My husband and I worked a series of odd jobs when we first moved to Nashville. That’s what you do when you move to a new city without job prospects and you don’t know anybody; when you’ve interrupted your education to get married–and to party.

Let’s see…I waited tables. I answered phones. I worked an assembly line hanging coiled wire and got one of my front teeth knocked out. I cashiered. And I worked construction with my husband.

The construction gig wasn’t half bad. We were roofers. Purely shingles. No tar. Just the two of us working for a shady contractor who built golf course maintenance houses.

We got on the job site early when the skies were streaked with color. We had our morning coffee and breakfast biscuit on the roof. It was pretty. Golf courses generally are.

This was back in the mid 80s when you could still make decent money working construction. But the gig didn’t last as long it was supposed to. The contractor had to leave town fast before a few of his jobs were completed. My husband got wind that he was skipping and…well, we got paid. Cash.

We lived downtown then, during the first Nashville renaissance. The Ryman Auditorium, the original Grand Ole Opry was boarded up, abandoned at that time. Lower Broad was still full of pawn and porn shops, but upper Broad and 2nd Avenue were rocking.

There was excitement in the air. And we were part of it.

The Market Street Apartments are on 2nd Avenue South. That’s where we lived, in expensive digs that cater to what we called yuppies back then. We were friends with some of them. Others looked down on us. It was hard for us to come up with the rent, but we managed. Our realtor/landlord loved us. He said he wished he had a building full of people like us. People that paid their rent on time. That made us feel good.

Anyway, there we were in between jobs with the rent due soon. I hoped we would work some of the construction contacts we’d made and get something similar to the golf course gigs, something where we could work together. My husband said that was unlikely. Cushy gigs like that are few and far between in construction.

Besides, it was getting cold. My husband hates the cold. He wanted to work inside. He wanted to DJ. That’s why we came to Nashville. So he could work in radio. And that’s how we met, in college radio.

But you don’t just walk into a mid-major radio market from a small radio market and go to work. It doesn’t work that way, no matter how good you are, especially back then when radio was a big thing and every job in the top 50 market was highly coveted. You had to pay your dues.

As the old story goes, we knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a lady that managed a strip club. The strip club needed a DJ.

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I could name names in this post and from a journalistic perspective I should, but I’m not a journalist, so I’m not going to. If that puts you off, I understand. This is my hobby. I don’t get paid for it. I’m not going to risk getting sued over blogging. And this physician sues people. He also pulls guns on people.

That said, he’s been the subject of many write ups in The Nashville Tennessean and The Nashville Scene since I’ve lived here and upon researching him, I found articles concerning his weight loss and family medicine practice dating back to 1979.

Here’s a run down of some of the antics that he has been “disciplined” by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners for:

  • Molestation of patients
  • Sex with a minor
  • Abusing and insulting patients and employees
  • Frequenting a brothel
  • Unethical Billing Practices
  • Brandishing a handgun in the physicians cafeteria of a Nashville hospital

His discipline consisted of being required to see a psychiatrist, attend Sex Addicts Anonymous, be interned in a treatment facility, have a physician sponsor and pay various fines.

Several years ago my husband and I were watching the local news and a story came on about him. He was being accused of exchanging opioids for sex with prostitutes. One of the ladies had gone to the police with allegations that he abused her. His lawyer was excoriating the woman on the news. My husband and I looked at each other. It was the first time we’d heard about him in years.

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I hated my husband working at the strip club. Duh. I threw few fits over it–to no avail.

“It’s good money,” he insisted. “I make more in tips in a couple of days than I can make all week working construction.”

I wasn’t appeased.

“I’m not working there for that,” he assured.

“Yeah. Right.”

“Then quit your job and go to work with me if it’d make you feel better. You can sit in the DJ booth. Nancy won’t care.” Nancy was the manager of the joint.

I was waiting tables again at a hotel coffee shop. The tips sucked and the manager was making passes at me. So I turned in my notice and went to work with my husband at the strip club.

It seemed like the logical thing to do. Of course I was twenty-two at the time.

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