"What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?"

-Teofilo Stevenson's response to being offered 5 million dollars by American promoters to defect and fight Muhammad Ali.

All Cubans–––especially Cuban boxers–––have heard Stevenson's quote a million times. Thing is, it's only the ones who agree that are permitted to talk openly about how they feel. The rest, even in their own homes, have to whisper.

Someone said there are only two ways to live your life: one is as if nothing is a miracle, the other is as if everything is. I've always been convinced Havana is an annexed colony of the latter.

Maybe you won't mind if I explain a little of why...

Hemingway lived here for 20 years leading up to and during the revolution. Castro was actually up in the mountains reading For Whom the Bell Tolls to get some pointers on guerrilla warfare. Even with the revolution taking place in his own backyard, Hemingway never went near Castro in print. Tolstoy had gotten in the ring with Napoleon, but Hemingway knew enough about boxing to know punching your weight is a good rule.

There's only one day where photos of Ernest and Fidel were taken; it happened right after Fidel won Hemingway's fishing tournament.

Castro was asked why he was so eager to meet Hemingway and casually explained that he'd always envied his adventures.

If you don't mind, take a minute to consider that one.

When you first arrive it's hard not to wonder what Shakespeare would've done with Fidel Castro. Then you read a little more and ask a bunch more questions and begin to accept that maybe the better question is what Fidel Castro would have done with Shakespeare. It's not something that's lost on Cubans on either side of the fence. The world can't control when or where our great characters of history will show up. The joke to be taken very seriously is that this character showed up here.

They made a pretty good movie about Che last year which most Cubans enjoyed. What struck me more than anything was how it seemed to be a movie about how you can't make a movie about Che. It came closest when he called a soldier a "faggot" and the New York audience I watched it with winced. Che was a pretty vehement homophobe despite looking out for women and blacks. Sorry...

If Sartre called you the most complete human being of the 20th century, chances are pretty good you'd make a slippery subject for anyone to get to the bottom of too. Murderer or saint as poles for the dialectic doesn't really do much for me. You learn a little more from kids you talk to who complain that the worst thing about Che is that he actually thought other people could be as good as him.

When Che was captured by Bolivian soldiers a guard asked him if he believed in God. He replied, “I believe in humanity.”

He was asked what the most important ingredient in a revolutionary was and he replied, "Love."

The more I try to explore this place's meaning the less I understand. I guess that's why I can't really help or do any better making sense of what I've seen and heard.

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, my favorite Cuban writer, is praised by the New York Times and his most famous work is banned in his own country.

I walk through his neighborhood in Centro Habana at 4am every morning and buy peso coffees from the old women who come down and sell it out of thermoses and shot glasses.

Apart from my wife, I've never met women I liked more than here–––in any role you can think of–––yet I've liked them so much I've never even kissed one on Cuban soil. Except on the cheek. I get plenty of kiss-on-the-cheek action.

The best friend I ever made here was a traveling salesman from South America and when he found out his liver was shot he went out of his way to die on Cuban soil. He's buried in a famous graveyard where arguably the most famous resident is a mother who died giving birth and was buried with the child at her feet, only to be discovered many years later, when the grave was dug up, with the child in her arms. A cult formed around this woman and her child and someone's on guard at all hours of the day and night in the cemetery. That salesman was the first one to show her to me and tell her story. Now I get to visit both of them when I pass through.

The biggest funeral ever held in Cuba was for a pimp.

You turn over a lot of goofy things in your mind so early in the morning walking the streets alone, maybe in the same way you really let yourself sing when you know you're alone. 

I was sitting in the rafters next to a father and son for the morning set of fights going on during the Cuban National Boxing Championships held at Kid Chocolate gymnasium in Old Havana. My high school gym might've cost more to build, but with hundreds of millions of dollars you couldn't recreate what this place looks like. The murals and chipped paint and scoreboards and rafters and ceiling takes your breath away––-yet it's the faces in the crowd that steal the show. The tickets don't cost anything for Cubans. Everyone can come. There's no advertising anywhere. Even though there are Olympic champions in the ring periodically who could cash in to the tune of millions, most don't. Nobody here is making a dime off world class ability.

Pure and complicated.

The teams are divided by provinces, 14 in all. Havana fights in the evenings. I train with some of Havana's coaches and know some of the kids on the team. There are morning, afternoon, and evening matches going on all week. Each set lasts a little over two hours. The weight classes start with the real skinny kids and progress toward heavyweight as each match finishes. Each fight is three rounds.

Even for a boxing nut, seven hours a day of boxing has reduced me to bringing along a journal and a juice box of rum.

The father offers me a cigarette and tells me about how one day his son will fight here. His boy is around ten and rolls his eyes.

Cuban tobacco in most cigarettes off the street is intense and sweet. The Cubans who offer them to you most of the time are shy and aggressive. I feel a little self-conscious smoking in front of a kid. Self-consciousness hasn't been invented in Cuba yet. The revolution has come up short in a lot of areas compared to American standards.

He asks if I'm a boxer myself and flexes his muscles and his son laughs. The boy raises his fists to his face and glares menacingly at me.

Just then I hear the cheering subside for the fight that's going on and notice an enormous, towering man in track pants stroll across the gym floor alone.

"Quien es esto?" I ask the dad.

"Oh that's just Felix. He's a friend."

"Felix Savon?"

"Claro."

Savon, like Teofilo Stevenson, was a three-time heavyweight Olympic champion. Don King offered Savon a whole lot more than the five million Teofilo Stevenson rejected in order that Savon turn pro and fight Tyson. More in the neighborhood of 15 or 20 million. He turned it down flat.

There he was, by himself, waving graciously to a few people who called out his name.

"Felix Savon is a coach?"

"Claro."

"And he's a friend of yours?"

"Familia."

"Familia?"

"FELIX! OYE!"

"Jesus fuck! Man, don't. What are you doing!"

"OYE! FELIX!" To me: "Familia. My berry good frien'. Berry goo'."

Felix, still in stride toward an empty chair near the ring, raises his hand to acknowledge the piercing scream of the man sitting next to me in the stands.

"I think Felix wants to be left alone."

"Que va! Bullshit. Felix is like my hermano. Let's get him over here and you can have a photo with Felix. Felix! OYE! " The pitch of this oye! is pleading and defiant at the same time.

The Fear is upon me.

Felix waves again but you can tell he dreads what is following. Though---many people sitting next to us soon realize and would attest---it is highly unlikely he dreads it half as much as I am dreading it.

The father abandons his son's hand and gets to his feet, shoves both hands in his mouth and whistles with such ferocity Felix stops, turns, and glares in our direction.

"Please god stop. For the love of your child."

"OYE!"

"Your son."

"MADRE MIA, FELIX!"

Felix squints until he spots us and frowns.

The father waves him over and grabs me by the arm. "Coño, grab your fucking camera."

Which I do.

"FELIX! OYE! Don't pretend like Miguel Antonio Torres has not known you since you were a child of seven! Get over here!"

Felix Savon, six inches under seven feet, 230 pounds, one of the greatest fighters the world has ever produced, has dropped his head and begun the walk of shame over to us.

The child of Miguel Antonio Torres could not be more pleased with this glorious day, the day his father regained the heavyweight championship for daddy's everywhere.

"Miguelito, wait here for us."

I'm grabbed by the elbow and hauled down the stairs toward the first row. We're on a platform as Felix arrives, so I'm at eye-level with the Cuban legend.

Felix sheepishly apologizes and Miguel, five-four in sandals, reaches up and slaps his cheek. I'm introduced as a close family friend and Felix extends his hand that is roughly the size of a catcher's mitt. As we shake hands I watch the event going on between us and try not to feel like a Muppet in the exchange.

Felix asks softly how I've liked the tournament.

A big secret and joke in the Cuban boxing community is that Felix Savon is a homosexual who has a taste for doormen at the best hotels. All the Olympic coaches who've come through Trejo, the gym we train at, cross their hands together to make a butterfly take flight and whistle it on when they describe Felix. It is as accepted as the theory of gravity at Trejo and I wasn't sure what to make of it then or now beyond feeling amused by it.

The father mentions a photo and Felix puts his arm over my shoulder and I do the same. We have a considerable section of the crowd enjoying my awkwardness with this situation. Miguel Antonio Torres is standing before us with the camera pointed and both Felix and I are smiling at him. We continue smiling for another 30 seconds that extends to nearly a minute. Felix, not breaking the smile, asks if there might be a good time to take the photo.

"Hijo de puta! Mierda!" Miguel screams.

I ask if the disposable piece-of-shit camera is broken. Felix looks over at me and clenches his massive jaw, striations spread out over his cheek like a cracked windshield.

"Hijo de puta!"

I feel fear at this point. From Felix. From Miguel. From the 300 people glaring at our fiasco. From the son of Miguel. From the prospective jealous doormen Felix is acquainted with who are plotting revenge against me.

"Venga! Listoooo..."

"I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me."

-Mitch Hedberg

Likewise certain moments in your life. Miguel captured it crystal clear.

After the fights I walked over to Trejo to watch some of the local kids preparing for that night's competition. The buildup and pressure on these kids is a nightmare to them and their families. Boxers aren't just boxers in Cuba, they're global ambassadors of the ideals behind the revolution.

Outside the Capitolio there was a fleet of bicycles carting birthday cakes around town. Every kid is entitled to a free cake until they reach 15 (plus a free cake on their wedding) and the state delivers. It's one of the prettier sights around town.

I remember my most miserable birthday that I ever had as a kid. It was a little strange. I'd wanted a poster of Muhammad Ali for my room but couldn't decide between my two most favorite out of the half-dozen they had at the store. I only had enough money for one and it was really bothering me. I liked all the posters, but the final choice was between two.

For the last few weeks I was having trouble leaving my room so different things were becoming more important to me. I cared less about what I wore to school and more about my room. I got really fixated on the poster thing to the point where it was scaring a few people. Then I started staying home from school without being sick or even knowing the reason why.

By the time my 12th birthday rolled around my family wanted to help cheer me up and gave me enough money to buy all six posters. Seventy-five dollars was the most money I'd ever held in my hand. It was a scary feeling. At first I was really excited not having to make a choice between those two posters then, for some reason, I got so upset I couldn't leave my room for the entire day. A few days later I tore down every picture and poster on my wall and shaved my head with one of my mom's dull razors. 

TAGS: birthday cakes, Boxing, brin friesen, Che Guevara, cuba, dirty realism, Fidel Castro, George Orwell, havana, Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Juan Pedro Gutierrez, muhammad ali, Sartre

Brin Friesen is the greatest looking author since Lord Byron. His first novel, Sic, was published by And/Or Press in 2006. His work has appeared in The Toronto Quarterly, Pyramid Power, and Avantoure. He is currently at work on a novel about boxers in Cuba called, The Domino Diaries. Contact him at brinfriesen@gmail.com

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