The women sit in groups of four along the stage. Their glances are part of the waiting game. Red lights cover their lips and whatever else needs to be hidden. It’s another night at the Bar San Luis.
Chepina walks past them and with an ever-ready smile.
“Hey, how are you honey?” Chepina says to one of the men at the nearby table.
He’s a regular and gets up to greet her. They exchange a handshake without her missing the strut. Chepina wears 5-inch black stilettos boots that remind you of a commander at ease inside a stiletto paradise.
“She’s the first lady,” says Gerardo with his index finger high up in the air. “We started out together when we were 19 years of age.”
Gerardo, the owner of the club, looks like a retired soap opera star with his long-swept black dyed hair. The shiny silver material of his suit makes him twinkle like a diamond in the dark. With a whiskey on his hand, he looks at the dancing women.
“All women lie about their age,” says Gerardo about how Chepina takes years away from her age.
However, no one contradicts Chepina. Now, she sees herself as a confidant.
“I just hear the men out. They just need someone to listen,” says Chepina about the changes she’s made to the dance routine.
In the heyday of her presidency, Chepina didn’t bother to have a house. She opted for first class hotel rooms but with three kids to feed, not much was left for savings. Now, Chepina has to wait in the new order where the young get to eat first.
“If I’m falling apart, then Okay. I’ll quit,” she says while she drinks a beer. “Look at me. Really, take a guess at my age? I think I got more in me. Dontcha think?”
On the dance floor, there is one newcomer in her early ’20s with long black hair. She dances with a man three times her age. The long red satin dress she wears is too big for her small frame causing the shoulder strap to fall out of place. Now her exposed brown shoulder is within kissing distance of her dance partner. She stares at the floor. He looks at the band. Without much effort, the rhythm is understood.
A dancer charges $1 per dance and to buy her a drink costs ten times as much. The paid entourage at Bar San Luis is not cheap.
“That’s how the business works!” says Gerardo.
He owns six clubs and employs 100 dancers. How the money is divided among the girls is not certain but the red lights, the live band and the reminders of the club’s 1940’s glamour are enough to hook some.
Chepina’s first time in the club was when she came on a date. The following Friday she went alone and never left–and that was several decades ago.
“I never wanted to do anything else,” says Chepina. “I mean things have changed, you look at some of these girls and they don’t have the class that we used to have back in the day.”
The bar was born in the ’40s when the danzón movement was in it’s pleno apogeo. The club has a long wooden bar, waiters don black tuxes, and the black-and-white checkered floor is reminiscent of an upscale European cafe. Now to accommodate modern tastes, a gold-stringed curtain forms a backdrop for the band. A neon light of a naked woman that sits inside a champagne glass frames the entrance of the ladies powder room.
“Everyone comes here. From the proletarians to the wealthy,” says Gerardo.
A group celebrates a birthday party and they only hang in the back. They bring their own women to the dance and take the floor until the end of the night. Instead of suits they prefer J-Crew vests while the working men dance first and wear their Sunday best.
Two regulars enter and Chepina sees her cue. She makes a straight line for them, greets them like long-lost friends, and with a laugh that overpowers the horn section.
Finally, Chepina takes the floor. The band leader gets on the microphone and says, “Chepina, show them how it’s done!”
The crowd forms a circle. She shimmies and sees the spotlight fall on the twirl of her long black skirt.
jumahchaguan 