Heineken Havana 500th Anniversary Bottle

This was the fifth trip I’d organized to Cuba, and the only one during which we would spend a full week in the capital. It was also my first voyage abroad since my 2018 hospitalization, 20 months earlier. It wasn’t going to be easy, that much I knew. My sciatica nerve is bedeviled by post-operative scars, my left leg throbs constantly, and I still can’t reach up higher than my head. The journey would include some suffering. But it was an inquiry into what might be possible for me, going forward. I promised myself not to complain.

Among the participants were my old friend Steve, and his wife, Becca. I’d known them well when they lived in the Bay Area, back in the 1980s. After they moved to Portland I saw less of them, but our mutual affection endured. They were thrilled to join the trip.

Steve is in his 60s now. When he was 17 he was vagabonding, riding the rails across the U.S. Somewhere in Arizona, he jumped off a train car and missed. He ended up under the wheels. Steve lost both his legs: one above the knee, one below. With no medical help in sight, he pulled a length of rope from his backpack and tourniqueted his own horrific wounds. He held on somehow until an ambulance arrived, 20 minutes later.

Steve now walks on two high-tech prostheses, which he designed and built. He also uses a carved wooden cane. Though he hobbled some, he had as much energy as anyone in the group. One night at about 9, we were dropped off at Havana’s Fabrica De Arte Cubano: a former factory, recently repurposed into a fabulous labyrinth of galleries, dance spaces, installations, theaters, and bars. By 11 pm, nearly everyone had run out of steam, and took the tour bus back to our hotel. Not Steve. He and I stayed until 1 a.m., threading our way through the crowded corridors, drinks in hand, enthralled by the dynamism of Cuba’s contemporary art scene.

That was just one of the eight eye-opening nights we spent exploring Havana. And though I’m not sure how much Steve’s influence had to do with it, I’ll tell you one thing: I never complained.