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Sashaying Through a Door Swung Open in Cuba, Jose Shines as Nayla
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The cabaret they'd come to see has been an on-and-off affair for years. The haunts of Cuba's gay, lesbian and transgender communities were often shut down in the bad old days of the 1980s and 1990s, when discrimination was rampant and arrests -- often for no other cause than sexual orientation -- were, too.
But things have been improving lately, especially since earlier this year when Mariela Castro, the niece of ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro, took up the cause of gay, lesbian and transgender rights. The men in the audience -- mostly gay -- are feeling bolder. The show they had come to see is still not legal, but it is tolerated by the authorities.
At 9:30, a 76-year-old man named Gilberto found a spot on a park bench by the sound system. He is the kind of calm, wise soul who draws a crowd without saying a word. Soon, young men were drifting over to listen as Gilberto talked of long-ago loves with a 20-something hunk in tight black jeans and no shirt.
Gilberto tried New York for a while in the 1960s, he told his friends, but he came back to Cuba. He missed his lover, a man who married a woman to avoid persecution.
"I missed the heat," he said with a wry smile.
His friends chuckled at the double meaning.
A waiter whipped past at 10, scrambling down the frayed blue carpeting on the narrow stairway to get more beer. He hit the landing just as a rattly, Soviet-era Lada pulled up.
Through some act of contortion, a 250-plus-pound performer squeezed out of the tiny car's back seat. A man in the foyer jumped in place and clapped his hands in front of his chest in quick strokes.
"Maridalia!" he shouted.
Maridalia was resplendent, a vision of grace in an ankle-length brocade gown and red, spiked hair. She smiled and sauntered into the beauty shop, every bit a star.
"She's very temperamental," said Rafael Sanchez, a Cuban painter who came by for the show. "Everybody loves her passion onstage."
At 10:15, as Maridalia applied a few last touches of makeup, the stereo upstairs began to pound out the opening bars to a song of unrequited love by Rocío Dúrcal, the late Spanish diva. Rogelio, an off-duty performer who came to check out the competition, smiled. Dúrcal is his muse, the artist he most often channels when he sings at another secret Cuban cabaret.
