(A Civil War Story They Would Never Tell)

Nashville, Tennessee, 1860, near the river lay a district known as Smokey Row, four blocks long, two blocks wide, where the prostitution industry thrived; in all, eight full blocks of houses and houses of ill repute. 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 nearly a dozen mulatto women were on the list, a large number were illiterate, about two dozen were widows. The youngest in her early teens, the oldest in her late sixties. Among the many, a dozen were from Kentucky, Alabama, Ireland and Canada, the rest from Tennessee. Most used, or passed for, common names.

On North Front Street, there was a large mansion, almost thirty people lived in the house, among the prostitutes there were several children and a black man in his early twenties, Tom Dimple. And the War Between the States began. Forth Sumter was hit, bombed. In 1863, Brigadier General RS Granger’s command in Nashville tried to drive the vile women out of the city by steamboat, but to no avail, they all crept back into the city in even greater numbers.

One hot afternoon, Tom Dimple, in Nashville, sat high on the roof of this great mansion on Front Street, where he worked as a janitor, looked out over the rooftops of the city; the chimneys that rise to the sky. After it got dark and the street lights came on, the soldiers began arriving as usual at the house of ill repute, by this time there were almost as many bare-faced 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 ongoing, the soldiers’ sexual need allowed an influx of black women into this sinful business, if only to ease the burden. of white work. females

People could hear Tom Dimple aching in pain on the rooftop and sometimes on the balcony and tonight was no different tonight he was on the rooftop with the cool cool breeze on the hot night again in pain . Also, those who knew him had a joke about him: that he was the best friend the black women in the house ever had (and maybe some of the white women) being just a janitor. And he called him in whispers, Enema Dimple, and not to his face, because of his anxiety to have sex with those women there, three or four times a day, but because he was constipated most of the time. Because I had so much cramping, I had to hold on tight to the toilet seat every time, if not from the burning sensations in the penis, then from the release of the rectum, this time I had so much cramping, bloating, twitching, and cramping. , peristalsis, they put him on crutches. Also, he arrived 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 quiet on that ceiling, and he was in so much pain 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 postponed it: his spine ached and his penis also, and he had not defecated in seventeen days, nor a check-up. by a doctor once, so he prayed in pious ignorance, “O 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’m begging you, I’ll be a new kind of young man, just heal me.” I’ll do anything you ask me to, I’ll leave this house of reputation and be a good boy like my mom 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 good working order. As a result, at that very moment, he had to run off the roof and make a big shit in the bathroom, and his spine was back in good shape, like iron. After all this, he went to bed to get a restful and painless night’s sleep. The next morning, when he sat down and had breakfast with everyone, he didn’t say not a word of his promise. And he just went back to work as normal, in fact, back to what he was doing before, with even more enthusiasm and relish.