To: America
From: Sam
Subject: Cool it

Dear Cousins,

What is it with all this hatred that’s venting in your country ever since you elected a new president?

Most of the rest of us around the world were hugely impressed that you’d finally broken through your troubled racial past, abandoned politics as usual, and elected an intelligent, relatively young, obviously sincere agent of change who happens to have a better tan than a lot of us.

In fact, we were jealous. Very jealous. The rest of the world had to put up with more of the same-same political hacks (see Canada’s Stephen Harper, Britain’s Gordon Brown etc.) while you went for a superstar, by far the most promising American leader since Bobby Kennedy and a breath of fresh air to the nations.

And then it turned to ratshit! First, the man inherited the mother of all wars and the father of all recessions from Bush the Younger, then he tried to fix your healthcare system which everyone except your rich agrees is an international disgrace.

Now people are yelling and screaming and venting scary hatred at these “Town Halls” that have suddenly appeared on the scene and the media really have no choice but to report on them, effectively displacing the necessary sober discussion of your country’s very real and basic problems.

My point is that under Barack Obama we rather thought you’d moved away from the Ugly American caricature and were embarking on a new America where your history of democracy and decency and hope would prevail and your history of violence would be just that — history.

But it isn’t happening that way at all. And those of us who want to admire you and look to Barack Obama to lead us to a new and more honourable world order hear the screams, threats and lies pouring out from the haters and greatly fear for you and your democracy.

The promise of "a more perfect union" that you made 222 years ago is not being kept and our world is a far more dangerous place because of that.

Sadly, but with lots of love,

Sam


(Samantha Jones is a Canadian journalist publishing her erotic memoir at www.lulu.com)
 
 


I am lying on the Estero Ciego beach of the Sol Club Rio De Luna, located 72 kilometers from the town of Holguin in the Republic of Cuba.

I am drinking a rum with mango juice and have just taken off my bikini top. My breasts suckle the sun and my nipples are hard with warmth and delight. Men find it necessary to make frequent trips to the bar on the other side of me to admire my breasts which, even from this angle, look quite beautiful.The men try not to be obvious when they walk past but they are obvious. I adore my breasts.

None of the other women on this beach look at me or bare their breasts to the sun like me. Most of them are from the frozen North and are unhappy. You can tell from their faces that they feel somehow betrayed, that life has not lived up to their expectations, that the world has not delivered what they deserve.

There are no Americans here because American governments so fear the 11-million people of Cuba that they've blockaded their island for more than forty years. Instead of Americans, the women who come here are from Canada and Germany and France and England and other northern places where the sun has no warmth at this time of year. Compared to the Cubans who serve them at this resort, these women have unimaginable wealth. But they are not happy.
 
Their faces are tight, their mouths thin and their eyes cold. And when they talk to other tourists — and to the Cubans who serve them with great generosity and considerable grace — their voices are abrupt and chilling and without courtesy.
 
These women spend most of their time complaining. It is too hot or too cold. The food is too spicy or too bland. The entertainment is lousy (which happens to be true but, on the other hand, it’s also free).  
 
These women wear ugly, elaborate swimsuits too small for their abundant, cellulite flesh. As a passionate woman myself, I suspect that if they ever knew real passion — the sort of passion that brings unendurable pleasure and, inevitably, le petit mort  — it was long ago and would be too embarrassing to repeat.

I think they should bare their breasts to the sun like me.

So their nipples harden with warmth and delight like mine.

That's what I think.


Samantha Jones is a Canadian journalist publishing her erotic memoir at www.lulu.com)

 
Cuba Libre 04/18/2009
 


It's a hell-hot night in the Sol Club Rio resort near Holguin on Cuba's north shore.

The master of ceremonies, dressed in a silly Hawaiian grass skirt and no shirt, bounces onto the stage to recorded music and announces in excellent English, French, Italian and Spanish that there will be games tonight. Not any games, he promises. Spectacular games. The finest games anyone, anywhere, has ever played.

He laughs at the extravagant promises and shakes his ageing hips to the music and the young women in similarly silly Hawaiian skirts who are his backup group laugh with him and they prance together for the tourists who pay to watch.

Much later that evening I share excellent rum with the master of ceremonies who is Enrique, has a couple of master's degrees and is professor of philosophy at the local university by day. He works from eight in the morning at the university to somewhere around midnight when the resort bus drives him home to his wife and family.

I ask him why he does the two jobs. "I earn three times as much making a fool of myself for tourists as I do teaching philosophy." He shrugs. "It's because of the American boycott."

Why hasn't Cuba simply become a capitalist democracy like the Americans have demanded for some 40 years?

"Once we open Cuba up like a normal democracy, the Americans invade us. Not with guns. With money. We do that at midnight tonight and by dawn tomorrow the Americans buy the whole island. Everything. We are so poor and they are so rich. We'll be back where we started under Batista. We'll be an American brothel again."

Enrique smiles sadly. "It is a matter of saving our souls" he says and shakes my hand and leaves to catch the bus to take him home to his wife and family.


(Samantha Jones is a Canadian journalist publishing her erotic memoir at www.lulu.com)