I have to dress different. I have to act different. I have to grow a mustache and get all kinds of robes and lotions and I need a new bedspread and new curtains. I have to get thick carpeting and weird lighting. I have to get new friends. Orgy friends. I’ve become an orgy guy.

-Lex Konrad

Our room has a view that faces inland, overlooking the garden and the crocodile pond and the rickety covered bridge that guards the entrance to what will become our private paradise. From the balcony I can observe the comings-and-goings of the airport shuttles. The room is luxurious enough. The mini-bar is free. Already I have a feeling we won’t be spending much time in here.

Before we consider stripping out of our travel clothes, Leslie and I take a lightning-quick tour of the resort’s manicured grounds. Signs implore us to keep off the grass. There are naked people everywhere, of all shapes and sizes, their furtive glances hungrier than I’d expected. Suddenly I feel self-conscious in my jeans and long-sleeved shirt. We’re fresh meat.

I change into garish swim trunks. Leslie changes into a little patterned dress, forgoing panties. When we crash into the calm, azure waters of the Caribbean we’re both overcome with laughter. “This is silly,” I say, and I return to the shore to remove my shorts, feeling pleasantly aware of the wind caressing my nether regions. Leslie follows suit, and back in the water I hold her to me, grasping her round bottom and entering her. Here in the ocean the friction isn’t quite right.

We stop by the pool bar for margaritas and meet a very naked couple from Bermuda, the man tall and black and lean, the woman shorter and white and pornish in appearance. They’ve been here ten days. On a lark I ask them whether they know the Bermudan couple we met at our first orgy three years ago. Of course they do. “Bermuda is small and boring,” laments the girl.

The jacuzzi is conveniently situated upon the rooftop of our building. As afternoon fades to early evening in the leisurely way that only seems possible in the tropics, Les and I ascend the stairs, steeling ourselves for whatever madness may await us up there. When we reach the top, a little breathless, we gawk at the sight of the naked vacationers lounging around the large U-shaped tub, we smile at the sight of the swim-up bar, we gasp at the sight of magnificent four-poster beds, their gauzy white canopies blowing in the breeze. Beyond the glass panes that shield the jacuzzi from the wind, the ocean stretches out below us, perfectly still to the horizon. “Pretty classy, huh?” I remark to Les as we stand by the tub stripping naked.

“And to think I hesitated,” she responds.

Going to a swingers resort when you haven’t come in three days is like going to the supermarket on an empty stomach. I feel hypersexual, and only one thought comes to mind as I lower myself, naked, into the jacuzzi, feeling as if everyone’s eyes must be upon me: Don’tgetabonerdon’tgetabonerdon’tgetaboner. It’s an incantation I will find myself repeating many times over the days and nights that follow. I wince as the hot water rises up to lap against my balls. It appears I won’t have to worry about making babies any time soon.

The scene in the jacuzzi is tamer, perhaps, than I’d expected. A lithe young woman sits perched upon the ledge, her legs spread wide, as her man teases her, yet for the most part people are laughing and talking, drinks in hand. In another corner, closer to the swim-up bar, the silver-haired crowd lounges about discussing grandchildren or retirement or whatever it is old folks talk about. They carry on, blissfully unaware of their nudity, and in a way I envy them. “Look at that,” I say, nudging Les. “The early-bird specials over there. Maybe we’ll be like them one day.” My fiancée just smiles.

We meet a couple of forty-somethings from New York, Frank and Lana, married veteran swingers who’ve been here before. “So whaddya think of the place?” asks the lightly bearded Frank in his New Yorkah drawl.

“Well, Frank, I think I’ve already seen enough penises to last me a lifetime.”

We all laugh. Lana’s shapely tits jiggle. As the sun recedes into the great Yucatan frontier we trade swinger war stories. Life is good.

I spy a girl standing on the ocean side of the jacuzzi, her curvaceous form silhouetted against the sky, her body every bit as soft as the cumulonimbus formations in the distance. She’s the kind of pretty, corn-fed creature that can only hail from America’s heartland. She makes eye contact, then smiles and looks away. It may be the booze or the hot water, but I feel a swelling in my breast, a kind of giddiness I haven’t felt since summer camp. There’s something magical about this place.

The girl and her husband swim over to our side of the jacuzzi and strike up a conversation. I learn they’re from Arizona, they’re in their twenties and they’ve been married since eighteen. The boyish looking hubby is named Ryan. The girl’s name is Lafonda. “Are you black?” I ask, staring into the pretty girl’s hazel eyes.

She smiles. “No.”

“Because you have a black girl’s name.”

“Haha. I have a little Cherokee in me.”

Ryan explains that he and Lafonda had their first swinging experience this week at another resort. “We came over here from Blue Bay yesterday but last night was kind of dull.”

They won’t suffer from boredom tonight. Lana returns from the bar with vials of tequila in hand. “Okay guys,” she says. “We’re doing body shots!”

I turn to Frank. “I see why you married this woman. She’s quite the instigator.”

We’ve been here less than three hours and already I’m slobbering tequila off three sets of nipples. As the girls take a turn on my nipples Lana’s breast quite innocently brushes against the head of my cock. The underwater lights have come on. Everything’s clearly visible. I look down. “Where did that come from?”

Lana grabs my penis. “It looks like someone’s happy,” she announces.

“I’ll take care of that,” says Leslie, diving underwater and wrapping her pillowy lips around me. I decide it’s only fair to return the favor, and so I take a deep breath and dive between my girlfriend’s legs. When I come up for air, spitting chlorinated water like a fountain, I notice little corn-fed Lafonda sitting next to us, her legs parted slightly. On automagic pilot now, I let my hands wander the length of her body, from her pert nipples down her soft belly to the landing strip of pubic hair between her creamy thighs. Ryan fingers his wife. I penetrate my fiancée, my toes scraping against the jacuzzi’s tiled bottom in a desperate bid for traction. Everything around us is a blur. People might be watching. I don’t know where Lana and Frank are.

“Your wife is a hot piece of ass,” I hear myself saying to Ryan. Anywhere else this might be considered an off-color remark, but not here in paradise.

“So’s yours,” he responds, and we switch partners. Lafonda’s moaning softly now as I grasp her firm buttocks and delicately probe her with my fingers. She’s slick, even under the hot water. I hold my breath again and treat her to my tongue. The whole time I’m thinking: I love newbies. When I finally emerge from the water Leslie looks at me and smiles, evidently satisfied with the attention she’s getting from Ryan.

And he says, “Shall we go to the beds over there?”

I rise from the tub, shivering, standing erect and, well, erect in the Mexican night, thinking how strange it is that just hours ago I never would have considered doing this, being this. We lay out fresh towels and stretch out on the mattress. Leslie takes me into her mouth. Lafonda bends over, bobbing up and down in her husband’s lap. I tease Lafonda from behind, having completely forgotten myself and where I am. Moments later Ryan’s in the bathroom cleaning up—his wife’s loving attentions evidently having done the trick—and I’m on my knees before Leslie with my arm wrapped around Lafonda’s waist. I recall the last time the breeze felt this good against my balls—in Tulum, not far from here but many years ago. The pretty brunette lies on her side to watch. I offer myself to her and when she parts her lips everything is so soft… so perfectly soft.

I can feel it in my spine, my buttocks, my chest. My cock is electric. This heavenly creature is going to make me come. The machinery of the universe grinds to a halt; I sense the rip in spacetime I first experienced during the recent summer of my discontent. Is this really happening? I’m thinking, and then I’m pondering the cosmological constant and before long it dawns on me that I’m spurting in Lafonda’s mouth. I uncouple from her and finish on the girls’ faces, my orgasmic contractions pulsing in great waves. “You got it in my eye!” Les cries out, laughing.

I haven’t come in three days.