Leisureville Page 9

  7

  Mr. Midnight

  IT’S A TUESDAY NIGHT AND AFTER YET ANOTHER LONG DAY OF REporting from the front lines of “golf, leisure and convenience,” I find myself feeling bored, and perhaps a touch mischievous. The perfect lawns, nostalgic architecture, and chatter about golf are beginning to get to me. Thankfully, there’s always Katie Belle’s in Spanish Springs, with its abundant cheap drinks and the elders’ endless antics, to let loose in. And so tonight, as usual, I’m driven to drink. The bar is full of laughter and the people on the crowded dance floor are swaying energetically to golden oldies performed by a band whose bass player wears a hearing aid and whose keyboardist wears what appears to be a toupee.

  You’d never know it was a weekday. With no Fridays to anticipate, or Mondays to dread, the days of the week just blend together, and eventually every night feels like Saturday night.

  One woman appears to be having a particularly good time balancing a pencil between her breasts in response to a challenge. Although she is in her early seventies, she has bright orange hair and is wearing a short skirt and a low-cut blouse. Her bracelet and necklace are neon-colored and her belt jingles with golden medallions. Her name is Kat, and she’s on a tear. She removes the pencil and then turns to the small group of friends gathered around her.

  “Want to see my mouse tattoo?” she asks, angling away from the crowd and lifting up her skirt. She looks down at her bare thigh and turns her head in mock surprise. She then hooks a finger around her panties and gently tugs them toward her crotch, her expression gradually turning into one of growing concern and disbelief. “Where’s my mouse?” she says. Just as she is about to reveal all, Kat drops her skirt and announces, “It looks like my pussy ate it!”

  Somebody buys Kat another cocktail. “Aren’t we silly?” Kat asks me, drawing me into her orbit. “I’ve been this way all my life. I didn’t change when I came here.”

  When my own grandmother was Kat’s age, she religiously watched Phil Donohue, chewed bonemeal tablets for her teeth, and occasionally treated herself to an early bird platter of broiled flounder (usually leaving the restaurant with a few secreted packets of Sweet’N Low). Her favorite activity was to take walks with her women friends. Once a week, they’d visit a beauty parlor to have their hair done. Whenever it was windy or threatened rain, the “girls” (as they called themselves) were sure to bundle their hair in crumpled plastic before stepping outside.

  Kat tells me she works part-time in The Villages’ regional hospital, where she sees an eye-popping number of seniors with sexually transmitted diseases. Seniors are now one of the fastest growing populations at risk of STDs because they are so promiscuous. Also, more than sixty percent of sexually active older singles have unprotected sex. After all, who’s going to get pregnant at seventy?

  Kat leaves for the dance floor, and I find myself sitting next to a man from New Hampshire named Tommy. At seventy-three, he is balding and wrinkled, with prominent liver spots on his hands. As I introduce myself, he leans over and tilts his head so he can hear me with his good ear.

  “I love sex,” Tommy tells me, unprompted. “I really do. I had a heart attack last year, so I’ve been out of the game for a while. That heart attack really knocked the stuffing out of me.” But Tommy isn’t easily deterred. “I’m back now and ready for some serious action. What better way to die than in the sack? Nelson Rockefeller died that way.”

  Tommy tells me that at The Villages he has slept with women as young as nineteen. He points out an apple-cheeked waitress with a cute blond bob, balancing a tray of cocktails on her shoulder. “I had her. I did her on the kitchen table. It was great. They’re all great.”

  I’m a bit stunned, if not a little impressed, and it must show, because Tommy starts explaining his success. “They don’t want to be stuck here earning a little here, a little there. They want to be set for life. They think I can offer them that. I’ve also been told I’m a good conversationalist.”

  Tommy’s eyes stray. “Look at that one.” He points to a busty brunette in her thirties who has sidled up to the bar. I’ve begun to recognize a few of these younger women as regulars. “Does that look like a senior citizen to you?” He takes another sip of the beer. “I like to sleep around. And I know how to love a woman. You don’t rush into it. You take your time.

  “You know, some guys around here don’t object to sharing their wives. I got it on with this one guy’s wife. But he didn’t seem to mind. It was just another ‘beautiful day in The Villages.’”

  I ask Tommy if he’s a member of the Village Swingers’ Club, about which I’ve heard whispers.

  “I’ve heard about one—some say it’s masquerading as the Wine Club—but I’m not so sure. Some folks dig that sort of thing; some don’t. There was this other woman. I really wanted to do her, but her husband was the jealous type. I thought I had her when he finally died of a heart attack. But then I had one, too.”

  “The Wine Club?” I ask, intrigued.

  “Sure,” Tommy says. “It’s not like they’d advertise such a thing. And alcohol’s a nice lubricant.”

  Tommy adjusts himself on his stool. I hear what sounds like a fart, and then smells like one. “It gets harder to keep ’em in when you get older,” he says. “You’ll see.”

  Some buddies stroll by and Tommy smacks them a high five. One friend, a Brit named Nigel with the looks of an aging movie star, pulls up a stool next to Tommy. Nigel tells me he first visited The Villages on a recommendation from a friend in his native Birmingham. “I bought a place within two days,” he says. “That was back in 1998. This place is like a candy store for a single guy like me. It’s like New Year’s eve every night. I can honestly say I don’t miss home a bit. And I’m far from alone: there are quite a number of us here.”

  Fresh from the dance floor, Kat walks up to me and gently rubs my shoulders. I can’t tell if she wants to mother me, or if she’s got a hankering for something more, but I’m not about to complain about a shoulder massage. She moves closer, until I feel the warmth of her bosom resting against my back. “You’re so tense,” she says. “I can just feel it.”

  The bartender announces last call, and I take this as my cue to exit gracefully.

  The next morning I drive a few blocks to the Andersons’ village recreation center, which consists of a pool, a few shuffleboard courts, and a wall of mailboxes. I’ve forgotten my guest pass and I’m not entirely sure I am allowed to swim in this pool—I’ve already been kicked out of two—but nobody’s here, so what the heck, why not squeeze in a few quick laps? I enter the pool area and toss my towel and T-shirt onto a lounge chair.

  I turn toward the pool, but stop abruptly and look back at the lounge chair. I wonder, Do seniors fold their pool towels? Would folding mine help keep me from looking like a young mischief maker? I fold my towel and carefully place it back on the chair. I turn again toward the pool, but the nagging persists. Maybe I should fold my T-shirt too. I fold the shirt and lay it across the towel at a pleasing angle, like an extra set of guest linens.

  When I am not ten minutes into my swimming routine, a woman steps into the pool area and cautiously surveys the scene. I see her frown but continue swimming without breaking my pace in the hope that she won’t catch a good enough glimpse of me to estimate my age.

  The woman starts swimming laps at the far end of the pool, as far away as she can get from me. A few minutes later I pause to catch my breath and check the time. She stops in mid-stroke and calls from across the pool. “Do you belong here?” she asks. “Are you a member? I noticed that your license plates aren’t from out of state.”

  I hesitate, pondering the significance of my license plates, but choose to ignore her diligent detective work. “I’m staying with friends,” I manage to say. “I thought it would be OK, especially since nobody was. …”

  She cuts me off. “What street do your friends live on?” She’s got me. I can’t remember. In a development that’s building out to 55,000 homes in count
less culs-de-sac, the street names tend to blur together. Besides, I’m nervous about involving the Andersons in my reckless indiscretion.

  “I think it’s called Pine Hill or Pine Cone or Evergreen something,” I offer truthfully. “It’s the second—or is it the third left? Right up the street.”

  “I don’t think you belong here,” she says.

  I can’t help it. I have to ask. “What’s the significance of my license plates?”

  “If they were from out of state I’d know you were down here visiting,” she explains. “But your plates are from Florida. Locals are always trying to sneak in here and use our amenities.”

  I look around at the otherwise empty little pool safely ensconced behind a gated guardhouse. I glance at my nicely folded and arranged T-shirt and towel. No matter. To her, I’m still just a local driving a crappy car. I’m the menace from the outside. I’ve been warned: pool-marm encounters are not uncommon. She watches me all the way to my car and then returns to her aquatic exercises.

  On Kat’s suggestion, I drop by her bungalow for a chat. Behind her zany exterior, I sense a bright woman with a big heart. Her place is just the way I had imagined it would be—a touch wild. The living room is decorated with comfortable lounge furniture upholstered in eye-popping colors with a scattering of zebra- and leopard-skin throw pillows. The 1970s flash competes with a nautical theme, which I find intriguing, given that Kat is from central Indiana. There are fishing nets hanging from the ceiling, lamps in the shape of whales, a mounted sea bass, and a fountain on her lanai in the shape of a dolphin.

  She invites me to share a late-morning glass of wine with some pretzels. She plugs in the dolphin, and water calmly dribbles out of its blowhole. “There we go,” Kat says. “A little ambience.”

  Kat wants me to know all about nightlife in The Villages. “It’s why I moved here and why I’m never leaving,” she says. “I’m having more fun here than I did in high school. I hope the carnival never stops.” She pours me another large glass of wine, filling it to the brim.

  “You should meet my friend Chet,” she continues. “He’s our big man on campus. All the ladies love him. They call him Mr. Midnight. That’s what he calls his penis, and the name has kind of stuck. We all use it.”

  I nearly choke on a Triscuit. “His penis?” I ask.

  Kat picks up a phone and dials Mr. Midnight’s number. She gets the velvet-voice message on his answering machine, and leans over so I can hear it, too: “Hi, you’re probably the one person in the world I’d really like to talk to today, but unfortunately I’m out. …”

  “Hey, baby, it’s Kat,” she says when it’s time to leave a message. “I’ve someone here you need to meet. Call me.” Mr. Midnight rings back a half an hour later; he was outside working on his tan. He tells me to “c’mon over.”

  Try as I might to follow Mr. Midnight’s directions, I find myself once again turning into and out of nearly identical culs-de-sac where most of the homes look alike. I know I’ve finally arrived at the right place when I see a sign hanging from a driveway light that flaunts a pair of Playboy bunny ears.

  Mr. Midnight greets me at the door and gives me a hearty handshake. “It took me weeks of living here before I stopped getting lost,” he says, putting me at ease. “Don’t worry about it. It gets easier.”

  The house is surprisingly clean for that of a sixty-three-year-old bachelor, although the kitchen sink is full of dirty cereal bowls and the counter is crowded with empty take-out containers and a badly wilted head of iceberg lettuce. A refrigerator magnet reads, “If we are what we eat, then I’m cheap, fast, and easy.” He offers me a seat in the living room on a plush recliner beside a large glass coffee table, and then casually sprawls across his white leather couch. A pastel print of exotic flowers hangs from a wall behind him. “I’m color-blind, so I had a friend pick out all the art,” he tells me.

  Mr. Midnight looks like an aging Adonis—six feet tall and broad-shouldered yet slender, with a full head of dark hair pleasingly salted with gray. Silver-rimmed glasses rest on his strong, aquiline nose. A former biology teacher from Illinois, he speaks with easy authority and charisma. Like most Villagers, Mr. Midnight dresses casually. Today he is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops.

  I ask him about his nickname. “A lot of ladies here are familiar with us,” he explains, referring to himself as well as his legendary appendage. “Nobody calls me Chet anymore.”

  Mr. Midnight tells me it was the uncanny friendliness of the place that first attracted him to The Villages.

  “I was with this woman—this is the gospel truth, mind you; I’m telling no lies—she was older, retired,” he continues. “She takes me back to her place, lights up a joint, sticks it into my mouth and then takes off my clothes. I walked home that night thinking, ‘I’m going to like this place.’ That was my first night here. I was only renting. What you’ve got to understand is that there are at least ten women here to every guy. And they’re all hot and horny. It’s wonderful.”

  A typical day in what Mr. Midnight calls a “paradise of pleasure” looks something like this. He takes a short jog in the morning to keep fit, showers, and then sits at his computer chatting online for a few hours with licentious women from all over the state. Next it’s lunch “in town” before he takes his daily afternoon nap. Then he heads to the pool to work on his tan. He’s friendly with his pool monitor, who points out any new single women for him. At night he’s on the prowl at Katie Belle’s, which he fondly refers to as the “Pussy Factory,” or just the “Factory.” “I work the night shift,” he says, with a mischievous grin.

  “I’m a hunter,” Mr. Midnight says. “That’s what I am. But I believe in catch and release.” Mr. Midnight walks me over to his computer and shows me how he enlarges the size of his already sizable pool of applicants. Up pop several photos of him on his favorite dating Web site. One photo shows Mr. Midnight resting against his Corvette. On his left hand he’s wearing a ring, which is the cause of much confusion among his viewers. “I have a little arthritis on my right ring finger so I have to wear it on my left,” he explains.

  Another photo is a close-up of Mr. Midnight smiling into the camera. He’s alone in the photo, but one can clearly see part of a female arm around his neck and her hand resting on his chest. He doesn’t know how to use PhotoShop, but he liked the picture, so he simply sliced his companion out of it, or at least most of her.

  His short bio describes him as “tall, dark, and handsome, or so I’m told. I’ve climbed all my mountains and now it’s my turn to enjoy.” He particularly likes what he calls “high-maintenance women” who spend considerable time fretting over their appearance, and he lists his preferred age group as forty-five to sixty-five. “I won’t sleep with anyone younger than my kids,” he says. “That’s one of my rules. And I don’t fall in love. That’s another one.”

  There are stacks of e-mail lined up for him to read from prospective honeys with nicknames like Cute Coochie and Insatiable Sally. “That Sally; she’s a wild woman,” Mr. Midnight says. “She’s passing through later this week.”

  I’m surprised by how bold many of the women are. Several list oral sex as among their favorite activities. This is just fine with Mr. Midnight. “I can pleasure some women for hours at a time. It’s like they say, ‘Show me a man who doesn’t pleasure his wife, and I’ll show you a woman that can be mine.’”

  Mr. Midnight switches to a “gallery view” of his female queries, which exhibits the women like a deck of cards. “Hot, aren’t they? I could sit here for hours. In fact, I do. There’s no reason for anybody to be lonely anymore.”

  Mr. Midnight invites a lot of these women to “hang out” with him for a few days. Three days is his often-mentioned limit—another rule. They’re all curious about The Villages anyway, he explains. “And you get a real bang for your buck here. I can take them out for a glass of chardonnay and a martini and it’s about five bucks—tax included. Try finding those prices in Saraso
ta or Saint Pete.”

  The only downside to his frequent visitors is that he has to avoid his usual haunts for days at a time, lest he “muddy the waters.” One inopportune encounter can set him back weeks with local women who have yet to succumb to his unbridled lust.

  Mr. Midnight tells me he’s on a short sabbatical from sex. “I’m not hunting this week. I’m too drained, literally.” But this doesn’t stop him from taking me on a field trip to the Factory. He changes into a clean Hawaiian shirt, freshens his breath, and combs his hair. Minutes later, I’m in my car tailing Mr. Midnight’s golf cart in what feels like slow motion. His shirt flaps in the breeze as he tops out at about twenty-two miles per hour.

  At Katie Bell’s, Mr. Midnight is in his element; he knows everybody and everybody knows him. I feel as if I’m entering a keg party with the quarterback of the high school football team. He’s a social nexus for the “cool crowd,” and he even refers to himself as the “party coordinator.” He kisses the hostess and surveys the scene. The dance floor is a sea of mostly women line dancing to a lively country and western band.

  One woman is wearing black slacks and a red blouse. Her hair is dyed a peculiar shade of blond. “Beautiful,” Mr. Midnight pronounces. “Absolutely beautiful. I’ve had her a few times. She comes over, takes a shower, jumps in bed, and then gets dressed and leaves. She’s simply the best.”

  There is a small coterie of younger women in their middle to late thirties at the bar. Mr. Midnight has slept with several of them (they’re older than his children, albeit by just a year or two). “They like us older guys because we respect them,” he explains. “We’re not threatening like so many of the younger guys. It’s just the opposite—we put them at ease. The only problem is that they’re the ones who usually make us wear condoms.”