By Kathy Silberger
Illustrations by Craig Grazier 

From his spot on the sand just beyond the palm trees, Alejandro surveys the beach in front of the Boca Chica resort - "FOR THE BEST OF TIMES" says the sign hanging over the entryway - where foreign tourists lie on their beach blankets, their pale skins acquiring a pinkish cast, their eyes shaded from the hot Dominican sun by tinted glasses. Sometimes Alejandro chooses his women by the make of their glasses. He can spot a knockoff at 50 yards: The cheap ones, like the kind you buy from a Santo Domingo street vendor for 150 pesos, don't merit a second glance. Ray Bans, on the other hand, signal availability and cash-the women who wear them are the ones with whom he has the most luck. Fendi or Gucci - now there's a woman with some class, he thinks. Usually the wearers of such high-style frames are out of his league-unless they're older, in which case his chances vastly improve. The younger, single Gucci girls tend to choose boys who are a bit taller, a bit smoother, boys who wear leather shoes and trousers instead of the Nikes and jeans cut off below the knee that Alejandro favors. Or Girls like those stay at the Coral Hamaca, a fancy hotel with a private beach, and try their luck with other tourists. But then again, according to Alejandro, you never know with these foreigners. You may strike out 19 times, but on the 20th, you'll get lucky.

Alejandro had a Gucci girl just recently, in fact. Her name was Lola, and she was French-Canadian. Good-looking, too. She bought him a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt, though she asked him to change out of it before they went dancing at the club. Ever since her vacation ended six weeks ago, Alejandro has resumed his post on the beach, looking for another woman looking for a guy like him. They're easy to spot, these women. Scandinavians, Germans, British: women who travel solo or in groups, coming to a hot, sunny climate to feel good. that means sand, sea, and often sex - with a handsome Dominican stranger.

With his closely cropped hair and neat baseball shirt tucked into loose denim shorts, Alejandro cuts a striking figure on the beach: lean yet muscled, café-con-leche skin, gray eyes, and a wide, easy smile that promises good times. But right now there is something mercenary and a bit desperate behind that smile. His nine-year-old daughter, Yolanda, needs fees for school and has an overbite that will be expensive to fix. Alejandro doesn't live with Yolanda's mother, he says, but they live near each other in El Sea, a modest-size town about an hour away from the beach. Alejandro wants to offer Yolanda a better life than his.

So every day he catches the "gua gua," the public bus, from El Sea to Boca Chica where the tourists are, in search of women whom he can befriend and romance, for whom he can be the fabled "Dominican boyfriend" and who will pay for his attention with meals, clothes, and, eventually, cash. If he is really lucky, perhaps one of them will fall in love with him someday and buy him passage off the island.

For decades, women have traveled to the Caribbean for sex. Single, female tourists are far less common than male sex tourists, but their numbers still support a thriving industry. Early in the century, enough white women traveled to the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the U.S. Virgin Islands that when the ferry arrived, men would sometimes tease one another, "Your mother come!" Today, women of all ethnicities seeking beach boys travel to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. In fact, the trade in Jamaica got a big boost following the publication of Terry McMillan's 1996 novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and the subsequent film, based on McMillan's real-life experience meeting (and marrying) a handsome Jamaican youth. "It's out of control," says Ellen Drake, a Jamaican native who resides in New York but returns to the island every winter for sun and rest. "As a woman alone you're instantly identified as a foreigner and constantly approached. You almost need to go with a guy so the others will leave you alone."

In the Dominican Republic, beach boys might make a living by renting out jet skis or beach chairs and umbrellas. They may sell jewelry or sunglasses, or even deal drugs. But the jobs are seasonal and pay too poorly to afford the trappings of a gigolo: athletic shoes, designer clothing, Oakley or Ray Ban sunglasses. Many young men are also helping to support parents, siblings, or children. And in the slow economy, people will do anything to survive. So they arreglar algo-arrange something on the side.

As for the women, they come to get something they think they can't get at home. Such is the case with Ulrike and her friend, Gaby, tourists from Cologne, Germany, who tell me they planned this trip for months and confide that they both secretly hope to find romance. They act blase and even a bit macho about the idea that, as the ones with money, they are in control. But they also seem almost childishly eager for a sentimental, storybook romance, however brief.

Alejandro spots Gaby and Ulrike, newcomers to the beach, and contemplates his first approach. Gaby wears a flowered green bikini, her fluffy blonde hair tied up on top of her head with a red hair band. She is smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine: German Elle. Ulrike, whose black two-piece bathing suit has a ruffled skirt on the bottom to hide her plump thighs, lies prone beside her. Alejandro smooths his military-short hair and approaches.

"Excuse me," he says in his courtliest voice, "would either of you girls like to go for a ride on a jet ski?" Gaby makes a move as though to swat him away, but Ulrike looks up for just a moment and smiles. That's when Alejandro knows he has her: In an instant, he thinks, he senses the loneliness, boredom, and all the grinding, unsatisfactory details of her life that propelled her to travel two thousand miles from home in pursuit of fresh papaya, blue sunny skies, and romance with a dark stranger.

"Entschuldegung, sprechen Sie Deutsch?" he asks. Do you speak German? "Ja, aber ich spreche auch Español," she says. She speaks Spanish. Lucky for him, because his sentence represented about a third of his German vocabulary.

"I'm Ulrike," she says. Alejandro swiftly grasps her right hand in his and brings it gently to his lips. "I am Alex," he says, kissing her sweetly on the hand. "I am honored to meet you." Ulrike and her friend exchange looks. Gaby goes back to her reading, but Ulrike begins to chat, flattered by Alejandro's focused attention. At his prompting, she gets up from her towel, coyly wraps a sarong around her waist, and walks with him to one of the beachfront cafes. Alejandro makes a great show of wiping the dust off her chair before she sits. She orders two Cokes, and when the drinks arrive, she pays.

Later in the afternoon, the three settle in at the Jet Set bar for piña coladas, and Gaby explains why she chose to come to the DR. "I wanted some sun and to be in an exotic place. And," she says, "a friend of ours has a Dominican boyfriend who she met here." She and Ulrike giggle. In a parody of courtliness, Alejandro, who has been watching Ulrike like a hawk, interjects, "Everything that comes out of your lips is beautiful!" but he is distracted in waving away several children, no more than seven or eight years old, who hover hungrily near the table, shoe-shining kits tucked under their arms. Ulrike doesn't seem to notice them. "I don't know if they are all better lovers, but-I mean there are some really cool German guys, too," she says. "But the guys here are a lot nicer. They are so sweet and have such big hearts. They seem to know how to make you feel like a real woman."

Alejandro's cousin Oliver saunters by and joins the threesome. In corduroy shorts and a ripped green T-shirt, Oliver looks closer to 13 than the 15 years he claims. He addresses the girls respectfully, as if they were teachers, or friends of his mother. "Are you looking for a boyfriend?" he asks Gaby earnestly. "I know a guy for you. Very handsome, very nice. Do you want me to get him right now?" Gaby laughs; it's her first day here and she is in no rush. "What about you?" she asks Oliver, teasing. "Do you have a girlfriend?" Oliver looks serious. "I had a French girlfriend, but..." his voice trails off as he looks down. "Why don't you find yourself another girl?" asks Gaby. Oliver bristles at the suggestion. "She was the one!" Then he brightens: "But I will find another. And I like foreign women the best," he smiles. Gaby laughs approvingly, accepting the compliment as her due.

When Alejandro escorts the girls to the ladies' room, Oliver turns to me and explains, "Before Ulrike, Alejandro had a Canadian girl and before that an Italian," he says. "He's had so many. They all pay him. Around 2,000 pesos-not very much. Some of the foreign girls here are beautiful and some are ugly, like anywhere," he continues. "But the ones Alejandro goes out with are..." he trails off, searching for the words. "Not pretty. That's why they have to pay him. And that's why he does not love them."

Sometimes these international encounters do lead to genuine romance. Such is the case with Robin and José, a couple I meet later that afternoon. The glances this couple exchange seem genuine, not a pantomime of love. A cute 25-year-old from Zurich, Robin met Jose, who is handsome and rather innocent-looking, in a Santo Domingo nightclub during her two-week vacation last year. She has returned now for three months, to study Spanish and live with Jose's family. Meanwhile Jose is working toward a degree in furniture design. They say they plan to marry and move to Zurich and open a store for imported Dominican furniture and handicrafts. "Even though we're from different worlds, Jose has become my best friend," says Robin respectfully, squeezing his hand across the table as he smiles on. "He shares my creative side."

But such friendships appear to be rare here in the Zona Rosa, Boca Chica's red light district, where everything is for sale. Down the street, Dominican girls in tight dresses and platforms, some so young that their bras require padding, flutter around tables of paunchy men, mostly European, who appear stunned into passivity by the abundance of female attention. While the male tourists are at least vaguely aware that certain female tourists, like them, are here to "have a good time," and though many men claim they are not surprised by the manner in which it happens, foreign women are so outnumbered by men that such arrangements basically fly under the male tourists" radar. Not under the Dominican women's, however. "Guys like [Alejandro], they also go with men," says Angela dismissively, a cocktail waitress at a local nightclub. "They go with one after the other. And then they go home and bring diseases back to their wives and girlfriends." She expels a sanguine sigh. "They do this to make money. But you can't believe a word they say. A whore-at least she knows what she is."

At a few metal tables set up in front of the corner grocery store, Gaby and Ulrike sit with Alejandro and watch the parade of people. A pale, blonde woman in a halter top and tight, black leather jeans passes by, hand in hand with a dark-skinned young man. "Hola Ernesto," waves Alejandro, and the man nods a tight, quick acknowledgment without breaking his stride.

Later in the week, "Alex" will act as Ulrike's chofer, taking her to Santo Domingo, accompanying her to the Club Jubilee, and teaching her to salsa-dance. They'll stroll on the beach at midnight, though when she suggests skinny-dipping, he'll demur; Alex only takes off his clothes in private. He'll borrow a motorbike from his friend Eduardo and let Ulrike "repay" him the 250 pesos that he'll say the rental cost. As the desk clerk looks the other way, he'll accompany her back to her hotel room and make somewhat perfunctory love to her. And finally, he'll tell her about Yolanda, her school fees, and her overbite. He'll show Ulrike a well-worn picture of his daughter at age five, which he keeps in his pocket. When Ulrike says she wants to help and reaches for her wallet, he'll nod and wordlessly pocket what she offers. And when the week is over, after Ulrike heads to the airport with tearful promises to write often, Alejandro will take up his usual spot on the beach. He'll spend weeks (or, if he's lucky, days) in the hot sun in his hunt for big game: chatting up a special female tourist, spinning out her dreams.