Note: I wrote Rum Socialism from the notes of a travel diary I kept while in Cuba. Here is a ver batim excerpts of that diary that doesn’t give away too much of the book itself.

*****

I need a drink. I’ve only had one since boarding, and the two I had in the terminal cost me what average Cuban probably makes in a month.

*****

I just work to the smell of something burning. Either we’re about to go down or someone is smoking scrap cigar tobacco in the washroom.

*****

I think the stewardess just brought a couple beers up tot cockpit. At first I thought she was going to serve them in first-class, but then she continued on through the second curtain where there’s nothing but the cockpit and an exit. Oh well, we’re almost there anyway.

*****

I just tried to another beer. “No more beer or rum,” the steward told me. “Only wine.” Looks like the captain and the co-pilot just got the last of it. Vino tinto it is!

*****

I just caught another whiff of smoke. I’m about to climb the cabin wall. It’s coming from first class where the off-duty Cubana staff has taken up all the seats. But hey, this cabin is Cuban soil, and the rest of us are just visiting. I thought I saw another washroom up there, past the second curtain by the cockpit, but when the fasten seatbelt first turned off after take off, and I made a b-line for it, I was turned away by the stewardess and sent to the back of the plane to wait in line with the other gringos. I guess I now know where the smoking section is. Oh well, I never really believed in equality, anyway. I mean, it’s a nice enough concept. But so is the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and Black Pete. At least the Cubans aren’t apologizing for a double standard they can’t help. This is the real world, where there are haves and have-nots, and there’s no use pretending otherwise. That’s why we have systems, after all: to keep the playing field level – at least between the members of the home team. And this is their revolution, not ours.

*****

I’m watching some Cuban music video with the sound off. The rocker looks like something Ben Stiller would play in a Happy Madison production about the bastard child of Jon Bon Jovi and John Cougar Mellencamp. This embargo really has left these people several decades behind the rest of us.

*****

We’ve dropped below the clouds on our descent and I can already feel the air on my skin. It tastes like moist, fertile soil. I need to get some of these clothes off.

*****

We’re on the runway and I’m looking out the window at the flora and I want to run off into the jungle naked and wrestle a chupacabra. I wonder if they have those, ere.