Yah Mon
Yah Mon
Naked In Negril
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
My husband, Grant, and I are celebrating our 21st anniversary this April. We’ve actually been together for 26 years, but who’s counting?
We didn’t really know where to go for our honeymoon so we went to see our local travel agent. Don turned out to be a real Jamaica freak.
The last time I had been to Jamaica was in 1976 and that was on a familiarization tour of newly-developed Negril. I was a New York-based travel agent and just learning my way around the world. Negril was a real eye-opener.
Just for the sake of background, the first time I was in Negril I shared a room in a brand-new hotel with a co-worker. Trudy was in her thirties and had three children and lots of teeth and was lots of fun.
I’ll give you a quick Trudy story. She and I went to a cocktail party thrown by the Jamaican Tourist Board one night and got blitzed beyond all human recognition on various rum concoctions. As we staggered around in the wee hours, we discovered that we couldn’t locate our room in the sprawling complex. We managed to find our way to the front desk in our long, flowery dresses but the night clerk refused to help us for some reason. I still don’t know why.
At any rate, off we went down the beach where were were soon pursued by really large land crabs. That was a fairly nightmarish experience so we broke into what turned out to be the honeymoon suite where we wrapped ourselves in bedspreads and shower curtains and went to sleep.
The next morning, deeply hung over, we needed to find our way back to the front desk again where a more reasonable clerk took pity on us and led us to our room. In the coming days, I ended up taking a familiarization tour of a local Jamaican Tourist Board agent who wasn’t crazy about American women because he thought they were shameless sluts with no culture. I also accidentally ate a delicious plateful of goat covered in ants. When I started screaming, the host said, “Why are you screaming? They’re only ants.”
Okay, enough about the good old days.
Or more about more recent good old days.
Grant and I flew to Jamaica from Atlanta in the spring of 1992. We arrived in Montego Bay and took a bus to Negril, where Don had booked us a room in a very exclusive all-inclusive resort.
After we were warmly welcomed and checked in, a lovely local walked us to our room. The further we walked the nakeder the people on the beach got.
“What is this? I asked. “We didn’t sign up for a nude beach.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
“We knew you were newly-weds so we just naturally assumed you would want to be on the nude beach,” said the lovely local.
I turned to my husband and said, “We can stay here, if you’d like, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to run around naked in this sun and burn my tatas off.” I don’t think Grant heard me. He may have been preoccupied with the other tatas already exposed and dangling in the breeze on the beach.
I must say, 10 minutes later we were both cavorting nakedly on the hot sand. It was my first public nudity experience. Nobody seemed to give a damn. They were at home in their bodies – and, frankly, some of their bodies were the size of homes. With the amount of food being consumed on the all-you-can-eat buffet, we learned the true meaning of “bellying up to the bar.”
Since this was a brave first for me, I decided to try another brave first: snorkeling. In the nude.
My first challenge was trying to find a snorkel mask that would fit my child-size face. I actually look a little like an anteater. The guy who was renting snorkel gear finally gave me a mask for a two-year-old – a human one. But he didn’t show me how to put it on.
So, while Grant was out flopping around in the Caribbean, I was standing naked in two inches of water struggling to put on my mini-mask. A naked gentleman onshore noticed my difficulty. He got up from his beach chair and came flailing toward me, probably with all of the best of intentions. He extended his hand (glad he didn’t extend his snorkel) and introduced himself. He was from L.A. Of course, he was from L.A.
At any rate, he did manage to cram me into my mask and then he went bouncing back to his beach chair.
My next brave challenge was putting my face in the water with hard contact lenses on. I’ve been wearing hard contacts since I’ve been 12 and had never submerged my face and opened my eyes. I did so with trepidation – and wonder of wonders! – the lenses stayed in my head and I was able to see quite well. A whole new world opened up for me beneath the sea – and, while it was beautiful, it pretty much kept me out of the ocean for the next 20 years. I’ll tell you why (now that I’ve got your attention).
I went paddling down to where Grant was and put my head in the water. When I emerged, I said, “Sweetie, I think we’re surrounded by barracudas.” He said, “What are you talking about? There are no barracudas here. Those are needlefish – gars. They won’t hurt you.” And, once again, his head disappeared under water.
He popped up rather abruptly. “Holy shit,” he began (never a good way to start). “We’re surrounded by barracudas!”, at which time we both got in the water and started swimming furiously to shore covering our private parts. I actually put one hand on top of the other – because one of my hands wore a very shiny diamond ring that I was afraid would excite the barracudas – and I cupped them on my udders, using them like rudders – and kicked like a madman. The guy in the beach chair was no longer there or I’m sure he would’ve come running to assist us. Somehow.
We had two other snorkeling experiences that day. In one, Grant and I took out a kayak and paddled our way to a private cove where we, once again, leaped into the water with our parts hanging out. That’s when we found the school of lobsters. Jesus.
So, later that day, we got on a snorkeling boat and visited a coral reef decked out in hazmat suits. Only kidding about the hazmat suits – but we were no longer naked.
Our resort was really pretty tame, especially compared to the resort across the street where people were freely fornicating in the lobby. At our resort, people were generally very well behaved – except for one woman who mistook our resort for the joint across the street and attempted to blow her husband in the communal hot tub without drowning. I, happily, missed this display. Grant caught the show, however, and reported it to me in detail. Who needed to go hot-tubbing in that heat, anyway? Not I.
The same woman and her husband showed up to the “come as you are” pajama party in which most people, apparently, slept in the nude. Big surprise. Grant wore one of my slips that came down to his upper thighs and I wore a black lace teddy, which, for some reason, was more embarrassing than showing up in nothing at all. The hot tub blow-job queen showed up naked, of course, and attempted to pole dance. She learned that this hotel had its limits. She was told that only clothed people could slime around on the pole. Go figure. So, she mounted her sizable husband instead.
Grant won a hat for having the best “sleeping outfit” – don’t ask where he put his room key – and played the piano for the writhing masses.
The resort mostly housed straight couples but there were a few gay guys in the mix. They fell in love with my husband and ran after him, squealing “Oh, piano man!” for the rest of the trip. I could’ve been dipped in chocolate. They only had eyes for him – especially after he got his WASPy hair corn-rowed. My Isro gives me a natural Rasta look – but I had a couple of braids and beads added for fun. And orange nail polish. And I still got ignored. Blame it on the bossa nova. Or, in this case, the reggae.
When we weren’t running around naked with strangers, we spent quiet times alone. It was our honeymoon, after all. Unfortunately, my husband used to look like a drug runner, which was a real come-on to the local drug peddlers. Every day, Grant would sit out on our private dock and meditate. And every day, a little boat would pull up to the dock with a couple of guys trying to interest Grant in their vast array of heroine, cocaine and ganja. Each day, Grant sat there like he was made of wood, but the boatmen wouldn’t be ignored. Man, were they persistent.
So, the stoned security guard finally chased them away. He befriended my husband. They had long, philosophical conversations and the guard gave Grant a gift. It was a talking stick that he wanted Grant to carry back to the States.
Grant kept the stick for one night and got terribly sick from its energy. Who knows what was buried inside of it – or was slathered on top of it. He had to figure out a way to return the stick without offending the security guard. He finally told the man that he wasn’t strong enough to carry his stick. I hope he said stick. The man took it back with a sad smile but I sense we avoided a long jail sentence in a Jamaican prison.
So – that was 21 years ago. We’ve had a couple of other public nudity experiences since then, but none as colorful as the ones on our honeymoon – and not as dangerous. I mean, what is likely to bite your genitals off at a Japanese health spa? Koi? I don’t think so.
So, Happy Anniversary to my loving husband who looks even better now than he did on our honeymoon. I bet he’d still fit into my slip.
Twenty-one years ago, my husband and I spent our honeymoon in Negril, Jamaica where we got to run around naked with a bunch of strangers and have close encounters with dangerous marine life and drug peddlers. We also had a wonderful time. After all these years, I’m happy to say that our parts are still intact and we still love each other – even with tan lines.
© Copyright 2017, Mindy Littman Holland. All rights reserved.