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 countless 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 Sarasota 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.”
I ask him whether he is worried about catching an STD. “Well, as you can see,” he says flatly, “I’ve stopped having sex altogether.”
A guy named Rico walks up to Mr. Midnight looking mildly dejected. “She gave me the engagement ring back,” he says.
“Hey, how long were you engaged—two months?” Mr. Midnight asks. “That’s not bad for The Villages. Have another beer.”
An unusually buxom young blond waves hello from across the bar. She’s wearing tights and a tight neon-colored getup that extends from just below her bust to her thighs. I’ve never seen anything quite like it and I can’t help staring. It looks something like the low-cut unitards that Olympic weight lifters wear, and it accentuates her ample breasts. When she runs over to embrace Mr. Midnight, I feel as if I am in a 3-D movie and they’re hurtling toward me.
“Hey, Jenny, you found love yet?” Mr. Midnight asks. Jenny shakes her head. “Getting any closer?” She shakes her head again, and her look of resignation is tinged with genuine sadness. Jenny, who is in her late thirties, divorced two years ago and now lives in The Villages. She rents a room from Martha, a woman in her eighties—the same woman who belted out karaoke on my first night at Gringos. “She loves to party,” Jenny says, when I ask about her roommate. “She goes out more than I do.”
“But why live in a retirement community?” I ask.
“I love it here,” she says. “Everybody’s just so friendly. They’re all so welcoming. I have a great circle of friends. The Villages is just so peaceful. I could live here forever. As it is, I hardly ever leave.”
An attractive southern belle catches Mr. Midnight’s eye. She may be in her late sixties, but even I can see her obvious appeal. She’s wearing a soft yellow blouse, a knee-length skirt, and diamond studs. She has a starlet quality about her that seems entirely out of place in the Villages. Mr. Midnight scopes her out, and then gives me the lowdown. “I had a friend who did her one night on one of those park benches around the corner. She visits from Palm Beach every so often.”
“Was his name Tommy?” I ask.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
The band plays the funk favorite “Brick House,” and Mr. Midnight jumps onto the dance floor. He sways to the music in his shorts and flip-flops, a mug of low-carb beer in one hand, a pretty woman holding the other. The clock on the wall approaches ten PM, The Villages’ witching hour, and the bartender shouts last call. I kid Mr. Midnight that “Mr. Nine-Thirty” might be a more accurate nom de guerre in The Villages.
A woman in a red leather jacket and a short black skirt who is carrying a designer handbag brushes past me. Like the aging starlet, she’s dressed to the nines. Her high heels emphasize her unusually shapely calves. I try to fit in by scoping out chicks as well. “Nice legs,” I say.
“That’s Wendy Marie,” Mr. Midnight says. “He’s a she-he. And a lesbian.” I reach for my plastic mug of beer and hastily empty it. “Good eye,” he says, with a wink.
“I feel sorry for her,” Mr. Midnight continues. “She could use a community where there are more people like her. And some butt pads. It’s a little flat back there, like a skinny old man.”
As usual, the party moves on to Crazy Gringos—the karaoke bar inside the Alamo Bowl. To my embarrassment, I’m starting to recognize many of the late-night revelers from my previous sprees after Katie Belle’s. Mr. Midnight and I sit at the far corner of the bar and order a pitcher of beer. He takes a deep breath and looks me in the eye. I sense that he is preparing to pass on his wisdom. I listen attentively, sorely aware of my youthful shortcomings.
“How do I get one of these ladies from the bar to my bed?” he asks rhetorically. “I say ‘Look, I’m not a teenager. I’m not going to put you in the back of my car and grope you. I’d like to take you home and make love to you.’ But I don’t want to appear anxious. When they’re ready, I order us another drink. When we get to my place, I suggest they clean up. I always keep clean washcloths and towels around.”
I ask Mr. Midnight how many women he’s slept with. “I don’t remember,” he says. “I don’t keep track.” I throw out a number—100. “C’mon, were talking about my whole life, not just the last couple of years, right?” He orders another pitcher and we both scan the room. Jenny’s roomate, Martha, is singing “Roxanne,” by The Police.
“Do you really see spending the rest of your life here?” I ask. “Don’t you miss the real world?”
“If a judge told me I could never leave The Villages again, I wouldn’t care,” Mr. Midnight responds. “I don’t want the real world anymore. I just want to keep getting laid. Whatever happens now, you guys have to worry about it—it doesn’t affect me. Hell, I didn’t even vote in the last two elections.”
“So that’s it? You’re just going to toss all your problems onto my generation’s lap?” I ask.
“I paid my dues,” he says, emphatically. “Isn’t thirty years of teaching enough? Now it’s your generation’s turn. You work it out. I’ll be here kissing the ladies.”
“But you can’t just hide from all the problems in the world, can you?” I counter.
“There will never be peace in the world, and I thank God that I’m old so I don’t have to worry about that crap anymore,” Mr. Midnight says.
“It just doesn’t seem right,” I say, deflated.
“Look,” he says, “I know what it is like to be young. You don’t know what it is like to be old.”
A stout gray-haired man with another pitcher of beer approaches. It’s Frank, a foulmouthed former plumber in his seventies.
“Hey, Frank, any luck last night?” Mr. Midnight asks.
“She was surrounded by her girlfriends,” Frank responds. “It was hard to break in.”
“Yeah, it’s tough when they travel in herds.”
Several beers later, Frank invites me outside for a smoke. Once we’re in the parking lot, he lights up a fat, fragrant joint. “It’s good shit,” he says, exhaling an impressive plume. I accept the invitation; I’ve never gotten stoned with a senior citizen before.
And stoned we are. The breeze feels as though it’s passing right through me, as if my body has hundreds of tiny pinholes. At my behest, we jump into Frank’s souped-up golf cart with flaming decals, and drive high-speed lazy eights around the parking lot. Frank tells me about his latest female encounter. “She wasn’t exactly a redneck; she was more of a country girl. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the night with her. I don’t sleep around. I’m not like my friend—he’s a slut. To me, screwing represents a commitment.”
I ask Frank what he does most days. “Get high and play Nintendo,” he says, without hesitation. “I’m not much of a cook, so I just eat a lot of pepperoni.”
“I like bacon,” I say.
I stumble back into Crazy Gringos and order a plate of nachos. “He gave you the good stuff, huh?” Mr. Midnight says. “Frank’s always got the best. The way he parties, you’d never know he’s had two heart attacks and a stroke. If I were his doctor, I’d tell him not to bother winding his watch.”
That night, I sleep fitfully and finally give up trying at around five AM. It’s still dark when I drag myself out of bed and go for a drive. I pull into a nearby gas station to fill up and buy a cup of coffee. I’m not surprised to see that the parking lot is filled with day laborers, but I am surprised to see a group of retirees sitting to one side on benches and portable lawn chairs, chatting amiably over jumbo-size cups of coffee.
“Do you folks always meet this early?” I ask.
The group has little interest in me, but one man finally answers. “Yup.”
“Why?”
“Habit.”
I arrange to meet the transsexual Wendy Marie for a late dinner at R.J. Gator’s, a reptilian-theme fish and burgers joint beside the docks in Sumter Landing. According to the menu, an alligator, who presumably craves fried food, owns the restaurant.
I arrive a few minutes early and pull on the restaurant’s front door. It’s locked. I peer through the glass and see a cleanup crew mopping the floors. I glance at my watch. It’s eight fifty-five PM.
A sleek silver sports coupé pulls up to the curb. A stylish woman checks her hair in the rearview mirror and effortlessly glides out of the car. It’s Wendy Marie, and she looks stunning in her low-cut blouse, white denim skirt, heels, and a pair of silver tear-drop earrings. There’s a chill to the air, and she’s wrapped snugly in her red leather jacket.
We find a restaurant that is still open and make ourselves comfortable in a booth. We are the only customers left. She removes a pair of bifocals from her purse, casually peruses the menu, and orders a small garden salad and a glass of chardonnay. I stare across the table, straining to find any trace of Wendy Marie’s formally male persona. I’m stymied. If anything, she is the epitome of femininity.
Wendy Marie is The Villages’ only transsexual and openly lesbian resident, and nobody is more aware of how her female neighbors dress. “I like women just as much as any guy, but the women here don’t impress me,” she says. Her voice is slightly raspy as a result of surgery to shave her Adam’s apple. “They’re overweight, dress like crap, and don’t give a rat’s ass what they look like. They’re more interested in their golf game or canasta. Nobody wears heels, nylons, or even skirts. Women dress so casually that a lot of them look like their husbands. And their husbands are so fat they look like pregnant old ladies.”
She rolls her eyes at the thought. “But the worst are the single guys at Katie Belle’s. They’re a bunch of dirty old men. You should see how they hit on me. It’s never ‘May I have your telephone number,’ or ‘May I take you out for dinner.’ It’s always ‘Want to go to my place tonight?’ One geezer invited me to a motel after ten minutes of conversation. And he was married. What are these guys thinking? Whatever happened to flowers and dinner—where did all that go?”
A retired major in the Air National Guard, Wendy Marie (then Donald) moved to The Villages in 1999 with his wife, Jennifer. Like most residents, they were attracted to the amenities. They bought a 1,100-square-foot ranch home with all the bells and whistles for $120,000. Donald and Jennifer quickly rose through the ranks of pickle-ball players. A paddle game played on miniature tennis courts, pickle-ball is particularly popular with retirees because it doesn’t require as strong a serve as tennis or quite as much running. Invented by a family in the Seattle area in 1965, the game was named for the family’s dog Pickles, who liked to chase after errant balls.
“We beat the shit out of everyone,” Wendy Marie tells me. “It’s a fierce game when played at a high level. We slaughtered our opponents. And we excelled at softball, too.”
It didn’t take long for Donald’s deepest longings to surface. He was a she, and he knew it. The couple separated and Donald started undergoing electrolysis. “Ouch, that hurt,” Wendy Marie says with a wince. The next step was facial feminization. Donald hired a top plastic surgeon in San Francisco to work on his face bones. “First he popped out my brow bones and sanded them down before putting them back in,” Wendy Marie calmly explains. I glance down at my hamburger and then over at the waitstaff. They smile back, oblivious of our conversation.
“Next he raised my eyebrows, narrowed my nose, and raised my upper lip. And then he took out my chin and put a screw in and then shaved down my jaws. It was an eleven-hour surgery. The doctor even took a lunch break. I was hoping the surgery would be effective—after all, it cost me $37,000. The funny thing is, only one person said, ‘You look different.’ I just told them I lost weight.”
In preparation for the surgery, Donald was careful to keep to himself—not an easy matter in a gregarious community like The Villages. “I just disengaged. I kept my car in the garage, so that no one saw me coming and going. And I no longer played pickle-ball and softball. Those people knew me when I was living as a male.”
After the surgery, Donald renamed himself Wendy Marie. “I started leaving the house dressed as a woman. And I looked like a woman. One day I went to Wal-Mart and looked at everybody to see if they’d react. You know, yell out, ‘Hey, you’re a man!’ But they didn’t. It was then that I knew that I could live full-time as a woman and not be ridiculed or discovered. Now I love going out. I love being called ‘m’am’ and ‘hon,’ and being asked, ‘What would you ladies like?’ when I’m at lunch with a friend.”
Next came breasts and then permanent makeup. “I didn’t want to have to pencil my eyebrows and put on eyeliner and lipstick every time I wanted to leave the house. Don’t forget, I was born male. You have no idea how high-maintenance women are: the clothes, the manicures, and the shoes—definitely the shoes.”
“I hate shopping for clothes, too,” I say, jumping at an opportunity for common ground.
Wendy Marie is uncertain whether she will stay in The Villages. To me, it’s amazing that she’s even considering it. “I’m not sure I have a place here,” she says. “There are a lot of boring people here, and there’s not a lot of pizzazz. And there’s certainly no gay scene. But there are people who know me and accept my decision. That says a lot about this place. Who knows? There’s an outside chance it just might work.”
For now, Wendy Marie is in what she calls a ‘holding pattern’—betwixt the sexes. Her final “transition” surgery is scheduled for the fall, but it may have to be put off because of an ailment common among seniors—high blood pressure.
“Frankly, I don’t have a burning desire to do it, but I can’t keep walking around half male and half female.” Her days are mainly spent indoors, protecting her privacy and tackling the boggling logistics of legally changing one’s name and sexual identity. Unlike most Villagers, she doesn’t belong to a single club.
“Sure, I’m lonely,” Wendy Marie tells me. “A lot of people come here to live their second childhood. I just want to live my first. But I know there will be a rainbow at the end of it. Until then, I will just have to wait and see where I belong.”
The next day I check the Daily Sun’s activity calendar for things to do. It feels like being at summer camp, where all I have to do is sign up for activities each morning. After a quick glance, I zero in on a listing for the so-called “Wine Club.” If Tommy from Katie Belle’s is right, then this is the front for the “Village Swingers.” My curiosity gets the better of me. As much as I am repelled by the idea of walking in on two dozen naked seniors in the throes of sexual rapture, the material is simply too rich for a writer to ignore. I’d never forgive myself for not pursuing it, so I decide to drop in on a “tasting” uninvited. But I’m nervous; I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Will they kick me out? Will they invite me to watch or, God forbid, join?
I park outside a recreation center where the meeting is scheduled. I move quickly because the sky is filled with swollen clouds growing darker by the minute. At the club room I meet a man with a knee brace who greets me warmly. I give the room a curious glance; the participants look more like Elderhostel’s travelers than the sort who sway lustily from indoor swing sets. Have I come to the right place?
I warily take a seat at one end of a long table. The first wine is poured, and I’m invited to participate. “Whoa!” the club leader says. “Anybody getting that banana flavor? Kind of fruity, don’t you think?” The woman to my right pours me another taste. “Really gets the juices flowing, doesn’t it?” she asks, and then winks at me.
Just then, a thunderous crack fills the room, followed by an intense flash of lightening. The skies open up and let loose sheets of water. The sound of thunder once again reverberates across the room, and the lights briefly flicker. “We just might have to spend the night here,” the woman says. “Hope we have enough wine!” Everyone in the room laughs, except me. I manage a weak smile and contemplate my next move. Another wine is poured. “How about that last one?” someone at the far end of my table asks. “Nice big taste, don’t you think? Mmmm.”
The wine keeps flowing, and everyone at the table insists I drink seconds. Before I know it, I’m tipsy. “This next one is a petit Syrah,” the club leader says. “The grapes may be small, but not the flavor.”
A couple from the Midwest, who are seated across from me, are real aficionados and explain the wines I’m drinking. He worked at as a computer programmer and she was in middle management at a corporation. Now she is a part-time hostess at a golf club restaurant in The Villages, her husband cleans its bathrooms. They tell me this work keeps them busy and lets them afford the half-price golf. “I’m the ‘head’ pro,” the husband jokes.
As the club members settle into warm revelry, the conversation is anything but kinky. It dawns on me that this night is unlikely to end with multi-partner sexual escapades. A guy down the table tells me about a new computer game that allegedly fights off senility with brainteasers. “Hope it helps!” he says with a hearty laugh.
“You have to have a sense of humor when you get older,” a woman next to me says with a smile. “But we’re all in the same boat.”
“That must be comforting,” I say.
“It is comforting. It’s one of the reasons my husband and I love living here. The only thing I miss is seeing little babies. I just love babies. I tell my husband I want to have another one and he’s like, ‘Yeah, sure, the baby could be your eightieth-birthday present!”
As we leave, half a dozen guys from Orange Blossom Gardens, who call themselves the Thursday Night Poker Club, take over the clubroom. Several of them wear terry cloth sports shirts and pork-pie hats. A man with thick black glasses spins a toothpick around in his mouth and shoots me a glance. “What are you looking at?” he asks.
The next morning I search out Wendy Marie’s potential companions, The Villages’ lesbian community. But it’s a deeply closeted group: among the hundreds of activity and affinity clubs in The Villages, lesbian-friendly listings are conspicuously absent.
I resolve to do what any other self-respecting writer with a relatively keen sense of gaydar would do—I drive over to the women’s softball league practice. I am soon rewarded with what I conclude are numerous closeted lesbians. Unlike the coy nymphs who populate The L-Word, these women have generous figures and some sports crew cuts.
“C’mon, Barb, throw the ball already!” a batter barks out to the pitcher. Barb underarms it across the plate and the batter smacks it hard. It’s a pop fly to center field. The fielder shuffles around uneasily, trying to get under the ball. “I can only see so far,” she shouts, adjusting her eyeglasses. She catches the ball anyway. “Way to go, Tammy!” Barb hollers back to the fielder.
Soon practice is over and I cautiously approach Barb. Who am I to presume? She’s sitting on a bench cleaning her cleats. A few other women sit nearby on lawn chairs, discussing the practice game.
“Hi, I’m writing a book about The Villages and I was looking to talk with all sorts of folks about living in a retirement community,” I say to Barb. “I want to make sure I get a well-rounded view of things. I heard that there was a lesbian community here.” I grimace and squint my eyes as if bracing for a car crash.
Barb is quiet, and doesn’t take her eyes off her cleats. She doesn’t introduce herself, nor ask my name. An awkward thirty seconds pass before I clumsily try again. “Do you know where I might find some, uh, lesbians?”
Another grimace, and then I really start tripping over myself. “Some of my best friends are lesbians. My brother’s gay. I’m from Massachusetts.” Several of the women walk away, not angry, but visibly uncomfortable.
Barb’s silence isn’t helping matters. She finally throws me a bone. “It’s hard to tell who’s a lesbian and who isn’t,” she offers. “It’s not like they carry a banner that says, ‘I’m a lesbian.’ It’s more like in the military: ‘Don’t ask; don’t tell.’”
“It’s kind of like being an alcoholic,” Barb continues. “It’s part of who you are, but you wouldn’t want to wear it as a label.” I’m saddened by the analogy, which suggests self-hatred; Barb clearly belongs to an earlier generation.
“Do you live alone?” I ask.
“No,” she says.
“Do you live with a housemate?”
“Yes.”
“Are some of the softball players lesbians?”
“Yeah, most of the good players are.”
“Do you consider yourself a ‘good player’?” I ask.
“Yes and no,” she says curtly. “Look nobody wants to break their anonymity. It’s just not proper. Nobody knows what might happen to the information. It could make things hard on you in the neighborhood. It could be that your friends and neighbors wouldn’t want to be guilty by association. It’s not like people burn crosses around here, but still, it’s never far from one’s mind.”
I tell her that where I come from, women who love each other walk hand in hand down the street. “That’s not OK here,” she says. “At least not in public.”
“I had suspicions about one woman,” she continues. “I caught her practicing her throwing at home with a man’s sock—so she wouldn’t throw like a girl. She said it was her husband’s sock, but I don’t think she was married. She said she had kids. Maybe she does. Half of us do. Maybe more. I thought that maybe I was wrong; maybe she’s not like that. Then I saw her at a restaurant with another woman and they looked like they belonged together. You know what I mean?”
I ask if we could exchange names and phone numbers, just in case she might want to talk some more at a later date. She says no. I tell her that I’m not interested in outing anyone and suggest that she might give me a pseudonym. She ponders this for a while.
“Call me Ellen,” she says brightly. “Like that comedian lady on TV. Yeah, call me Ellen.”
“Ellen” walks away toward her car. A woman from across the way bellows out to her: “Hey, Barb! Barb! It’s me, Fran! What time do you want dinner?” Barb keeps walking to her car, fighting the impulse, I imagine, to turn around and acknowledge her roommate in my presence.
An hour or so later, I run into Mr. Midnight standing in the sunshine outside Katie Belle’s. “I’ve penetrated the lesbian community,” I say. He laughs. But I can see that something’s on his mind. After all his talk about sex and secession, he apparently doesn’t want me to get the wrong idea about him.
“I want you to know that I speak to my maker at night,” he says. “I ask for good health, peace in the world, and someone to love.”
Listening to Mr. Midnight try to be pious is actually more painful than funny. There’s an awkward pause, which I keep expecting him to break with a punch line. I yawn. Mr. Midnight fidgets and looks bored.
Is he really about to quit his hedonistic lifestyle, dedicate himself to making the world a better place, and even embrace monogamy?
I don’t think so, but I probe a little deeper, just in case. “How was your visit with Insatiable Sally?” I ask.
Mr. Midnight hesitates, and then speaks his mind. “Excellent,” he says. “But I had to let her go. She wants someone to love and cherish her. I don’t love, and I don’t cherish. So it’s over. She knew the rules.”