John (or Juan David, as he was called then) was a shy, quiet child. He was ridiculed from an early age for his then uncorrected lazy eye as well as his rather foppish use of stolen fish oils to style his luxurious shock of silky brown hair. He was also a bit of an outcast for his outspoken defense of root vegetables, which he credited as having a number of healing powers not limited to straighten his teeth and giving a prepubescent John an impressive patch of dark chest hair.
It wasn't until his teens that his vision was corrected (something he attributed to "clean living and a steady diet of root vegetables"), that John began to show the athletic aptitude that would quickly thrust him onto the world stage as an international soccer star.
In the seven years John played the sport, he was never recorded
on film, but witnesses say that his skill was more reminiscent of an abstract
free verse poem than it was of sport. John was said to have had the ability
to kick a ball over his head (as though on a bicycle) as well as to kick the
ball equally well with either his left or right foot. His ambidextrous game
made the use of his hands unnecessary and left them free for waving at the
crowd or holding things like pens or baked goods. John’s game was so
successful that in 1987, hand contact with the ball was banned altogether.
This development took the sport from a minor spectacle to being one of the
most beloved sports in all of Europe and Latin America. In those countries
the name of the sport was changed to "football" to honor John's
innovation. In the United States, the sport’s name was changed to Cuban
Kick Ball.
In 2004, an unlucky shot to the left side of his head knocked
John’s eye back into lazy and forced the sport’s brightest star
and Cuba’s most beloved son into early retirement. Banned from his native
Cuba because he had once “disrespectfully” pulled a hair out of
his mouth after giving Cuban dictator Fidel Castro a raspberry on his (Fidel’s)
belly, John settled in Managua, el capital de Nicaragua.
Without football, John soon faded into obscurity. Life without celebrity was not kind to John. The entourage, extravagant meals, and luxurious rooms that were once comped came with a price. John ran through the fortune he amassed while playing professional sports in short order.
John found himself alone and penniless for the first time in his life. The gritty streets of Managua were no place for a down and out football star and John was easy prey for pickpockets and banditos. His life changed suddenly when he found himself held hostage in the jungle, the captive of Marxist rebels who demanded a ransom no one would pay. In the years Juan lived with them, they learned to trust and love him until he became their leader- masterminding a series of devastating guerilla attacks against the oppressive banana-fascist regime. Perhaps he would have stayed in the jungle forever had he not been betrayed by his comrade and first officer, Manuel. With the fascists closing in and no one to trust, Juan left for the United States, unceremoniously hidden in a coconut crate with just the clothes on his well tanned back and his beloved parrot, Kiki.
A mere shadow of the man who once filled soccer arenas in Europe and Latin America, once in the United States, an unskilled John found himself slowly working his way north as a migrant fruit picker. It was not until working a second job in an Iowa casino that fortune once again smiled on him and John found himself thrust into the spotlight.
The casino had a standing rule that no employees were to be on the floor once a show started. Fearful of his supervisor, Ronnie the Pap, John took a shortcut across the stage just before the show started. Mistakenly thinking the motion on the stage was one of the actors, the lighting engineer quickly brought up the stage lights. Frozen with fear, only feet from precious freedom, John was dumb-struck. Silence. Before anyone could rescue him, John uttered what proved to be his abiding catch phrase: “Aye! Que malo suerte!” The thunderous applause and deafening laughter from the audience made it impossible for the comics of Comics in Action to ask him to leave the stage- so they made him part of the show. Impressed by his wit, stage presence, and jungle improvisation skills, they asked him to become part of the group.
Aye! Que bien suerte.