Leisureville (23 page)

“Look, they've all got their lives, their own problems. And believe me, they have plenty of problems. After a while, I don't even want to hear about them anymore. I've got my own life to lead. And when it comes time to die, they can ship my body north afterward, but I'm going to die in The Villages. This is where my support system is. I have loads of friends here. They say you can't have too many friends, but I don't know; I can't keep up with all of them.”

“It's a wonderful place to die,” Mopsey adds. “The only way I'm going to leave here is feet first, too.”

Although I remain unconvinced that age segregation is either healthy or desirable, I do find my heart opening up to many of the Villagers who are refreshingly unpretentious. I find that some of the older women remind me of my grandmother, who died when I was eighteen. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease, so I really lost her years earlier. And she was my last living grandparent. Perhaps that explains why I enjoy hanging out with people of all ages back home.

I have nothing but fond memories of my maternal grandmother. Spending the weekend with her in her tiny apartment in downtown Philadelphia was such a treat that it had to be carefully rationed between my two brothers and me so as not to cause fighting. The only way to score an extra visit was to be sick, and I happily obliged. Being sick at Grandma's meant homemade chicken soup, fresh brisket sandwiches on miniature slices of bread, and comic books. If my health improved, I was rewarded with a trip to the top of city hall for a view of the city my grandmother loved so much, and weather permitting, bobbing in her little rooftop pool while being fawned over by her “girlfriends.”

I'm quite certain that my grandmother would have never lived in a gated age-segregated community like The Villages, even if she had had the money to do so. But that doesn't stop me from seeing a little bit of her in many of the people I meet. And while I suspect that Grandma would have had little use for the likes of Mr. Midnight and his overt sexuality and hedonism, I find him fun. I resolve to quit sulking, and make some new friends.

The following evening, I attend an affinity club meeting for former residents of my home state, Massachusetts. More than 200 Villagers are gathered around long folding tables in a powder-blue room with fake wainscoting and a fluorescent-lit drop ceiling. The first order of business is inviting new members to come up to the makeshift podium and introduce themselves. Many of the attendees speak with heavy Boston accents. Behind them, the club's flag is draped over a hanging picture frame.

“Hi, I'm Annie, and I'm from Agawam,” one woman says. “I moved heah one month ago.”

“Welcome, Annie!” the crowd says in unison.

“Hi, my name is Nick; and this is my wife, Anita. I was tired of the wintahs so we sold the house and came down heah and we've been in love evah since. My wife still likes to go back to Massachusetts, so we visit a lot. I went back for a Red Sox game but I couldn't
go because I pulled my back that mahning. They lost seven to three. But it was a good visit north anyway.”

Next, we are treated to tonight's entertainment: Sheldon's Village Stompers. A handsome silver-haired man steps onto a dance platform on the far side of the room. He's wearing white slacks, a white shirt, and a red bolo tie.

“Good evening, Massachusetts!” Sheldon says.

“Good evening,” the crowd responds.

“Back when I started the Stompers in 1992, I was the only clogger in The Villages. All the rest learned it here. My wife and I are from Acton and we're very happy to do a show for our Massachusetts neighbors!”

Six women spill into the room, dressed in red-and-white checked skirts and frilly white blouses. They wear patent leather shoes with metal taps attached to the soles that make a delightful jiggling-clanking sound when they walk. Sheldon turns on a small boom box and “Next to You, Next to Me” flows out of its speakers. The women snap into formation and start a synchronized stomping, like elder Rockettes. Each step sounds like tiny cymbals.

For the next song, “Cluck Old Hen,” six men enthusiastically jump onto the dance floor. They are dressed just like Sheldon, who remains beside the portable stereo directing the action. Several of the men have comb-overs that occasionally need readjusting during the performance. The men and women skip around in a sort of square dance.

After they whoop and holler through a few more jigs, they leave the stage, and Sheldon introduces his friend Phil, who plays a medley of polka songs on a pair of short thick wooden sticks called “bones,” which rest between his knuckles. Phil flails his knuckles rhythmically, smiling at the audience.

After the performance, the meeting is adjourned and I start chatting with my tablemates. I zero in on a woman who is dressed as if she just walked in from the Boston Common. She wears a
turtleneck and a sheer pink cardigan and carries a quilted handbag with a bland preppy pattern. Her name is Carol, and all evening she has looked like a deer in the headlights.

“My heart is still in Boston,” she tells me, stating the obvious. “I miss my family. I miss the four seasons. And I miss riding the T into town and walking around.” Carol moved to The Villages with her far more enthusiastic husband about three months ago.

“I was in the navy for a lot of years,” her husband, Jim, says. “I'm used to moving around.” Carol looks down at the table. “I've been looking for a nice place to retire for seven years. Here I can play golf every day. And if something happens to one of us, there are people for us to lean on.”

“I miss the snow, the flakes falling down,” Carol says.

“Yeah, but she forgets all the slush and shoveling,” Jim counters.

“I miss the rain,” Carol says. “I'm tired of all this sun, day after day. Everything is the same here. There's nowhere to go. We're in the middle of nowhere. Where's the art museum? Where's the library in Copley Square? Where's the Boston Pops, or the fall foliage? I miss the mix. I miss not seeing any children around. But what I really miss is my family. I miss them terribly.”

Jim is quiet. He takes no pleasure in his wife's discomfort. “Look,” he says finally. “Let's just give it a while. Try it on for size. You might just end up liking it here. We can fly home as often as you like.”

“You promised we could always move back,” Carol counters.

“We can buy as many plane tickets as you'd like,” Jim responds.

“That wasn't the promise.”

“You're right. We can always move back, I suppose.”

Carol looks pale. She and Jim excuse themselves.

The other women at my table are a feisty bunch—hard-core Yanks from Boston—with thick accents. Their comments are full of
sharp barbs. “You find that a lot of people miss their families,” a woman named Ellen tells me. Her short hair is smartly styled, and she wears a touch of lipstick. “It's the husbands. They drag their wives down here for the golf. But the women miss their families. The men—it's like they don't care as much. They'd rather visit them. That's the generation you've got here: the men make the decisions and the women follow them. I run across it all the time. Ninety percent of the men love it here, as if they've died and gone to heaven. But the women—that's another matter. I'm single. I'm a free woman. I make my own decisions.”

A woman named Paula cuts in. “You make lots of acquaintances here, but not a lot of close friends. Everybody's too busy running around the golf courses. Me? I love my house. When we took the trolley tour, the woman said, ‘We don't sell houses; we sell a lifestyle.' Well, I wanted a new house, not a lifestyle. I never had a new house. I like to cook, to clean. People think I'm crazy because I like ironing. Nobody around here even cooks. When you talk to someone about meeting for dinner, the first question they ask is, ‘Which restaurant?' I guess it all depends on where you're from and what you're used to. Everybody here is from somewhere else. Florida is such a transient state.”

“This is an excellent place for singles,” Ellen says. “I don't care if I never go back north again. There's an excellent support system for single women here.”

In addition to belonging to the Massachusetts Club, the Irish-American Club, and the Explorers' Club and volunteering as a docent at a regional museum, Ellen is a founding member of the Sociable Singles Club. But the purpose of this club is not to meet men; it's to provide a venue for single women to meet and make friends.

“Men?” Ellen asks. “I've already been married once. And that was enough. The men here are all letches anyway.” Divorced after twenty-seven years of marriage, Ellen now lives with her brother, a Korean War veteran diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder
who rarely leaves the house. “It's only men that truly retire,” she says. “I took care of my husband, I took care of my kids, I took care of my mother when she got sick, and now I take care of my brother. It's time I took care of myself.”

Ellen's cousin Pat introduces herself. She's a petite woman who never married. She has lived all her life with one of her sisters, and still does: they share a home in The Villages. “As a single woman, I feel safe and secure here,” Pat says. “I don't feel threatened like I did back in Boston. Back home, I'd be stuck in the house, scared. Here I can go down to the square by myself, listen to the music, see people dancing, go home, and I feel like I did something—and it didn't cost me a dime.”

“Living down here is affordable,” another woman—Debbie— says. “Up north, I couldn't afford to go out. I'd probably be living in an insulated garage or something, counting pennies. Here I can have my own apartment. It's tiny, but it's a home.”

Like most northeastern “blue staters,” these women are solid Democrats, although they now live in a community where Republicans outnumber them two to one. They have few kind words for Gary Morse and his staunchly conservative politics. “This place lost a lot of its charm when Harold died,” Paula says. “It's kind of like when Walt Disney died and Eisner took over. Morse is too greedy. He cares more about money than people. You read his newspaper and you'd think everything is hunky-dory in Iraq and Bush is a genius.”

“This place is a dictatorship,” Debbie says. “But you know what? If I won the lottery, I'd still live here. I'd just travel more and maybe buy a house on the Cape.”

I ask the women for their views on age segregation. “I like kids,” Debbie says. “But I don't want to live with them. After four hours with them in the pool, crying, yelling, throwing tantrums—well, it's nice to know that I can relax without them.”

“Children don't fit the lifestyle we've got in The Villages,” Pat says. “You can't mix the two. It's either one or the other, but not both. If this place was multigenerational, there'd be a lot more crime. We'd have drug busts, wild parties, loud stereos, auto accidents. It wouldn't be the same. We'd be shoved to the side. And afraid.”

Although the night is still young, the women all drive home. I head to Katie Belle's. There's a short line outside; an elderly bouncer slowly checks for resident IDs and guest passes with a flashlight and magnifying glass. Three seniors from out of town wait in front of me. The first in line has an awkward comb-over and wears heavy gold chains around his neck and wrists. The next one has a mop of white hair and an unusually prominent Adam's apple and wears a Jimmy Buffet T-shirt. He rocks back and forth impatiently in his shorts and two-toned loafers. The third guy wears a Hawaiian shirt tucked into a pair of jeans pulled up over his belly button. They're agitated at the bouncer's delay and say as much, as if they're spoiling for a fight. By now, most of the bouncers know me, so I just wave and walk right in.

Inside, Mr. Midnight's holding court at the bar, telling friends about his day trip to the beach to meet an Internet friend. “It was a great day,” he says. “We swam, ate lunch, smoked some marijuana, and then jumped in bed. She had new tits. Just bought 'em, and they were beautiful. Top-notch. You know what else? She's pierced down there. I'd never seen that before. Right there, under the hood.” He pauses to order another low-carb beer. “It's nice to get off campus once in a while.”

I grab a drink and listen to the band play Fleetwood Mac's “Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow” and another perennial favorite in The Village, “Mustang Sally.” About 100 residents linedance in unison, and the balconies are packed with spectators cheering them on. I watch in amusement as a few younger people struggle
to keep in rhythm with the quick-dancing seniors. A woman who seems to be in her late seventies leaves the dance floor swinging her hips and pumping the air with her fist. The contrast with my hometown's senior center couldn't be any starker.

Suddenly, somebody grabs my notebook out of my hands. “What are you writing about, cutie?” asks an attractive middle-aged woman in jeans and a silky red blouse. “What do I get if I give you your notebook back, hmmm?” She grabs me by the arm, pulls me closer, and then reaches down and gives me a soft playful slap on the butt. Her hand lingers at the base of my thigh. “I need another drink,” she announces. “How about you?”

I have difficultly responding. Feeling like a prude is a new experience for me, and her seizure of my notebook does not amuse me. I know she's only playing, but the notes inside cannot be replaced. Nevertheless, I walk to the bar and return with two margaritas. She looks me in the eyes and asks what brings me to The Villages. “Research,” I answer.

She pauses and then starts to tell me her story. Her name is Jean, and she moved to The Villages six years ago from Wisconsin, where she worked as telephone operator. She looks as if she is in her late fifties and is actually quite pretty. She then returns to the business at hand. “I'm
so
horny,” she says, drawing even closer. She rests an elbow on my shoulder and gently tousles my hair. “I gotta use it before I lose it!”