artfullivingmagazine.com
| Winter 2016
1
intel || essay
MY CUBAN MISA D V E N T URE N I N E T E E N YE A R S A G O , I W E N T T O H AVA NA W I TH M Y B OYF R I E N D . I T WA S A PE R F E C T LY M A G I CA L T R I P. TH A T I S , U N T I L W E G O T CA U GH T. |
I
BY JILL ROFFERS, AS TOLD TO ALYSSA FORD
’m not a rule breaker. If anything, I’m a rule follower. Case in point: I’ve gotten a single speeding ticket in my whole life, and I paid it on time with a nearly ridiculous amount of contrition. And yet, on St. Patrick’s Day 1997, I was detained at the Memphis International Airport. I had my passport confiscated. I was accused of violating the Trading with the Enemy Act, a serious federal offense that can levy a fine of up to $250,000. But all that was later. First I had to fall in love. It started three months before. I get a phone call from this guy I had no recollection of meeting. He tells me he’s a friend of a friend and that he’s just moved back into the Twin Cities from Denver, and he was just wondering: Did I want to grab a drink sometime?
158 Artful Living
| Magazine of the North
I didn’t. I really didn’t. I mean, seriously, how random. But I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t want to offend anyone, even friends of friends who call on the phone. I’m almost irrationally nice that way. On the evening of the scheduled date, I called up one of my friends and complained about having to go. I told her, “You watch. I’ll be back home in an hour.” But I wasn’t back in an hour. I didn’t come home for more than three hours. Frank and I sat at the bar at Runyon’s, and we drank wine and talked, and the hours passed in a beat. I liked how intensely present he was, how carefully he listened. And I liked his flash, too: his white Saab convertible, his business card that said Vice President of Business Development. The next day, he went on a work trip to Puerto Rico and called me from
the island, which I found exciting and exotic. Things got intense very fast. He took me to see shows at the State Theatre. He booked us tables at romantic restaurants. He was flattering, too, but never in an ironic or self-conscious way. One night, he got pulled over for swerving and told the cop, with unblinking sincerity,
covered in tiny white porcelain tiles. The city was more than I imagined: the architecture, the ancient cars, the pastel colors on the buildings washed in Caribbean light. Frank was completely in his element. One afternoon, he took us to a little open-air cafe where a woman was crooning love songs as people drank Havana Club from tall glasses. Another night, we took dinner in a Cuban family’s wood-framed home, with a single bare bulb hanging from AS MUCH AS I’VE ALWAYS PRIDED MYSELF ON the ceiling. They served us beans and rice and plantains, and there was a MY FASTIDIOUS RULE FOLLOWING, THERE WAS picture of JFK on the wall. Frank wanted to know S O M E T H I N G E X C I T I N G A B O U T B E I N G S O M E W H E R E everything about the cigars, so we went on a self-devised cigar-making I WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE. tour to Romeo y Julieta, La Corona, and Partagas. He took us to a cabaret show at the Tropicana. We “Wouldn’t you swerve, too, if walked for miles. And I was you were sitting next to her?” completely in love — with We were on our third date the city, with Frank, with when he pushed a cocktail napkin all of it. across the table. “Write down And I’ll admit it: As where you want to go on our first much as I’ve always long weekend,” he said. I wrote prided myself on my down the usual sort of places: fastidious rule following, Chicago. Charleston. Napa. there was something Then he pushed his own exciting about being napkin across to me with a single somewhere I was not word: HAVANA. I looked up. supposed to be. Sure, it “Wait,” I said. “Isn’t that illegal?” was kind of illegal-lite, “Well, yeah, technically,” he like picking bluebonnets said. “But I’ve been there before.” in Texas or ripping off a And so, that was it. He made mattress tag or jaywalking all the arrangements through a across an empty street. Canadian travel agency. We flew But still — exciting. into Cancun from Minneapolis. When it was over, we From the moment we got on the were back in Mexico, and first plane, we were completely it was plain that we had punch-drunk for each other. We been on a very different giggled over the name of the nail kind of trip. Here was the polish on my freshly pedicured Cancun crowd, in their toes, My Auntie Drinks Chianti. I Carlos’n Charlie’s hats think the other passengers were and blistered sunburns, about to kill us. gringos who had spent From Cancun, we took a their days drinking wheezing Cubana turboprop. frozen margaritas out of The Freon blew so plentifully yard-long neon glasses. from the overhead vents that We were feeling pretty we could hardly see each other through the chilly fog. And smug, pretty sophisticated. That is, until we were firmly then we landed in Havana. Frank booked us a room at the asked to step out of the line at customs at the Memphis Hotel Nacional, a classic old place on the ocean built in airport. Then it was the Cancuners’ turn to look at us 1930 as a copycat of the Breakers Palm Beach. There was no and feel smug. They whispered together in their Señor TV, not even a little black-and-white set. The bathroom was Frog’s T-shirts.
artfullivingmagazine.com
| Winter 2016
159
intel || essay
A customs official took us to a room with a stainless-steel table and started in on the questions. “Where did you travel to?” “Mexico,” said Frank. “Only Mexico?” asked the customs official. “Yes.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “Then you don’t mind if we go through your luggage?” “Be my guest.” The customs official gave Frank’s luggage a thorough working-over, but he didn’t find so much as a cigar stub. That’s when I started whimpering softly. Before the trip, Frank had told me not to bring back any souvenirs. “We’re only going to bring back our memories,” he had said. But then we were there, and it was so beautiful, and it wasn’t really all that illegal to be in Cuba, right? The customs official reached for my bag, and that’s when I put my face in my hands. And out came all my little souvenirs: the stationery from the Hotel Nacional, the Dunhill cigarettes in their metal tin, the Cuban gum.
THE CUSTOMS OFFICIAL REACHED FOR MY BAG, AND THAT’S WHEN I PUT MY FACE IN MY HANDS. The customs guy, in his hateful Memphis drawl, pulled out the bag of Cuban coffee I bought for my parents and shook it accusingly.
160 Artful Living
| Magazine of the North
“So you haven’t been in Cuba, huh?” he said. Then he took out a cartoonishly large pocketknife and slammed it into the heart of my Cuban coffee. The coffee beans scattered across the table, rattling angrily onto the floor. That was when I lost it — sobbing, shoulders shaking, the whole bit. The customs official kept on: “You’re in a whole heap of trouble,” he said. “Do you realize that you’ve violated the Trading with the Enemy Act? We’re going to have to contact the State Department, and we’re confiscating your passports.” They marched us to another sterile room with another stainless-steel table. Only this time, they locked the door. After making us sweat for three hours, an official came in and told us we could fly back to Minneapolis, but we would be hearing more about this and we wouldn’t be getting our passports back. We had to run to make the last flight. When we landed, Frank attempted a little levity. “Hey,” he said. “It’s still St. Patrick’s Day. Do you want to go get a drink?” I wasn’t having any of it. “I’m not Irish,” I replied. The next day, two men in suits arrived at Frank’s office and served him for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act. I got an intimidating packet, too, which laid out the fine I was expected to pay: $15,000. It might as well have been $500,000. Frank, in his usual way, started asking around. He got the name of a woman, Sandra Levinson, who ran the cultural exchange between the United States and Cuba. She directed us to the Center for Constitutional Rights in Washington, D.C., which took on our case pro bono, arguing that the very heart of the Trading with the Enemy Act kicks at the constitutional right to free travel. We stayed in limbo for 18 long months, until a plain manila envelope arrived in the mail one day with our passports inside. No return address, no official letter — just two passports, passive-aggressively shoved into an envelope. In a way, the Cuba experience was a good trial run for what life with Frank would be like: risk, adventure, top-shelf dinner-party stories. Being with Frank has helped me ease up on the rule following, but I still want my parents to see me as a good kid. Which is why, 19 years after the fact, I still haven’t told them that I almost got slapped with a felony for trading with the enemy. So Mom, Dad, if you’re reading this — well, just give me a call, OK?