected didn’t want to work for the cause; I suppose they thought that someone else was going to build a great nation while they laid up all day under a tree and drank rum. This didn’t sit well with the men who watched over us and the officiales. Eventually, they had to hire more people to come out and coax the more reluctant members of our work team to contribute equally to the cause.

We often saw Americans pass by while we toiled dilligently during the scorching Cuban afternoons; they were usually GIs bouncing along in their little Jeeps but were occasionally wealthy turistas who drove out to our isolated field so they could see the glory that was Communism in action. They took many pictures, not knowing that their film would be confiscated before they could board their return flight, haha. I spent so many hours bent over in those fields that I began to feel that the ground, my hoe, and myself had become one, like the machines that they use in fields now. If I could still bend like that…I suppose it doesn’t matter now, since someone else cleans my floors. And I have looked through the imitation Gucci that is her ratty, cheap, off-season handbag so I know that I have soup tureens that are worth more than she is. I have exquisite taste; everyone who is invited to take tea at my house admires my extensive collection of serving dishes and flatware while we are in my dining hall. I let all of my guests handle my collections until they have had enough. As much as I hate, no, loathe, seeing fingerprints on my precious objets, I know that it is a charitable deed to keep the servants from becoming too idle.

I have lost my point again.

As one particular summer progressed, I remember seeing one turista repeatedly. I always knew he was there even before I turned around; his piercing European blue eyes cut holes into my back, through the rough fabric of my cheap (yet flattering and revealing) dress that was the standard uniform of female comrades in the Youth Army; to him it was as if I was wearing nothing at all. I often turned around to match his gaze and he would glare at me compellingly over the fence that marked the border of the farmland and the main road.

Finally, summer was ending and my team and I were in a state of agitation because we knew there was to be a brief respite between the summer harvest and winter planting season. The weather was getting more reasonable and I wasn’t even breaking a sweat until midmorning.

Suddenly, over the horizon I could see a cloud of dust; I figured it was one of the overseers coming to issue new instructions for how the day’s work was to progress. As it came closer I could see that it wasn’t a government vehicle. Several of us stopped picking ears of corn to stare since it was very unusual to see a civilian truck on communal property. The truck came skidding to a halt on the loose gravel road that was on the edge of the fields, several feet away from where our team stood gawking.

Three local men jumped out with automatic weapons and machetes looped to their belts, waving their guns carelessly while alert to any trouble from us. They spit and shouted and I could smell the rum off of them when the wind picked up and carried the fumes over to where we stood trembling. As was befitting the position of lowly fieldhands, we were quite unarmed except for our farm impliements. Behind the men I recoginized emerged the handsome European turista, who I assumed had already departed since summer was winding down. He, supernaturally tall and manly, strode over to me with the same air of conviction that he had exuded when he had undressed me with his eyes all summer long. He seized me by both of my arms and covered my face with kisses made by his impossibly sensual lips.

He said something to me then, but I didn’t understand him as my grasp of English at this time was limited to useful phrases such as “for three dollars only” and “you go now”. One of his gun-wielding companions translated for him.

“His name is Jean-Paolo. He wants you to marry him and go back to America with him.”

America! Ever since I was a little girl in Aldea de la Cabra, I had heard stories of America. It was a legend to most of us who knew we would never go beyond Cuba’s shores.

You will have to forgive me at this point in my narrative, Dear Reader, because I made a decision– the first decision of my life that was not in the best interest of my country; it was in the best interest of myself. You must understand, I was tired. I was callused. I was baked brown from the blazing Cuban sun when by rights I should have been under the cool stage lights with Tenalita at Etapa del Sexo. I did what any sane, healthy young woman with childbearing hips and an exotic European man’s tongue down her throat would have; I dropped my dull machete and walked away. This is the end of the beginning of my story.

I often reflect on that early time. Fortunate am I to have been selected as a fieldhand; I toiled tirelessly and have come to my reward (though I doubt part of my reward is the fact that you could park a Cadillac in my vagina after I whelped those ungrateful brats of his). Fortunate am I to spend my days engaged in whatever activity amuses me currently, whether it’s equestrian pursuits or finding the perfect solid oak sofa table to go underneath our newest Bougereau. Fortunate am I to be surrounded by a sea of formica in a kitchen I don’t know how to use (it is so modern!) instead of up to my ass in chiggers and horseflies and manure. Fortunate am I.