By clothing-bag, 17/02/2022

14ymedio.com | Cuba With that underwear there is no one who undresses in Cuba

"I am selling ten pieces of modern and sexy underwear, used but very well cared for," warns a classified on one of the most popular buying and selling sites in Cuba. Interested customers are told that "they are like new and with firm elastics", a plus in a country where these products have not been sold in national currency for more than a year.

Brian had his first sexual relationship last August. Despite the limitations imposed by the pandemic, he fell in love with a young woman from Havana that he met on Instagram. "It was a crush since I saw the first photo of her, I wrote to her and we were exchanging messages, videos and photos for more than six months." For this 18-year-old, the "definitive moment" came this summer, but there was one detail that neither of them had noticed.

"All my underpants were ripped and ugly and tattered," recalls Brian. "That way I couldn't introduce myself to the love of my life," he explains. "I asked my brothers for help, but they were in the same situation, because they depend on the mules, and since people are not going out, there are hardly any offers. I looked among my friends for someone who would lend me something nice, even for one night, but they were all the same.

In recent years, the market in Cuban pesos on the Island has been reduced to basic products and food. To buy clothes, shoes and household appliances, sooner or later you must end up in stores in freely convertible currency or in illegal networks. Even in hotels, where carasboutiques used to try to attract national clients, now the offer of these merchandise only appears in foreign currency.

María Elena, 68, was taught by her parents from an early age to keep "a spare change of underwear in case she has to go to a hospital." For years she kept untouched a yellow outfit that she kept in the back of a drawer. "In January of this year I had to release it because I couldn't continue with the scraps I had left," she explains.

"But when I went to put them on, the elastics were already somewhat expired, so if I have to go to a consultation and they ask to take off my clothes, I'm going to look at the ceiling because I don't even want to see what all this disarray looks like," he says ironically. Her son works in a construction crew where every morning "he has to take off his clothes and put on his overalls in front of his colleagues. Sometimes he doesn't even want to go to work because he's embarrassed to do so."

Thanks to the support of his parents, Brian rented a room on the outskirts of Havana. "It had a jacuzzi, a double bed, breakfast and lunch included for two nights, a flat-screen TV and a lot of privacy," he told 14ymedio. "In the room there was a set of LED lights that could be programmed, so when we were about to start touching each other, I turned them all off because I was embarrassed."

The next day, Brian discovered her underwear on the floor of the room, also threadbare and with holes. "That united us more because we were talking about the subject and the hot flash that we had gone through to appear what we did not have, in the end knowing that each one was almost destitute in that aspect has made us more sincere."

Two months later, Brian and his partner seem to have overcome the hurdle of faded fabric and gaps, but for others the deterioration of adjusters, briefs and panties is a question of insurmountable self-esteem. "I haven't slept with anyone for more than a year, so I can't, I'm very ashamed," admits Claudia, a 40-year-old woman from Matanzas who got her supplies from the informal market in her city.

"Before I had people to whom I bought comfortable underwear and other more appropriate for love outings, now neither one nor the other," she admits. "I had to start wearing bikini bottoms from when I went to the beach every day, and it's uncomfortable because it's not a fabric meant to be worn all day, but it is what it is."

"I feel sorry for myself, so there is no one who undresses erotically in front of another," Claudia tells this newspaper. "It's not that I want something branded or luxurious, it's enough for me to be able to take off my dress and that what's underneath doesn't make me feel sorry, but rather arouses some lust." And she laughs, despite everything: "With this faded and stretched bikini they are going to send me to retirement."

A young woman who works as a volunteer for a group that distributes medicines from donations that arrive from abroad independently to the Government told this newspaper that they have received several messages from people interested in getting underwear, especially women: "Here we have received messages of girls who ask us if we don't have underwear or adjusters to donate, or if we can do them the favor of facilitating a shipment in our packages. People are desperate with that issue but we have no way to help with that, I have all my clothes myself old and broken interior".

Others hoist love "skin to skin" without going through the fabric of underwear. “I think that all this need that we are going through helps to filter who loves you because you have a nice adjuster and who does it because they really like you,” says Mónica, another 32-year-old from Havana who got divorced in the middle of the pandemic. "He believed that I could give him a life in a way because when we met he was wearing a Victoria Secret outfit that a friend left me, but nothing to do with my possibilities":

"Now I prefer to be seen in a more modest way, because at the end of the day I live in Alamar, it can't be that my partner has any idea that he is going to have a comfortable life because he sees me in brand-name underwear and then disappoints. I do not turn off the light or anything, that he notices from the beginning that I am a low-income woman and loves me as I am. "

Malcolm feels that he has made the bread. A cousin living in Panama sent him a package of underpants that each bear the English name of the day of the week. "Today I have theSaturday on, but as soon as I let it go I wash it by hand, no washing machine because it breaks. I take them off and keep them until the next appointment," he smiles.

Beyond personal vicissitudes, experts warn of other problems. "The social distancing caused by the pandemic together with the economic crisis may be causing serious problems in this generation of Cubans to interact, get to know each other and love each other," Lázara Echeverría, a psychologist in social behavior, explains to this newspaper. "They may be incubating trauma and rejection that will only be known in the long term."

For the expert, "the moment of the first meeting is very marked. If it is accompanied by the complex, by the feeling of disadvantage and shame, that will take a long time to subside. Sometimes things as simple as underwear or new panties change the whole experience."

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