Sun worship in winter

To hell with cancer, let’s see some tan lines

By Jerry Fraser

This winter my wife and I trundled off to my mother-in-law’s condominium in Cancun a few weeks earlier than usual, which is fine when you are looking forward to vacation, but not so fine when you get home and still have two months of Maine winter to contend with.

After I got back, I called my mother-in-law, who is still in Mexico, to tell her that yes, I should have quit my job and stayed in Cancun to work on my tan, as she suggested, but I could not get her. The message on the answering machine, recorded by my wife to a backdrop of Ricky Martin music, said the “casa” was empty because “all the señors and señoritas are at the pool. Adios.”

There are actually three pools at Villas Marlin, which, like everything else in Cancun’s “Zona Hotelera,” arises from the barrier island’s sands and thumbs its nose at the prospect of a hurricane.

I wouldn’t have included three swimming pools in my plans for a beachfront habitation. Even in mid-winter, the Caribbean Sea is warmer than Maine air in mid-August: why bake on a cement pool deck? (I might ask, “Why am I a poor and embittered writer and not a prosperous architect?”)

To be sure, most of the residents at Villas Marlin like having the beach around because it makes for spectacular sunrises and sponsors a wonderful breeze, and its sand is nearly as fine as Ogunquit’s. (Even better, it contains much lime and is almost cool to the touch. Ogunquit Beach, by comparison, will broil your feet like a couple of New York sirloins.)

Every winter my mother-in-law spends six weeks at the middle pool, which is the largest and most populated and has a bar. You will not see her swimming over for a cocktail, however, because the thatched palapa roof offers protection from the sun and her mission, like most of the pool-sitters, is to return to North America — in her case, Ogunquit — looking like an African. To assure herself of all the ultraviolet rays the tropics have to offer she eschews sun blocks and screens and uses intensifiers. Rather than preoccupy herself with fears of melanomas, she adds cigarettes, red meat, and cheese to her daily regimen of UV rays, ensuring that any cancer cells inhabiting her aura won’t know where to turn.

If only life were as simple as rising in the morning and going to the pool. At Villas Marlin, the early bird catches the worm. There are more sunbathers than there are lounge chairs, and more lounge chairs than there are palapas (even diehards need relief from the sun, and shade saves you the hassle of getting wet), so you need to stake your claim by 7 a.m., 6 if it rained the day before. That’s a little early for me to be thinking about sunbathing — Carlos and Charlie’s doesn’t close until 4.

Over the course of the last few years I have observed at Villas Marlin a positive correlation between a sunbather’s age and his or her disdain for warnings about over-exposure to the sun. We have discussed, for instance, my mother-in-law, who in conscience-stricken moments will dab a little SPF two on, and it is her generation that far and away puts in the most hours — at least six or seven a day — by the pool. My wife applies either a 15 or a 30 every morning, depending on her hue, but her sister, who is 10 years younger, re-greases herself a half dozen times a day. In turn, she butters up her own little girls so often they will never know the joy of a tan line.

Speaking of tan lines, not everyone at Cancun has them. Sadly, more people revel in their near-nudity than ought to, given their proportions, a judgment I apply to men and women equally. One afternoon I watched from our condo as a man in a black thong waddled past.

“Look,” I said to my mother-in-law. “That fat bastard has no business in that get-up.” His stomach overhung in the front, and even from our seventh-floor unit I could see that in the back his flabby butt cheeks overlapped the thong.

My mother-in-law put the binoculars on him. “He’s not that fat,” she said. She put the glasses down and lit a cigarette. “He must be a European,” she observed, exhaling smoke. “They never wear anything.”

The ethos of sun worship manifests itself in different ways throughout the Yucatan’s so-called Mayan Riviera. At Playa del Carmen, for instance, about 60 kilometers to the south, I was hard-pressed to find a swimming pool, and the beach was as crowded as Ogunquit’s in July, and the water was chock full of swimmers. Playa del Carmen still has the unaffected free spirit Cancun long ago surrendered to pursue American Express platinum card holders. The hotels are low rise and open air, restaurants prop up tables and chairs in beach sand, and an iced bucket of five Coronas costs 40 pesos — about $4. Right beside me there are three Mexicans making music (in hope of a tip), one singing, one playing the guitar, one playing the harp.

Thirty yards up the beach an American Eric Clapton wannabe and his sidekick are jamming. Surprisingly, they don’t sound bad.

Better still, my mother-in-law observes, the sun is undeterred in its wondrous work. “Look,” she says, fondly gazing at her fellow touristas. “They’re all black.”

Jerry Fraser can be reached at cfraser@maine.rr.com.