Hedonism II trip report (Nov. 1 – 8/1998)
First, a bit of an introduction. My name is Gene, I’m a 24 years old SWM, 5’ 6”, 167 lbs., I work out, play tennis, volleyball, basketball, and ski in the winter. I run a successful software company in Toronto, Canada, which is how I can afford to go to Hedo. Hedonism II is an all-inclusive beach resort in Negril, Jamaica. It’s part of the SuperClubs family of resorts, which makes it expensive (about 50% more than Club Med and 150% more than the cheap-cheap trips to Cuba)… but, it really is pretty inclusive. Naturally, all the food and drinks are in, and the drinks are all name-brand, high quality stuff (no chalky residue in the vodka). A wicked set of activities are available, including motorized watersports like water-skiing, not to mention all the nighttime entertainment. But that has nothing to do with what makes Hedo special.
Hedonism has developed a rep as the wildest resort in the Caribbean. Half of the resort, including half the beach are designated as clothing optional (in practice, nude). There is a 50-foot nude hot-tub which is famous for its open displays of sexual acts among couples and sometimes groups, and in general the whole culture of the resort is structured around letting go of inhibitions and having fun. It is not uncommon to see a couple come in for dinner in full bondage gear, or a woman walking down the beach dressed in nothing but body paint, but having said that, it’s not all sexual… it’s just as much about being open and uninhibited and fun.
So, after a truly grueling summer, I talked my brother into coming away to the Caribbean with me, but he had to back out at the last minute. I ended up booking a single-share room (you get a same-sex roommate assigned to you at the resort), but in a flash of good fortune I ended up with my own room for the entire time I was there. Normally I would have had to pay a 50% premium for that, so I was extremely happy to have it dropped into my lap. Not that I spent a whole lot of time in my room.
Showing up
The entertainment started with the bus ride in from the airport in Montego Bay. After almost being hustled by a taxi driver at the airport (the last bus is gone, mon, you must-a com’ wit’ me), I got on the Hedo van from hell with 5 other Toronto singles (2 guys, 3 girls, what luck). The air conditioner wasn’t working, and Spence was a typical Jamaican driver. I consider myself to be pretty aggressive on the roads, but I guarantee that if I got behind the wheel in Jamaica I would be dead inside of 10 minutes, and I would probably take the other driver, a few pedestrians and a goat or duck with me. Being the sensitive guy that he was, Spence realized we needed to calm our nerves and we stopped for a couple of Red Stripes at a grocery store at the side of the road. As we swigged the beers driving down the road (this is quite funny if your culture treats alcohol-vehicle offences like great big no-nos), we slowed at the infamous ganja bridge. Spence took the bus down to a crawl as the other Canadians in the van stocked up on the local weed. Let me tell ya, they were like kids in a candy store. I sipped my beer as Spence soberly explained that in Jamaica, you can get anything you want, mon, girls, drugs, you name it. No problem, mon. But if you pass the ganja bridge on the way back to the airport, they won’t sell you anything. What comes from Jamaica stays in Jamaica, mon. We want you to come back soon.
As we pulled into the resort I casually inquired about the going price for high-quality cocaine and Spence handed me a business card of a buddy of his who “could be trusted” and who “can get anything. Anything at all, mon.”
The first night
I was about 12:30 in the afternoon and the rooms weren’t ready yet (no problem), so I walked through the reception area to the main dining room and sat down for a leisurely buffet lunch. Sipping my white wine, I remembered the reading I had been doing on the Hedonism message board on the web. Attitude is everything, veteran after veteran proclaimed. Say Hi to everyone, be open, friendly, approachable and entertaining. These people should know what they’re talking about… some had been back to Hedo 10, 20, or more times over the years (Hedo apparently has an unmatched guest return rate of 87%). So I finished my lunch, went up to the bar, and started making friends.
Turns out that this was the best advice I could have received, and throughout the week I silently thanked the many advocates of this approach as I watched the unconverted sulk quietly in the shadows. I tried to explain this spirit of aggressive friendliness (to coin a phrase) to a few people who could have benefited, but for the most part I got blank stares. Oh well. Hedonism is definitely not for everyone.
I had dropped wine immediately after lunch, and over the course of that afternoon and early evening made it my personal mission to try every drink I had heard about while doing web research on Hedo. Bay Breeze, Purple Rain, Pina Colada (white AND dark rum) , Mudslide, Daquiry, Margarita, Appleton and Coke, Vodka Slush, the list lengthened and blurred along with the evening itself. Normally I’m a competent beach volleyball player, but when I hit the court around sunset without my glasses and with a blood alcohol level that would have made it illegal for me to take the bus, I quickly developed a reputation as the on-court entertainment. In fact, several times the next morning perfect strangers greeted me enthusiastically and commented on my previous days performance.
This is when I learned something about myself that bothered me quite a bit. I’m a lot of fun when I drink. When I don’t drink, I’m less fun. This kind of epiphany is what starts life-long drinking problems, I realized. I thought about this a lot during the week, both when sober and not so sober. Which is another thing about Hedo. You tend to learn things about yourself, and some of those things you might not be happy with.
Watersports
A brief aside. Early in high-school my parents sent me to a summer camp in Quebec where I had my first water-skiing experience. I was one of the older kids there, and the only one who didn’t speak fluent French. I had spent the previous week in social purgatory, alternating between trying to make new friends and defending myself against the natural aggression that teenagers greet outsiders with. When a group of 15 or so of us were sent water-skiing, I felt a great pressure to do well, and “show them all.” Well, without going into detail, of the 15 kids, I was the only one who wiped out all three times. My ego was badly bruised, and from that day forward I vowed that I would nail waterskiing to the wall… someday.
So, on my first full day at Hedo, I jumped at the chance to redeem myself. A group of 6 of us took a cigarette boat out to a nice place to ski (ever done 50 knots on the water before? Un-fucking-believable!) And off we went. The instructor, Omar, was awesome. He was working on his own DJ career in Kingston… apparently he knew Shaggy personally (you know Shaggy, Mista’ lover lover, mmm), and he had put together his own CD. Unlike most North American DJs, the Jamaicans don’t just spin and mix, they sing too. Which Omar was happy to demonstrate to the absolutely gorgeous Swedish tourist who happened to stumble upon our little group. Needless to say, she got a free waterskiing lesson and her fair share of attention from Omar and our otherwise male contingent.
Without going into great detail, of the 7 of us who went skiing, I was the only one who wiped out all three times. This time, not only was my ego badly bruised, but I tweaked my knee a bit and started developing a leg cramp (we had been in the cool water for a long time). My revenge would have to wait for another day. Despite everyone’s best efforts, Fia, the Swedish waterskiier (she got it on the first try), left alone.
Road Trip
Purist travelers often disparage all-inclusive resorts like Hedo because they totally insulate you from the reality of the place you are visiting. I don’t necessarily agree that this is a bad thing (some parts of Cuba I would rather just read about), but I was intrigued enough in Jamaica to see more (a little more) than the spic-and-span touristiness of Hedo. So the two guys from the bus ride in and I talked a cabbie into being our personal chauffeur for the evening ($52, no $40, no $45, no $42 and we’ll buy you a beer, deal), and off we went to see Negril. The cab driver (damn, can’t remember his name) took us to Farmer Brown’s, a little shack in the middle of nowhere where the proprietor (you guessed it, Farmer Brown), treated us to the famous Ganja Cake and Mushroom Tea (US$30 per diner). I was designated sober guy, making sure Farmer Brown’s shifty-eyed wait staff didn’t take advantage of us nave Canadians, sipping my (bottled) beer very slowly. So as my two partners got progressively shit-faced, Farmer Brown talked me into looking over his little trinket stand, and sure enough, he I ended up buying a necklace made of Hematon (?), a beautiful gray/black stone that looks really sharp. He assured me that he had made it with his own hands… I was only slightly surprised to find an identical necklace on an identical stand in an (almost) identical shack a little later into my adventure. Ah well, it still looks good.
So as our cab driver finished his red snapper (yes, it’s still funny) and the last of the Ganja cake was washed down by the tea, we hopped back in the cab and headed towards Rick’s Caf. Now Rick’s is the ultimate tourist trap… a big bar with one side completely exposed to the shore, where waves crash against rocks and the sunset is supposed to be legendary. We were about 3 hours late to see the sunset, and Rick’s was discouragingly empty. I chatted up a couple of cute tourists (while trying to peel the Jamaican hookers off my shoulders) as the full effect of the drugs made itself clear in the pupils of my two friends. We decided to call it a road trip and headed back to Hedo.
The Disco
That night I went to the disco to do a bit of dancing. My early day sobriety (don’t drink and ski) was washed away by an ocean of Appleton and Coke, with a dash of bitters. If you’ve never tried this drink, you should… just ask your bartender to throw a dash of bitters into a normal rum and coke. A friend of mine from Trinidad taught me this, and now I can barely stomach normal rum and coke. But bitters are a bitch to find in Canadian bars. Anyway, I was well past the no-dancing-while-sober threshold, and by this time I knew most of the younger people in the resort, so off I went dancing up a storm.
There was a fair bit of reggae, which had already started growing on me, but also a lot of top-40 dance and even some techno. All in all, the music was excellent, and I can’t remember any songs which I didn’t like. I did, however, ask the DJ to switch to slower stuff near the end of the evening (about 4 AM) when there were only two young couples left on the floor, gazing hungrily into each others eyes, as Crystal Method pumped from the speakers.
Midnight Snack
Even though I didn’t partake of the ganja cake earlier in the evening, when I left the disco I still had the munchies something fierce. Now, as I mentioned, Hedo is all inclusive, and I could have easily washed my hunger down with a drink or two, but I was actually hungry and the little orange slices and maraschino cherries weren’t going to cut it. I walked down to the dining room hoping that someone had forgotten to clear a dinner tray away, but I was SOL. Never fear, it’s Jamaica mon. After a brief conversation with one of the cleaning staff (where a $5 bill changed hands), I was sitting by the pool happily munching away on my improvised sandwich platter. Anything you want, mon, girls, drugs, or a cheese sandwich at 5 in the morning. For the rest of the week, I made a habit of smuggling some dinner back to my room for later.
The Morning After
My mornings fell into a pretty regular pattern… wake up at 11 or so, take a shower, and stagger into the dining room just before lunch. Drink a couple of grapefruit juices (yes, for the tenth time, JUST grapefruit juice), and shoot the shit until lunch. At lunch and dinner, Hedo provides entertainment, sometimes in the form of a local band or act, sometimes requiring audience participation. Things like wet t-shirt contests, reggae dance lessons, you get the idea.
Well, one particularly gruesome morning (I was on my third grapefruit juice already and I was worried that I might have to switch to Bloody Mary’s in order to clear my head) the female half of a honeymooning couple approached me and sat down. Kerrie had just married Steve (in Virginia, I think) and she was clearly trying to loosen him up a bit. Steve’s a great guy, but something tells me Hedo wasn’t his idea. Anyway, the lunchtime entertainment for the afternoon was something called the “Best Body Motion” competition, and Kerrie wanted me to participate because “Steve won’t do it unless someone he knows is doing it too.” I was suspicious, and had no great desire to move any more than absolutely necessary, but I let Kerrie explain the festivities… she wasn’t real clear on the details but she said that they would be using those big Sumo wrestling balloon-suits and stuff. Well, I remember those suits from school, and I never got the chance to play, so I said what the hell, sign me up. And she did.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that there were no sumo wrestling suits.
In fact, they rounded the 7 guys who signed up together at the foot of the stage, and got about 20 ladies from the audience to sit around the edge. Then, one after another, we did a striptease for the ladies (which was a bit of a challenge considering we pretty much started in just swimming trunks). That was Phase 1.
Phase 2 was where each guy got into the middle of the stage and the MC picked some activity for that person to perform. It varied… Steve had to pick a lady from the audience and do a lap dance for her. You should have seen his face when they wouldn’t let him pick his new wife. The guy who went before me had to pick two ladies who laid him down in the middle of the stage and massaged his body with ice cubes.
My turn came around, and I was asked to pick three ladies from the audience. The (incredibly hot, young, and enthusiastic) female staff proceeded to cover my body in caramel syrup. They then lowered me onto a towel on the stage and my three selections were told to lick the syrup off my body. I kid you not.
Well, if I wasn’t up before, I was definitely up now, and was more than a little concerned about the lady at my midsection who was nipping (a little too) enthusiastically at my trunks. Luckily, before any permanent damage could be done, I was escorted to the shower to towel off.
The consensus among my friends was that my third-place finish in the competition was blatant favoritism. The winner, Charlie, was a retired Canadian civil servant who must have been in his seventies and was pierced about a hundred times all over his body (yes, there too). Charlie was a big favorite with the ladies… you go, boy.
The Island Picnic
Turns out that a lot of the harmless-sounding activities at Hedo are actually false fronts for alcohol-intensive, sexually explicit romps through immorality. Take the so called “Island Picnic” for example. One particularly late morning I stumbled over to the beach where a bunch of guests were being loaded onto boats headed for an island about 5 minutes away from the resort. My curiosity aroused, I jumped into the last boat and off we went.
Apparently, many of the activities on the Island Picnic are supposed to take place in the water, but the surf was pretty choppy that morning so we all sat around a circle on the sand as wine bottles filled with rum punch were passed around to each of us. Conroy, the MC for the trip, told us to drink down our bottles to half, anyone who wasn’t finished in 30 seconds had to finish the whole bottle. Well, it might not have been subtle, but as an icebreaker, nothing beats a half-bottle of rum punch slammed down in 30 seconds. In fact, hardly anyone noticed the smooth segue into drinking games that lasted for about 2 hours until they fired up the grills for lunch.
The drinking games were fun, and by the end, we had each finished a couple of bottles of the rum punch and a Red Stripe or two. Most people were bearing it well (stumbling but not falling), but of course there were exceptions. One of the girls on the trip was absolutely sloshed, and she flitted from guy to guy snuggling and kissing and dry-humping and generally mega-flirting with all of us. Another woman started necking with a friend of mine as her husband snapped pictures. But the best was my friend Matt, who hadn’t finished his first half-bottle in time, and had taken enough drinking game penalties to put him well into the booze lead. This is not counting the impromptu beer-chugging contest he did (or maybe started?)
Anyway, by lunchtime Matt was passed out on the beach and all reasonable attempts to revive him failed. The Hedo staff occasionally walked by and made sure his chest was still rising and falling, which seemed to satisfy everyone concerned except for one lady who decided to make it her personal mission to get Matt up, so to speak. As she positioned her (not insignificant) girth over Matt, I knew immediately that he was not faking. She lay on top of him and started kissing him, but (amazingly), there was no reaction. Eventually the staff pulled her off before the relationship developed any further.
After lunch, the staff started loading up the boats for the ride back to Hedo. Matt hadn’t budged. Conroy stood over him, shaking his head slowly from side to side. As I walked up, Conroy turned to me and said the single funniest thing I heard my entire trip.
“Rum dun ‘im, mon.”
I’m going to remember that line for a long, long time. Conroy and I lifted Matt onto the boat and, when we got back to the resort, ferried him to the nurses office where he spent the rest of the day. The next morning he was absolutely fine, and had no recollection of the whole ordeal.
Getting Naked in the Hot Tub
If you distilled Hedonism to one activity, one place, one event, it would be the nude hot tub. Located at the very end of the nude section of the resort, this 50-foot behemoth is rarely hot at all. Kept at lukewarm temperature to promote long-term occupancy, and serviced by a bar, 24-hour beer and soft-drink taps, as well as a Slurpee machine that serves frozen strawberry daquiries), this, my friends, is the shit.
You can go to the tub to kick back, relax, have a drink, reflect on your day, but if you did that you would be in the minority. The hot tub, ladies and gentlemen, is about sex. Sex between married couples, sex between new friends, sex between married couples AND new friends, sex alone, sex in groups, sex, sex, sex. The chlorine level of the nude hot tub is 4 times that of any other pool or tub in the resort. Draw your own conclusions.
During various trips to the hot tub, I saw couples trading partners, two girls and four guys “rotating”, a “who can get their partner off first” competition, and a guy who swam by me saying “watch this, I’m going to be sucking her tits in 10 seconds.” You know what? He was.
Although my personal experiences in the tub are much tamer (it can’t be safe, no matter how strong the chlorine is), I did manage to lure a couple of girls from the disco to the tub in the wee hours of the morning, and after many drinks, much talking and coaxing and taunting, get them to (for the first time in their lives) strip down and jump in. Strangely, the hot tub was deserted and the three of us, as well as another guy who joined us en route, had the tub to ourselves for the night. We stayed in there long enough to watch the sun rise over the beach, and it was very romantic.
The Turning Point (or, How my Vacation Turned to Shit)
I had been having the time of my life… meeting all kinds of people, drinking and eating and partying more than I had ever done in my life (and I’ve been to Engineering school). That fateful afternoon, however, put an end to that.
It was the 4th day of my week-long trip. I was playing in the Hedo vs. Breezes volleyball game (Breezes is another resort close by, which had sent over some players to “teach us how to play”…. Pffft.) We were down 1 to nothing, best of 3. Our entire team was tense… we had a ringer from the staff playing, and it was exceedingly clear that he did not want to lose. No “no problem mon” from this guy. He was one serious dude. I had gotten into the game late, and although I had my glasses AND I was sober, I had squirted a few balls away already due to lack of warm-up. So over comes this ball, it ’s bumped up and everyone is yelling “net, net” but there is no way this ball touched the net. The ball is nowhere near me, but nobody is going for it, so I hurl myself under the ball and put it up just right for our hitter to pound it into the corner. Beautiful play. Unfortunately, as I land in the sand, my knee, already weakened by a couple of nasty waterski spills, just blows up. I roll over to the sideline and call for a sub. I am out for the rest of the game, and really, for the rest of the week.
The resort has a great nursing staff, and they were very good about giving me a tensor for it and generally making me feel better. Although I could have gone to a hospital for x-rays and such, I decided that I would rather spend my last few days sitting (laying?) on the beach with a drink in my hand than in an emergency room waiting for x-rays. Besides, as long as I didn’t bend my knee, there wasn’t THAT much pain. I got a lot of sympathy from everyone involved, and my limp turned out to be a great conversation starter (yeah, you know, rough sex can really do you in… my advice, limit yourself to three girls at once. I mean, unless you’re really athletic, you understand). But the disco was out, volleyball was out, even swimming wasn’t an option. I lounged around in the hot tub, but my Hedo experience definitely suffered because of my mobility disability.
First thing I did when I came back to Canada was hit the emergency room. Luckily, nothing was broken and it was just a wicked knee sprain. The resident doctor stuck a 18-gauge syringe into me and extracted 40 ccs of joint fluid before the swelling went down. So it was pretty lousy luck. But I say to myself, at least it didn’t happen on day 1. And there’s no permanent damage. And hell, we won the v-ball match.
Things I Learned at Hedo (or Hedo Tips for the Single Guy)
What you’ve probably heard about ratios are, unfortunately, true. There are many married couples and unmarried couples, there are many people who will be nowhere near your age (as far as I could tell, only one other person at Hedo was 24, everyone else, excepting staff, was older), and there are many more single men than single women. Having said all that, it is not difficult to find someone to play adult games with, if that’s what you’re looking for. You may have to make sacrifices and lower your expectations though. I had several opportunities while I was there, but none involving attractive, intelligent, single women who were about my age.
The single most important thing about Hedo was taught to me before I even went… ATTITUDE. Be funny, open, friendly, introduce yourself to everyone. Hedo is one place where this kind of behaviour is universally rewarded. The more I did this (and the less I acted like my normal, reserved self) the more fun I had. And the key to meeting women at Hedo is entertainment. I saw this act repeated time and time again, and even did it one or twice myself: guy approaches girl, says something, girl laughs, guy talks to girl for 5 minutes, girl laughs the whole time, guy and girl leave together. 5 minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Took my breath away, every time.
A couple of great openers from myself and people I met there: two girls walk in, obviously just arrived at the resort (they’re still wearing street clothes). Go to the bartender, order 2 glasses of white wine, take them up to the ladies. “Hello, and welcome to Hedonism. My name is _______, I am the mayor of Hedonism, and it would be my pleasure to show you around this evening.” I love that one… or, my friend Jose from Ecuador did this, and it still makes me laugh just thinking about it… steal a chef’s hat from the kitchen and walk up to a table. Hello, my name is ______________, I will be your chef for this evening. Can I take any special requests?” Jose was wearing that hat the whole night, and even while we were doing tequila shots cute women were coming up to him asking, “Hey chef, what’s cooking?”
Will I Be Back?
Hard to say. Hedo was a blast, and I feel as though I didn’t really get to do everything I wanted to because of my injury. Having said that, the world is a great big place, with many things to see and do that I haven’t seen or done yet. Maybe I’ll go again when I can introduce someone special to it… I think going as a couple would be a vastly different experience.
Regardless of whether I go back or not, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone adventurous enough to let their guard down for a week. Don’t expect to spend much time in your room.