I’m sure I’ve had more sex on my honeymoon trips than most married couples.
Back in 1999, I received a promotion at the number one bridal publication in the world. Up until that point, I’d been assigned puff pieces about flower arrangements and how to find the perfect tux for your big day. Bored to death, I gave the editor in chief an ultimatum: Let me do honeymoon travel writing (one-third of the phonebook-sized magazine) or I’d look for another job. She said yes, and I was off and running to the plane.
I realized travel pieces for bridal publications are also puff pieces—consisting of approximately 500 words on jacuzzi nights and spa-treatment days—but I knew it would allow me to see parts of the world I’d never experienced, stay in five-star hotel honeymoon suites, and get pampered like nobody’s business. Since I was in my early 30s, gay, and single, it was the perfect opportunity to see the world on someone else’s dime and linen sheets. And while I didn’t take the job to meet men, they ostensibly became much like the welcome baskets hotels offered upon arrival—a lovely perk I grew to depend on.
Caribbean honeymoons are a staple for 20-something newlyweds in the Midwest, and I got assigned to the Bahamas (though technically not part of the Caribbean), Jamaica, the ABC Islands, and the Vegas of Mexico, also known as Cancun. I often traveled alone, though the three times I went to Jamaica, a notoriously homophobic locale, I brought along a female friend who posed as my wife in order to ward off suspicious glances.
At a Jamaican resort famous for housing rock stars and big honeymoon spenders, a sexy masseuse known for his killer couples’ massages, asked me if I needed a “private rubdown.” He looked extremely nervous, and I was scared for him: Men were jailed here for giving blow jobs. Later that night, at dinner with the hotel’s gay owner, Peter, I was told not to worry, at his resort—where Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller had visited on their honeymoon—we would be safe. The “private coaching” took place in my honeymoon suite. “Soon come,” is a common expression in Jamaica (meaning, basically, things will arrive in time), and I used it to full advantage.
Once home, this hotel, and countless others, received rave reviews from me, and straight honeymoon couples were heeding my advice and booking trips. I was invited back to virtually every destination I visited. My editors loved my work and, back at the office, we’d stay late picking and choosing which bride and groom photo to go with the hetero-haven suite I’d summed up so nicely.
When I traveled alone, I quickly learned that single American men receive a lot of attention. Waiters, day-tour guides, and cabana boys would ask what room I was in, if I “needed anything else,” or simply follow me back from the pool, ready to drop their shorts before running back home, often to their wives and family. They were always heavenly, their pent-up hormones bursting like the champagne corks I popped at night.
In Cozumel, I ducked into a popular bar for a martini—my drink of choice back then—only to have the sexy-hot bartender ask me if I could show him now to make “the American version,” as spoiled just-marrieds would scream at him when he made the concoction with too much vermouth. I jumped behind the bar to live out my own Cocktail fantasies, apologized for my nation’s patronizing behavior when vacationing, then fucked him behind the counter at 2am closing time. I did it the Caribbean way…unhurried.
The windsurfer instructor in Bonaire was just about the best teacher I’ve ever had, and I didn’t learn a thing about the sport. In Aruba, the hotel’s point-person gave me a tour of the pool area and a more intimate tour of his boyfriend. In Playa Del Carmen I met Titus, the Greek-Mexican son of the hotel owner, and we developed a hot affair that, today, still ranks as one of the best I’ve ever had. I’d visit Cancun, then take a “personal day” to explore this neighboring city’s wonderful beaches, restaurants, and romantic streets. Titus never left my side.
That Titus put the “God” in Greek God was almost as exciting as his closeted status. I was his first, he was about 25, and Call Me by My Name had nothing on us—him terrified his father would discover us frolicking in the Caribbean, me a bit anxious someone would report my antics to the offices back home. Instead, his dad invited me to dinner at the hotel, wife and Titus in tow, and we talked about the changing spending habits of honeymoon visitors.
On a side trip to Cuba—the Mexican tourism board I was working for offered the illegal trip as a bonus—I met and fell madly in love with Luis, a dancer on the right-out-of-a-Humphrey-Bogart-movie cruise ship that took me there. He barely spoke English, I don’t speak Spanish, and I’ve never communicated with a lover quite so well. We were both hopelessly smitten, and, when I flew back to Mexico a year later to meet his ship, I found out that the Cuban government had decided not to let the dancers embark. I gave a love note to some crew member and have no idea if Luis ever read it. I’m still devastated over the loss.
In Curaçao, I met a billionaire hotel owner who told me two things over our bodyguard-supervised dinner: One, that he was dying of cancer, and two, that I was one of the most attractive men he’d ever met. I came back a year later to sleep in his $10,000-a-night honeymoon suite, which he called “homey.”
Cancun became my beat, so to speak, and one year I traveled there six times, staying in about five different hotels in twice as many days. I loved going to that city, mostly because, after a busy day of talking to bridal planners and going over chapel options and looking at the best beach spots for a long-distance wedding, the gay tourist board guide would take me downtown, where the locals danced and sang got up and did their thing. Gay bars were as hot as the nights, and, in most of them, the same scantily dressed hunks who greeted you at the door also served your drinks, later danced on the pole, and really later, asked if you wanted to spend time in one of the backrooms.
I got to know two of them: Gerardo and Eric, boyfriends who, together, could have wiped up the Chippendale’s floor with their bodies and charm. I told them they needed to move to New York, where’d they make a fortune as go-go boys. Neither had ever left their hometown.
On my last night in Cancun one trip, approximately two weeks after 9/11 (I refused to cancel the visit), we hit the bar amid pats on the back and words of condolences and a general, sweet sense of acknowledging the tragedy in my home city and state. My guide came up to me with Gerardo and Eric, and said, “Pick one. It is our gift.”
They both showed up at my five-star around 2:30am. I was woken up by the nighttime security guard, Manuel, who called to announce that two friends were here to see me. I’d met Manuel earlier in the evening, and he looked like one of those porn-star characters that don’t exist in real life: Latin, hunky, decked out in cop gear and a gun, with a menacing gaze and gravel-low voice.
Still drunk from the bar, our fun lasted till about 4am, and I gave Gerardo and Eric my phone number. No threesome could have ever been more innocent in its affection and mutual admiration. Drifting back to sleep, finally, the phone rang again. It was Manuel, telling me he was familiar with the men who’d come to see me.
That’s it, I thought. I’ll be fired, humiliated, maybe arrested. How will I ever explain this when I call home for bail money, if they even have bail in these parts?
My hands were shaking, and not from the alcohol, and I tried to think of a quick explanation that might help me from the depravity sure to follow. Manuel stopped me.
“I have a break now. May I come up?”
He came and we did it, and all my fears were shattered. I was living in a secret underworld, gay James Bond flick—the Bond Boys an antidote to the world’s espionage. That every business trip was all to sell hetero-normal honeymoon made every “workation” trip top secret in my head, in places where my true identity could be revealed at any time.
Professionally, I was on assignment for an extremely conservative bridal magazine, and I never missed a deadline, never had an awkward talking-to, was never anything but the American reporter known for perfectionism and tough demands. If my suite wasn’t grade A, I’d insist on a better one. On arrival, I’d look at itineraries, then cross off the places I didn’t care to see. At dinners, I’d order the most expensive wine on the menu. My write-ups made it worthwhile for the hotels. Personally, I was simply having the fucking time of my life.
I called Gerardo and Eric shortly after I arrived back in the states, and the man who answered the phone said they moved to Canada with the hope of eventually coming to New York. I’ve never heard from them since. Titus is married to a woman, found God, and lives in Florida. Luis married a Mexican man so he could move to Cancun, of all places, and one night I met the deathly glances of the husband in a bar, sans Luis. “Don’t approach him,” said my guide. “He knows about you and Luis and is very jealous.” My heart still aches when I think that, ultimately, our two countries kept us apart. The Curaçao billionaire died recently, the cancer finally winning out after years of borrowed time. We remained wonderful friends and I miss him like those perfect seas.
In 2003, I was fired from the job just as it was revealed to the press that I’d been asked to write a gay wedding book. My boss and her superiors thought that an openly gay man writing for their straight wedding magazine was bad for business.
They never knew about my extracurricular honeymoon activities, and, within a few years, were all let go in one of those major publishing upheavals. So, while they might have had the last laugh when it came to me, I’m the one who made it out with a happy ending. I don’t regret a thing.