BY DAVY ROTHBART  July 18, 2017

My friends from the Jacuzzi, Rob and Laura, are definitely not here for senseless rabbit fucking. They're not even swingers—not yet—but they're…intrigued by the idea. They've poked around on the Internet, they've even posted a profile on a swingers site, but nothing much had come of it. They figured Desire Pearl, a resort far from home and stocked with other frisky couples, might be a fine, low-risk place to indulge some of that curiosity.

After dinner, I milled about with them at the bar in the lobby. The evening's sartorial theme—a nightly ritual that seemed a little surprising at a nude resort—was "Animal Print." This meant that women donned sexy animal-print tops and high-cut animal-print skirts, while the men, evidently immune to the notion of theme nights, wore their standard dress shirts and slacks. The lobby bar had the same cheesy feel of any upscale South Beach hotel. But there was a powerful, illicit charge in the air.

Pretty soon, a guy started talking to Rob while sneaking glances at Laura, sizing her up. Then he pointed over to his own wife at the other end of the bar. This is how the flirting and mingling generally goes, keeping to a strange, if logical, rhythm. While the men seem to handle any initial negotiations, according to the people I talked to, it's the women who ultimately call most of the shots. Finding a match isn't as easy as it might seem. The quadrangle of chemistry—known as "double double-dating"—requires everybody to reach agreement. Which may explain why there seemed to be more talking going on than fucking.

By ten, everyone had moved through a leather door into the dance club, where, up on stage, I spotted a dead ringer for Rivers Cuomo, the Weezer frontman, naked save for a leopard-print loincloth, freaking his scrawny girlfriend. The DJ, who told me his name was Lorenzo, seemed to have been directed to play the lamest string of global hits imaginable—which spoke more, I think, to the tastes of the resort's guests than to any deficit of Lorenzo's. When I asked him for some hip-hop, he played the Black Eyed Peas, and the dance floor cleared. "This is not a rap crowd," he explained.

Before long, I fell into conversation with a friendly doctor from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and his cheerful dark-haired wife. To the side of the room, he motioned toward a set of red curtains that I hadn't seen before. Through the gauzy fabric, I could see two bodies in motion, gently writhing. "That's the Sin Room. Have a look-see!" the doctor shouted in my ear, in his robust Canadian accent. "Go oon!" 

I watched a man sitting on the edge of the tub receive the most peculiar hand job imaginable from a woman he'd just met while their spouses monitored the action close by, laughing....

​I slid my way in. The space was no larger than a living room, hot and dark, lit by a pair of dim red bulbs. Futon mattresses bound in white canvas and pocked with dubious stains curved on three walls; in the middle of the room, from the ceiling, a sex swing dangled. And there, on one mattress, less than ten feet from me, was Weezer—naked like a newborn, except for his stylish horn-rimmed glasses. He reclined on his back, his dick stiff as a zucchini, as his skinny girlfriend straddled him, grinding away. "Say It Ain't So," indeed!

A tingle of uneasy titillation brought me back to the moment when, at 8 years old, I walked in on my parents having sex. It was the briefest of glimpses—just bodies under the covers—but my dad came down to my room 20 minutes later to have a talk with me. (Thanks, Dad.) More than 30 years had passed, and until today I'd never seen another couple have sex in real life, right in front of me. It was raw, nasty, animalistic, and strangely, utterly captivating.

Only after a minute did I realize that there was another couple in the room "sinning" as well, an older Mexican guy gratifying his lady in the oral fashion, working at her from an odd sideways angle, as though frozen in a perverse game of Twister. How could that feel right for either one of them? As if aware of the passions afire in this curtained sex chamber, the DJ slyly changed the track to Boyz II Men's "I'll Make Love to You." Props, Lorenzo.

Before the song ended, I escaped, back through the curtains, suddenly desperate to unsee all that I'd just witnessed. The bartender spotted me and flashed me a look that said he'd seen bewilderment like mine before. "Tequila?" he asked. I nodded vigorously, and he poured me two quick shots.

​Laura and Rob were sprawled naked on a pair of deck chairs, reading by the pool when I found them the next day. Close by, dozens of other naked bodies tanned in the sun and bobbed in the shallow water. A few guests knocked a volleyball around. Others held spots at a swim-up bar.

Like many resorts with a certain price tag, Desire Pearl does a lot to keep guests entertained—hosting a schedule of activities that includes everything from yoga to beer pong to dancing, often with a sexy twist. The emphasis on careful programming—games, theme nights, special events—seemed to me to give shape and rhythm to the guests' experience, so that the place feels more like summer camp for luxury-minded and sexually woke adults and less like just a collection of horny strangers sitting in a pool all day, trying to sort out who's down to fuck.

A young, energetic South African woman named Kayla, wearing a skimpy bikini—one of Desire Pearl's designated "party hosts"—wielded a cordless mic and began leading a trio of couples through a game she called Human Sundae. The three women were doused by their partners in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. When Kayla gave the word, the men began licking at the toppings. "All right," Kayla cried into the mic, looking out across a sea of naked, half-drunk sunbathers. "These guys here are asking for some help. Who's gonna step up?"

At that, as though waiting for his signal, a silver-haired George Plimpton-looking motherfucker rose from the pool, his dick peeking out from between his legs like a curious albino bat. He strode purposely toward one of the women covered in dessert toppings—a young woman, maybe 40 or 50 years his junior—and bent toward her, eagerly lapping Hershey's syrup from her breasts. A moment later, he moved between her legs and started devouring her. I'm not sure who, in this situation, could be considered the gnarliest—the old-timer with his face buried in his "sundae"; the young lady, arching her back, showing off surgically enhanced breasts, and clearly enjoying the moment; her muscle-bound boyfriend, beaming with incongruous pride; or myself, lurking in the shadows, 50 feet away, staring without shame.

Finally, Plimpton lifted himself away. "Great work!" Kayla gushed. She squirted some chocolate sauce on his dick. "Okay, ladies, who's gonna take care of that?" An older woman knelt on the pool deck and gobbled him down. Perhaps the weirdest thing about the whole scene was how few guests took notice of such a spectacle. Rob, deep in his book, missed most of the action. As Plimpton lolled his head back in pleasure, the volleyball game in the pool continued unabated.

After a few lazy hours poolside, Rob and Laura had to tend to a critical errand: walking down the beach in their swimsuits to take pictures of themselves at a normal neighboring resort.

After all, for anyone with a social-media account, it would seem super suspicious to be on vacation in Mexico for a week without posting any pictures. And so this chore is repeated routinely by Desire Pearl guests, who nab a few snaps to feed the Facebook and Instagram beasts.

For many visitors, secrecy is serious business. High school guidance counselors, pediatricians, small-town business owners—they all feel, reasonably, that their careers and reputations would be threatened if folks back home knew what they were up to. Other logistical concerns crop up, too: If you're leaving your kids with the grandparents so you can play Human Sundae in Cancún, what sort of emergency contact number do you leave them? All week, I heard people trading tips on how to tackle these sorts of concerns—logistical anxieties that fell well beyond the ordinary travelers' dilemmas.

​It took a few days, but I noticed something odd about the nocturnal rhythms of the resort. Every night around ten, the dance club would open up and quickly grow packed. Lorenzo would do his thing, and then, within an hour, the place would empty out. Where had everyone gone? One night, I resolved to find out.

I made my way from the club and heard the murmur of laughter from beyond a row of tropical hedges. I veered down a narrow path, following the sounds, and slid around a high wall, emerging beside the mammoth Jacuzzi on the edge of Desire's campus. Instantly, I absorbed the wild scene: All six cabana beds were filled with naked couples, everybody fornicating in various permutations, while the hot tub was packed with 80 or 90 nude men and women, cast in the eerie glow of submerged lights, lustily slamming drinks. If Happy Hour had seemed lively, this was utterly bacchanalian.

Everyone was drunkenly chatting, laughing, flirting, and making out. It felt strange to be lingering there, watching from the fringes, so without a second thought, I grabbed a whiskey from the bartender, dumped off my clothes, and hopped right in. Being totally naked, which just a few days before had made me squirm, now felt completely natural.

The scene was like a Mardi Gras melee on Bourbon Street—except everyone was showing everyone else their tits. I met a couple from West Virginia here on their honeymoon (what?!)and a doctor and his wife from small-town Idaho, with eight kids, who said they weren't swingers, only nudists who enjoy the anything-goes atmosphere at Desire.

Although hookups are technically meant to happen only on the cabana beds and not in the Jacuzzi, we were well past midnight and the rules had started to bend. I watched a man sitting on the edge of the tub receive the most peculiar hand job imaginable from a woman he'd just met while their spouses monitored the action close by, laughing. Rather than stroke his dick up and down in the classic style, the woman was beating her palm across the head of his penis—rubbing it back and forth—like someone slapping the control ball on the vintage golf arcade game Golden Tee. As the guy struggled to maintain a boner, his wife offered the woman encouragement: "Maybe…more gentle?"

This was little help. Soon she was rubbing one side of the guy's penis, as though sanding an irksome spot on an old wooden chair leg. She seemed puzzled that the guy's hard-on continued to wilt. "I don't get it," she said. "My husband loves it like this! Right, Randy?"

I kept drinking, making friends and marveling at all the wonderful weirdos around me, until I realized I'd closed down the party and was guzzling pink margaritas in the world's largest hot tub, all by myself. Back in my room, I pounded some water and descended into a string of Google wormholes: What is the weirdest HJ technique that actually feels good? Can you catch STDs from a hot tub?

​The next afternoon, Rob and Laura listened with deep interest to my stories of the late-night Jacuzzi scene. Their own longing for a spirited hookup had so far led to nothing. "We'll have to check it out," Rob said. Earlier, they'd stepped out onto the patio of their suite and had sex. It didn't cause much of a stir, but the thought of passing strangers' gazes tickled their skin and gave them an exhibitionist's thrill, all the same. "Not like a big crowd was watching," Rob laughed. "We're not the hottest folks here."

The hottest people at Desire Pearl, of course, are the staff. A young waiter told me he's propositioned by guests on at least a weekly basis, offered gobs of money, even, but fortunately he has a diplomatic out: "It's strictly forbidden," he tells guests. "Even to enter a guest room, I will lose my job." It's a kindly way of turning people down, convenient because it happens to be true. The waiter said that corporate higher-ups will even test new hires with fake guests, offering cash for sexual favors. "We are watched closely," he explained. "We're meant to be friendly…but get too friendly, and you'll be gone."

Rick, the other American who works at Desire Pearl, selling vacation packages, puts it even more simply: "Look, but don't touch." He came to Cancún six years ago for a bachelor party and never left. There's an endless supply of hot local women to pursue, he told me, so keeping his hands off the guests (and theirs off him) hasn't been an issue. Back in New York, he used to hear about folks who'd moved away to some tropical locale and he'd think to himself: It can't be that great, or everyone would be doing it. "I was wrong," he said. "It is that great."

His colleague Daniel agrees. Friendly and quick-witted, with deeply tanned skin and piercing green eyes, Daniel says he doesn't get hit on too often by guests—but that doesn't ease the concerns of his girlfriend. "She's never been here before, so she doesn't know the scene," he explains. "People think it's an orgy, all day, every day. It's really not. Just a lot of naked people. After two weeks, it becomes totally normal."

In his spare time, Daniel is building a business that he expects could have enormous regional potential: a service that provides, for $150, an IV to help resort guests overcome hangovers. "You've spent all this money on a vacation. Why waste time in your room with the shades down and a throbbing headache?"

For the most part, the staff seem to take a quaint, affectionate view of their hedonistic visitors. Kayla, the South African party host, has developed a friendly rapport with many of Desire Pearl's regulars. She bats away the occasional come-on with the skill of a seasoned cocktail waitress. "Me and my boyfriend," she told me, "we're not swingers. And even if we were, it's not like we'd be hooking up with guests—you've got to keep your work and personal life separate."

Kayla says that in her time at the resort, she's made friends from all over the world. "I respect the guests' lifestyle," she told me. "It's not what I choose for myself, but these are smart, fun, extremely successful people. Why shouldn't they take time to play?"

As Rob and Laura's week at Desire drew to a close, their own hope of finding a couple to "play" with was dwindling. But they had one last arrow in their quiver. A couple they'd been chatting with over the past few months in one of Desire's online forums was set to arrive—Mike and Tina, physical therapists from Washington State.

Midnight approached on one of their final nights, and as the club emptied out, Rob and Laura headed for the late-night Jacuzzi. For the first time all week, Laura decided to ditch her bikini bottom and climb into the hot tub fully naked. Suddenly, from the swirl of bodies, shimmering in the pool lights, another couple appeared before them. The fellow—a few years older than them, thin, balding, and handsome, drink in hand—stepped forward with a kindly smile. "Rob? Laura? Is that you? I'm Mike." He shook their hands. "And this is my wife, Tina." She moved into the light, a slender, fine-featured beauty in her late 40s. "So you've been here for a few days already," Mike says. "How's it been going?"

"Fine," Laura said.

"Just all right," said Rob.

" 'Just all right?' " Mike said with a laugh.

He fetched everyone another round from the swim-up bar, and for 20 minutes they all chatted with the relaxed friendliness of two thoughtful, well-educated couples who've met at their kids' soccer game. Rob and Laura seemed a little amped and nervous, drinking harder than I'd seen them drink all week, laughing in strange moments.

Finally, Laura broke the ice. "So…how does this whole thing work?"

Tina smiled warmly. "Work?"

Laura stammered on. "Like, do you guys want to come back to our room? Or something?"

"Oh, sweetie," said Tina, putting an arm around her shoulders. "It's okay. Don't worry. We like you guys, too."

"Tell you what," said Mike, smoothly guiding them toward the perimeter of the pool. "Tina and I were going to get in one of the cabanas. You guys want to join us?"

Rob and Laura nodded enthusiastically, trying to hide their nervousness and excitement, and they trailed behind their new friends toward one of the poolside beds. As Rob later described it, the scene that followed was both wildly pleasurable and thrilling, and at the same time a bit overwhelming. "There was just so much going on," he told me. "I didn't know what to pay attention to!" After Mike and Tina had quietly whispered their good-byes and slipped away, Rob and Laura, alone again on the mattress, listened to the muted sounds of the hot-tub party and the tropical birds caw-caw-ing softly in the night.

"I love you," said Rob. "You were amazing tonight."

"Everyone was amazing," said Laura.

​A few weeks later, with Rob and Laura back home in Wisconsin, I gave them a call. They told me that, for now at least, they've put their swinging days behind them. With work and family, they really don't have the time for trolling swingers' forums or trying to organize dates with strangers. But their trip to Desire had, despite the hefty price tag, scratched a certain itch. Almost daily, one of them will make a reference to Mexico—speaking in code—and they'll wink, trading a naughty smile.

For Laura, there's one moment from their trip in particular that plays in her head, and it has nothing to do with sex. She was on the beach, near those neighboring resorts—a place where the boundary between Desire and the real world was thinnest, where conventionally clothed vacationers could whisper to one another about the well-heeled nudists they'd spotted. Because it had felt more like a public space, Rob and Laura always wore their swimsuits here. And one day, coming out of the water, Laura caught eyes with two ladies walking past. "I think they saw my swimsuit and felt that I was safely one of 'them,' " Laura told me. "But then I saw some people I knew, naked in the sand, and ran over and gave them a big hug."

The ladies seemed scandalized and hurried away in a huff. "Before our trip, I would have been one of those gawking tourists, making judgments," Laura said. "Now, I guess, I'm one of the weird sex perverts. But at the end of the day, it's only our bodies. It's just sex. It's boobs and penises and vaginas. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that."

Source: GQ.com
Davy Rothbart is the author, most recently, of 'My Heart Is an Idiot,' a collection of personal essays.

This piece ran in the August 2017 issue with the title "The Super Rich & Super Naked".