Adios Muchachas by Daniel Chavarria - 2001 - translated from Spanish by Carlos Lopez

Adios Muchachas by Daniel  Chavarria - 2001 - translated from Spanish by Carlos Lopez

Born 1933. Uruguay

Died 1918. Havana

Adios Muchachas by Daniel Chavarria has several very X - rated scenes.

If you have ever been into prostitutes or been one at some point in your life, I think you will appreciate Cbavarria's main character, Alicia.  Living in contemporary Havana, she rides a bicycle on the streets in the areas where rich tourists can be found.  

Here is her method of operation:

"When Alicia decided to become a bicycle hooker, her mother agreed to sell a ring that had been in the family for five generations. She got $350 for it, and for $280 they bought an English mountain-bike, one with wide tires and lots of speeds, on which Alicia launched her hunt for moneyed foreigners. It was not until two months later, however, that Alicia perfected her technique. She got rid of the English bike, for which she received $120 and a heavy old Chinese bike on which she developed her “lost pedal” routine. That was when her real success began. The hoax was conceived and executed in the inner courtyard of an old building on Amargura Street. The author was Pepone, a bicycle genius who specialized in “Substitutive Cyclomechanics,” according to the sheet of aluminum lettered in red lead that hung at the entrance to his tenement. For two bottles of aguardiente rum, Pepone fixed the locknut on the pedal with a linchpin that Alicia could easily remove. All she had to do was lean over a little, without stopping her pedaling, and with a slight tug bring about, whenever she felt like it, the spectacular loss of a pedal. The next step in her routine was to clamp on the brakes, which sent her flying into a face-down (ass-up) landing on the pavement. With a good pair of gloves and a lot of practice, Alicia had the fall down to a science and was ultimately able to get through it without a scratch. The accident would always take place about sixty feet in front of some expensive car whose foreign driver had already been entranced by the rhythmic gyrations of that—oh, so maximus!—gluteus churning on the seat she had purposely set much too high on the frame. It was simple. Whenever a car that should have passed her actually reduced speed and fell in behind, it was a sure sign that the fish was on the hook."

A rich foreigner will then offer to take her home, putting the bike in the trunk.  She and her mother, they live in a nice house her mother inherited from father, who worked as a diplomat for Castro, are in on a scheme to fleece the men.  Alicia plays on the vanity of the men like cheap violins, if they offer her money for sex she acts insulted.  Her trick, coordinated by her mother, is to pull an electrical fuse so it seems like her air conditioning unit has broken.  After providing the men with fantastic sex, men end up coming back the next day with a gift of a new air conditioner, which, as soon as the man leaves, she sells on the black market for often $1000.00.  

Alicia has sex down to an art.  She senses what men want, will throw herself into any sort of sex, acting like the man is a great lover, driving her to never before experienced peaks of pleasure.  

At about the midpoint in the book she meets a man with a very shady past who has a plan to start a tourism company exploring old ship wrecks in Cuban waters.  From this an elaborate criminal plot develops.

I found this a fun read.  

"About Daniel Chavarría
DANIEL CHAVARRÍA is a Uruguayan writer with two passions: classical literature and prostitutes. For years he was a professor of Latin, Greek, and classical literature, devoting much of his time and energy to researching the origins and evolution of prostitution. He has won numerous literary awards around the world, including the 1992 Dashiell Hammett Award and the 2001 Edgar Allan Poe Award. His novels include Adios Muchachos, The Eye of Cybele, and Tango for a Torturer."