The Sunset Cafes

Scratch the surface of Negril and you’ll find debauchery as lewd as any that you’ll find in Hedonism. Hedonism is just a little more up front about it.

I suppose if you scratch the surface anywhere you might be surprised at what you might find.
I scratched the surface. It was just a scratch, and by its very nature, not very deep.

The New Yorkers were more forward than I took them credit for when I brought them to the sunset cafes. Not all were Americans, either. One was German, and Germans are far more forward than North Americans. No sooner than we arrived, he was off like a shot without us, looking for a Jamaican woman to bed. We knew what he was about. He made no bones it. He said he “wanted to try some dark meat,” even before we piled into the cab. The New Yorkers asked me if he was safe on his own. I suppose they hadn’t spent much time off the reservation, either. I shrugged. How should I know? I thought. I was alone on the strip and nothing happened to me, but I didn’t go searching for extracurricular comfort, either. They wondered if we should stick by him, to keep an eye on him.

“Suit yourself,” I said, noting that he was already lost to sight.

They were concerned, so I suggested we trawl the bars in the direction he was headed. There was good music coming from that direction, and one direction was as good as another, as far as I was concerned. Two birds, and all that.

The ska band the night before was not in residence. In their place, a hip-hop disk jockey spun his disks, accompanied by a rapper. I’ve never been a rap fan, so I was eager to be on to the next spot. The next one was a reggae affair. The place was packed, our German not to be seen. We did meet one of the resort staff there and struck up a conversation with him when he approached us. They asked him if he’d seen our German. He had not. He asked us if we liked sports, boxing specifically. I said I knew a little, not much. That was enough of an invitation for him to tell us that he was a boxer, a good one too. Sure, I thought, you can be a boxer if you’d like. He was a nice guy, and it was irrelevant what I thought. But I must say, he looked the part, without his shapeless shift covering him. Then he told us about his Olympic experience. He told us how he went pro afterwards. That perked me up. An Olympian? A pro boxer? Working at a tourist resort?

“If you’re a professional boxer,” I asked, “what the hell are you doing working at a resort?”

“Ya got to make ends meet, man” he said.

“I hear that.” I asked him how he liked it. He shrugged, and said, “A job’s a job.” I heard that, too.
He asked me if I’d buy him some Ting. It’s a Jamaican carbonated grapefruit drink. It was cheap, so I thought, what the hell? He stuck by us, talking about Jamaica, boxing, women, how rough the bars could be, asking us/me about our homes, where we lived, what we did, and asking how much it cost to live there.

Someone approached to sell us some weed. I waved him off, but the fellow was insistent. I walked away a few steps but he followed me. He reached out and gripped me by the arm to restrain me. Our resort boxer shoved him off me, stood nose to nose with the dealer and beat him back with a little patois.

Our boxer suggested that we leave. Our German wasn’t there, so, as there was nothing keeping us, we took the hint. We found him two bars down in a disco, hours drunk in the minutes since we’d last seen him, with a predatory Jamaican woman on either side of him. I wouldn’t say that either was what I’d call pretty. Shapely, yes; voluptuous, definitely; but pretty, I’d never have accused them of that. He called us over and introduced us to his “girls.” He was so hammered it took some work to decipher what he was saying. The volume didn’t help. His now thickened accent didn’t help, either. He eventually asked one of the New York set to negotiate payment for his needs. The New Yorker did. Those negotiations took some time. It’s not like he was a pro at that sort of thing. How much for this? How much for that? How much for both? Together? One after another? What about by the hour? He didn’t look happy about doing it.

“Fuck me,” he said, afterwards. “I felt like a pimp!”

I bought him a Red Cap and told him to put the whole seedy experience behind him. “At least you know what everything costs now,” I said, clinking bottles with him.

“Do you think he’ll be alright?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “His choice.”

Our boxer approached me a little later on, introducing me to a woman he knew. He told me that he’d gone to school with her. He told me he was in love with her. He also told me that she was a prostitute. He asked me for 20 American dollars so that he could have her for the night.

It takes a Jamaican a long time to save up twenty bucks, he explained, all but pleading with me.
I handed him the twenty.

I never once wanted for anything at the resort while he was on shift.