Through a strange course of events, I ended up spending the last ten years of my life in western North Dakota. This has been a very unpleasant and difficult time in my life, very nearly the same as if I had spent this time in prison, for a crime that I did not commit.
But I guess you learn a lot about life and about yourself while being locked up in prison, that you might otherwise have never been forced to consider.
President Theodore Roosevelt spent several years of his life in western North Dakota, which he later reflected on, “I have always said I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.” Most people don’t know that this is one of those double-meaning comments, almost a backhanded compliment. But after living here, I know exactly what he is talking about. It’s very trying living here, it’s something that you endure.
During the North Dakota oil boom 2007-2015 the ratio of men to women in Dickinson was 3:1. Magically, to this day, it’s still about 3:1. The women who are here are very rough, and that’s putting it mildly, that’s an understatement.
No matter where I had lived previously, I always had at least several romantic prospects: a woman who worked at the grocery store; a woman who worked at the Radio Shack store; a girl who worked at the Mexican restaurant; a girl who worked at the gym; a woman who worked at the other gym; a waitress; the two women who bothered me when I went fishing:
When I was fishing on a floating dock on the Snake River in Idaho, a women who was about 36, and her daughter who was about 16, would come and sit about eight feet from me, with their legs hanging in the water. They would chat for a few minutes, and then unbutton their very short cut-off jean shorts. Then, unzip their very short cut-off jean shorts, revealing their underwear, and lean back on their arms, so that I could look and see.
You can imagine what I was thinking, when next they completely removed their very short cut-off jean shorts. It took me about ten seconds to realize that they were wearing Bikini bottoms. I started laughing, what!, awww!, and they laughed too. From then on, they stopped, and did something like this, whenever I was fishing on the floating dock, until I had to leave Idaho to go work in North Dakota.
The romantic prospects that I was referring to, it was a very enjoyable part of life to visit women who made you feel lust, desire, excitement, to look them over, and feel something, and for them to respond with irritation or tolerance, encouragement or discouragement, friendliness or unfriendliness, and to sometimes surprise you with what they said or did next. But there are almost no women like this in western North Dakota, it’s more like being in prison, in just about every way.
I have learned that for someone like myself, in western North Dakota, it is better to just stay home than try to go anywhere or do anything. The Police here are like guards in a prison, they feel like they have to stop, hassle, question, and try to put charges on everyone, even if they are just coming home from Walmart with groceries. Any public place, with a mostly male, below blue-collar level population, with no women, being treated like prison inmates, there is mostly anger.
I spend perhaps too much time on the internet, but it’s better than leaving home, considering where I live, and what’s out there, the Police prison guards, angry men, and jack-o-lantern women. The internet is my way of travelling some other place.
A couple of weeks ago, I looked up a woman who I dated in my final years of college in Florida. I will refer to her as “M”. When I was in high school, “M” was an art teacher at my high school, she was ten years older than me. She went back to college to get her Master degree, when I was completing my engineering degree.
“M” was very attractive. She was about 5′-7″, 125 lb, blond hair, pale flawless skin, thin, large-breasted. At that time, she was the most free in having sex with me, of any woman I had ever met. I would have sex with her, until I couldn’t move. That semester, was the best grades that I ever made in engineering college, I was happy, and could always have sex.
“M” brought up the subject of marriage, to see if I was interested, not pressuring me at all, very casual. I was not ready to get married, “M” was not everything that I wanted, I thought that I would find someone better, someone that I would be in love with. “M” graduated before I did, and she did not keep in touch.
As the years have gone by, especially now, I have begun to realize more and more what an agreeable and pleasant person that “M” was, in addition to her physical beauty, and her appetite for sex. If I could ever be stuck in a marriage, that would be an excellent marriage to be stuck in. “M” didn’t fight, she didn’t complain, she wasn’t judgmental, and she wasn’t demanding.
Part of the reason why “M” was so pleasant and easy-going, was because her parents were very, very wealthy. They owned about four very nice homes, where they vacationed at different times of the year. Her parents were very calm and gentle with her, didn’t expect or require anything of her, allowed her to do what she wanted.
When I looked “M” up a couple of weeks ago, I found that she was living on Massachusetts Bay, about ten miles from the city of Boston. I didn’t know that not far from Boston, that there are small islands and peninsulas that are a couple hundred feet wide, with houses on them. “M”s two-story house was right on the water, with a very large swimming pool overlooking the bay outside of Boston.
I never wanted to live in a city like Boston, but Boston has some of the oldest architecture, oldest Pubs, renowned restaurants, brightest and most educated people, incredible night-life. But to live on an almost private island, with only a couple hundred people, ten miles from Boston, sign me up for this.
I looked up another girlfriend of mine from Florida, who I went to high school with, and some of college with, “D”. “D” got her Master’s degree in Archeology at about the same time that I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in engineering. I didn’t know that it took her another 6 years, until she was 31 years old, to get her PhD. But now she is the head of the Archeology Department at a large university.
I looked up “V” who I went to college with, at a small private college in Virginia. “V” got her Master’s degree in Political Science a little before I graduated from engineering college. But I didn’t know that it took her another 7-8 years to get her PhD in Political Science when she was 31 years old. She has been a professor at a small college in Pennsylvania for the past 20 years.
Lastly on this list today, I will mention “C”, who I went to high school with. “C” went to a very famous and prestigious women’s college to obtain her Bachelor’s in English, then another prestigious college to obtain her Master’s degree. She first became a well-known and acclaimed author before becoming an English professor at a small Ivy-League college.
“C” got married later in life, and had two children. I thought that “C” would probably never marry, because she was very opinionated, argumentative, high-strung, and uncompromising.
“V” looks very good in her photograph. Over the years when I looked up “V”, she has always maintained her good looks. I thought that she had gotten married when she was in her late twenties or early thirties, but there is no mention of her husband now.
“D” looks very good in her photograph. I think that she looks better now than she did in her teens and twenties. I thought that “D” got married in her early thirties, but it would not surprise me at all if her husband was done and gone. “D” is probably very attractive to her male students, which I doubt she discourages the slightest bit.
“M” it appears never got married, and I am very happy for her. “M” had been very in-love with a teacher at our high school, when she was an art teacher there. When this teacher proposed to “M” when she was about 24 years old, she didn’t want to be married, because he wanted to finish his career at this high school. When “M” told him “no”, he began dating and soon married another teacher. “M” was heartbroken, and she realized that she had made the mistake of her life. She left this high school, and went back to college to get her Master’s degree in Art, mostly because of him dating and proposing to her, and marrying another teacher at this school, she couldn’t bear it.
Do I want to have anything to do with these aforementioned women now? No, not really, definitely not. I feel like they would be too inquisitive, too suspicious, as if they had to determine what my status is, what my worth is. Their scrutiny of me would be automatic.
I might possibly be able to give an accurate accounting of myself, but why would I? Why would I go through the trouble of trying to explain myself, when I have nothing to gain from it? Most likely it would be frustrating and upsetting trying to explain why I have done what I have done, and why I am the way that I am, in a way that would meet with their approval, ( “M” and “D”, the Art teacher and the Archeology professor, would be only slightly less judgmental. )
What I think is funny, is that in their life, having the “right house”, in the “right neighborhood”, with the “right friends” is probably very important to them, whereas I see this as a kind of short-sighted vanity. Or, demonstrating that I had a great deal of money would lead to a kind of almost instant acceptance. What I value and enjoy, they would have difficulty seeing these things as I do.
I think that I am better off not saying anything to them. Although I am tempted to prank them, just to be mean.