ENLARGE




Sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll made me crazy—thank God!



An Erotic Novel



How we lost the right to feel.

Go to the beach.

A Literary Love Affair

Zona de Tolerancia

Plaza 21

Kilometer 21, Mérida Highway. $80 seems to be the usual gringo starting price, depending on the location, but negotiation is customary. Especially desirable will charge up to $150-$200.

Play-for-pay area

This probably belongs under "Night Life," but since that was written mostly by Faera, we felt that it would be inappropriate. Also, I wanted something beginning with the letter 'Z' to end the directory properly.

Red Light District

The Zona de Tolerancia is an especially Mexican accommodation between reality and decorum. In the United States, they used to call these Red Light districts. Cancun’s Zona de Tolerancia is called Plaza 21 -- Km 21 on the Mérida highway. The facilities are said to be clean and secure

Prostitution is legal in Mexico but pimping and soliciting on the street are not. Most prostitutes work out of bars, many in the Zona de Tolerancia, where it may safely be assumed that any unattached lady is on a business mission. You may be sure that you’ll find homosexual male prostitutes as well.

Health Checks

All known prostitutes are registered and given periodic medical examinations and issued health certificates, just like waitresses.

About five per cent of the health examinations reveal sexually transmitted diseases, usually gonorrhea, rarely syphillis—although often enough to make you think twice about exchanging body fluids.

Taxi drivers will probably be your best source of information. The scenario, according to one taxi driver, is to visit a bar in the Zona de Tolerancia and invite one of the hopefuls to a drink. The cover charge will range from about $3.50 to $30, depending upon the bar. When you are ready for privacy, there are rustic accommodations nearby. You can leave the premises and go to a hotel in town, if you wish, but there is an extra charge of $3-$5, plus return taxi fare.

A young male Mexican friend of ours has been to some of these places on more than one occasion as the guest of a client of his. He said that some of the girls were quite beautiful and the shows were great but that the girls tended to be voraciously greedy and aggressive in trying to get money out of him even before making a deal for sex. He said that the usual method was to demand expensive drinks. When he finally got off alone with one girl she began by putting not one but two condoms on him and he just gave up and went home.

Prostitution is tolerated in Mexico but that doesn’t mean that it’s approved or that the lifestyle is much better than anywhere else in the world. Be very careful about your money and valuables. Crime against tourists is not all that frequent in Cancun but we do read about prostitutes stealing from their customers. All in all, this is a very risky business.

We don’t want to be moralistic and hurt anyone’s economic progress, but unless you are thick skinned it might be better to concentrate on Cancun’s very large floating population of single people looking for fun. This includes not only Americans and other foreigners but also regular Cancun residents. Many modern Mexican girls like American men and find them exciting and easy to be with. Most Mexican men, of course, think American women are the bee’s knees..