HAVANA, Cuba. – I bought two jackets; one of them is an exquisite pink, as rosés tend to be when they are from the soul. The other blouse exhibits an indigo blue that is beautiful and could awaken very strange sensations in whoever looks at it. I confess that I kept them with some tenderness in a drawer, perhaps because of the novelty of having my first pair of blazers at 60 years old. Maybe because despite being 60 years old I wouldn’t know what to do with them.
I was never attracted to that garment. I never longed to cover my private parts with a blazer or other feminine garment. I never tried to make earrings hang from my earlobes, not even if they were the earrings that the moon is missing.
I have never longed to wear feminine clothing; However, now I am writing and noting the purchase I made two days ago. And here I am, insisting, highlighting the purchase of two blue jeans that I look at every time I open that drawer in which I left them safely and where they hope to get some use.
And it all started with a notice on the phone. The message warned me that I could go buy the jeans that they would sell me in one of those stores that were created by those in power to get a few dollars from the people, and which they called, first TRD, and then Caribe. And I, without hesitation, made the way to that Caribe store, still amazed, and wondering why I would want to buy those two pairs of jackets.
And despite the doubts, the many questions, I took the path and bought the blúmers that I got from the notebook. And I came home with them, and I kept them. And I’m not going to put them up for sale. I have them safely stored in a drawer.
And today, in a line at the winery, I heard something that left me with my mouth open; A woman complained to her companion in line, pointing out that she only had one presentable blouse and that she was saving it for an emergency, and then she made it known that the biggest emergency was attending a doctor’s appointment in which she would have to undress wearing a worn-out blouse and broken.
And so many Cuban women believe, who can’t stop thinking about the blunder of “going to the doctor.” And now, every time I open the drawer I wonder what I’m going to do with those two blue jeans. And Cuba is, without a doubt, the country of the greatest surprises, of the greatest astonishments. Cuba is the country of great absurdities, a country in which its women suffer a thousand shortcomings, among them sanitary pads.
I brought my two jackets home and I have them safely stored. I bought my blouses, as I also bought, a few months ago, sanitary pads in the same place, although no woman was registered in my supply book.
And the thing is that those authorities who direct Domestic Trade only care about selling, and they came up with the “brilliant” idea that these very intimate pieces would be sold to each family unit, without them being interested in their composition, in the type of the members of those nuclei. I bought the blúmers and returned home with them, and I thought about the “revolutionary absurdities”, about those nonsense that are against any system of reasoning.
In Cuba, women rightly complain because they do not have sanitary pads for their menstruation, which is also called a “period,” and a rule is what the Ministry of Internal Trade should have so that women do not return to those “gurupelas” again. “, to those of the ones I wrote very recently.
In Cuba, women cry because they don’t have a sad jacket to cover their private parts, and I remembered a neighbor who claimed that she always had two or three jackets saved for any eventuality, and the biggest of all her eventualities is always the trip to the doctor’s office. doctor, especially at that moment in which he must take off his clothes and put his blazers on display.
The eventuality, for her, was to get sick and have to go to the doctor with an old and broken blouse, with a dismantled blouse that would make her “embarrass.” And now they give me the possibility of buying two jackets; one pink and the other indigo blue, those that I brought home, and that I kept with great care, as if it were a treasure that I am going to put in the hands of someone who needs them more than me, who has underwear.
