NSU

I spent the Summer of 1996 working at Wal-Mart and being with Mike.  That fall I started at NSU as Sociology major.  The classes were much easier at NSU then at USL or at least I thought so.  I was also taking classes in something that I loved.  I still had no idea what I was going to do after college.  But I was assured by everyone around me, get a good college education and you will have a better life. Yeh right.

Mike was still a music major and I don’t remember if he was delivering pizzas at that time or not.  We were college students.  We were living on student loans at the time. 

I had started getting into computers at USL.  Three of the four fellers I road back from St. Louis with were computer majors and hung out at the Wesley with me.  They introduced me to the internet.  The computer lab at USL was freezing cold, as computers were known to overheat.  The floor was raised and made of metal to hold all the cables connecting all the computers to the printer and the main frame that was in another room.  The internet was in black and white, and Yahoo was just one page.  And it was not a search engine yet, it was a directory.  You had to click a link and then another link to get what you wanted, unless you had the URL.  I have been messing with computers ever since.

I remember trying out email for the first time.  On a black screen with white letters that looked a lot like DOS.  Later learning to go into what were early chat rooms.  These were a lot more sophisticated then the computers that were in the dorms that had either lime green or hunter orange text on a black screen for you to type your papers on.  I even remember Windows 1 and what a wonderful improvement it was over the damn orange and green text.  Now you could chose your writing program, and you typed on what looked like a white piece of paper and you could chose the color of your text, you know if you had a color printer and those were only for rich people. 

When I got to NSU the Sociology department was just setting up its own computer lab for students to use and I was made one of the monitors.  Now a monitor was someone who helped you with the ins and outs of software, the internet, and made sure that people did not down load porn, which was starting even in those early days.  Mike started downloading porn just as soon as he figured out how.  I turned a blind eye for many years.  If my bosses had known I was letting him do it, I could have been fired and him expelled.

Mike’s attention and lust for me seemed to be fading with each passing day.  I wanted to so much to get back to that summer, the Summer of ’95, when he had wanted me so much.  I don’t know when I started having to beg for him to have sex with me.  I know that other then the first few times I always initiated sex.  I also know that once Mike had sex that first semester it was downhill from there.  I feel he saw me as concurred, like Mt. Everest.   Once he planted his flag that was it.  I was saddled and put up on a shelf like a trophy, not to be touched or played with again.  Into my life walked Joe. 

The first time I ever saw Joe he was leaning up against the door frame of the Sociology lab.  Oh he was so beautiful with his blue eyes, sandy colored hair, trim little body, and allergic little sniffles.  The first thing that caught my attention was his Boy Scout belt.  I asked him about it and we soon became fast friends as he told me about him being an Eagle Scout and that he was also from the Shreveport area.  I invited him to the Wesley and Joe started hanging around with me and Mike.  We all became very close fast friends.

It was later, in my darker days, that we would begin what my therapist termed an emotional affair.  But Joe is another story all together.  I still believe if it was not for him, I would not have survived, and for that I am ever grateful. Oh the flirting between us began almost immediately, but nothing came about until much later.  We are both horrible flirts. But Joe began to give me what I desperately wanted in those days, attention.  Most of the time I think Mike could have cared less.

No I was committed to Mike, no matter what my heart or my loins might have told me to do. My bible told me to not have sex outside of wedlock.  I had barely got it in under the fact we were engaged.  After all Mary and Joseph had been engaged when she had Jesus, right.  I had to marry him.  I remember before leaving USL having this conversation with a very Christian friend of mine.  I had my reservations about marrying Mike, even then.  She was the first to tell me I didn’t have to marry him just because I was sleeping with him.  I had never heard that before.  But I wanted to do what was right and proper and so that included marrying him, even if I was starting to see the signs the ship was sinking.  Hey I was 20, over 200lb., and still no car.  I felt I didn’t have a lot of options. 

Ilsa