(A Civil War story they would never tell)
Nashville, Tennessee, 1860, near the river resided a district known as Smokey Row, consisting of four blocks long, two blocks wide, where the prostitution industry thrived; in all, eight full blocks of houses and houses of disrepute. If you had asked the Nashville sheriffs at the time for the federal census of these businesswomen, they would have told you that they counted over two hundred, listed in such an occupation, but surely there were more, the unlisted list, mostly white but almost a dozen mulatto women were on the list, a large number were illiterate, about two dozen widows. The youngest in her early teens, the oldest close to sixty. Among the many, a dozen were from Kentucky, Alabama, Ireland and Canada, the rest from Tennessee. Most used, or went by, common names.
On North Front Street, there was a large mansion, almost thirty people lived in the house, among the prostitutes were several children and a black man in his early twenties, Tom Dimple. And the War Between the States began. Forth Sumter was hit, shelled. In 1863, Brigadier General RS Granger’s command in Nashville, tried to take the vile women out of the city by steamboat, but to no avail, all sneaking back to the city in even greater numbers.
One hot afternoon, Tom Dimple, in Nashville, sat on top of the roof of this great mansion on Front Street, where he worked as a janitor, looking out over the rooftops of the city; the chimneys that rise towards the sky. After it got dark and the street lights were turned on, the soldiers began to arrive as usual at the disreputable house, by this time there were almost as many barefaced black prostitutes who paraded through the streets as freely as the whites. , even to public squares, day and night. Newspapers complained about this, and troop commanders complained about black women, but with the war going on, soldiers’ sexual need allowed an influx of black women into this sinful business, if only to ease the burden. work for whites. females
People could hear Tom Dimple aching in pain on the roof top and sometimes on the balcony and tonight was no different, tonight he was on the roof top in the cool cool breeze in the hot night again in pain . Also, those who knew him had a running joke about him: that he was the best friend the black women in the house ever had (and perhaps some of the white women) being simply a janitor. And he called it in whispers, Enema Dimple, and not to his face, because of his concern about having sex with those women there, three or four times a day, but because he was constipated most of the time. Because he had so many cramps, he had to hold on tight to the toilet seat every time, if not for the burning sensations in the penis, then for the release of the rectum, that one time he had so many cramps, bloating, spasms, and cramps. , peristalsis, put him on crutches. Besides, he came in due time, he became more of a patient than a janitor in the house, but everyone liked Tom.
So, there he sat that night on top of the roof, a skilled janitor and a sexually addicted young man skilled in the art of interaction.
Before he went back down to his room tonight, it was dark and silent on that ceiling, and he was in so much pain, so bad that he wanted to jump off the ceiling and kill himself, even though he knew the women wouldn’t understand. and being grateful for the establishment of the house, he felt that this was not what he should do, and perhaps he would postpone it: his spine ached and his penis ached, and he had not defecated in seventeen days, not even a check-up. by a doctor once, for which he prayed in pious ignorance: “Oh, Jesus,” he exclaimed, “if you would only listen to me, I would mend my ways this very day, help me through this difficult time, take away all this pain.” “Please, oh please, please, I beg you, I’ll be a new kind of young man, just heal me.” I’ll do anything you ask me to, leave this house of reputation and be a good boy like my momma told me to be and go to church every Sunday” and, lo and behold, just like that, in the blink of an eye eyes, everything was back to normal. His pain was reduced to nothing, his penis was back in working order. As a result, right then and there, he had to run off the roof and take a big shit in the bathroom, and his spine was back in good shape, like iron. After all this, he went to bed for a good, pain-free night’s sleep. The next morning, when he sat down and ate breakfast with everyone, he didn’t say not a word of his promise. And he just went back to working normally, in fact, he went back to doing what he was doing before, with even more enthusiasm and desire.