Leisureville (12 page)

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.”