Israel Centeno

I spent the whole afternoon thinking about Roberto Roena.
It wasn’t nostalgia. It was something else.
Like a jolt from deep inside.
A bassline rising from the gut, waking up shit I thought I’d buried.
And right in the middle of that mood, memories from ’79, ’80 came rushing in.
I was 19, maybe 20.
Just stepping outta adolescence, but still soft in the chest.
Half-lefty, half-hood—caught in that in-between where you wanna change the world
but fall apart if the girl you love don’t even look back.

I was living out west in Caracas.
Out there, salsa wasn’t no trend or Instagram vibe.
It wasn’t for tourists going to “El maní es así,”
or middle-class folks doing emotional tourism down in Sabana Grande.
Salsa was how we talked pain without sounding weak.
How we felt things without having to say too much.
And in that soundtrack, Roberto Roena wasn’t just some idol.
He was code.
His records weren’t just hits.
They were slices of truth no priest had revealed.

And yeah, there was Denise. La Negra.
A skinny, gorgeous, and dangerous one.
She moved in sol mayor and in raw flesh.
She was perfect.
But she wasn’t for me.
Even though, sometimes, it felt like maybe she was.
One night, couple weeks before, she jumped me at a party—
kissed me hard like she was marking territory.
She looked like a corroncha gone wild.
Left my neck all bruised up.
Next day, everybody cracking jokes:
“Yo, you got bit by a mosquito with big lips?”
“Damn, you gay now?”
“You donate blood or what?”
And there I was, laughing with them,
but deep down proud I got bit by la negra,
trying to defend something I didn’t even understand.
‘Cause love, when it’s murky, is a trap you build for yourself.

Then came that afternoon at Kike’s house.
No kisses.
No signs of the old heat.
Just distance. And tension.
Denise danced a couple tracks with me, smiled like she owed nothing,
then just walked out to the floor with some other dude.
Someone looser, more street, more sure of himself.
I stayed frozen.
Drink in hand, mouth dry, chest dented.

And then “Mi Desengaño” hit.
That beat dropped hard—
percussion dry as a slap, bass heavy.
Tito Cruz wasn’t singing.
He was telling it.

“Cuando despierte, diré… mi desengaño.”

That shit was speaking what I couldn’t face.
Apollo Sound never missed.
It was exact.
Music and percussion with killer precision.
Roena knew how to leave space—
knew when to let the lyrics do damage,
and when to bring the horns in to lift the dead.

Then “Marejada Feliz” rolled in.
Softer, more melodic—
but still a beast.

“La playa de mi cariño…”

And I got it.
Happiness is a kind of cheap violence.
It shows up like a gift, messes you up, and dips.
I watched her—Denise—spinning, laughing, letting go.
Her body letting me know:
nah, papi, not even to the corner with you.
Music playing.
Roena preaching.
He was the preacher at the end of my little world.

And then something happened I didn’t fully get.
Wasn’t no miracle, no light from above.
More like a quiet certainty.
Somebody sat next to me—
invisible.
Didn’t say a word.
Just presence.
A silence that didn’t judge.
A mute kind of company.
And I knew—or thought I knew—
that God was there.
Not the church God,
not the one from the Kingdom temples.
This was a quieter God.
More discreet.
The kind that just sits with you
when there’s nothing left
and waits for you to breathe again.

The party kept going,
but for me, everything was winding down.
El Guaguancó del Adiós.
The sound fading.
Roena slipping into the fade out.
Denise disappearing.
The timbal still striking—
marking the end of something that never started,
but had been there all along,
like gum pain pulsing under the skin.

And in that slow blackout,
I knew that was it.
No more chances.
La Negra wasn’t mine.
Love can’t be forced.
And sometimes music teaches you shit
that books and friends never will.

And when everything went quiet,
when only the body’s vibration stayed,
I sat still.
Peaceful.
With the last bits of rum echoing in my blood,
listening to the silence that sounded
like a final note stretched thin.
And I felt something more.
Passive. Still.
Even though Denise was gone,
even though the moment had faded,
even with the jokes from my boys
buzzing in memory like mosquitos at night,
something inside kept pulsing.

And that was it.
That was the fade out.
That was God.
No words.
No drums.