*** I wrote this a while ago when I met a journalist on vacation. His assignment was to document how club med has changed over the years. He wanted my input and for some reason, on my flight back to the mainland, this is what came out in my two hour journey. I have read it to my close friends, few club medders, and the journalist. (Is that how you spell medders?) I finally decided to put this on here after friends who knew this story told me I should. ( Yes, I would jump off a bridge if someone told me to...kidding.) While this is all true, in no way does everyone involve themselves in some of the risky activities described. This is what the insiders saw, knew,and usually couldn't believe. Club Med was a great part of my life, but just a part of my life.
Now for the story. Club Med from our view...
Opportunity, growth, and some SERIOUS change! "An all adult village in the Caribbean? Your totally going to change!" It was the reaction I received the majority of the time I informed those around me where I was going to work after graduation. I didn't get it or necessarily fully understand what I was getting myself into but it didn't take long. Day one I walk toward the restaurant for lunch, to my right are G.M.'s (the guests of the village, it stands for gracious member) lying on tables while the guys walking by perform pre-lunch body shots off of whichever girl they choose, or all if they like. I met one of my coworkers only to find him stumbling out a door a few hours later confused and looking around, "That was girl number two," he slurs while pointing to the room he just left, "girl number one is on the second floor, but girl three? I forgot her room number!"
Huh? Where am I working? A fresh college graduate and being the oldest virgin I knew, this was all so shocking, but refreshing at the same time. When word got out that I was a virgin, the guys called it 'the disease'. "I've got something that can help you with your disease!" Jon would yell across the pool with his crazy curly hair completely bleached by the sun. i would laugh as the girls followed him around like puppies.
"Look around," my fellow life guard said one day, "they could have sent a more experienced lifeguard here, you didn't get sent down for that."
"No I didn't, I got sent here to teach aerobics."
He shakes his head, "They didn't need that either, you got sent here because they thought you were cute. This is the hardest village to get into, we are sent here for our looks."
The change didn't happen right away, but rather a slow process instead. A few weeks pass and I am less disturbed when the sailing team discussed the blow-jobs they received while sailing random girls to the reef, or when I found out that a few guys got bored of 'doing' any girl they please, so they started up a competition, the first guy who goes through the whole alphabet in order wins with no one in between. First maybe an Ann, then Becky, Christina, and so forth and how few had trouble finding an I or an O girl.
There were rules too, so many rules. Say hi to everyone, greet them with your sunglasses off, its rude otherwise, always smile, and pour the water during meals. Drink with the G.M's, make them happy and laugh, you don't don't have to go home with them but at least make them think they had a shot. Speaking of shots, take them, and plenty of, never be late, ever! there are meetings, tons of meetings, be good at everything, be in all the shows, always look good, don't get fat, ever. Walk fast, suggest other sports, know the schedule of everything. Crazy signs, love crazy signs, or act like it. Invite the G.M.'s to do things with you. Always!
Because of this, the G.M's would love you, become obsessed with you, want to sleep with you the second they saw the name-tag, or that was the joke at least. We found websites about ourselves, polls of who they thought was the cutest, buffest, sweetest, who got with whom and so forth, and when they come back a month later were devastated we couldn't remember them. I meet about five hundred people a week, who are you again?
Change, I would change. Hearing the same questions over and over again at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, i would get annoyed, please don't ask me what I do, how long I've been here, what I'm doing after. My conversations used to be so genuine, I become callused, we all become callused. We make friends with you, maybe, really enjoy your company, like you, want to keep in touch, but you, the G.M, the guest leaves and we stay. Its hard at first and soon you begin to not care. Keep in touch? Definitely. Until your replace one week later by another G.M. who is cute, likes to drink, makes me laugh. We are G.O.'s (the workers) and get distracted easy. Sorry. We all grow less genuine, more callused. We change and Club Med changes. Rules change and our lives are engulfed in this fantasy land where there are no bills, no real responsibilities, where finding someone to crave you is a s simple as a glance, or just them seeing you star in a show in a thong and bikini top. Rules: The G.M.'s can buy you drinks, wait, no, the G.M.'s cant buy you drinks. So, we find every opportunity to outsmart the rules an have the G.M.'s randomly place drinks somewhere slightly deserted where we (the G.O.'s) would perform the pick-up one minute later, thirst satisfied. The rules change again, the G.M.'s can buy you drinks The rules engulf us, control us, and the longer your a G.O., the more you lose touch with yourself, your own rules and decisions, you change. its hard to be real in fantasy world where the reputation, hard to accept is true, its a crazy place with sex galore. Or, opportunity, opportunity to scuba, sail, windsurf, trapeze, aerobics, snorkel, blow-jobs, threesomes, and public displays of serious affection. Try getting you sunset yoga class to focus on their one leg balance pose while a couple is having sex in the warm salt water twenty feet away. However, we heard the club was changing, keeping up with the times, being 'politically correct', pursuing 'upscaleness'. I laughed. We all change.
The body shots stop, the hookups become more of an elaborate plan. "You, walk behind that building and I'll meet you there in two minutes so no one sees us walk away together." One of my friends received a note written on the back of a paper place-mat during dinner with just a girls name, her room number, and what time to meet her there. Wow, thats forward. But, how could Club Med change, grow, when some of the stories were too great? One guy was pissed when he realized the girl he went home with the night before was actually our gay male bartender dressed up as Roxy from Chicago. One of the scuba instructors video taped himself having sex with a G.M. in the scuba instructions room and forgot to take out the tape before the G.O. Christmas party. The divers were shocked when they thought they were going to watch a scuba slidesow during dinner. No one ever looked at that table the same.
New G.O.s came and we would have bets on how long they would stay. Two weeks for the painter acting as a bartender. Life for the overly hyper landsports instructor We were usually right. We also did anything to get out of the village, even if that meant re-locating a table and chairs out of a bedroom window to have a mini G.O. party of drinking games outside of the village. But the Chief (our boss) would find out, because he had eyes everywhere and we all change, and some leave, and some stay, and soon I leave the fantasy world. Funny, one of the more difficult things about working for Club Med is not the initial leaving of home to work, rather its coming back and adjusting to normalcy. Nobody made my egg white omelettes for me in the morning. I wasn't the name everyone knew on the streets of L.A. like on the sidewalks of Turks. You have to pay for things here. Weird. But most of all, nobody understood unless you have been there and even more so worked there, you wouldn't understand. I hear, "Holly, you've changed." Yes, I left Club Med without "the disease" only because I had a boyfriend while I was there, but that wasn't it. It was Club Med. But, I adjust, and change again to fit into this place called Reality and grow into a person who remembers island life but functions on the mainland with opportunities higher than any Club Med could offer but its difficult. Its difficult to find a job and be happy in it after Club Med. Its difficult to stay fit as you were, even if you do teach aerobics and as bad as it sounds its difficult to find someone you like in this world of boundaries and limitations, but you talk to ex-G.O.'s, and share the bond no one else will understand, laugh at the insanity of it all and amaze yourselves that you lived like you did. We grow.
Two years later, I'm on the other side of the coin; a G.M. at the village I used to work at. I sit down and endure the fake smiles and ingenuine questions, until they find out I once was an employee: fitness G.O. They relax, genuinely laugh, and tell real stories, see me as one of them, and they change. I see G.O.'s who I used to work with back in our earlier days, and though they look the same on the outside, its the inside thats so fake I don't recognize their personalities. "You've changed." I tell them but they know. And Club Med in its pursuit of upscale status has done the exact opposite of an experienced G.O. The outside has changed, newer rooms, nicer pool furniture, but its the inside, the core where the same steamy hookups, and dirty talk reside.
Above all, being back in this fantasy land, I see you become more callused in Club Med, and more genuine away with the opportunity to take advantage of all the good and absurd Club Med has to offer, or, to leave, and no matter what, everyone in every way, all of us, G.O.'s past and present grow as we pursue different opportunities and change. Looking back as a G.M. I see it as an insiders view from the outside. The teetering way in which change manifests itself within us, and even now, as I'm again back in the real world, working at my real job, I've never appreciated that process more so than today, the opportunities I've had, the growth I've experienced and the changes I love.
