SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (5)
By:
October 17, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… ska records! PLAYLIST HERE. Series edited by Josh Glenn.
During spring college break, Negril Beach, Jamaica just might be the horniest place on the planet. It’s a jiggered, frenetic, nerve-gas feeling, as if the entire 7-mile beach were crop-dusted with an aphrodisiac. Beach clubs offer “Spring bling special: Twenty bucks for all you can drink in 48 hours.” One passes the occasional beached male at low tide; shoeless, pockets turned inside-out, sleeping it off with a mouthful of sand.
A handsome, dreaded Jamaican Rastafarian slices with a nine iron into the ocean, sending the golf balls cresting out over the waves. “Need company?” he asks. “You see I got a good stroke.” I tell him I admire his salesmanship and walk on.
The Rastitutes, or rent-a-dreads, as they are called by locals, sell sex to white women. Some think this progressive, others exploitative. The hotel I’m staying in is run by a fit, 74-year-old Chinese woman. “I don’t mind they sell banana,” she says. “But if you say no, they ask again and again, you need banana? No, I don’t need banana.” Then she blurts out “You want jerk today? I get you good jerk,” referring to the popular jerk-sauce.
An ex-marine pothead, all pecs and tattoos, is stationed in front. She pays him to swing a bat at the gigolos. “I know I’m a dictator. I call myself ‘Hitler on the Beach,’” she says. Her nephew, who runs the office, hides in the back with his lovebirds. “His lovebirds, they’re not very loving,” she whispers. “What looks like a kiss is really a peck.”
The mayhem is presided over by the gentle eyes of Bob Marley, whose image is as ubiquitous in Jamaica as Jesus is in Rome. Everywhere you go, there Marley is; trapped in posters, splayed helplessly on the T-shirts, dangling from pendants.
I swim to an anchored catamaran for a snorkel trip. Captain Iman, an amiable, soft-spoken Jamaican, says “You hate hustler beach? I could show you something real, you want real?” he teases. “Sure,” I answer, no idea what I’m getting into.
We drive high into the hills, turn down a dirt path at a “welcome and cozy” sign, to a tilted bamboo shack nestled in a field of weedy cane stalks long past giving up any sugar. The bamboo walls have gaps. Light shines in and casts white stripes. The gaps have eyes; children outside peer in. One man has a cutting board and a knife, he chops dense ganja bud, dicing it like garlic. It’s quiet but for the chopping and continuous click of bottle caps as two men play checkers with Red Stripe and Guinness caps.
The DJ in the back gets ready to spin 45s. The hand-pressed, hand-labeled discs rise in precarious pancake stacks. There’s a small stage with a broken mirror shard about the size of a child on the wall. Schoolgirls line one side of the dirt floor, boys the other, separate and shy as a barn dance.
The DJ warms up with a slow, reggae, one-love trance vibe. He spins an eclectic mix, the songs layered with disparate influences, from funk to salsa to Sinatra croons. Boys and girls sway and eye each other across the room. The girls are neatly dressed in pressed white shirts, gold crosses, and pinned hair. The boys wear wide-pants, oversize T-shirts, and upside-down ball caps, visors sticking straight up.
The DJ speeds things up with the faster beats of ska. The two towers of black speakers, when cranked, hit a decibel power absurdly overkill for such a small room. A gorgeous Jamaican girl in a black string bikini appears. She gives the DJ a look and he reaches into his pancake stack. All eyes turn to the stage.
Captain Iman whispers that the DJ is about to kick things up a notch. He’s going to play her song; Jimmy Cliff’s Miss Jamaica. The song beckons. She moves to the beat. None of the stylized, come-hither moves of the usual strip joint. This girl does one thing: finds a position, and pumps. She watches herself in the misshapen mirror shard, ignoring the audience. She slides one leg up a wall to get traction, props the other on a railing, finds a position, and air-pumps as Cliff sings about his love for an imperfect woman; “…But you do suit me, and that’s all I want to know, I need not know nothing more…” She has uncanny control of every muscle in her body. “You’re my Miss Jamaica, I’m crowning you myself.” The crowd is respectful. It may be a go-go club, but it feels oddly like church.
Jimmy Cliff, of 1972’s “The Harder they Come” fame, wrote Miss Jamaica in 1962, the year that marked Jamaica’s independence, and with it their first beauty contest. Cliff’s lyrics speak to all women, saying, no matter what you look like, you could be someone’s Miss Jamaica.
Girls try out a move, slyly mimicking a position, pump a few times, then collapse giggling into each other’s arms. I wonder if I’m at sex school. A how-to-shake-it club for pre-teens. “That’s my little sister,” Iman says, pointing. “And that’s my mom.” Why do they come here? I ask. “My sister to learn things. My mom, she likes to watch.” And the girl on stage? “Thirty dollars.”
Then, as if by some secret signal, the women begin to leave, the men stay. I ask Captain Iman what’s going on. “Simple trash bline yai,” he says, or something like that. I ask what that means, and he says, “It’s in your eyes and you don’t see.”
Ah. It’s time to go home.
SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Lucy Sante on Margarita’s WOMAN COME | Douglas Wolk on Millie’s MAYFAIR | Lynn Peril on Prince Buster’s TEN COMMANDMENTS | Mark Kingwell on The [English] Beat’s TEARS OF A CLOWN | Annie Nocenti on Jimmy Cliff’s MISS JAMAICA | Mariane Cara on The Selecter’s ON MY RADIO | Adam McGovern on The Specials’ GHOST TOWN | Josh Glenn on The Ethiopians’ TRAIN TO SKAVILLE | Susannah Breslin on The [English] Beat’s MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM | Carl Wilson on Prince Buster / Madness’s ONE STEP BEYOND | Carlo Rotella on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ THE IMPRESSION THAT I GET | Rani Som on The Bodysnatchers’ EASY LIFE | David Cantwell on Desmond Dekker’s 007 (SHANTY TOWN) | Annie Zaleski on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ SOME DAY I SUPPOSE | Mimi Lipson on Folkes Brothers’ / Count Ossie’s OH CAROLINA | Alix Lambert on The Specials’ TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG | Marc Weidenbaum on Dandy Livingstone’s RUDY, A MESSAGE TO YOU | Heather Quinlan on Fishbone’s MA & PA | Will Hermes on The [English] Beat’s WHINE & GRINE / STAND DOWN MARGARET | Peter Doyle on The Skatalites’ GUNS OF NAVARONE | James Parker on The [English] Beat’s SAVE IT FOR LATER | Brian Berger on The Upsetters’ RETURN OF DJANGO | Francesca Royster on Joya Landis’ ANGEL OF THE MORNING | Deborah Wassertzug on The Bodysnatchers’ TOO EXPERIENCED | Dan Reines on The Untouchables’ I SPY FOR THE FBI.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!