Searching for a Boyfriend

Irina Pino

HAVANA TIMES — The idea of using Havana Times to find my friend a boyfriend isn’t an experiment but an attempt at finding an alternative for her. My friend needs a partner. Her loneliness and depression could harm her psychologically in the long run.

The help I can offer her isn’t much. I often agree to accompany her to places where there’s a chance she may “hook up” with someone, where there’s music and dance. We’ve gone to Havana’s Yellow Submarine club on several occasions, but, lately, most of the people who go there go as couples and many of the single men who go alone are over sixty (a little too old for her).

So I thought of putting out and ad. The idea came to mind when I remembered the film The Mirror Has Two Faces, starring and directed by Barbara Streisand, where a university professor puts out an ad in order to meet a woman with certain characteristics.

There are Internet sites where people exchange messages and get to know one another. This is difficult to accomplish in Cuba, as very few people have access to the Internet and chatting tends to be very costly. There are also no singles clubs or dance academies where people could meet.

My friend tells me she visited a site called Cubango a few days ago, but that all of the ads she came across were by people looking only for sex. She finally found a person who wanted an actual relationship, but it turned out to be a woman.

Old folk recommend one take bath in honey and cinnamon in order to attract others, a recipe it would do one no harm to try. The concoctions people prepare as part of such magic rituals are almost funny. Ultimately, I think anything’s fair to encounter love.

I don’t know what’s going on. It is said there are less and less men around here, as many of them have left the island in search of better lives. The few who remain have partners. Then there are those who are either too young or too old. There are more and more homosexuals, bisexuals and a certain number of men who work the streets, so finding someone becomes difficult.

Intelligent and professional women demand even more. They need someone with similar tastes, someone they can get true feedback from. Idiots, as is logical to assume, ruin everything. That said, I know some writers who suffer from huge egos, selfishness, lack of sensitivity and tact, the ills that not many are free from and sabotage the pure feelings with which love is built.

In short, everything is more complicated in these, the times of indifference, as my friend and colleague Warhol P. wisely said.

So, here’s the ad:

LOOKING FOR A PARTNER

I am a white, 34-year-old woman with a degree in Communication, currently doing a Masters in the field. I am a writer and literary editor with a high level of schooling, speak English, and love all genres of music (rock, pop, classical, folk, electronic and others). I love movies (including the classics), am easy to talk to, pleasant, intelligent, sophisticated and also love travelling. I am looking for an intelligent, hard-working, sensitive and educated man with good taste, between the age of 34 and 50. He need not be a professional. He may be white or light mixed race, from any country.

Those interested, please contact me through Havana Times.