- FILE
The Montego Bay Hip Strip on Gloucester Avenue, St. James.Adrian Frater, News Editor
WESTERN BUREAU:
STRAIGHT OR perverted sex, the choice is yours. Liberated and in your face, in an apparent effort to keep on top of the tourism market, Montego Bay seems to have rebranded and rejigged the popular tourism theme: sea, sand and sex.
With nightclubs offering adult entertainment, aka 'live sex', sex toy shops emerging in a number of plazas, parlours on every corner offering sensuous massages, prostitutes lining major streets, which were once out of bound, old houses giving way to brothels, groups offering call girl services and young girls turning to lesbianism, the city has taken on new life.
"Forget the sea and the sand. It's all about sex, big, bold and no-holds barred,"said a knowledgeable person of the city.
But the oversexed reputation of Montego Bay is not entirely new.
Up to the 1960s, Montego Bay was considered one of the few places that exercised tolerance towards homosexuals, especially visitors. In the 1970s and early 1980s when Reggae Sunsplash was in vogue, the city became a rent-a-dread hub, where, 'locksmen', made a profession of providing sexual services to female tourists for a fee.
In today's Montego Bay, male homosexuality has seemingly returned to the closet and the rent-a-dread phenomenon has become redundant. However, the city is being swept by another central form of sexual adventurism in the form of lesbianism.
LESBIAN LIAISONS
While there has always been loose talk of lesbian liaisons among rich female householders in the suburbs and their housekeepers/maids, the practice first began to take on a public image some five years ago with the emergence of the 'Pleasure Dome' nightclub, with its open invitation for patrons to 'come in and experience your wildest fantasy.'
Dennis Meadows, Jamaica Labour Party Standing Committee member, believes that the renewed sexual energy in the city is a definite offshoot of the harsh economic realities and individuals creating their own sources of income, using what is readily available to them.
"It is a consequence of the lack of opportunities. The first instinct of any human being is to survive, and they will do this in any way, moral or immoral. Some of the girls who are involved in commercial lesbianism are qualified, but cannot find jobs, as a consequence they are forced to compromise standards in the name of survival."
According to Mr. Meadows, while the overt, public sexuality must not be condoned, many more cases will arise as the economic conditions worsen.
"They are the life of the party when they come here," said a Hip Strip bartender, about the women who openly practise lesbianism. "They know how to have a good time and they are heavy spenders. Needless to say, they are good for business."
TIMES HAVE CHANGED
According to the bartender, in former times, when lesbianism was not as pronounced as today, the 'girls' use to attract a great deal of negative attention, eliciting frequent shouts of, "Blood and fire," from other patrons, especially men. Those days are now long gone.
While some, like the bartender, enjoy viewing or participating in the sexual liaisons, medical practitioners like Dr. Sonia Nixon, sees this as an unfortunate development.
"This represents a breakdown in society's values. People no longer see the importance of choosing between right and wrong. They simply do what makes them happy," she argues, "but I don't think that it is too late to retrieve the situation and make the society whole again."
The massage parlours, which started to become an integral part of the sexual landscape of Montego Bay three years ago, also became a vehicle of lesbianism as patrons are regularly offered, 'steamy girl-on-girl sex scenes', as either a prelude to or an encore to what is offered by their masseurs.
"It is exploitation of the female and it is not healthy for an emerging city such as Montgeo Bay. Advertisement in the newspaper shows a total decay in any moral standing we had," says head of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce, Mark Kerr-Jarrett. "It also shows the economic depression we have fallen into as a nation. For the mothers of the nation having to degrade themselves in such a way, speaks to the lack of a proper value system. For this decay to stop, the Government will have to step in and create opportunities."
Former head of the St. James Ministers Fraternal and pastor at Family Church on the Rock, Dr. Richard Keane, is set against the new phenomenon.
"Anything that promotes sexual immorality is unhealthy for the society, so I have to go against it. Your body is the temple of God. If you allow it to become the temple of the devil, you will do sinful things. Whether homosexuality, lesbianism or sex outside of marriage, they are all wrong and if you indulge, you are wayward from the standard of God," Dr. Keane remarked.
YOUNG GIRLS ENTICED
While acknowledging the role of both the clubs and the massage parlours in the spread of lesbianism, for Donna, a former Montego Bay dancehall personality, the spread of lesbianism is primarily the work of one her former colleagues, who she claimed, "went to America straight and came back gay."
"Is she mek it get so big," said Donnna, in reference to her former colleague. "She come back from America with her bag a money and is she who start entice the little girl dem to leave dem parents home and come live lesbian life with her. Right now she is living with a whole house full of dem girl deh."
However, for Brenda, a young woman, who embraced the lesbian lifestyle five years ago, she sees nothing wrong with two consenting females being lovers. She also has no problem with them showing their emotions whether in private or out in the public.
"It just a normal thing," said Brenda. "Don't you hug and kiss your woman?"
"This is the life I have chosen and I really don't care who don't like it," continued Brenda. "Take my picture and put it in the newspaper if you want."
