Before I ever left the U.S, I had tried to construct, orchestrate, and otherwise micromanage an experience that wasn’t mine to do. Jamaica reminded me of that at every beat of the trip and of the old saying about making God laugh. Sometimes life, and for certain Jamaica, is better experienced than it is planned. It’s a lesson I took with me as I made my way back home, but not before the kind ladies at the duty-free shop offered me a sex juice aphrodisiac in the form of a drink called Magnum. It featured, rather comically, an ingredient called “vigorton”. They swooned as they talked loudly about how much they drank of it and how effective it was. The entire trip the Jamaicans I’d talked to were so reserved and stoic in some ways. Perhaps I’d been talking about the wrong things. Perhaps I hadn’t been listening. Maybe Jamaica wasn’t all that hard to grasp after all. It had been there all the while. All the locals wanted me to do was have a good time, to have some Bob Marley, a lot of drink and little love, and most of all show respect. They said as much, time and time again.