We’ll Always Have an Ode (Fuck)*

We'll Always Have an Ode (Fuck)* / Luis Felipe Rojas
Posted on November 2, 2013

I had to let a year pass in order to compose this ode (fuck) which is
not for Enrisco and his refrain of throwing it all to hell. This is the
story of a one-eyed but happy man. I was in the Havana room of my
friend Roberto Gonzalez, eating bread and tons of ice cream because
there was nothing else, while I read "We Will Always Have Madrid".

I did it in one go, as the best jokes are read and about every twenty
pages La Chipi would appear with the jugs of ice cream. I believe I'd
returned to the best of Marcos Behemaras, to the most spicy Zumbado that
was taken from us "by accident" and all that was seasoned with the
Madrid stories which will never be ours (nor Enrisco's) and a Havana
that was no longer mine because I was leaving Cuba.

But no sooner had we followed the food and that digital version, than it
occurred to me to write to the "prof" and give him the bad news that his
book was already being pirated between the corsairs and the
cyberpirates, in a capital that wouldn't recover, this Havana
simultaneously virgin and whore.

"We will Always Have Madrid" is a linear story, since humans at the end
always come back to the scene of the crime, or of ridicule, and the
value of this book is that, in not stopping to laugh at the misfortune
of the cold, the naiveté of a just arrived immigrant, or the sons of b…
that destiny reserves for us at each step. The turbulent Havana of the
90's is like an old movie, fading into black but without credits.

When this character, who years later will delight us in "Encuentro de la
Red" with those disparate stories, left the Cuban capital, a half-Cuba
missing the best and the worst of the so-called "Special Period," and to
sympathize with us Enrisco and his troops walk alone in a Madrid of a
thousand demons

I will not share with you any of the jokes that are related to
loneliness and estrangement to the point that on some occasions our
respective tears fall. If anyone decides to buy the book or the books,
I'd recommend that you do it right now. I wanted to look like a "yuma"
or a "pepe" — a foreigner — and I bought "wine, bread and sausage" and
went down the hill until I came to the end. What a good time.

*Translator's note: In Spanish "ode" can be turned into "fuck" with the
addition of a single letter.

2 October 2013

Source: "We'll Always Have an Ode (Fuck)* / Luis Felipe Rojas |
Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/well-always-have-an-ode-fuck-luis-felipe-rojas/