The beautiful men of Ibiza, and what to do about them

Somewhere around the third day it stops being a coincidence. The man carrying the paddleboard. The one pouring the coffee at the beach bar with his shirt tucked into his back pocket. The two on the rocks at the far end of the cove, doing nothing at all with enormous concentration. It is not your imagination, and it is not the light, though the light helps. Ibiza has an unusually high density of beautiful men, and almost none of them are wearing a shirt.

There are reasons for this, and they are worth understanding, because they also explain why looking is easy here and everything after looking is complicated.

Why the shirt comes off at the airport

• The island is a runway. People come here to be seen, and a body is the cheapest thing to bring. Gyms across Europe fill up in May for exactly this beach, and the ones who did the work are not going to hide it under linen.
• Everyone is half in the water. At twenty-six degrees the sea is not a thing you do once a day; it is a place you keep going back to. A shirt in Ibiza is just something you would have to take off again in twenty minutes.
• The light is a filter. Golden hour here lasts most of the evening. It flatters skin, it flatters shoulders, it flatters people who have not slept. Every man on this island is being photographed by the sun whether he asked for it or not.
• Nobody is in a hurry to be anywhere. A man standing still in the sea for an hour is not waiting for anything. That is the whole activity. It happens to look very good.

A short field guide

• The boat boys. Deckhands and charter crews, tanned to the colour of the rope they are coiling, permanently barefoot. They are working, technically. They know you know.
• The beach-club regulars. Arrived at eleven to secure the bed and the angle. Will not enter the water above the waist because of the hair. The most photographed and the least interesting to talk to.
• The ones adjacent to a DJ. Linen, tattoos, sunglasses at midnight. There is always a table. There is always a reason you cannot sit at it.
• The locals. The fishermen’s sons, the ones who grew up on these coves and do not pose because they have never needed to. Usually at the beaches you have not heard of, usually at eight in the morning.
• The ones who came for the same reason you did. You will recognise them because they are also looking.

The honest part

Looking is free, and it is one of the genuine pleasures of this island: sit at the right bar at the right hour and the whole parade comes to you. Everything after looking is where the week gets complicated. The beautiful men of Ibiza are, for the most part, extremely busy being looked at. A conversation at a beach club at four in the afternoon is a poor investment. The night decides the rest, and the night here is loud, late and expensive, and not always kind to your plans.

Which leaves a lot of women, on the last evening of the trip, with a phone full of photographs of a coastline and a distinct feeling of having admired a great deal and tried nothing. And you can read the word tried however you like.

The one beautiful man on the island who is not busy being looked at

There is a version of this that involves no queue, no dance floor and no four-in-the-afternoon conversation. I am a masseur. I come to your hotel room — your room, your hour — with the oil, the towels and the music, and for sixty or ninety minutes the only body on the island being paid any attention is yours, and the only hands are Spanish ones. Nobody is looking at you. That, after a week of this island, turns out to be the thing you wanted.

Eight rituals are on the menu, from an hour of complete quiet to something considerably more intense — and one of them, I will only say, is the single place on this island where the shirt coming off is entirely for your benefit. If you have admired plenty and tried nothing, and you would rather do your trying with a name on the menu and an hour in the diary: choose your ritual, or write to me and tell me what your week has been like. Everything happens in your room, at your hour, and it is the one appointment in Ibiza nobody will make you queue for.