September 15-19, 1997. Seeing my friends again at Outreach Camp. (#145)

October 9, 2022 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 7 Comments

Although I had been this way once before, this drive still felt unfamiliar enough to be exciting in its own right. This part of the state in general was still mostly unfamiliar to me. It was a Monday afternoon, and I had driven from Jeromeville on the valley floor east on Highway 100 for about fifty miles, across Capital City and its suburbs into the mountains. Then, in a smaller city called Blue Oaks, I turned north on Highway 79 and drove north for another thirty miles. As I continued climbing into the mountains, the landscape gradually changed. Between Capital City and Blue Oaks, Highway 100 passed mostly through rolling hills dotted with oaks and covered with grass, brown now at the end of the hot, dry summer. North of Blue Oaks, along Highway 79, the surroundings began to be dominated more by pine trees, with the grassy forest floor giving way to a coat of dead needles and cones.

After passing through two other small cities, I turned onto a rural road and drove another five miles, mostly uphill. Pine Mountain Christian Conference Center was situated at the top of a ridge, and just past the conference grounds, the road began descending into the canyon of a river. I turned left into the parking lot and stopped the car. Jeromeville Christian Fellowship’s Outreach Camp was the week-long retreat where we planned for the approaching school year, and this year it was at Pine Mountain, as it had been last year.

“Hi, Greg,” Cheryl from the JCF staff team said as I walked up to the registration table. “How was your summer? You did that internship in Oregon, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It wasn’t what I was expecting. I learned that math research is not what I want to do as a career.”

Cheryl looked up from a list on a clipboard. “Who was in your car?” she asked. “I see you on the list, but someone didn’t write down who came with you.”

“I came by myself,” I said, “because I’m not going straight back to Jeromeville afterward.”

“Oh! Where are you going?”

“Another retreat for the weekend. Student ministry leaders at Jeromeville Covenant.”

“Fun! That’s because you’re working with the junior high kids there, right?”

“Yeah. Youth group leaders of all ages, and college group leaders, they’ll all be there.”

To the right of the parking lot was a sports field, where a group of about ten students were playing Ultimate Frisbee. Brent Wang threw the disc a long distance downfield, where no one on his team appeared to be, but Seth Huang appeared seemingly out of nowhere, dashing downfield and catching the disc in the goal zone. Ajeet Tripathi and Todd Chevallier sat to the side of the field, watching; I walked up to them.

“Hey, Greg,” Ajeet said.

Ajeet wore a black Bay City Titans baseball cap; I pointed at it and said, “I went to a Titans game a few days ago. First time I’d been in three years.”

“Nice! Which one did you see?”

“The one against Dallas that went into extra innings.”

“Sweet. I watched that one on TV, stayed up to see the ending.”

“Brent and Seth are so good at Ultimate when they’re on the same team,” I said. “I remember one time last year watching them play Frisbee on the Quad, and they did all kinds of crazy running throws and catches like that.”

“I know,” Ajeet replied.

“How was your summer, Greg?” Todd asked. “Did you go home?”

“I was in Grandvale, Oregon, doing an internship. Then I went home for a couple weeks, then back to Jeromeville for a couple more weeks.”

“Wait, Oregon? I thought you were from the Santa Lucia area.”

“Yeah. Plumdale, in Santa Lucia County.”

“So you were just in Oregon for this internship?”

“Yes. Doing math research. Sorry, I thought I told everyone last year I was going to Oregon.”

“You might have,” Todd said. “A lot of people went places this summer.”

“Speaking of which, how was the China trip?”

“So good! God really planted some seeds in some of the students we were working with. We’re going to do a presentation about it at the main session tonight.”

“That’s cool.”

I spent most of the rest of that first day saying hi to people and catching up. It was always good to see people for the first time in three months. Saying hi to Haley Channing felt a little awkward, because of our history the previous school year. We were friendly to each other, but I did not want to try to force any conversations or give the impression that I could not accept the fact that she just wanted to be friends.

Intervarsity, the parent organization of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, led a trip that summer where hundreds of students from all around the United States and Canada went to China to do ministry among university students. Twelve students from JCF went on the trip, and from the presentation that night, it sounded like it was a challenging yet powerful experience. Evan Lundgren, my Bible study leader from the previous year, was on the trip; he was also a native of Santa Lucia County, but we did not know each other growing up. After the presentation, Evan and I were catching up, and he told me something about the trip that was not addressed in the presentation. “We had some new couples form on the trip,” he said.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Like who?”

“Darren and Katrina.”

“Hmm,” I said. Darren and Katrina ran in the same circles already, so this was not terribly surprising.

“And Eddie and Tabitha.”

“Eddie and Tabitha?” I repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Eddie Baker and Tabitha Sasaki,” I said incredulously. “They’re dating now?”

“Yes,” Evan replied. I did not see this coming, probably because I considered them both close friends and had no idea that they were even on each other’s radars. I often felt like the last to know whenever couples formed, though, so this was nothing new.

More couple-related news broke at breakfast Tuesday morning, although this involved an established couple who had been together for a year and a half, not a new couple. As I walked to the dining hall, six girls were gathered around Amelia Dye, along with Janet McAllen, half of the couple that were the lead staff of JCF. The girls were looking at Amelia’s left hand, which she held up as she said something about “this morning, we got up early to watch the sun rise.” I noticed a diamond ring on her finger and put the pieces together in my mind.

“Scott proposed?” I asked as I walked by, pointing to Amelia’s ring.

“Yes!” Amelia answered excitedly. “This was his grandmother’s ring! It’s so beautiful!”

“Congratulations!”

This year’s JCF class had the unusual quirk that many students from the class a year older than me, including Amelia and Scott, did not graduate in four years, so they were still at the University of Jeromeville for a fifth year. I was beginning my fourth year, and at this point it was uncertain whether or not I would be finished at the end of the year. After discovering I disliked mathematics research, I decided that I wanted to be a high school teacher, but I had not yet figured out how long it would take to finish both the classes for my degree and the prerequisites for the teacher training program. I had made an appointment to talk to Dr. Graf, my major advisor, next week after I got back to Jeromeville.

At the beginning of the morning session, Janet had gone over some highlights of the upcoming week. Wednesday night, Sarah Winters would be sharing her testimony, telling the story of how they came to faith in Jesus. Thursday afternoon we would walk down to the river where four students would be baptized. And every afternoon, one of the campground staff would be running a ropes course, new to the center this year.

After lunch, I walked out to the ropes course, mostly because I had no idea what a ropes course was and I was curious. A number of elaborate climbing structures had been attached to some exceptionally tall trees, one that looked like a giant rope ladder with wooden steps about three feet apart, a balance beam connecting two trees about thirty feet off the ground, and a small platform at the same height of uncertain function. John Harvey was carefully climbing the giant steps of the ladder, pulling himself up to each step; he was attached to a rope extending above him high into the trees, through some unseen pulley, and down to where a campground staff member held the rope, probably to keep John from falling. Several other students were standing by watching, and we all cheered when John reached the top of the ladder.

“Hey, you!” a female voice said from behind me. I turned around to see Sadie Rowland smiling and wearing some sort of harness. “Are you gonna go up there? I’m going next.”

“I was just watching,” I said. “It looks like fun, though.”

“How was your summer?”

“It was okay. I was in Oregon doing a math research internship.”

“Math research. That sounds like something you’d be good at, and I wouldn’t.”

“Actually, I mostly just learned I don’t like math research, and that I don’t want to do it as a career. Math research is weird and complicated and hard to understand what you’re doing.”

“So then do you know what you’ll do after you graduate?”

“I’m going to be a teacher. I helped out in a high school classroom last year, remember, and I really liked that. I always thought I didn’t want to be a teacher because of the politics involved, you know, but maybe I shouldn’t let that get in the way of something I enjoy doing.”

“Oh, I know, there’s a lot of messed up political stuff in the school system. And your coworkers will be a bunch of liberals. But maybe you’re right.”

“Yeah.”

“I think you’d be a good teacher.”

“Thank you,” I said. “How was your summer?”

“Nothing special. I was just home, working. I’m thinking about an internship too. I found out about something for poli-sci majors where we can go intern in DC. That would be an experience.”

“Wow. Yeah.”

While Sadie and I continued to make small talk, John crossed the balance beam while hanging onto another rope. He now stood on the small platform. I could see its purpose now: there was a zip line above the platform, and another platform about thirty feet away on another tree, at a lower height, with steps leading down from it. John grabbed the handle and slid along the zip line to the other platform. “That looks fun,” I said as John dismounted and began climbing down from the tree. Everyone cheered.

“Yeah!” Sadie replied.

“Are you ready?” the camp employee asked Sadie as John detached the rope.

“Yes!” Sadie replied. “I’ll talk to you later, Greg.”

“Yeah. Have fun!”

I watched as Sadie carefully climbed the giant ladder, a bit more cautiously than John. I cheered with everyone else as she finished each section, and when she climbed down at the end she had a wide smile on her face. Sadie was so easy to talk to. I hoped to have more opportunities to do so this week and in the upcoming school year.

During my freshman year at UJ, I was part of something called the Interdisciplinary Honors Program. This program consisted of around seventy specifically selected freshmen who lived in the same building and took one class each quarter specific to the program. My first friends at UJ were other students in the IHP, and I got involved in Jeromeville Christian Fellowship the following year through students in the IHP who invited me. One of these students was Sarah Winters, a mathematics major like me. She was a sweet, kind-hearted soul, a listening ear when a friend needed someone. Sarah would see the good in others even when they were not acting at their best; I saw that freshman year, when I got upset and threw a cardboard box at her and she never got mad at me. “I hope you all had a great afternoon,” Cheryl said after the worship team finished their set on Wednesday night. “Tonight, you’ll be hearing from Sarah. She’s going to share her testimony.” Sarah stood and walked to the podium, and everyone clapped. Sarah lowered the microphone a little as she began.

“I didn’t grow up in a Christian home,” Sarah began. I had heard her say this before, but I still found it surprising. She always seemed so strong in her faith, a good example of what a Christian woman should be like, and yet I found out later that she had only become a Christian at age 17, a few months before we met.

“We just weren’t religious at all,” Sarah continued. “And my parents divorced when I was eight, so I didn’t have a very stable home life, going back and forth between Mom’s house and Dad’s house. By the time I got to high school, I was still doing well in classes, but I was starting to make some bad decisions in my social life.” I felt myself getting scared, not wanting to know what bad decisions Sarah was making. I did not want to be disappointed in her. But I kept listening.

“Junior year, I played at this big marching band event, with a lot of other school bands from all over the state. I met a guy there from another school, and we just hit it off really fast. We even snuck off during part of the time we were supposed to be performing to go make out. After that weekend, we stayed in touch, we called each other, we wrote letters, and a few months later he asked me to his prom. He lived in Hilltown, near Bay City, and I lived in the Valley, in Ralstonville, so it took me a couple hours to drive there. I didn’t want to drive home in the middle of the night, so I stayed with him.” I was pretty sure I knew what was coming next, and it made me a little uncomfortable to hear her say it. “And I slept with him,” Sarah continued. “It was my first time, but I thought I loved him, so it felt right. And that continued whenever we’d see each other in person. He’d come see me or I’d go see him a few times during the summer, and every couple weekends in the fall.

“Then he cheated on me,” Sarah explained. “Suddenly now I felt dirty, and ashamed, and angry. I had given him everything, I had stayed loyal to him in a long distance relationship, and all that meant nothing to him. And I handled it in the worst possible way: I had a fling with this guy at school who I knew liked me, because I needed to feel like someone wanted me. And I slept with this guy too. But this time it didn’t feel right. I knew that I was only with this guy because I didn’t want to be alone. So we broke up after about a month.

“I apparently didn’t learn my lesson from that, because soon after that, I had a new boyfriend.” Some people chuckled. I had not seen this side of Sarah before, and I was a bit unsettled. “But this guy was different. He was a Christian. He invited me to church. I avoided telling him about my past, because I knew he wouldn’t approve, but when I finally did tell him, he told me about God’s redeeming love, how the blood of Jesus Christ had washed away my sins. Shortly after that, I made a decision to follow Jesus. And it hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learned so much about how I don’t need attention from guys to be wanted and loved. Jesus loves you just who you are. I am a beloved daughter of the Lord.”

Dave McAllen gave a talk after this, also about the new identity we receive in Christ, but I could not stop thinking about Sarah’s story. It brought new context to some of the other conversations we had had over the years. More importantly, I knew that there was something I had to tell Sarah now. She had been placed in my group for the week, so we would be debriefing together after tonight’s session talking about any thoughts we had about tonight.

“I haven’t slept with actual girlfriends,” I told my small group after the session, “but I’ve struggled with having lustful thoughts and…” I did not want to be unnecessarily graphic, but I did not want to be vague either. “Acting on them, alone,” I said. “One time a while back, I was feeling particularly ashamed because of that, and I wanted to talk to someone, but I was too embarrassed to say anything face to face. So I sent an email to someone in this small group using an anonymous emailing service, so my name wouldn’t be on it; I just said I’m someone you know and I need someone to talk to. My friend replied, saying to read the Bible or do something to distract myself when I feel that way, but most importantly, not to get down on myself, because Jesus loves me. I needed that reminder tonight. That’s all I wanted to say.” Everyone else seemed to get the hint that I did not want to talk about this in detail, and no one asked me anything more about it.

After everyone shared, we prayed to close the night. As people dispersed to the cabins, I stayed in my seat, looking at Sarah, hoping that she had remembered that incident. She sat next to me, put her arm around me, and said, “Jesus loves you.” I put my head down; Sarah just stayed there silently next to me with her arm around me from the side. After several minutes of quiet, I looked up and gave her my best half-smile. “Are you okay?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah.”

“You wanna get some sleep now?”

“That’s probably a good idea. Thanks for sticking around.”

“Of course. Jesus loves you. Don’t ever forget that.”

I heard abbreviated versions of a few other students’ testimonies Thursday afternoon at the river baptisms. I found it interesting that Kieran was getting baptized. Last time JCF had a baptism event, when Sarah had gotten baptized at the end of sophomore year, Kieran had made a big deal to say that he wanted to make a public declaration of his faith, but he had already been baptized as a baby and did not feel a need to be baptized again. I wondered what caused him to decide now to be baptized after all, especially since I was also one who had been baptized as a baby and not as an adult.

I said goodbye to everyone Friday afternoon when Outreach Camp ended, but I knew I would see them soon. At the end of the road that the camp was on, everyone turned south on Highway 73 back toward Blue Oaks, but I turned east less than a mile later, on Highway 22 toward the Great Blue Lake, since I had another retreat to get to. I put on a tape of Third Day, a Christian rock band from Georgia that I had discovered last year, as I drove through more forests and mountains, some of the most breathtaking scenery I had ever experienced. I was in no hurry, since I left Pine Mountain a little after one o’clock and most of the group from Jeromeville Covenant would not arrive at the other retreat until evening.

Highway 22 took me back to Highway 100 eastbound, which actually ran diagonally to the northeast through that area. I exited the freeway again on the road that eventually took me to the western shore of the Great Blue Lake, about an hour and a half after I left Pine Mountain. The lake was huge, surrounded by forested mountains, except for the lake’s outlet through a narrow river valley that I had followed from the time I turned off the freeway. The area was popular with tourists year-round, hiking and boating in the summer, and skiing in the nearby mountains in the winter, so traffic slowed down in some spots. Now that I finally saw the area’s natural beauty in person, I understood why it was such a popular destination.

I drove south along a windy mountain road, down the entire western shore of the lake, stopping a few times to take pictures since I was in no hurry. I passed through a city called Lakeview at the south end of the lake, then climbed back into the mountains over a summit on a road that would eventually lead me back to Capital City. Six miles past the summit, I saw the road I was looking for.

At last year’s Outreach Camp, God had opened a door for me to have a specific role in JCF as the worship band’s roadie, but they did not need one this year. I had signed up to sit at JCF’s table on the Quad during welcome week, and to help out with a welcome mixer next Tuesday night, but these were not ongoing ministries for the year. I did have a specific ongoing ministry outside of JCF, though: I was volunteering as a youth leader at church. God had still shown up at Outreach Camp this year in a more simple way, providing the opportunity to reconnect with my friends and hear messages I needed to hear from the Scriptures and others’ testimonies. I looked forward to seeing how he would continue to show up in my life at this other retreat and during the first week of school.

Readers: Do you enjoy going on retreats, or just generally getting away from your regular life and being out in nature? Tell me about one such time in the comments.

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August 1, 1997. Oh, how I wish that I might be the one. (#140)

August 21, 2022October 16, 2022 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 5 Comments

While I was in Oregon that summer, away from all of my friends and with less of a social life than I had in Jeromeville, my mind had plenty of time to explore some creative ideas. Since I did not have my computer with me, I could not make any new episodes of Dog Crap and Vince. I also could not work on Try, Try Again, a novel I had begun a year and a half ago about a high school student who needs a fresh start, but is not ready to move on to the next stage in life, so he runs away and fakes his age to get a few more years of high school. That manuscript was saved on the hard drive of my computer back in Jeromeville. By now I had lost interest in finishing Try, Try Again; I had moved on from whatever thoughts had inspired its creation. I never worked on it again; it remains unfinished to this day.

I was playing with an idea for a multi-part science fiction story, inspired by my recent rediscovery of Star Wars. My story began with humans living on another planet, ruled by another race. Their rebellion against their overlords would take up the first three stories. Then, hundreds of years later, in the next episode, it would be revealed that the alien overlords had been secretly living among the humans, plotting to reconquer their planet when the time was right. Unlike Star Wars, I was not going to leave my readers hanging with just the middle of the story, waiting to get the beginning and end of the story in movies that would never be made. My story had not only a beginning and a middle, but also an ending, in which hundreds more years would pass, and the humans would battle their overlords again, winning once and for all. But then I would write one more story, in which the conquering race would reappear. They could never truly be defeated. This idea never made it farther than an outline in which I would summarize each of the ten tentative episodes in one sentence each.

I had no computer in my room, so if I wanted to write for an extended period of time, I either had to write by hand with pencil and paper, or walk all the way to Keller Hall and use the computer in room 202, the study room for the other students from the summer math research program. Writing in 202 Keller carried the risk that one of my classmates would ask me about my writing. I did not feel particularly comfortable with the idea of sharing my writing with those people.

Also, with no computer in my room, I had to do all my emailing from 202 Keller. My mother wrote almost every day. I also had a few girls I met flirting in chat rooms who emailed me occasionally, and a few of my friends from Jeromeville actually checked their email during the summer when school was out. Many of my friends were currently on summer mission trips with churches or Christian ministry organizations; although they did not have frequent access to email, some of them occasionally sent out mass emails to their supporters.

I got one such email today, from Erica Foster. It was Friday, I was tired, and I decided in the late morning while sitting frustrated in front of a computer in 202 Keller that I was done doing math research for the day. Keith and Marjorie were sitting on a couch across the room, talking about things that were not math. Ivan and Emily, the other students working on the same project as me, each had their own things to work on, so I was not hindering their work by taking the rest of the day off. I closed the window in which I was writing scripts with the math software Mathematica and opened another window where I could get to my email.

This email was the first time I had heard from Erica since I left Jeromeville in mid-June. Erica, like me, was a youth group leader at Jeromeville Covenant Church. She was three years younger than me, having just graduated from Jeromeville High School; she would be joining me and most of the rest of the youth leaders at the University of Jeromeville in the fall. Her younger brother, Danny, was one of the kids in the youth group at J-Cov. Danny and his friends were a big part of the reason I got involved in youth ministry, after they randomly brought me with them on an adventure after church one day six months ago.

Erica was in Turkey for the summer, volunteering as a nanny for a family of full-time missionaries that J-Cov supported. The concept of mission trips and full-time missionaries was relatively new to me. I grew up Catholic, where missionary work looks a bit different from that of evangelical Christians.

In Erica’s email, she told all about the three children of the family she was helping, what they were learning in school, their hobbies, and what she had been teaching them weekly in place of a proper Sunday school. She also talked about helping their parents with the Bible study they had started in their community, and about some of the locals who had made a decision to follow Jesus or were asking questions indicating interest in doing so. At the end of the message, Erica had mentioned that the Turkish word for turkey, the animal, was the same as the Turkish word for India. “I wonder what they call turkeys in India?” she wrote. I laughed.

Erica was truly a woman of God. It took a huge leap of faith to go overseas and do God’s work, and as much as I supported the concept, I could never see myself as the one to actually go overseas. This trip seemed like the perfect experience for her; she had a very motherly side to her personality, suited to nannying, and having grown up at J-Cov, she had known this family that she was working with for many years. I needed to find a woman like that for myself, one who showed through the way she lived her life that she truly loved God.

Every once in a while, a poetic phrase will pop into my head regarding whatever, or as the case usually is, whoever is on my mind at the moment, and if the right words come, I will build a poem around that phrase. I was still thinking about Erica when I walked back to Howard Hall to warm up something in the microwave for lunch, and in my mind, I kept saying to myself, Reflected in her face, I see the Lord. Iambic pentameter, just like Shakespeare. This could work. By the time I got back to my room, I had a second line: Each move she makes the love of Christ reveals.

I would occasionally hide secret messages in my stories and poems. A few months ago, when Haley Channing told me she did not like me back and I was in the process of getting over her, I wrote a story in which the first letter of each paragraph spelled her name. Conveniently enough, “Erica Ann Foster” had fourteen letters, and a Shakespearean sonnet had fourteen lines. And the first two lines I thought of for my poem started with R and E, which were the first two letters of Erica’s full name spelled backward. I could hide her name in the first letters of each line, but spell it backward.

I wrote down the start of the poem as soon as I got back to my room. After I ate lunch, I went for a long walk around the Grandvale State campus, composing poetry in my head and occasionally taking a piece of paper out of my pocket and writing something I wanted to make sure to remember.

Erica had done another short mission trip over spring break, to northern Mexico, as part of the high school group at J-Cov. That was a big trip with hundreds of students from all over the West, organized by a Christian university in California. The students on that trip got a t-shirt that said “Be The One,” with a Bible verse on the back, saying to be the one that God sends out to spread the Gospel. I wrote that down, making a note in my head to incorporate that phrase into the poem somehow.

What was I doing? Was I developing a thing for Erica, falling for her? This could never work. We did not really have much in common other than being youth leaders at J-Cov. And what if Erica did become a full-time missionary someday? If something serious did happen between us, and we got married, I would have to follow her to some faraway land. Should I even be letting these thoughts into my head enough to write a poem about it?

Or, perhaps, could I incorporate these thoughts into the poem itself?

Somewhere around the seventh line, I got stuck; I could not make the poem sound like I wanted while making the line start with N, to fit the secret message. The line I had in mind started with I, and Erica’s name did have an I in it, but not at line 7. I decided to give up on making the first lines spell Erica’s name backward, opting for the simpler task of making the first letters of each line an anagram, unscrambling to spell “Erica Ann Foster.” This way, I would not have to change the first six lines that I had already tentatively written.

After I got back from my walk, I got out my copy of Needful Things by Stephen King, a long novel which I had been reading off and on all summer. I was near the end. I took a break from reading every once in a while to continue thinking about my poem. I warmed up something in the microwave again for dinner, and by about ten o’clock I had finished the poem. At some point, the pronouns in the beginning of the poem had changed, so that I wrote as if I were addressing the woman directly instead of writing about her.

“That I Might Be The One”

Reflected in your face, I see the Lord,
Each move you make the love of Christ reveals;
Through you, His love on everyone is poured,
Such strength in Him no worldly thing conceals.
Oh, how I wish that I might be the one
For which you save that special love, so dear,
In all your smiles I feel the shining sun,
No worries trouble me when you are near.
Now always will these dreams go unfulfilled,
Can bridges cross the years and miles between?
And we’ve no common ground on which to build
Except for Christ, Whose blood has made us clean;
Regarding this, I put my dreams aside,
And lift my cross, and let Him be our guide.

Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, with the Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme, and the first letters of each line unscrambling to spell Erica Ann Foster. It was perfect.

After my poem was done, I walked back to Keller Hall and went straight to room 202. This was exactly the kind of quiet, boring night that seemed perfect for logging on to Internet Relay Chat and finding strangers to talk to, particularly girls. I certainly was not meeting any girls here, and all the cute girls I knew back in Jeromeville were not keeping in touch regularly this summer.

A girl named Valerie whom I had seen off and on in this room for a long time was on tonight. We had talked some over the last year or so; sometimes she was friendly and sweet, but other times she seemed too busy for me. A girl who was outgoing and friendly and claimed to be young and pretty would be really popular in any Internet chat room, probably inundated with messages from lonely, horny guys like me.

gjd76: hey
sweetgirl417: hey u! what’s up ;)
gjd76: not much, bored tonight. i told you i was in oregon for a research internship this summer right?
sweetgirl417: no! how’s that going?
gjd76: i really don’t like it. math research is weird. and i don’t have anything in common with the other students in the program. i really can’t wait to get back to jeromeville
sweetgirl417: oh no :( when do you go back?
gjd76: i leave grandvale august 15, which is also my birthday. then i’ll be with my family for two weeks. then back to jeromeville.
sweetgirl417: happy early birthday ;)
gjd76: thanks :) i just keep telling myself it’s almost over… i’ve been telling myself that for a month now though
sweetgirl417: too bad your program isn’t here in missouri, then you could hang out with me ;)
gjd76: that sounds nice ;) i wish
sweetgirl417: so did you ever find a girlfriend? ;)
gjd76: no. there are four girls in the math program, they’re not my type.
sweetgirl417: anyone you like back home?
gjd76: kinda. i wrote a poem earlier today, it’s about someone i know back home who is a great girl but it just wouldn’t work between us
sweetgirl417: can i read it?

I sent Valerie my poem; she said it was really good. I did not tell her about the secret message, and she never found it. She asked me why I did not think things could ever work out with Erica, and I told her everything that had been on my mind lately. Valerie then messaged me a winking face and told me again to come to Missouri. I asked her if she had a boyfriend; she did not. She had gone through a breakup a few months ago and had not met anyone else, and the only guy interested in her was kind of a creep. I told her that she should come out west to see me.

After a couple hours of small talk, with lots of winking faces and some jokes about what it would be like if I went to Missouri to meet Valerie, and some talk of kissing, I asked Valerie what she was wearing. She said a tank top and pajama shorts. I looked around the room, hoping that, since it was almost one in the morning by now (and two hours later for Valerie in Missouri), no one would come to 202 Keller and ask me what I was doing up so late. I attempted to take the conversation in a much more intimate direction, and I was pleased that Valerie reciprocated. The flirty messages soon became overtly sexual, with a lot of touching myself on my end, and at one point I had to tell Valerie that I would be back in a few minutes, since I had to go to the bathroom and take care of something. I really hoped I was alone in the building, and that no one would question an obviously aroused undergraduate wandering the halls.

I had the sense to log out of the computer before I stepped away from it, just in case anyone else came to 202 Keller while I was gone, and when I returned a few minutes later, I logged back into IRC and typed to Valerie with my recently-washed hands that she was great and that I had had a wonderful time, but I should probably go to bed. She agreed, since it was even later for her. I told her that we would talk soon.

I always felt ashamed of myself for having these feelings and acting on them. My freshman year in the dorm at UJ, I had made the Walk of Shame back from the bathroom after taking care of myself in this way many times. Tonight, the Walk of Shame was much longer, walking all the way from Keller Hall across the Quad and down the street to Howard Hall. I was a follower of Jesus, and Jesus said that lust was a sin. I should be stronger than this; giving in to these moments made me feel weak in my faith.

About a third of the way across the Quad, I saw someone else approaching on the same path. Whoever it was, I hoped I was not going to have to interact; I was not in the mood. As the thin figure approached, I realized in horror that it was Marcus Lee, one of the other students from my math program. Now I was going to have to explain why I was making the Walk of Shame in the middle of the night. The Quad was wide open, I was over a hundred feet from the nearest tree or any other object that I could hide behind, and Marcus was only about twenty feet away now. There was no avoiding this interaction.

I looked up at Marcus. “Greg?” he said. “What are you doing out so late?”

“I was bored. Just doing stuff on the computer in Keller. Emailing people back home.” I was not lying; early when I was first catching up with Valerie, telling her about the math program, I had my email open in another window, and I had replied to one message. “I need to get to sleep.”

“Yeah, it’s late,” Marcus replied. “Hope you sleep well.”

“Thanks.”

I went straight to bed when I got back to Howard Hall, but my mind was so full of guilt and shame that it took a long time to calm down enough to sleep. Eventually my mind went back to the poem I wrote earlier. Oh, how I wish that I might be the one. Erica was a Godly woman who would never want to be with someone who talked dirty with strangers from the Internet. And neither would any other Christian girl I would ever be interested in. I was only making things worse for myself.

I never did find out why Marcus was out so late himself. Could he also have been sneaking off to do something he wanted to keep secret? Was he just out for a walk? Or was he going to work on math all night, since he was so focused on his career? I did not ask; it was none of my business, and if I did not want people to know where I was at night, it was not my place to care where anyone else was.

After tossing and turning for almost an hour, I read Psalm 51. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.” I knew that God was a God of love, and that he sent Jesus to Earth to atone for my sin. I knew that no one was perfect, and that the fact that humanity needed a Savior just indicated that no one was perfect. Psalm 51 was written by King David after he slept with another man’s wife and got the other man killed to cover up the affair. I often read this psalm on nights like this. I prayed for a while, that God would create a pure heart in me, just as David had asked. I did eventually get some sleep, but not much, and I woke up with a headache. I was tired of being alone, I was tired of all the good Christian girls passing me up, but I still had no idea what to do about any of this, so I felt stuck as I drifted off to sleep, consumed by darkness.

Readers: Have you ever written anything with a secret message hidden inside? Tell me about it in the comments.

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June 11-12, 1996. The new Walk of Shame. (#86)

March 6, 2021December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 7 Comments

These days, it is easy to create a new identity and pretend to be someone else online. Just sign up for a new free email account with Google or Yahoo or any of those, and use that free email account to make a new Facebook or Instagram or whatever else is needed. Or just use it to send emails with a new name.

In 1996, it was much more difficult to send an email without my real name on it. Free advertiser-supported email services were still a few years away. Someone wanting a new email address had three options: get a job with an employer that offered email, attend a university, or pay for it. However, if the only purpose was to be anonymous and not have a specific name on the message, I knew of one other option, a service called “anon.penet.fi.” This service was an anonymous remailer; a message emailed to anon.penet.fi would be forwarded to its intended recipient with all traces of the sender’s actual name and email address removed and replaced with arbitrary nonsensical numbers. I had no idea how to pronounce “anon.penet.fi,” but I thought that the “.fi” ending meant that the service was based on Finland, and “Penet” was presumably the name of the service. Last year, someone called “Publius” famously posted mysterious messages on the Pink Floyd Usenet forum about hidden messages in the band’s most recent album; Publius used anon.penet.fi to post those messages anonymously.

I used anon.penet.fi exactly once, and when I woke up on that Tuesday morning, I had no idea that I would require the services of an anonymous remailer. The day started out perfectly normal, at least as normal as finals week could be. My final for anthropology class, taught by the unfortunately named Dr. Dick Small, was in the afternoon, so I slept in until nine. That counts as sleeping in for a stressed light sleeper like me, and did a lot of last minute studying after that. About half an hour before the test was scheduled to start, I rode my bike to campus and parked next to the big lecture hall in Younger Hall, just east of the Quad in the old part of the campus. I walked inside and found an empty seat toward the back of the room, pulled up the attached writing desk, and got out my blue book, Scantron, and a pen and pencil. About a minute later, a girl whom I did not know, but had noticed in class before, sat next to me. She wore short shorts and a low-cut tank top over her firm, round breasts. I did not know her name.

“Are you ready?” I asked, the first words I ever spoke to her.

“I think so,” she replied. “Good luck!”

“Thanks. You too,” I said, the last words I ever spoke to her.

While I waited for the test to start, I turned my head so that I appeared to be staring off into space, but with my eyes still able to look at the attractive girl inconspicuously. I saw her write her name on the Scantron; her first name was Jennifer, but I could not read her last name. The test began a minute later, and despite the sexy distraction next to me, I managed to stay focused enough to do my best, and I felt fairly confident when I finished. The test was straightforward with no real surprises on what was asked or what I had to write about. I snuck a few glances at Jennifer’s long legs while looking down at the test paper.

I got home, not in the mood to do any more studying since I had no finals tomorrow. I wasted a few hours writing emails, talking on an IRC chat, reading a book, and eating. I lay down after I finished eating, and my mind wandered back to Jennifer from anthropology class sitting next to me during the final. I did not know her, but I wanted to caress her legs and fondle her breasts and kiss her lips. I began thinking about what that would be like, I found myself becoming aroused, one thing led to another, and ten minutes later I found myself making the Walk of Shame to the laundry room to wash my pants and underwear and sheets.

All I could think about was how I had failed as a Christian. Jesus said that someone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart. I had let Jesus down, and I had also let down all my friends at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship who had prayed with me, and shared the truth of the Gospel with me, and led me in Bible study.

Furthermore, all of this tied up another hour and a half of my evening. I had not been planning to do laundry today, and I refused to leave clothes unattended in the laundry room after an incident a few months ago when a bunch of my clothes were stolen. I brought my textbook for combinatorics and used the time to study, even though my final for combinatorics was not until Thursday morning. I had a hard time concentrating; I kept thinking about how I had failed in my walk with Jesus.

When I got back to my apartment, as I made my bed with my freshly washed sheets, my eyes caught the bulletin board behind my computer. Last month, I was having a rough day, and I was talking to my friend Sarah Winters between class. She just silently listened to me rant while she wrote two Bible verses on a piece of paper, handing the paper to me when she was done. I had pinned Sarah’s note to my bulletin board, so it would be there to remind me of God’s Word when I needed it. And I needed reminders of God’s Word now.

“I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Just as God had a plan for the exiles of the prophet Jeremiah’s time, he had a plan for my life too. He led me here to Jeromeville in the first place, and by putting me in a situation where I lived alone in this studio apartment, he led me to seek out friends, which brought me to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, where I learned what it really means to know Jesus.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.” My life is not my own. I was created to serve and glorify God. I believed. But if I did, why did I have such a hard time trusting and acknowledging him? Why could I not just trust that he had something better in store for me than empty fantasies about Jennifer from anthro, whom I did not know and had no chance with?

Everyone around me seemed to have their lives together. I wondered if any other guys I knew dealt with this. Probably not. I felt so ashamed to struggle with this still. I wanted to talk to someone about this, but I knew that anyone I told would just scold me and remind me that what I did was wrong. I knew I was wrong. I needed help, and encouragement, and prayer, not more guilt.

I looked up again at Sarah’s handwritten Scriptures. Maybe Sarah could help me, I thought. She was a good friend, one of the nicest people I knew, and she really was living her life for Jesus. I would learn years later that many Christians would find it inappropriate for an unmarried man to talk to a woman about his struggles with lust, but at this point I just wanted someone to help me in my struggles and pray for me. I was not trying to hook up with Sarah. And, honestly, I found girls less intimidating to talk to than guys. I had spent too much of my life around guys who just wanted to be macho and intimidating.

No, I thought, this was not a good idea. I did not want Sarah to know my deep, dark secret. I did not know if I would ever be able to face her again. If only there was some way I could communicate with her anonymously, being honest about what I was going through without her knowing it was me… and I remembered that there was such a way: anon.penet.fi.

I had learned how anon.penet.fi worked from the Pink Floyd Usenet group, when Publius was anonymously posting cryptic messages. I had to send the email to a specific address in the penet.fi domain, and the first line of the message had to say “X-ANON-TO:” followed by the actual email of the intended recipient. This would signal the computer on the other end that this was an actual message intended to be forwarded anonymously to someone else. On Sarah’s end, the sender would appear as some long number followed by “@anon.penet.fi.” The server at anon.penet.fi would remember my email and assign me a specific number, so that any message sent to anyone from my email address would get labeled with the same number. This way, people using anon.penet.fi to communicate anonymously back and forth would at least know that the messages were always coming from the same person. I took a deep breath and started typing.

X-ANON-TO:sewinters@jeromeville.edu
I am someone you know in real life, and I need someone to talk to, but I am too ashamed to use my real name. You may call me Joe.

I did not think I looked like a Joe; that should take the suspicion off of me if Sarah tried to guess who sent the message. As I started typing, I realized that Sarah might not be particularly knowledgeable of the dark intricacies of the Internet, so she may not know what anon.penet.fi was. When she got this mysterious message with a bunch of numbers as the sender, she might not read it. I changed the subject line to “please read, this is real, you know me,” and started typing over again.

X-ANON-TO:sewinters@jeromeville.edu
I am using this anonymous email service because I am too ashamed to use my real name. I am someone you know in real life, and I need someone to talk to. You may call me Joe.

I continued typing, explaining to her in a couple of paragraphs what happened, and how I felt ashamed, like I was a failure, and I had let Jesus and my friends down. I concluded the message by explaining that she could reply to this message and I would receive it with all of the names removed. I took a deep breath and clicked Send before I could second-guess myself.

By now it felt too late to do homework. I got in bed with the book I had been reading, The Firm by John Grisham. I read for over an hour and tried to go to sleep around midnight, but sleep did not come quickly. I woke up in the morning with a headache after having slept for around four hours.

I had no finals the next day, Wednesday, and I did not go to campus. I went grocery shopping, I read more of The Firm, and I went for a bike ride through the Coventry Greenbelts. I made a cheeseburger for dinner, and when I was done, I put the greasy pan and my plate in the kitchen sink, which had been piling up with dirty dishes for a few days. I also spent about four nonconsecutive hours studying for my final in combinatorics tomorrow, even though I was getting an A-plus in the class and I felt comfortable with the material. During a study break that night, I checked my email and saw this in my inbox as the computer played the tone indicating that I had a new message.

15358854@anon.penet.fi Re: please read, this is real, you know me

Sarah had written back. I opened the message and began reading.

Joe,

You are not a failure, and you have not let me down. You definitely have not let God down. You said that your friends all have their lives together, but trust me, we really don’t. We are all sinners saved by grace. Jesus loves you, and he will never let you go.

I would suggest that you find something to get your mind off of those thoughts when they come up. Read a Psalm or your favorite Bible verse. Play worship music, if you play an instrument, or just sing if you don’t. Go for a walk. Clean your house. Do whatever it takes. But most importantly, don’t get down on yourself if you do mess up. Remember that Jesus died for sinners like us, not for perfect people who already had their lives together.

Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I will keep you in my prayers. Take care and God bless.

I was not feeling particularly aroused today, but I felt like I needed some time with God nevertheless, after all that had happened. I opened my Bible, having remembered something I had read recently about Jesus dying for us while we were still sinners. I thought it was in Paul’s letter to the Romans; I found it a few minutes later, Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Interestingly enough, that verse was just a few sentences past the first verse that I had ever memorized, the one about hope that Janet McAllen from the JCF staff had written when she drew the diagram explaining to me how Christ’s death worked. I spent some time just sitting there on the edge of my bed, praying.

I read Sarah’s email again. “Play worship music, if you play an instrument, or just sing if you don’t.” I did not play an instrument. I knew songs we sang at Mass, and I was learning some of the worship music that the band at JCF played. But I had a stereo with a CD player on my shelf, and I had recently purchased two albums by Christian rock bands: the self-titled debut album by Jars of Clay, and DC Talk’s Jesus Freak album. I put on the Jesus Freak album and really listened to the words while I did dishes and cleaned the kitchen. The dishes had been piling up for far too long.

I sat down to answer other emails while DC Talk continued playing on the stereo. Track 10 on the CD was a song called “In the Light”; I had discovered this song two months earlier, when I took the road trip to Bay City and Moonlight Cove with Eddie and Haley and a bunch of other people. Sarah was on that trip too. I loved this song already, but the lyrics just hit differently tonight.

What’s going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicion
That I’m still a man in need of a Savior.

That was me. That was exactly what I had been feeling. Sarah had reminded me that we are all sinners saved by grace, and just because I was giving in to temptations of the flesh sometimes, my sins had been paid for with Jesus’ blood on the cross.

Lord, be my light, and be my salvation
‘Cause all I want is to be in the light.

Anon.penet.fi would shut down a few months later, after too many legal controversies caused by people using anonymous remailing for criminal purposes. I never attempted to use the service again. I did reveal to Sarah that I was Joe eventually, but not directly; we were in the same breakout group on a retreat, and this topic came up, so I told the story of sending the anonymous email. She could tell that I was a little uncomfortable sharing, and all she said to me about it afterward was “Jesus loves you,” along with a pat on the back.

I would go on to learn that many Christian men and women struggle with this, but I never completely resolved this issue in my mind. I have heard a lot over the years about this culture of sexual purity among Christians. Some Christians take sexual purity very seriously, refusing to spend time alone with a member of the opposite sex other than one’s spouse, committing to not kissing until the wedding day, things like that. Others reject purity entirely and brag about how they have had sex with many people they were not married to, but God loves them anyway. I do not agree with either of those views, and mostly I have just numbed myself to some of the guilt and shame that I used to experience. One thing is true, though; just like everyone else, I am a sinner saved by grace, and my salvation was bought with the blood of Christ.

December 10-13, 1995. None of this made any sense. (#63)

September 21, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 7 Comments

“Let us offer each other the sign of peace,” Father Bill said. Congregants turned to each other, saying “Peace be with you,” and shaking hands. I turned to Phil Gallo and shook his hand. “Peace be with you,” I said. Phil said the same to me. I turned around to Matt Jones and Ryan Gambrell with their guitars behind me and shook their hands. “Peace be with you,” I said.

I walked to my right. “Peace be with you, Greg,” Danielle Coronado said as she hugged me. Danielle had lived down the hall from me last year in the dorm, and she had encouraged me to be part of the church choir in the first place. Danielle’s younger sister, Carly, was also in the choir. “Peace be with you,” Carly told me, also giving me a hug.

I walked around making sure to wish everyone in the choir peace. Sabrina Murphy walked up to me and smiled. “Peace be with you,” she said, putting her arms around me. I hugged back and wished her peace in return. This was the first time Sabrina hugged me; before we always just shook hands. Maybe that meant something… hopefully.

Just before the final song, during announcements, Sister Mary Rose held up a small box about the size of a soup can. “We are taking up a collection for our sister parish in El Salvador,” she explained. “You can pick up one of these piggy banks, and over the holidays, when you have change in your pocket, remember our brothers and sisters who need to do some repairs to their chapel. We will be collecting the money you raise during the January 14 service.”

After the final song, everyone around me seemed to be engrossed in conversation, so I walked over to where Sister Mary Rose was handing out the piggy banks. About ten minutes later, I approached Heather Escamilla, because we were neighbors and we had carpooled that morning, and I wanted to ask when she would be ready to go back home. But she noticed me and began speaking first. “Greg! Do you need to go home now? Because some of us from choir were just talking about going to Bakers Square for lunch. You want to come?”

“Sure,” I said.

Bakers Square was a chain of restaurants that were essentially like Denny’s with pies. In the early 2000s, most of the Bakers Square locations in the western United States closed, leaving the chain with only a few locations far from here. But in 1995, Bakers Square restaurants were common in suburban neighborhoods around here. The one in Jeromeville was only a few blocks from the Newman Center, so those of us from the choir all walked over in a big group. When we arrived, they put a bunch of tables together in order to accommodate our group of twelve. I walked toward the nearest empty seat and was pleasantly surprised to see Sabrina taking the seat next to me a few seconds later. “Hi,” I said as Sabrina sat down.

“Hi, Greg,” Sabrina replied. “How are you?”

“Not bad. My physics final is tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll probably be studying for that. I’m not too worried about it.”

“Which class?”

“9B.”

“That wasn’t too hard. I took that last year.”

When Sabrina said that, I realized that I did not know what her major was, or what year she was. She was probably a junior if she had taken Physics 9B a year ago. “What’s your major?” I asked.

“Aerospace engineering.”

I was not expecting that. Sabrina did not at all look like an aerospace engineer to me. “That sounds interesting,” I said.

“It’s hard, but I really like it. And my boyfriend is an aerospace engineer too, so we get to take classes together sometimes.”

“That sounds nice.”

The server came to take our orders; she started at our side of the table. Sabrina ordered a chicken salad, and I ordered a cheeseburger. I was too disappointed at Sabrina’s mention of her boyfriend to rejoin the conversation for the next few minutes. It seemed like it always happened like this; I would meet a cute, friendly girl, and she would immediately bring up her boyfriend, almost as if she was telling me not to get interested in her.

“Greg,” Danielle said a few minutes later. I realized that I had not talked to anyone except Sabrina since I got here. “How are you? What’s your finals schedule like?”

“Physics tomorrow afternoon, math Wednesday morning, and chem Friday morning. Nice and spread out.”

“You only have three finals? That’s nice. I have four, and three of them are tomorrow and Tuesday.”

“Two of my classes don’t have finals. Your finals schedule sounds like mine was last spring quarter. Good luck.”

“What classes are you taking that don’t have finals?” Heather asked.

“Bowling, and math problem solving seminar. Bowling is half a unit, and the math class is 2.”

“Oh, ok. I was going to say, two classes without finals? How lucky!”

After we finished eating, I took Heather home and went back to my apartment. I spent the rest of the afternoon studying physics. I thought I understood it pretty well, but my first physics midterm in the spring had caught me off guard. I still ended up with an A in that class, though, after working extremely hard for the rest of the quarter, and I have made sure to study hard for every physics test since.

Around eight o’clock, I turned on the TV to watch The Simpsons, but it was a rerun, so I turned on the computer and went to an IRC chat channel, only half-paying attention to The Simpsons in the background. A few people whose names I recognized from having spent a lot of time in this channel said hello, and I said hi back. I watched the messages scroll by; someone was talking about getting stoned at a party over the weekend, someone was bragging about the size of his penis and got quickly banned by the channel administration, and someone was trying to start normal conversations and getting ignored. I replied to the person’s normal conversations, making small talk, but that lasted a few minutes before that person stopped replying. I looked through the list of people in the room and tried messaging someone who might have been a girl my age, and got no reply.

A few minutes later, someone named “musicgirl” entered the room and said hi to everyone. I sent her a private message.

gjd76: hi :) how are you?
musicgirl: hi! i’m doing ok! how was your weekend?
gjd76: good. studying for finals, taking a break for the rest of the night.
musicgirl: i have finals coming up too! but i’m graduating in the spring so i’m excited about that! one more semester after this one!
gjd76: i’m only in my second year. so why is your name music girl? is that what you’re studying?
musicgirl: i’m studying elementary education. i want to be a teacher. but i also play guitar in a band with two of my friends. we play shows at this coffee shop sometimes.
gjd76: that’s so cool! i’m studying math. and i don’t play an instrument, but i sing
musicgirl: math was never my best subject. i’d need you to tutor me ;)
gjd76: i could do that :) what do you look like?
musicgirl: 5’9”, brown hair, blue eyes, slim. what about you?
gjd76: cute :) brown hair and blue eyes, i like that combination… i’m 6’4” with dark brown hair, almost black, and brown eyes
musicgirl: nice! i love tall guys! a lot of guys think i’m too tall.
gjd76: good :) do you have a boyfriend?
musicgirl: no, i’m single. you?
gjd76: no girlfriend for me. and all the guys are missing out, you seem really nice
musicgirl: thanks! you do too… and tall, dark, and handsome :)
gjd76: if i were there, i’d probably want to get to know you better :)
musicgirl: i’d want to get to know you too!
gjd76: what’s your name?
musicgirl: Laura. you?
gjd76: greg. nice to meet you :)
musicgirl: nice to meet you too!
gjd76: laura, if i asked you to dinner, would you go out with me?
musicgirl: of course!
gjd76: then afterward we’d go for a walk… and i’d try to hold your hand… is that ok?
musicgirl! yes! i would love that! i love holding hands :)
gjd76: me too :) so when we got back to my apartment… would you like to come in?
musicgirl! yes… i look into your eyes and smile :)
gjd76: i put my arm around you and pull you close and kiss you
musicgirl: mmm… i kiss you back passionately
gjd76: i pull you closer and kiss you again… i take your hand and take you to my bed
musicgirl: i lie down and pull you close and kiss you again and pull my body close to yours

The rest of the conversation went… well. I don’t need to share the details. After we finished, Laura said it was late, and she needed to go to bed. I did too; I had a final in the morning. But I was so aroused after my dirty conversation with Laura that I needed to finish myself before bed. And when I did finally get to bed, I lay there awake for almost three hours, feeling guilty about what I had done. I liked it. Laura seemed nice, and it felt good. But afterward, it felt wrong. I was Catholic, and I was not supposed to be lusting after women like this.

By about 1:30 in the morning, I had to pee. On the way back to my bed, I saw the piggy bank for our sister church in El Salvador. I had a pile of change on my desk, close to two dollars. I put it all in the piggy bank, then turned out the light and went back to bed. If I was going to be misbehaving like this, I could at least do something to help out the less fortunate in El Salvador. Maybe that would make up for it.

My physics and math finals were pretty easy. Laura had emailed me back Monday night; I was afraid that she was going to say I was out of line for our sexually explicit conversation on Sunday, but instead she said I was a total sweetheart and she could not wait to hear back from me. I wrote back telling her about my finals, and she replied while I was at school today, saying that she would be on IRC tonight. But when I got there, in the late afternoon, she was not on. I checked again after dinner, but I never saw Laura in the chat. I wanted to talk to Laura and continue where we left off the other night. But she never got on. After about half an hour of frustration, I walked away from the computer and fantasized about Laura the same way I had Sunday night, leaving me burdened with guilt and a mess to clean up. After I was done, I put another handful of change in the piggy bank for the church in El Salvador.

What was I doing with my life? This could not possibly be healthy. It probably would not help me find a girlfriend in real life. I checked my email. I had two messages from Mindy Jo, my friend in Georgia whom I had met on this same IRC channel last year. Back in 1995, there were no hashtags and no social media, and viral posts spread through chain emails that people forwarded to all of their friends. Mindy Jo’s first message was one of these chain emails; I had to scroll down for a while, because these forwarded emails would start with pages and pages of headers, containing dates and recipients of the message as it had been sent from person to person. I scrolled down and saw light bulb jokes about different college majors.

How many psychology majors does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but the bulb has to want to change.

How many French majors does it take to change a light bulb?
Un.

How many philosophy majors does it take to change a light bulb?
What does it really mean to change a light bulb anyway?

How many aerospace engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one. Come on, it’s not rocket science.

I laughed loudly at that one, thinking of Sabrina being an aerospace engineer. Maybe I could tell her that joke someday (I did), and she would think that it was so funny that she would leave her boyfriend and fall in love with me instead (she didn’t).

After I read the rest of the light bulb jokes, I read Mindy Jo’s other email. In the last email I sent to her, I mentioned the time we had spoken on the phone and asked if I could ever call her again sometime. She said in this reply that I could call tonight or tomorrow night, and that she would be up until at least midnight. I looked at the phone, and at the clock; it was still well before midnight in Georgia. I dialed Mindy Jo’s number and waited nervously as I heard ringing.

“Hello?” a tired voice said.

“Mindy Jo? It’s Greg.”

“Hey! How’re you doin’?”

“Not that great. I dope I dint’ wake you up; you said I could call until midnight.”

“You’re fine. I wasn’t sleepin’.”

“That’s good.”

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you doin’ great?”

“I’ve just been discouraged and frustrated about being alone.”

“You haven’t met a nice girl yet?”

“Most of the girls I really like are taken. It happened again just the other day; I was talking to a cute girl I know from church, and she said something about her boyfriend.”

“I hate when that happens. I had a crush on this guy freshman year, and I was about to tell him that I liked him when he said he was going to go see his girlfriend.”

“Exactly. And I don’t really know how to ask a girl out.” I did not tell Mindy Jo anything about my shame I was feeling about masturbating; she did not need to hear that.

“Just relax and be yourself. Ask her to have lunch, or get a coffee, or something. Wait, you don’t drink coffee, right? You can get tea. Or hot chocolate.”

“I don’t know. It’s just all so confusing.”

“I wish you could just relax and not worry about this. You’re a really great guy.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It doesn’t always feel like it.”

“Promise me you’ll try to keep your chin up.”

“I’m trying,” I said. “How have you been?”

“Well… this week has been interestin’.”

“How so?”

“Well… I was at the bar on Saturday, and I ran into this guy that I had a class with sophomore year. We just got to talkin’ for awhile… and he said some nice things about me… and I don’t know if it was the alcohol or what, but he came over and… yeah.”

Came over and what? I was confused. I was missing something… Wait. Was Mindy Jo trying to tell me that they had sex? Would she do something like that, have sex with an acquaintance she picked up in a bar? “At least I used a condom,” Mindy Jo continued, which answered my question.

“Hmm,” I replied, not sure what else to say.

“I need to get another AIDS test,” Mindy Jo continued. “This is, umm, four guys now since last time. And I didn’t always use a condom.”

I was still not sure how to reply to any of this. “What do you have to do for that?”

“They just take blood. I don’t like needles, though.”

“Well, I hope you’re okay.”

“Thanks.”

Mindy Jo and I talked for about another twenty minutes, mostly about other things. We talked about our respective experiences with finals and our holiday plans. When we were done talking, I was still feeling ashamed of myself from earlier, so instead of getting back on IRC I studied for my chemistry final that was coming up Friday morning. This whole concept of having to get an AIDS test had never really intersected my reality at any point. I knew all about AIDS, of course; I had taken health class in high school. But I tended to associate it with lifestyles such as heavy drug use and extreme promiscuity, not the kinds of things I associated with my friends. I did not know that Mindy Jo had been with so many guys, and I was unsure of what to do with this information.

But I had no right to be so judgmental. My conversation with Laura on Sunday night proved that; I had slept with someone I barely knew, just like Mindy Jo had. Of course, Mindy Jo’s tryst had been in real life, whereas Laura and I were ultimately just fantasizing, talking in a chat room. And was that wrong? I was not sure. I felt conflicted, and I felt ashamed because of it.

A month later, when I turned in my piggy bank for the church in El Salvador, I handed it to Sister Mary Rose, and by then it had become heavy enough with coins representing my shame and penance that she had a visible reaction to its unexpected weight. “It’s mostly pennies,” I lied. If I was not already going to hell for my lustful behavior, certainly lying to a nun would not help my case any.

Mindy Jo told me a while later that her AIDS test came back negative, thankfully. I just did not understand the way that many young people lived these days. None of it made sense to me. By not doing drugs and not having sex, I never had to worry about things like getting AIDS, or using contraceptives, or getting someone pregnant with a child I was not ready to raise. Drugs had no appeal to me. But why did I feel like I wanted sex so much? Someday, hopefully, I would be married, and having sex with my wife would not feel shameful. None of this made any sense, and I wondered if the reason girls did not like me was because I did not understand how to live like a reckless college student. I eventually drifted off to sleep, my head full of some mix of shame and conflict.