The Nomadic Wrestler

My room at the Hotel Havana Libre is three floors below the suite where Fidel Castro once set up headquarters during the revolution. Black and white photographs of him, Che Guevara and their militia spot the immense lobby where I drink café con leche every morning before practice.
I’m lucky. I get to travel on official business—to spy under the guise of the U.S. national wrestling team. Sport has always been an excuse to supersede political landscapes.
Everyone wrestles. It’s in our blood. People of every shape and size and socioeconomic situation can compete.
En route to the Cerro Pelado sports complex our bus rear ends an old Ford, jolting us forward into our teammate’s seats. For an hour we watch traffic at the edge of the three-lane roundabout: classic American muscle, Ladas from the Russian 50s, and so many we don’t know or that have been chopped well past recollection.
The wrestling room is an old gymnasium with walls of peeling teal paint and open windows all around so that a breeze blows through the humid building. Locals watch from outside the window bars—the lower row are always open. The glass panels lining the top are dusty, missing chunks and cracked. Birds perch on the rafters above us and fill the room with music. Sunlight pours in.
We jog, stretch, and do gymnastic tumbling to warm up. By the time we start wrestling the mats are slippery and dirty with sweat.
Most of us take our drenched shirts off before sparring and hang them on the window-bars to dry in the breeze. I find a Cuban partner, Julian Garcia.
We weigh about the same, but Julian’s much taller and lankier than me. A couple teeth are missing. He has one of those ageless faces. He could be 19, he could be 27. His style is so funky and unique that he makes me feel like a beginner.
It’s refreshing. New like a painter falling in love with an art movement, discovering it for the first time. The sparring’s relaxed physically, but our minds are in full speed like playing a game of chess.
My Spanish is basic, but I manage Abrigame. Teach me. Teach me.
The Coach yells out in Spanish to start live-wrestling. I go to shake hands, as is customary before a full go. Julian shakes his head.
He puts out his right palm, and we slap hands. Then he does the same with his left. I miss, awkwardly. We try again. This time, slap slap. Julian nods his head, gives me a wide, yes smile, and we begin.
Since then I always double slap hands before wrestling Latin Americans. And they always grin back at me.