Booked!!!

During these months of confusion and relaxed morals, I didn't know where or who to turn to for advice and understanding. My friends enjoyed hearing my adventures from the United Nations of Dating but grew bored quite quickly when it slipped back into reminiscing and worrying about Juan. The internet terrified me with its tales of romantic terror in Cuba and I did my best to avoid it entirely. I watched movies that I figured might prove educational - Dirty Dancing, Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights, How Stella Got Her Groove Back - but ended up no further along in my understanding of what I should do. All that developed there was a creepy crush on Diego Luna playing a teenager...which was no help to me at all!

Diego hard at work as a seductive Cuban sixteen year old

Later on I would join the ranks of People In Relationships With Cubans and learn to share my most intimate secrets with people I knew only by forum usernames like QueRicoMangoCubanitaIslaPinga74. But at the moment, I was alone. I didn't realize that I was holding out longer than most. That it was de rigueur to run back within the first month or two to see your new love again. That most people upon meeting their Cuban lover knew immediately that they never wanted to touch another. That the thought of continuing to date in Canada never crossed their mind. That to marry on your second or third trip was considered a reasonable possibility. I just assumed I should fight these feelings and fight hard. I thought that sooner or later I would reach the point where I had to give him up.

But I also decided I wasn't ready to do that giving up yet. By the beginning of April I was tired. I was tired of dating men that weren't Juan. I was tired of pushing him out of my mind. I was tired of wondering and worrying and questioning and replaying our few small moments together over and over in my mind. I was tired of waiting for emails and a weekly phone call that was never long enough. I was tired of it all.

I told him I wanted to see him soon, that I wanted to come for two weeks and travel with him across Cuba. I was worried that he'd think it was too much, too long, too intense. That, like the men I was used to in Canada, as soon as I told him I wanted to be with him he'd start running. But the only direction he started running in was towards me.

I didn't know exactly how things would work but I decided to stop thinking and make a decision. I found a one week deal to his resort...and added another week to my flight. I told him the dates. He said any time worked for him, he would make it work, he would be with me whenever and wherever I was (in Cuba at least). So I took out my credit card and paid. And immediately headed to the gym. In 3 weeks I would be back on the beach with Juan. I didn't know what shape my heart would be in by then but I could at least control the shape of my abs.