I met Louise in my freshman year of college. She was the prettiest girl I had ever met, but she was special in another way. Unlike some pretty girls, who were stuck up, so to speak, Louise was charming and sweet. We dated for three months, but sexually I never got anywhere with her.
We enjoyed some kissing and a little petting, but Louise was not really into it. She was uptight about sex or even anything closely related to sex. I was pretty sure she was a virgin, even if she once confessed to me that she had been 'a little wild' in high school. We still dated, nevertheless, because I adored her, and I'm a patient guy.
The way I figured it, almost all women have children, right? That means at some point they have sex. You just have to wait until they're ready. And I simply loved being around Louise. She made me feel good, and we had wonderful conversations about almost anything, as long as it was not sex. We'd have sex, I felt sure, when Louise was ready. Lord knows I was already ready!
As it turned out, however, Louise was more than ready for sex. She just was not ready for sex with me. She had not been a virgin. When I hunted down a guy who went to the same high school as she did, he told me that rumors about her sexual promiscuity were rampant, all about the school. She had slept with at least three different guys that he knew of. She was considered to be a slut. I knew, however, it's not hard to achieve slut status in high school. College was a whole different ball game.
Unlike with me, Louise certainly was ready for sex with one of my friends, Tom, and she fucked her brains out with him right after she dumped me. I began to wonder what kind of game she had been playing at with me? I finally concluded that she did not want to develop a reputation in college like the one she 'enjoyed' in high school. I did not pressure her, and I was a safe choice, at least until she "got her sea legs," and became bored with me.
Louise hurt me when she dumped me for Tom, but I was only 18, and I knew I would get over it as time passed. I dated other girls, found one who was willing, at least a few times, and I eventually got over Louise. Louise later dumped Tom, moving on to Mike, one of Tom's friends. She shacked up with him for a while, and eventually she dumped him too, as she found someone even better, at least for her taste and what she wanted from a man. I lost track of her. I had bigger fish to fry, such as staying in school. I was out of money.
One thing about Louise. Every man in her sequence of lovers was financially richer than the one before. I never stood a chance with her. I came from a poor family.
Second semester of my freshman year my parents were involved in a bad car accident, and while their insurance paid around 70% of their costs, the remaining 30% was huge, or at least it was for them. Even before the accident, things were always financially fairly tight around the end of the month. My Dad was working class, with a union job at Essex Wire, and my mother cleaned other people's homes.
My parents were exemplars of what is known as "the working poor." My parents had a steady income before the accident, and they could even help me a bit with my large college expenses, along with my massive loans, but they had no margin of error. Workmen's compensation did not apply for car accidents, and with no income coming in from my father's job (since he had to take sick leave), my parents were, to use the technical phrase, 'shit out of luck.'
So, at the age of 19, I gave up trying to get girls into bed in between study time and classes, and instead I went to work to support myself and to help my parents. I was good with my hands, and with the help of a friend of my father, I quickly found work as a trainee to become an electrician. Being a trainee did not pay, so I worked on the side as a locksmith, a skill I learned quickly and easily. I even became quite skilled at it.
Five years later I had relocated, from Southern Missouri to Chicago, and I had my own locksmith shop. I had to compete with the 1-800 number companies, but there were always people around who (correctly, in my opinion) did not trust the 1-800s of the world, and preferred to hire a local guy, someone with a local office, who would be there if they had a complaint, or needed anything else. These people wanted someone they could trust, not some anonymous 1-800 guy.
I had 5 star reviews on all of the web sites, except for one, which gave me a 4.9. I was bonded. I was the safe choice and also, if I do say so myself, the competent choice for a locksmith. I had a much smaller web presence than the 1-800s, to be sure, but I was also a better locksmith than was typical of their guys. I was, in fact, a damn good locksmith.
My work was pretty routine, but there was some variety from time to time. People got into all sorts of jams that might surprise a person. Nothing, however, surprises me anymore. I liked the occasional challenges of bizarre situations.
There was the jewelry store guy who was getting a little bit old, and who for the life of him could not remember the combination to his safe. It was a huge safe, 6 feet high, with a solid steel door, and a complicated locking system, involving both a combination and two keys. The safe was an antique, and I considered it to be a work of art. You turned a key, and then you had 5 minutes to use the combination, and then you turned another key.
That job was really tricky, and I was thinking about how to go about it when my girlfriend Cleo at the time said, "I'd be surprised if the old fool didn't make a note of the combination somewhere. Maybe he forgot that he did that, too."
I pooh-poohed her idea of course, since it was inconceivable to me that she could be right about something within my area of expertise, but then I figured, what the hell? I put myself in the mind of the old coot. Where would he think a thief would never look? He was the kind of guy who would hide the rent money in the freezer.