Before Night Falls

Content Warning: The source text contains descriptions of anti-gay bigotry, sexual violence, and political violence.

In rebellion against Cuba’s sexually repressive culture, Arenas and his friend Hiram Prado embark on a “sex tour” of the island in 1968. Arenas and Prado want to take full advantage of their relative freedom while they still have it, as the government interns increasingly more gay men in UMAP concentration camps. Arenas and Prado easily find willing men. On the Isle of Pines, they find entire regiments of young communist recruits who take turns having sex with them in abandoned tanks. The beaches are popular places for young people to have sex; nearby bushes afford sufficient cover.

Partway through their trip, Arenas and Prado estimate that they have each had sex with around five thousand men in their lives. Their enormous sexual appetite is not uncommon: “Hiram and I were not the only ones carried away by this kind of erotic rage; everybody was: the recruits who spent long months of abstinence, and the whole population” (175).

In the ‘60s, Arenas has three main sources of joy: his typewriter, the sea, and the dissident, “free love” youth of those days. These three things intertwine in his and his friends’ lives.