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.

Off The Reservation

I was still recovering from the flu when I arrived in Negril. I was weak and still a little unsteady on my feet, but by the time I arrived in Negril, I was up for more than sleeping in a lounge chair.

The Coral Beach resort was smaller, cozier, owned by a Jamaican doctor and not an American corporation. That was much of its appeal. And both Trelawny and Negril were family resorts, unlike Hedonism. There were kids of all ages about, so people were much better behaved. A naked swinger humped Becky’s leg once at Hedonism. I don’t care how sex-positive you are, that was rude, disrespectful, and a little creepy.

That said, there were a lot of Europeans about. The woman went topless. That was distracting at first, but by the next day I was taking it all in due course.

There were a lot of Americans, too.

There was one very important American. She was a New Yorker. She was pretty. She was about my age. When we spied one another we took to chatting. Before long she’d meet me at the beach bar after 3 pm, and then again in the waning hours of the night. She disappeared between those times, returning giddy and drunk each night. I wondered where the hell she’d gone. The resort was quiet. The bar I was seated at was the only distraction after the nightly show had packed it in for the night. So where the hell did she go? I asked her. She talked about the sunset strip and all the parties that carried on there. She asked me if I’d like to go. I said sure, but when the time came, she and her friend were already gone. When she returned, even more drunk than I was, I’d already gone to bed. We flirted by day, and had she been sober, things might have followed their natural course; but I was sober by day and she was not, and I didn’t feel right about doing anything while she was in such a state.

Before long, she was gone and later that same day, I met another New Yorker. She was a backpacker. She’d just spent a month tramping around the islands, ending in Jamaica where she wanted to bask in a little luxury after hostels and budgetary restraint. She and I noticed one another straight off. We too were of a like age, and single, surrounded by an abundance of families and retirees. I asked her to lunch, but didn’t see her after that. She’d donned her daypack and was off to see Negril. I envied her daring do. I looked for her for dinner, but if she was there, I didn’t see her. I did see her at two in the morning. She sat by me at the bar, made small talk for a bit, and convinced me that I ought to be off to bed.

The next day I asked her to have dinner with me. She accepted.

Midway through the meal, she said, “You must be so fucking bored.”

I said, “Why would you say that?”

“Because you’re not an alcoholic,” she said, “and you were totally hammered last night.”

“That’s encouraging,” I said.

She explained: I was sober by day. I did not smell like an alcoholic. I was easily convinced to lay off the booze and go to bed. And she said that I remembered the night before. Therefore I could not be an alcoholic.

Having known plenty of alcoholics in my time, I could see the holes in her logic, but I was eager to see where she was going with all this.

“You need to get off the reservation,” she said.

“The reservation?”

“The resort. This is just a fairy tale that feeds you food by day and booze by the gallon. The entertainment is freeze-dried and as boring as fuck.”

“And what do you propose I do?” I asked.

“You’re coming with me,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

“The sunset cafes.”

“Been there,” I said.

“Rick’s Café?” she asked.

I nodded, “Among others.”

“Not there,” she said, “the real ones.”

We caught a cab outside the resort. She haggled the price with the driver like a pro. I think we headed south. We travelled about 5 or 10 minutes, arriving at a car park filled with cabs, the drivers leaning against their cars, heaters glowing about their faces. The lot smelled like tobacco and cannabis. So did the beach when we spilled out onto it. There were people everywhere, Jamaicans, Europeans, North Americans. There were accents folding over one another with each step. I heard Ska to the left, reggae to the right. What do you want to hear, she asked me. Ska, I said. An hour later we were back on the beach, seeking food. We found a little cabana where a woman as wide and she was tall was slaving over a wok. Two, my saviour said, and two baskets of jerk pork were handed over at a ridiculously low price.
We wandered up to a bon fire that blazed high into the starry night.

She kissed a man there. He introduced himself. He was from Bonn.

“You know how to get back?” she asked. I stammered a little so she coached me. “Remember that Ska bar? Up that path beside it is the cabs.” She taught me how to haggle for the price. Settle it before you get in, she said. She told me what to pay. “No more,” she warned. “If he asks for more, walk away. He’ll drop his price.”

I must have seemed a little unsure of myself, because she said, “You need to navigate this on your own. Walk up and down the beach. There’s lots of clubs and bars and people having fun. You’ll do alright. Have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Ska, reggae, rap. Disk jockeys and dance. I had the time of my life.

She left the next day, and I fell in with a group of New Yorkers. Yes, there were a lot of New Yorkers at that resort. I took them to that same beach that very night.

I’ve never been back to a resort since.

I can’t remember her name. I only knew her for a few days. But she changed the course of my life.

Trelawny

Once I began to travel, I didn’t want to stop. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do, or where to go. So, I went back to Jamaica. I had fun when there, met people, drank too much, stayed out too late, and got up too early, thinking a beach vacation was all about the tan. But I’d found two weeks in one place was too long. Entertainment and activities repeated on a weekly schedule. This time I would go to a different resort the second week, on a different part of the island.

I discussed this with my travel agent and she booked me into two resorts. The first was the Trelawny Beach Resort in Falmouth (the Royalton White Sands now) and another in Negril, a Jamaican owned resort (I think it was the Coral Beach Resort, but names change; it was certainly coral coloured when I was there, the trim painted either pink or blue).

I arrived to the same fanfare as before, Red Caps wrestling me for my luggage. I found my shuttle and was off. Trelawney was just past Falmouth, so the drive there was shorter than it had been to Negril.
Trelawney may have been larger than Hedonism. It was certainly taller, seven stories towering over the central pool its wings reached out to. It was windy, too, the wings funnelling the airflow in and through its central space. Guests were always chasing their towels, wrestling with their shifts and wraps. I watched as a bride flashed the resort when her dress flew up to her chin. She ought to have worn underwear, but she obviously wanted to be a little risqué on her special day. Her tan lines were a dead giveaway. Few people lounged on the beach. Sand coated those who did, the wind blowing in from the north picking it up and blowing it around, their sun-block flypaper to the gains.

I can’t say that I enjoyed myself. I did, but I didn’t. I was ill. I came down with the flu and spent my days freezing by the pool. I passed out on my lounge chair more than once, waking to find myself in a cold sweat, with my beach towel clutched tightly around me. I coughed when I spoke, despite the steady lubrication I inflicted on it.

I lie. I did not lubricate my throat anywhere near as I had the year before. If Hedonism had taught me one thing, it was that people can indulge too much. Becky had to administer to two fools who showed no restraint at all on their first full day. They drank too much over-proof, disdained sunblock, and paid the price. They both sprouted purple patches of second-degree burns and lolled in bed, shivering from their burn, delirious from alcohol poison. It’s quite a sight to see someone’s skin defying gravity, not fall back when pinched. I can’t say I felt any pity for them. They were stupid and their excess cost them their vacation. They spent days rehydrating and peeling off sheets of blistered skin, only to emerge on their final day, their skin blotchy, their legs weak and shaking. Memorable. A cautionary tale.
Their excess made me promise myself that I would not drink before 3 pm. That seemed reasonable. My Irish skin can only take so much sun before it dries out and flakes away, so I’d call it a day then, make my way up to the main bar and took my first Red Cap from the bartender who always had it ready for me when I sat down. Tipping a $20 bill on the first day expedites service in my experience. The bar smelled sickly sweet. Grenadine hovering in the air can do that. It can also attract flies, which were always in attendance.

3 pm seemed a good time to quit baking on the beach and get a seat before the masses poured in. The sun was not as strong by then, its light growing golden in its waning. The wind was cooling by then, too. But that was probably my fever. I’d stay there for an hour or so, chatting with whomever was at hand. Some were eager to see a new face. Some were not, taking their leave of me to join their groups quickly. Those who were sought me out later. Some asked me to join them for dinner. I always did. I was alone, after all.

I did not dive. I was too ill. I didn’t know I had the flu at first, but I suspected. I ought to have gone to my room to sleep it off, but I was youngish (30) and foolish and wanted to eke as much enjoyment out of my vacation as I could muster.

I barely joined in any fun and games. One of the activity directors, a Jamaican woman with jet black skin who I thought rather fetching, used to tease me, calling me “Mister No-Thank-You.” I surprised her later on in the week when I said, “Sure, I’ll do that,” when she asked if I’d like to compete for best tan. I was perking up by then, not energetic by any means, but I was also beginning to get bored of lazing about all day. She’d already begun to pass by, and had to do a double-take when I agreed. She smiled brightly then and told me to follow her. I took third place, rather surprisingly. It was a cloudy week, not continuously sunny by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d managed to brown a bit, nicely bronzed from all those hours sleeping in my lounge chair. There were only six of us, so I was happy to place, especially pleased to have beat out a new arrival who declared that he was using Red Cap as his SPF. He was drunk. He was giddy. He was the crowd favourite, hanging on by the tips of his personality to finish fourth.

Sadly, there was no romance that week, either. Suffering with the flu, I was lucky to remain upright, let alone make an effort at wooing some woman.

I can’t say that Trelawney was a disappointment, but my week there was. The resort was beautiful. The room was a little small, but I was alone, so it was cozy. The view from my balcony was fantastic. The food was great. The bar and activity staffs were friendly. So were many of the guests.
But I was eager to move on by then.

I had high hopes that the second week would be better.

It was.

It was life changing.

Expectations

That first trip to Jamaica awakened the wanderlust that had always lurked just below the surface, one predicted long-ago by a self-described psychic girl on the northbound Northlander bus. “You love to travel,” she said, “or you will. I can always see these things. I’m psychic, that way.” I don’t believe she actually saw anything. Her prediction wasn’t much of a stretch. Most people like or want to travel. I think she was just flirting and making small-talk. More likely, she was just speaking her own heartfelt wish aloud; but she did unwittingly predict my future. I would never feel as free as when I had a backpack strapped across my shoulders, map in hand, dive bag at my feet.

I’d never really been anywhere on vacation until then. Sure, I’d been to Sudbury, and I’d been on that ball trip to Detroit (Windsor, actually) and Toronto, but I’d been to Sudbury and Toronto before, so that was like retracing my steps. Negril was uncharted territory. And I was going it alone. Did I enjoy it? You be the judge.

I basked in the sunshine. I drank Red Cap and Tequila Sunshine. I met people, most notably a couple guys from Michigan (one a gravedigger, the other a nuclear power plant engineer), and a couple girls from Sacramento, California, one who professed to have fallen in love with me by week’s end. It’s easy to fall in “love” while on vacation, I imagine, and I’m all for love at first sight, but I have my doubts whether Becky ever really saw the real me, rather seeing what she’d projected onto me. I was flattered, but I didn’t believe it for a minute. Infatuation and lust were far more likely than love. She even went so far as to ask me to move to California, which surprised me. Tolerating one another in the real world would prove more challenging were I to have chased down that temptation, considering how little we knew one another in so short a time. Hedonism could never be a proper testing ground for what might be.

To begin at the beginning, I met those four on the first night while we were being inducted with 100 proof rum drinks that could ignite nose hairs. There were games played, Simon says for one, and others like dancing and freezing in place when the music stopped, sort of like musical chairs, but in this case, if you moved when you were supposed to be frozen (no easy feat when saturated with rum), you were eliminated. I was eliminated. Other games were far more Hedonistic. All males were to face the walls in a circle, the girls to critique our buns. The girls were instructed to test us in any way they saw fit. Before I knew it, I was all but disrobed, a succession of hands kneading me front and back. Oh, you’ve never heard of Hedonism? Neither had I. That fun and games night was a surprising introduction. All I can say is that, drenched in rum, I stood it in stride. Did I win? No. I was a little surprised to make the top five, though. I think Becky might have had something to do with that.

Once I dried out, I was adamant that I’d try scuba diving. I enrolled in their one-day course, a far more inclusive one than others I’d heard tales of, and was fitted for gear. It was serviceable, but it had seen some wear. The days were grey, both to train and to dive. But even so, once I hit the water and learned how to glide effortlessly, seemingly weightless, embraced by the sea, shrouded by fish, I was hooked. I also required medical attention. Nothing serious: softened wax impacted my ear drum while diving, leaving me deaf on my right. My equilibrium was lost. I could barely walk, so Becky was thrilled when I asked her to guide me. She stayed close, she fetched my drinks. What can I say? I luxuriated in the largesse while it lasted. It ended all too soon. The resort doctor flushed both my ears for good measure and I was right as rain again.

The week with Becky passed quickly. We marvelled at the audacity of the Turtles, a swingers club sharing our time on the resort, a little surprised when another couple succumbed to the temptation of the open air and the stars in the late-night hot tub mere feet from us. We took in the sunset each evening, took catamaran cruises to sunset cafes, browsed craft markets where she tried and failed to teach me to haggle, we went on bike rides. I forgot my SPF and paid the price. I burned a little. A nurse, she revelled in the opportunity to care for me, applying aloe and SPF and clucking at my foolishness. She shared my cigarettes, and stole more than a few of my lit ones, giggling at the sideways glances I gave her when she did.

I’ve no doubt she saw something in me that moved her, but California was a long way off, and at the time, Sacramento seemed a desperate gamble. What would I do there? I looked into it, but abandoned the idea when I realized that Sacramento was a government town with mining well buried in its past. I was too pragmatic to travel a road where a person was the only destination.

When she’d gone, I was a little out of sorts. My constant companion had left a void in her wake. Then the Michigan guys left the very next day and I found myself alone. I brushed up against other people, but it wasn’t quite the same. None clicked as well as those first four had, she foremost.

But it was also exactly the same. I discovered that there was a weekly cycle. Mondays had the same dance troupe, Tuesdays the same jugglers, Wednesdays the same trapeze artists, and so on. I grew bored. I drank too much. Drifted. And before long, I was done and wanted to go home.

It was as eventful as any resort vacation might be, maybe more so. I had nothing to compare it to at the time, and little to compare it to afterwards.

I went on only one other resort vacation after that, one that would transform me far more than this one had.

Stir It Up

That little trip to Sudbury had been fun, but it only served to whet my appetite for more.

Before long, Garry Martin was gone, and only Neil Petersen and Henri Guenette were left to me. I’d made no lasting friends at the Mine, and those guys I had begun to hang out with at Casey’s were sad, tired, boring young old men who were waiting for their turn to die. God help me, I realized that was becoming one of them. The difference between me and them is that I knew it, and I had every intention of ensuring that didn’t happen. I would not waste away in Timmins on a barstool. So, I began planning my next escape.

I asked Neil and Henri individually. They were only slightly acquainted, so it was an opportunity for them to become more so, in my view. Neil declined. No money. I couldn’t argue with that. Henri was all in this time. That was encouraging, but I wasn’t holding my breath, just yet. I’d heard that level of enthusiasm on the subject before.

The day came that we were to book the trip. We’d decided after some deliberation on Jamaica. I called Henri, asking if he wanted me to pick him up. He told me that he would drive. I waited with anticipation. This time, it was actually going to happen.

Henri pulled up, and I was out the door in a flash. I was excited and chatting endlessly. Henri was not.

He spoke up after a time, when we were on the outskirts of downtown. “I can’t go,” he said.

There it was, the expected hammer blow. “What?” I asked. “Why not?”

“Because I’m getting married,” he said.

Wow, I thought. Married. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Congratulations,” I said, trying to stir up some enthusiasm about his declaration, all the while wondering about the state of the trip I was until then stoked about. “When’s the lucky day?” I asked, not sure what else to say.

“In two and a half years,” he said.

Two and a half years? I was confused. I was bewildered. Then I felt a black rage rise up in me.

“Wow,” I said. I had just then come to the realization that I was not anyone else’s number one choice, that I would always come second. Were I to ever do something, I’d have to do it myself. I’d just come to the realization that I’d become a loner and would be one evermore.

“So, you see why I can’t go,” he said. “I’ve got to save up for the ceremony and the honeymoon.”
I was thinking about how I had waited four or five years to go on a trip with my friends, listening to them beg off, watching them leave town, and I made up my mind that if I were to wait on someone else to do anything with me, I’d die a bitter old man who’d never gone anywhere except to a bar and a barstool. I made up my mind that I’d never wait for anyone, or to rely on anyone else, ever again.

“Do you want to go for coffee?” he asked.

“Drop me at the travel agency,” I said.

“What?” he said.

I repeated what I said.

“You’re going to go without me?”

“Well I’m not going to go on your honeymoon with you, am I?” I said. Did all this play out the way I’ve said. Maybe. Probably. I have a vague memory of these phrases. It’s a largely emotional memory, and memory can be painted by anger and rage.

He dropped me off downtown. I walked in alone. I sat with the travel agent, and she asked if we should wait for my friend.

I told her I’d be going alone. She processed that, said, okay, and set about asking me where I’d like to go, what I expected out of the vacation. I said, anywhere singles go. I wanted to go somewhere where I’ll meet people, and that I wanted to party.

She booked me into Hedonism II. I had no clue about what sort of resort it was, I only knew what she told me. That it was an all-inclusive, adults only Superclub, that it was party oriented. She told me that as I’d be going by myself, I’d have to pay a single supplement, and she explained how much extra that would cost me. I paid my money, collected my tickets and vouchers and made my way to the airport when the day came.

I was nervous. I’d never been on a plane before. Oddly, I’d been in a helicopter, but never a plane. The flights went well, despite my experiencing turbulence for the first time, as well. Montego Bay drew closer, and I saw palm trees for the first time. I felt tropical heat for the first time. I was set upon by Red Caps for the first time. Everyone was eager to move my luggage two feet for 20 American dollars. I escaped with my wallet intact, found my shuttle bus, and was offered a cold Red Cap by the driver. “It’s free,” he said, after my telling him there was no way I was going to pay 20 American dollars for a beer.

Once the rest of our fellow Hedonistic passengers were herded in and collected, we were on our way. I shared a couple more beers and chatted with them on the way, never to have anything to do with them ever again once we arrived. I spied palm trees and poverty whisk past on our way to the highway, remembering how everyone had told me how beautiful Jamaica had been when they’d been there. They never mentioned the garbage shanties, the junkers, or the emaciated cows tied to trees, the overabundance of exhaust hanging in the air. Or the near death experience the Jamaican roads turned out to be.

We pulled into the resort, opulent in comparison with what I’d seen on the ride there. But there was wear at the corners, the tiles sun-bleached and scuffed. I wondered how many thousands of feet had shuffled up to the front desk before me since its last reno, how may bags had rubbed and rested up against the corners and pillars.

I signed in, showed my ID, my vouchers, my credit card, and was given a map that laid out the resort for me, a neat circle where my room was in relation to this and that. The staff bid me welcome, the maintenance staff went one further, whispering to me that should I like to party, they had the means, if I were so inclined. I expected that said means was likely to come to about 20 American dollars and might be a little Rastafarian in nature.

I found my room, opened the door with my key, and wrestled my bags inside. The room was dim and woody, the colours vividly ‘80s dark. The upholstery brown, orange and gold, as was the bed. A little musty from the humidity.

I stood by the door for a few seconds taking in the ambiance. There was a mirror above the bed, a mirror where a headboard ought to have been. A mirror lined the wall across from the bed, reflecting the other endlessly if you set yourself just so.

I dropped what bags I still carried. And laughed. I laughed so hard I bent double and crouched, my arms folded and resting on my knees.

I don’t think I’d ever seen anything so tacky in my life.

For the next two weeks, I was in pornland.