Meet Our Exquisitely Sensitive Cuban Import, Viktor Quixote—Once the Man Maid and Presently the Made Man
By TOMMY GEORGE
excepted from Millennial Humor: A Fever of Eagles, Donald Pardlow, ed.
Our Man-Maid Viktor was born in Havana, Cuba, the only child of Hector and Consuela Quixote. Hector, a young guerrila officer for Fidel Castro, was away training his troops in the mountains when baby Viktor came into the world. Consuela, then age 50, worked as a maid at the Havana Hilton. She regularly had to deny any relation to her much younger husband to her Hilton Hotel employers and the police, too. The Batista regime hated Castro, and feared his men.
Viktor’s mother quietly supported Fidel Castro; and his father was engaged in active service for the great leader. After he succeeded in ousting Batista and his gang of crooks, the new President Castro liberated the island nation, returned stolen assets to the Cuban people, and made Consuela head of housekeeping at the Cabana Havana—formerly the Havana Hilton. When Fidel Castro visited New York City to speak before the assembled United Nations of the world, Hector Quixote made the historic trek up Manhattan’s 5th Avenue right beside Fidel Castro. They knew the only place to find a safe bed in racist America was in Harlem.
Beginning at age eight, after school, boy Viktor apprenticed as a maid with his mother and learned much about the hotel business. However, when he reached physical maturity, his blind devotion to the new Cuba saw heartache ahead when his male classmates began persecuting him for working a job usually reserved for girls, and even more for his sensitive, kind ways. When Viktor sought protection from his teachers, his principal, and finally la policia, they all told him the same thing: to act more like a man. Even his father couldn’t help.
By age 16, Viktor knew he would never develop the machismo expected of Cuban men. Devoted to his family and the new Cuba as he had always been, he nonetheless began planning his escape from the beautiful island nation where diverse sexuality was outlawed and treated harshly, to a new world where his differences would be protected and appreciated. In 1977, he landed in Key West, Florida in the small sailboat he purchased with money he had been saving ever since he began working at the age of eight. –T.G., 15 Nov 2016
By TOMMY GEORGE
excepted from Millennial Humor: A Fever of Eagles, Donald Pardlow, ed.
Our Man-Maid Viktor was born in Havana, Cuba, the only child of Hector and Consuela Quixote. Hector, a young guerrila officer for Fidel Castro, was away training his troops in the mountains when baby Viktor came into the world. Consuela, then age 50, worked as a maid at the Havana Hilton. She regularly had to deny any relation to her much younger husband to her Hilton Hotel employers and the police, too. The Batista regime hated Castro, and feared his men.
Viktor’s mother quietly supported Fidel Castro; and his father was engaged in active service for the great leader. After he succeeded in ousting Batista and his gang of crooks, the new President Castro liberated the island nation, returned stolen assets to the Cuban people, and made Consuela head of housekeeping at the Cabana Havana—formerly the Havana Hilton. When Fidel Castro visited New York City to speak before the assembled United Nations of the world, Hector Quixote made the historic trek up Manhattan’s 5th Avenue right beside Fidel Castro. They knew the only place to find a safe bed in racist America was in Harlem.
Beginning at age eight, after school, boy Viktor apprenticed as a maid with his mother and learned much about the hotel business. However, when he reached physical maturity, his blind devotion to the new Cuba saw heartache ahead when his male classmates began persecuting him for working a job usually reserved for girls, and even more for his sensitive, kind ways. When Viktor sought protection from his teachers, his principal, and finally la policia, they all told him the same thing: to act more like a man. Even his father couldn’t help.
By age 16, Viktor knew he would never develop the machismo expected of Cuban men. Devoted to his family and the new Cuba as he had always been, he nonetheless began planning his escape from the beautiful island nation where diverse sexuality was outlawed and treated harshly, to a new world where his differences would be protected and appreciated. In 1977, he landed in Key West, Florida in the small sailboat he purchased with money he had been saving ever since he began working at the age of eight. –T.G., 15 Nov 2016
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