Leisureville (11 page)

Desegregation has never proved to be an easy undertaking, and integrating Youngtown had its own particular challenges, many of which were lost on the newcomers. To the seniors the issue was simple: they didn't want younger people around. But to the newcomers, discrimination based on age was probably a difficult concept to understand. After all, a white person can't have been born black, but everyone was once young.

The seniors suffered yet another perceived indignity when the young invaders flexed their political muscle and elected one of their own as mayor. A youngster born after 1960 would now govern the veterans of World War II and Korea. The new mayor arrived at his first council meeting riding a Harley-Davidson, and gunning the engine for effect. He immediately set about carrying out his campaign pledge to spend more money on the town's children by building playgrounds, athletic fields, and a skateboard park.

Meanwhile, a group of seniors worked to discredit the mayor, much as they had done before with Chaz. They dug up and circulated damning court documents, but this time the documents were real and the mayor was guilty as charged. To Youngtown's older residents, the crime could hardly have been more emblematic of
their predicament: the mayor had once been arrested for parking in a space reserved for the handicapped—albeit thirteen years earlier and halfway across the country. Worse yet, unlike the town's penny-pinching elders, the young mayor proved to be a profligate spender, and many people blamed him for draining the municipality's reserve funds.

Given Youngtown's tumultuous recent history, it's somewhat surprising how little its historic center has changed when I visit. Compared with old photographs I had seen, it looks much the same as it did decades ago, with a bandstand in the middle of a modest green, and a one-story town hall that originally served as housing for ranch hands. Across the way is the town library, where there are now children's books as well as computer terminals popular with Youngtown's teenagers.

Farther down the street is a small playground and just beyond that is Maricopa Lake, which resembles a retention pond. But any amount of water in the desert is a luxury, and this tiny body of water is no exception. At the far end is a picnic gazebo and a few scattered pieces of old playground equipment. Lake or no lake, the heat and dust never let you forget where you are.

Many of Youngtown's streets sweep around in the lazy curves that characterize so many subdivisions today. The homes that are well maintained are charming in the suburban style of the 1950s: ranch houses with small footprints, little carports, and carefully manicured gardens. But there are also plenty of run-down homes with ratty yards, peeling paint, and tinfoil hanging from windows to keep out the searing desert sun.

The commercial area is still recovering from the exodus of businesses in the 1970s and 1980s. The town's big grocery store left in 1978; and a cooperative failed, owing to a lack of volunteers. I see two massage parlors and a tattoo business. Across the street, Sun City and its palm-studded boulevards beckon.

The most radical new addition to Youngtown is also the one that is most difficult to access. One either has to drive halfway around the edge of the community or across a steep and creepy (at least at night) storm wash to reach a subdivision called Agua Fria Ranch. The development represents the community's first substantial residential construction since the early 1960s, and it is a source of great pride. The subdivision looks much like any other—uninspired homes with large garages facing one another—but there are plenty of basketball hoops and children playing in the streets.

Much of the subdivision's infrastructure—such as flood control —was paid for with a $3 million special assessment for which only those living in the new development are responsible. The assessment's purpose is to make sure that the residents of “old Youngtown” don't have to pay for improvements exclusively designed for residents of “new Youngtown.”

On my way out, I spy one homeowner participating in an activity feared and despised by most deed-restricted communities, including old Youngtown. His car is hoisted up on a jack in his driveway, and he is buried somewhere under the chassis, presumably changing the oil. In many of the communities that I have visited, such activity is quickly reported and the perpetrator is warned to refrain from it in the future or face expulsion. Most members of a homeowners' association will tell you that taking a hard line is necessary to keep a community from spiraling downward.

Nonetheless, Agua Fria is considered a complete success, because it quickly doubled the town's population, from 3,000 to 6,000. It also balanced out the community's lopsided demographics. There is now the same number of younger people as older people, although time is ultimately on the side of the town's younger residents.

Graffiti is not altogether rare, and according to Dan Connelly, Youngtown's sixty-five-year-old police chief, crime has indeed increased since desegregation. The department recently added a
drug-sniffing dog to the force, to help deal with a growing problem: methamphetamine. But the crime is due to a number of factors, Connelly tells me.

When it was first built, Youngtown was more than thirteen miles from the city limits of Phoenix. The retirement community and its neighbor, Sun City, were islands of green in a vast expanse of desert. But as Phoenix rapidly grew from a small city to a sprawling metropolitan area—it is now the fifth-largest city in America—it expanded to within three miles of their boundaries. One look outside at the congested roads makes the region's inexorable growth abundantly clear.

“At this point, we're really just another bedroom community of Phoenix,” the chief tells me when we meet. “In ten more years we'll be considered inner-city. We've got all the crime and the problems that other cities have.”

But while Youngtown has its share of drive-through crime, he says that much of its criminal activity is now homegrown—just as the obstinate seniors angrily predicted it would be. “We used to get about two domestic violence calls a year,” says Connelly. “Last year we had 337. Ages twenty-five to forty are the prime demographic for domestic violence. In general, we have the same number of calls for service today as we did in 1999. But they're no longer Mildred calling because she can't find her cat or can't figure out how to operate the air-conditioning now that her husband's dead.”

Another measure of change is the so-called death patrol. “We used to collect thirty-five to forty dead bodies a year; now we find ten, if that many.” As the town's demographics change, so does its sense of community. Requests for the death patrol now come from concerned relatives “back home” rather than from a neighbor. “It's usually some nephew from Canton, Ohio, asking us to check up on his uncle who turns out to be dead on the toilet,” Connelly says.

And yet, the chief tells me emphatically that the increase in crime has been worth the sacrifice. “Look, where you have kids and
young people, you're going to have problems. But on the flip side, we now have a vibrant, growing community. We even have a kids' soccer league. As far as I'm concerned, the banning of children was wrong. I don't see it as being any different from the overt prejudice against African-Americans in pre–civil rights America. When I was in the military, I was stationed in the South, and I remember that time well.”

In his view, integration has actually led to better relations between the generations. To illustrate this point, the chief recalls an incident from the mid-1990s, just before age restrictions were lifted: an older woman ran over and killed a seven-year-old girl who had just gotten off her school bus. “The woman was
angry
. She told me that the child should never have been crossing the street, because schoolchildren aren't allowed to live in Sun City. That's how bad it was.”

I
T
'
S A
T
UESDAY NIGHT AND AFTER YET ANOTHER LONG DAY OF RE
porting 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.”