Adults at Play at Hedonism

And so here I am, an hour into my first day at Hedonism and already stripped of my Speedos and my dignity, wondering when the authorities are going to come down on me for public indecency. Oh wait. Here they hassle you if you're not naked. I try to relax.

But it turns out that nudity loves company, and after a few minutes I'm able to mingle more or less casually along the waterline, where people wearing nothing at all are busily staking out the best beach chairs. It's not long since the last of the all-night partyers fled from the dawn and gave over the beach to the first sun worshipers. Now, flotillas of the latter drift on mats, arms outstretched, not a strap or a string between them and the Caribbean sun.

Around the adjacent pool, almost every chaise longue is occupied by a bare bottom. Behind the swim-up bar, a clatter of activity finally produces the day's first whir of a blender. That, and the abrupt burp of syncopated calypso from the bar's sound system, are calls to action for the half-dozen naked people milling in the waist-deep water, who suddenly converge on the bar like a pack of piranhas. A middle-aged, lawyerly looking man wearing an expensive watch and nothing else eases into the water, careful not to splash the small pipe and lighter in his hand. He lights and puffs as he wades over to the bar and the ripe scent of marijuana smoke drifts over the pool.

This is Hedonism stretching its arms and stirring for another day in the life of Gomorrah.

So far, though, I don't feel in any danger of turning into a pillar of salt. Mostly everyone is just talking, a placid crowd of decidedly average naked people, black, white, tattoos, Rolexes. Some are thin, most are not. It's the kind of scene you might see at a company picnic if Casual Friday policies ever go too far.

"The real action usually cranks up about 4 or 5 in the afternoon," says Steve, a mortgage broker from Washington state, who -- like most Hedonism guests interviewed for this story -- asked that his last name not be used. "That's when the exhibitionists have had enough to drink to really get going."

He and his wife, Laura, have been here for a week, and they haven't left the resort once. Most of the time they've spent in two lounge chairs planted in the shallow end. As he speaks, I watch a forty-something redhead plant an enormous fake penis on the bar as she orders a Red Stripe beer. She doesn't explain. I don't ask. I'm the only one taking notes, which makes me feel like the weirdo.

By 11, a line has formed at the slushy machine that dispenses frozen daiquiris. Valerie, a 22-year-old waitress from Southern California, surveys the scene of building depravity. She faces the third day of her first trip to Hedonism with a mix of anticipation and worry. Her standards of behavior, she says, have been steadily fading -- along with her tan lines -- since she checked in.

"So far I haven't done anything I can't tell my boyfriend about," she says, a bit groggy from a night at the disco. "But I still have four more days."

What she's done so far barely registers on the Hedonism scale of naughtiness and nudity: a little topless volleyball, a lot of bikini-free beach time, smoking some of the pot (which she says she doesn't do at home) that is easily bought from boats floating just off the beach. That's it. Okay, she did let one guy lick beer off her naked body to the whoops of the poolside crowd. Oh, and she did find herself frankly enthralled by an X-rated public display of affection one night in the infamous "grotto," a swim-in cave attached to the nude pool. But that's really all. So far.

"I couldn't help but watch," she says, marveling at her own hidden brazen depths. "It's like Temptation Island here. They keep you coming back for more and more things you would never do at home."

And come back they do -- 10, 20, sometimes 40 times. Hedonism II -- or Hedo, as its regulars call it -- has built the most loyal following of any all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean, drawing a repeat-visitor rate of 40 percent compared with a regional average of less than 20 percent, according to the hotel's statistics. There are hundreds of "repeaters" who book the same weeks every year, joining the same group of revelers. They form formal tribes with names ("Bubbly Bares," "Pirates of the Caribbean"), dues, newsletters, Web sites and even off-season reunions back in the States. Few clubs without Greek letters in their names offer such opportunities for organized, regularly scheduled revelry.