It’s surprising to me how fragile men look with their clothes off. Not that I haven’t seen men naked before, but watching them now, shuffling around by the harsh light of day — these hairless primates with their delicate, dangly and fallible sex — I wonder how the male of our species ever amounted to anything. Women — with their flexible bodies, their strategic fat deposits, their neatly stowed reproductive organs — make more sense to me. Clearly, it was a man who first decided to cover up.

By early afternoon my visual cortex has already adapted to the new environment, replacing penises with fig leaves and rendering retirees nearly invisible below the neck. I am thankful for this. Les and I take brunch by the pool, she in a sarong and I in swim trunks (having decided it’s not the best idea to mix hot food with a bare lap). The black couple who witnessed last night’s exploits join us, both of them in swimwear. We bond over Family Guy quotes. The husband, Jose, tells us he works as a contractor in Dubai. This is their first trip to the resort. Jose’s wife, Crystal, is shy about her body. It’s a shame, because she’s beautiful.

Les and I take a catamaran out on the low seas. The wind is decent and the twin-hulled vessel gently slices through the calm ocean, the water rushing by the boat making a pleasant sound like, say, a babbling brook. The resort looks so ordinary from out here — nice enough, sure, but nondescript. Not at all like the fucky-sucky place we’ve come to know. It would be easy — and perhaps disastrous — to mistake Desire for the vanilla resort down the shore.

“Was it something I did?” Les asks me.

“What?”

“Last night. With the guy.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then maybe he wasn’t into me.”

“If anything he was too excited around you. And it probably didn’t help that I was really giving it to his wifey.” I make a few thrusting motions with my hips.

Leslie laughs. “Stop it. You’re turning me on.” We’ve been warned against having sex out here — apparently the sex police patrol the ocean day and night — but I pull down my trunks and we touch each other anyway. “I’m serious though… why don’t you have those problems? You always seem to get what you want out of the women you’re with.”

“Um, hello? How long have we been doing this? Experience helps. I think it’s easier for a man to find some satisfaction with a woman than the other way around… as long as he knows what he’s doing anyway.”

“Because you can just ease her into position and then… ease it in.”

I bite my lower lip at the thought. “Contrary to popular belief, guys are sensitive creatures. I mean, women can use a little lube, y’know, to get going but if our dicks betray us we’re fucked. Or not. And our dicks do betray us… in many ways.” When I turn the boat into the wind the sail goes limp. Cap’n Lex gives the order: “Okay, come about.” We both scramble to the padded seats on the other hull and I let out the sail to catch the wind again. “Anyway, one doesn’t become an international playboy overnight.”

My woman smiles. “Like you?”

“Hey, I wasn’t naming names.”

“So how do I find these guys — the guys with skills? Do I have to fuck the whole resort?”

“Heh. They’d probably erect a statue in your honor.”

Being Latin and speaking the language of the natives, Leslie proves quite popular with the Mexican men who staff the resort. After we return the catamaran, the young studs who handle the boats offer to take her out for a private lesson — without me of course. She politely declines.

Happy hour at the hot tub has already taken on the weight of tradition for us. When the last traces of direct sunlight disappear poolside we migrate to the rooftop, sure we’ll find familiar and friendly faces. There’s talk of a group dinner. Though I promised myself I’d take each moment as it comes, I’m already thinking about what other sorts of group activities we might get ourselves into tonight. “I have a simple philosophy when it comes to this place,” I’m telling Frank. “Just gimme a drink and point me in the direction of something sexy.”

He laffs, teetering back and forth in the whirlpool. “Listen to this guy! Yesterday he was all like ‘I’m just here to relax’ and now he’s ready to throw down.”

A lot changes in a day. For instance, at the poolside buffet I discover that our reputation precedes us. “Oh, we’re just soft swingers. You guys are hardcore.” The words come tumbling from the smiling mouth of a tall, slender woman in an elegant cocktail dress.

“Hardcore? You’re the one with a flogger in your hand,” I respond, eyeing her leather accessory.

Ellen is older than me — by how much I don’t know. A dirty blonde in more ways than one, she’s the MILF to end all MILFs. Halfway through dinner she’s got Leslie bent over a chair, the flogger cracking against my fiancée’s round cheeks. When the hot mom takes her turn over the chair, her tight bethonged ass turning a deeper shade of red with each blow, I’m wondering what precisely she might have meant by soft swingers. The show ends. Spontaneous applause erupts all around us.

Tonight the disco is like a high school dance — and certain swinger meet-n-greets in the city — packed with anxious couples clinging to the walls and staring at each other. Everyone is waiting for something to happen: a room full of voyeurs posing a rather obvious dilemma. I begin to wonder whether last night wasn’t a fluke… and then banish the thought as Leslie takes center stage with a busty Latin girl. The husband, a barrel-chested gentleman in what I would guess to be his late forties, strikes up a conversation with me. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah,” I say, watching the cocoa-skinned women undulate in each other’s arms. They’re of similar height and build. It’s like watching twins.

The gentleman and I exchange the obligatory pleasantries. When I learn that he and his wife Jasmin are from Guadalajara I raise an eyebrow. I decide to give them bonus points for not being American. He surveys the room, shrugging. “Everyone’s standing around tonight. Where are the swingers?”

“I was just thinking that myself.”

“We’re going to the jacuzzi,” he says, which is swinger lingo for I wanna see your girl naked.

“We’ll join you,” I respond, which is swinger lingo for Likewise.

In the jacuzzi I find out this mother of three from Guadalajara speaks no English. I turn to Leslie, ever the faithful translator. “What did she just say?”

“She wants you to stick your fingers in her.”

Good thing everyone here speaks sex. Jasmin takes my hand and presses it between her thighs. Leslie devours the girl’s breasts as my fingers find their target. The husband plays with Leslie from behind but I cannot be certain of what’s going on back there. Shadowy forms twist beneath the churning waters, the lights occasionally bringing bits of anatomy into focus as bodies rise to the surface. I lose myself in the bubbling cauldron. When I snap to I’m riding Leslie from behind, the top of her rump barely breaking the surface tension. To my right I notice Ellen and her husband huddled together in one of the jacuzzi’s darkened cul-de-sacs. They watch in expressionless silence.

We’re having a smoke on the landing outside the Mexican couple’s room, peeking in now and then to watch Jasmin worship at the altar of her husband’s cock. “You ready?” I ask my fiancée.

“Got the lube?”

“Yup. And a hard cock, apparently.”