I landed in Cancun ready to embrace a cliché. There were no plans except to set aside the haughty, critical coldness of Cambridge and indulge in that undergraduate tropical escape narrative that is Mexico for Spring Break. I had four tank tops and a pair of jean cut-offs—all bought for ironic costume purposes but now ready for full-fledged sunbathing sincerity. I’d never met half the people on the trip, and I’d never felt more bro-“chill” with that. Walking through passport control, I felt fully prepped for the “Spring Breakers” story that has burrowed so deeply in our expectations, fantasies, and language. What I didn’t plan on, though, was just that: language.
The quotes began to accumulate as soon as we landed. Our first “cheers” went to “escaping linear time”: a hedonistic celebration of having abandoned the over-scheduled Google calendar. And for a time zone that, having switched from CST to EST just a month before, would always be one mystic hour ahead of our phones.
Next came the slogan “Life is lost to dreaming; dreaming is lost to becoming,” inscribed on the backside of the shopping mall complex that mysteriously bordered the beach. (To reach the sand you either went through the Chili’s or the liquor store.) Tipsy textual exegesis ensued, but the group remained split: Did the quote encourage dreaming, criticize its excess, or simply state that it passes into action as we age? Two days later, we defined exegesis—then differentiated epigraph, epitaph, epigram, and epithet. We were in a rental car on our way to the nearby Mayan ruins, playing word games while “Jose Cuervo” was passed from passenger to passenger, while “Jerk it Out” and “I’m a Believer” brought us back to middle school.
Over time, these words and phrases developed into a private seven-person language. Repeating simple idioms like “This is the dream” built them into multi-layered mantras. Someone started the trend of making any stand-out action signify that person’s membership in a “Team.” If you wanted a napkin, you might say, “Anyone on Team Napkin?” If you wanted to apologize for spilling water all over the kitchen, you would say, “I’m on Team Flood.” Suddenly, just one shared characteristic or behavior could unite you with someone in a micro-squad.
It’s amazing how quickly community develops when the constraints of (linear) time are lifted. Conversations stretched out over 1 p.m breakfasts, giving language the space to innovate and unite us in separate, special ways of speaking. Though it’s well known that the content of conversations binds people together, Cancun taught me that form can do so just as well: Language itself gives our experiences and inter- actions a meaning beyond what words convey.
When we started calling ourselves orbs—the reverse of bros; pulsating, celestial bodies—it became pretty clear that we’d swapped the clichés for something more far more intimate.
There were still plenty of moments that fit the “Breakers” stereotype: a plastic bottle of sugarcane-alcohol for $1.50; an exploded glass cover on our Airbnb stove; a skinny-dip after rounds and rounds of body shots: “It was more of an experience than a beverage.” But I spent most of that intoxicated time discussing the “neo-colonial authentic” aesthetic of tourism, and our plunge into the ocean featured a cleansing ritual, a communal pee, and a moment of silence.
“Oh, the queen of social justice?” someone yelled on the first night. “I think I left her back in Cambridge.” We laughed with relish at our new, indulgent Cancun identities. But that royal matriarch of responsible criticism couldn’t have been more wrong. When your cab ride to the touristy club is spent discussing sophistry, when drinking game rules foster confession and connection—you start to realize that Spring Break can’t take the Cambridge out of you. When “Team Reading” drunkenly tells “Team Alcohol” its epithet is “just a cultural signifier; we’re not impressed,” you cackle in the warm night air and remember how lucky you are to be both in and out of cliché.
