I moved into an older apartment building in downtown Dickinson, North Dakota about 1-1/2 years ago.  It wasn’t until a couple of years after the North Dakota oil boom ended in 2015 that real estate prices and rental prices began to fall to where I could afford to rent an apartment in Dickinson.

The older apartments, in the older downtown neighborhoods were less sought after than the newly constructed modern apartments on the outskirts of the City of Dickinson.  I was trying to find absolutely the least expensive apartment, because I am just here in Dickinson to work, I have a home back in Idaho with most of my belongings.  I found a studio apartment for $350 per month which was fine with me, and I said that I would take it, until the landlord showed me a two-bedroom apartment for not much more money.

I guessed that the landlord didn’t want me to get sick of living in the studio apartment, and try to find some place else to live, or shoot myself in the head.  He was right in a way, it would have been kind of embarrassing and depressing at times, when the reality set in that I was living in a studio apartment in Dickinson, North Dakota, and wondering why I was even alive.

I moved into a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, which I liked very much.  It was a pretty large apartment, but it did not have a fancy kitchen or bathroom, which was O.K. with me.  Not long after I moved in, the toilet seat broke in half, because it was old and made out of pressed wood particles.  I found out very quickly, that sitting on this toilet seat after it had broken in half, that it would pinch the back side of my upper legs so bad, that it would almost cause you to go to the emergency room to get stitches.

I happened to have a small amount of white duct tape in my belongings, which I thought would be a good temporary fix for this toilet seat.  I didn’t have a lot of white duct tape left, so I didn’t fix this toilet seat very well, and it was still dangerous.  I bought a new toilet seat about two weeks later, but it sat in the hallway outside the bathroom for about a year, because I didn’t feel like changing it.

Meanwhile, the Mormon missionaries seemed to target the building that I lived in, for spreading the gospel according to Joseph Smith.  For one thing, they had accomplished a successful conversion of a strange couple of Hispanic men who lived across the hallway from me.  I say that these Hispanic men were strange, because they were both very feminine acting, and they lived together.

As these two Hispanic men were being converted and brought into the Mormon Church, it appeared that part of the process was to get them to leave this building, because it was a bad, unwholesome environment.  At the time, there was a lot of illegal drug use and drug dealing in the building where I lived, and I didn’t blame the Mormon Church for wanting to get these two young men out of this building, because it was dangerous, a bad environment, and a bad influence.

When these two Hispanic men were ready to leave, they were talking about wanting to get out because of the illegal drug use, and drug dealing in this apartment building.  There was even a drug dealer who lived right across the hallway from them.  Wait a minute, I live directly across the hallway from them, were they talking about me?

Out on the street outside of the building where I live, I had spoken to different sets of Mormon missionaries who patrolled the downtown neighborhood.  I told them that I lived near Idaho Falls Idaho which is about 70% Mormon.  This area of Idaho is very important to the Mormon Church because of the high number overall of Mormons, the high percentage of Mormons, the huge Mormon Temple there, and BYU Idaho being not far from there.

If Salt Lake City is like the Washington D.C. of the LDS Church, the Idaho Falls area is like the Atlanta or New York City of the LDS Church.  When Mormon Missionaries get sent on their mission to Idaho Falls, it is kind of a joke inside of the LDS Church, because it is already the highest percentage Mormon of any place in the United States.

In that area of eastern Idaho, I had met and talked to many Mormon business owners, citizens, and missionaries.  I discussed religion with the Mormons, especially the missionaries, and I even went to several church services in the LDS Church.  What was the end for me, where I could not go any further, was when at a church  service, one of the Mormon men read a passage, “Just as God evolved, we too can evolve to become like God, and be gods of our own planet one day.”  I asked, and no they weren’t kidding.

Because I quit going to the Mormon Church, and I explained to them that I could not go along with the belief that we could evolve to become like God, and become gods of our own planet one day, I became not a favored person in eastern Idaho.  And because I had two Mercedes, two Porsches, a Jaguar, a Jeep, a lifted black Dodge Truck, and a hot young Hispanic girlfriend who was a drug addict, I guess that made me a drug dealer as far as the Mormon Church was concerned.

Now, in addition to the Mormon missionaries having had some success in talking to and converting people who live in the building where I live, they seemed to want to talk to me too.  I don’t mind talking to them, I just have not had time to talk to them.  In the past several months, there have been groups of two or three young Mormon missionary women who have asked me if I wanted to talk to them while I was out on the street, but I have just not had the time.

I would like to talk to the young Mormon missionary women for several reasons:  One, there is a shortage of women in Dickinson, and the women who are here are fat, overweight, glaring, scowling, mean, and nasty;  Two, Mormon missionary women are pleasant, presentable, courteous, and soft spoken;  Three, I like the guts, determination, and fearlessness of the young Mormon missionary women;  Four, I want to hear where they are from, and what their plans are in life.

About one month ago, I had my apartment window open in the afternoon while I was laying in bed trying to take a nap, when I heard the pleasant voices of young women in the parking lot.  These were not the voices that I normally hear, of the foul-mouthed, uncouth, trashy, low class drug addict women who live in the building, these were the voices of unruined women.

I got up out of bed and I looked out the window, I said to myself, “Shit, it’s the Mormon women, I hope they aren’t coming in the building, I hope that they aren’t coming up here.”  I wasn’t going to let them in my apartment.  I was in my underwear, and my apartment wasn’t clean, it was a mess.  God forbid they would get in my apartment, and one of them would ask to use the bathroom, and that broken toilet seat would wreak havoc on their ass.  They are not old, tough, and muscular like me, on their soft behinds, that toilet seat would be like a bear trap.

A few weeks later, the young Mormon missionary women came knocking on my apartment door, and I wouldn’t let them in, because I wasn’t prepared for visitors, and I was scared of one of them getting hurt on my toilet seat.  What would have been just as bad, was one of the young Mormon women talking to me and suddenly realizing that she needed to use the bathroom, and me telling her that she couldn’t use it.

Finally, I went ahead and changed the toilet seat, just for the sake of the young Mormon missionary women not getting their bottom severely pinched, which in their mind would be like a sin or carry some kind of extra shame.