Bonding

“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?” asked Piglet.

“Even longer,” Pooh answered.

A. A. Milne

My childhood and adolescence were largely spent in self-imposed solitude. Due to my solitary character, I made very few friends as I grew up; indeed, by the time I graduated from high school, I had only a couple of real friends, though those were true and devoted. 

Coming to the United States from Cuba at the age of twenty forced me to leave behind my childhood friends, for none were fortunate enough to escape the hellhole that my country of birth had become under the Castro regime. I lived in Miami for four years, during which time I made a reasonable number of school and work acquaintances, but no real friends, for the strain of life as a penniless immigrant combined with my aloofness to allow me no time or disposition to develop a social network. My departure from Florida in the fall of 1967 for Columbus, Ohio to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Ohio State went largely unnoticed and unlamented by anyone outside my immediate family.

Moving to Ohio was a drastic change in my personal circumstances. Part of the reason I had avoided feeling lonely during my years in Havana and Miami was the enveloping cocoon of love from my family and the familiarity of the Cuban-like environment in which I operated. The people with whom I dealt were largely my peers and interacting with them was an unconscious source of comfort that was not appreciated until it was taken away by the move.

When I arrived at Ohio State I was assigned a room in a graduate student dormitory. My roommate and most other dorm residents were from other Ohio cities and, as a lot, were friendly and polite, but far more reserved and low-keyed than the boisterous Latins with whom I was familiar. I did not make a friend during my first year in Columbus except for Carlos, a fellow Cuban who was starting school at Ohio State at the same time, and who I had known vaguely in Miami. Carlos and I became (and to this day remain) close friends; he and I moved to a rental apartment, together with another Cuban, the following year.

Through Carlos I became acquainted with members of the few dozen Cuban families that lived in the greater Columbus area – an insignificant minority in an area of nearly one million people. I made no real friends among the Columbus Cubans, but attended social activities and other events held by them, and my contacts with them made my time in the city a bit more bearable.

The number of my Columbus friends expanded the following year. One Saturday afternoon in the fall of 1968, someone knocked at the door of my apartment. It was another Cuban, Jake, an engineer who had just taken a job at Western Electric’s Columbus manufacturing facility and moved to the city. He had contacted the Ohio State Student Services Office seeking referrals to Cubans who attended the university and had been given my name and address. Jake, who was an outgoing and expansive fellow, quickly became my friend and remained close to me until his death a few years ago.

One more person was added later that year to the roster of my friends in Columbus. Jake had met at work with Paul, a recently graduated physicist who had been hired by the Bell Labs (a sister company to Western Electric) to clerk for them in Columbus and then proceed to Boston to get a Masters Degree at MIT. Paul was from North Dakota, and in some ways he probably felt as out of place in Ohio as I. Thus, he quickly added himself to the small band of funny-talking Cubans and became one of my closest friends; two and a half years later Paul, Jake and I would rent an apartment in the Columbus outskirts and live together until I left the city in 1972.

There was one final addition to the number of friends I made in Columbus. Eloy, his young wife, and her family moved to Columbus so that he could do the academic work necessary for a PhD in Romance Languages. Eloy also became a very close friend of mine and, in recent years, has been (together with Paul) a crucial supporter of the literary career on which I embarked late in life.

***

My Columbus friends and I engaged in many activities together that tightened the ties between us. The most notable of those was perhaps the hearts game that we ran every Friday night at Eloy’s house. Paul and I would show up bringing one or two six-packs of beer; we would be joined by Antonio, a Spaniard who was a friend of Eloy’s. Eloy’s wife or her mother would prepare some snacks for our nourishment and there would be more beer in reserve in case the game went beyond the supply we had brought. The four players (Eloy, Antonio, Paul and I) would sit around the dinner table, with Eloy’s family either watching the proceedings or trying their best to ignore us, an effort that became more difficult as the night went on and the beer made us more boisterous.

Hearts is a trick-taking game. Its objective is to collect the fewest number of negative points while foisting points on other players. Each of the thirteen cards in the hearts suit counts a negative point; the queen of spades counts for thirteen.

The game proceeds in a series of rounds. At the start of each round, all fifty-two cards in the deck are dealt to the players. Before playing, each player selects from his hand three cards he wants to get rid of, passing them to the player sitting on his left in the first round, the player on his right on the second round, the player sitting across on the third round, and not passing at all on the fourth.

The game starts by the player holding the two of clubs laying it on the table. All other players must follow suit if they can, or play anything else if they cannot, except that neither hearts nor the queen of spades can be played on the first trick. Aces are high, twos are low, and the person who plays the highest card of the suit being led takes the trick. The winner of the trick leads a card to start the next trick, and so on until the entire hand is played. Hearts cannot be led unless they have been played in a previous trick. At the end of each round, points are counted. The game continues round after round until one player has accumulated 100 negative points, at which time the player left with the smallest number of negative points wins.

It is possible that a player will take all the hearts and the queen of spades in a round. That is called “shooting the moon” and, instead of his being penalized with 26 negative points, 26 negative points are added to the scores of all other players.

The game is simple to play but allows for a fair number of strategic considerations. For example, the choice of which three cards to pass depends, among other things, on the need to get rid of hearts or the queen of spades, the status of the scoring, and a passing player’s perception of the dangerousness of the recipient. Likewise, the choice of what suit to lead or whether to drop a heart on a given trick depends on a player’s perception of what is most advantageous for him to do.

All participants in the hearts games at Eloy’s house were cutthroat players, eager to win and have fun at the other players’ expense. A player giving a particularly wicked pass to another would smirk and declare something like “here is a present for you, buddy;” the recipient might react with fake indignation at the pass by replying “you bastard!” Dropping the queen of spades on a trick would often be done by dramatically slamming the card on the table, and gleefully exclaiming: “take the bitch!” As the night progressed and more beer was consumed, the commentary became more biting. On one occasion, Antonio realized that he could win the game by shooting the moon on the last round, but would otherwise lose. Soon, it became evident that he was trying to collect all the hearts, and everyone tried to prevent him. On the last trick, someone managed to take the last heart remaining, saddling Antonio with 25 negative points and making him lose the game. Someone, probably Eloy, commented: “You went down like the Spanish Armada!” Antonio turned red with wounded pride, but ultimately laughed with the rest of us.

The games of hearts provided entertainment for the players and a chance to vent steam after a hard week at school. For me, they also afforded an opportunity to get to know my new friends and bond with them in ways I had seldom experienced before.  

END

Matias F. Travieso-Diaz is a Cuban American engineer and lawyer who, having retired from the practice of law, rediscovered the pleasures of creative writing. In addition to fiction in both English and Spanish, he has written papers on issues relating to Cuba and miscellaneous other topics. His memoir, CUBAN TRANSPLANT, was published earlier this year by Story Sanctum Publishing. You can find him @ matiastraviesodiaz.com.