Tracey Parker is an urban explorer, based in Mexico City, who discovers and presents unique gay cultures around the world. This time he explores a local cruising hot spot with a hookup on Halloween night well-known in Havana.
I had been seeing Axel each night that I cruised Parque Central in Havana, Cuba.
Now, on Halloween night, he sat across from me, naked, on a bed inside a simple hotel room two blocks away—a place where men like us came to do this to each other.
Before tonight, Axel had never looked at me, even though he must have felt me looking at him. I had been warned about him. They told me, “Este muchacho no se apunta,” meaning he doesn’t do sex for money. They told me that if he did go off with me, it would be to rob me, and that I would regret it.
But it was the end of October, and the veil between this world we live in and whatever other unknown worlds exist was at its thinnest. Some believe we can communicate with dead ancestors, though how this happens is never explained. I heard once that attraction = desire + obstacle. My attraction to what was behind Axel’s eyes and his skinny, bruised-up body was surely something from another one of these worlds; it made absolutely no sense in the one we shared here on planet Earth, in 2025, on this island in the Caribbean.
The obstacle was what Axel and I had been told about one another by people inside this world—the warnings we had both received about what happened in Parque Central, and why we shouldn’t do what we were doing.
When I first saw him this evening, he was below me. I was leaning on one of the six columns that held up an eclectic gazebo, or el kiosko, which sat in the middle of the plaza. By this time of night, it was quiet. The birds in the trees had stopped screeching, fewer cars were passing by, and the only music came from a nearby cantina. Below the gazebo, there were concrete benches and small trees where the regular sketchy characters checked in with one another about whatever they were trying to accomplish at this hour.
Axel was talking to another young guy. I stared closely at them, assuming they wouldn’t look back, because guys like them never did. Axel’s friend gave him a cigarette. He placed it behind his ear, and then, for the first time, he turned in my direction and stared straight up at me.
It was at this moment I realized that the veil between us, which had kept each of us in our respective corners, wasn’t present tonight. At first, it made me so nervous that I forgot how pretty he was. He began to walk up the stairs of el kiosko. I moved behind the column I was standing in front of. I told myself it was to be discreet, but really, I was hiding. I waited for him to find me. I could already feel consent being exchanged, and I hoped for the courage to change course if I decided to back out.
He emerged from the other side of the column and spoke first. “Hola,” he said. “I saw you with my friend Joshua last night.” “Sí, te recuerdo. Buenas noches.” “Buenas noches.”
Suddenly a local man my age joined us, staring straight at Axel. The three of us stood in a standstill, not knowing how to proceed. Axel invited me to the other side of el kiosko to sit down, and we left the third guy standing where he was.
We took a seat on a pedestal. A gargoyle, painted black, stood between us. We awkwardly adjusted ourselves so we could remain seated while we scoured one another for signs—clues to decide if we trusted each other enough to go to a hotel room and devour each other. Neither of us was familiar with the script for our own reasons. We slowly led one another away from a hard, masculine indifference to reveal that yes, both of us andamos apuntados.
“What do you want to do?” he asked me. “I want you to get naked and suck me off.” “Will you pay me?”
I told him yes, and we bravely walked down the stairs. We felt all the characters in the plaza looking at us. What we were doing was changing the energy of the square. Both of us were untrusted elements, yet we had decided to trust one another in an intimate manner that not everyone in the plaza dared to do. I was an unknown foreign newcomer. Axel had been around a while, but for some reason I hadn’t learned yet, nobody trusted him.
There was a roughness to Axel’s face. He had light brown skin, like most guys from Cuba, but his had a red undertone—maybe from spending the day in the sun, but probably from drinking beer, which I could smell on his breath along with cigarettes.
On our way to the hotel, we passed by Luis, another guy from the plaza whom I had tricked with last week. Luis had permission to sell lollipops outside of a corner store. I approached him to buy one, and Axel stood back. I saw concern on Luis’ face. I asked him about Axel and he told me, in broken English, “I don’t like. No is good man.”
I paid for my lollipop and went back to Axel. “What did he tell you?” he asked eagerly. “We just said hi, that’s all.”
Both of us knew what Luis had said. Both of us were watching the other to see how the warning would affect what was about to happen. Between Luis’ corner store and the hotel, each step was an act of resolving the warnings we carried in our bones against what was happening before our eyes and what we felt in our intoxicated nerves. On my side, I saw a scrawny, beautiful street kid who lacked the strength to harm anybody. Sure, he had the grit and the attitude to cause problems, but there wasn’t really much at stake. All the money I had on me, I had already agreed to give him in exchange for his body.
We entered the hotel, and again, Axel stood back and let me talk to the woman at the front desk. We entered the room and began removing our clothes. We sat on the bed and crossed our legs. We each leaned back against the walls of the small room, which contained only a bed and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“Chupamela,” I told him softly. It is a useful phrase in this world, and I’m not aware of a similar translation in English that carries the same weight. To my surprise, he obediently got on all fours and lowered his mouth onto me. This was the moment I realized I could trust him. The only scam he could have run at this point would have been to refuse the act and still demand the money. But that wasn’t happening.
I felt his lips on me as I ran my hand over his back, over his buttocks, and down his slender legs. I fondled him and brushed my finger over his skin. I closed my eyes, and felt my brain changing shape, like the shift you feel when you smell a fine wine. Tension left my shoulders. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him close.
He asked if he could watch porn on my phone. The warnings from others were now a distant whisper. I reached over to my pile of clothes to find it. We both retreated to opposite sides of the bed, our legs curiously rubbing against one another. We touched thick, soft thighs with our feet and tickled each other with our toes.
Before I gave him the phone, I took a picture of him. He heard the shutter but didn’t object. “These are only for you,” he told me softly, but I received the message sternly.
I gave him the phone and let him watch while he jerked off. I studied everything he was doing for some clue as to why this scrappy street rat affected me so much. I heard sounds of men fucking coming from the speakers. I had been expecting a screeching woman. I asked him what he was watching and saw him blush. The beginnings of a smile formed on his face for just a second before it was replaced with the hard, stoic look he wore for the world. It was the only clothing he had not removed, but it concealed nothing.
Our secret desires were bouncing off the walls like echoes. More frightening was the possibility that the other was able to understand, with ease, secrets that would remain a mystery to ourselves well after this night was over.
He began to pose for me in positions I never would have requested. He lay down and lifted his legs; he flipped onto all fours and put his ass in my face, giggling as I breathed him in and exhaled to tickle him, watching the hairs on his skin stand stubbornly still in the breeze.
Later, we each retreated to our corners and finished ourselves off as we watched one another. We passed the phone back and forth and took pictures. We cleaned ourselves with the single towel provided and got dressed. We sat at the edge of the bed.
We looked into each other’s eyes. I took out my wallet and handed him the money. I was still under his influence, even after I had ejaculated. It was a mystery, just like most of what happened between those walls under that harsh light bulb. I would ponder these things for weeks while looking at the pictures.
“Give me a little more,” he asked. I looked into his eyes with the same fascination I’d felt minutes before. “You leave first,” he told me. “Okay.”
I left without saying goodbye—the same way these guys walked away from each other in the plaza. I passed Luis on my way back. “How did it go? Did he rob you?” Luis asked from across the way, gesturing with his shoulders and hands. I gave him a thumbs up. He looked surprised. I flashed a devilish smile and kept walking.
I climbed the stairs of el kiosko and looked out at the creepy scene of downtown Havana at night. I saw Axel walking down the street after me. He walked up to Luis. Luis didn’t see him coming; he was still busy selling lollipops to passersby.
Axel screamed something at Luis’ back. Luis turned his head directly into Axel’s fist. Axel’s punch caught him square in the nose. Luis stood winded, struggling to keep his balance. Axel said nothing else. He took the lollipops out of Luis’ hands, threw them across the plaza, and kept walking.
