No character in this story was under 18 when they had sex.
I will leave it to the reader to decide what is true and what is fiction. I have been around long enough to know that each person decides what is true or not based on their own experiences, and NOT based on what is actually true.
Chapter 31 -- Carmen
After leaving California, I got to Provo, Utah a few days before New Year's Day. My first priority was to find an apartment close to BYU. My second priority was to get registered at the university. Let's just say that not everything went according to plan. Finding an apartment wasn't too difficult, but finding the right apartment mid-year was a bit harder. I was sleeping in a friend's living room while I looked, and while that may sound like a good thing, I wasn't used to college life in apartments. People were coming over all the time, and sleep was a rare commodity, since I couldn't set up my bed until everybody left in the evening.
I kept searching, though, and I finally found a good apartment. Most apartments around the university had two or three guys sleeping in each room. I really wasn't interested in that, and I was delighted when I found a small apartment above a garage, where I would have the apartment all to myself. It had a small kitchen area, a private bath, a queen-sized bed (they normally rented to married couples), and my own private entrance where I could come and go as I pleased (that was the best part). I even had my own parking in the driveway.
The rent for the apartment was just a little more than I had wanted to spend, but was still well within my budget. An interesting feature was that the owners had eight girls living in the main house that the garage was beside (it was actually a detached garage). The girls lived two to each bedroom, and they shared the kitchen and bathroom (I'm sure that was a recipe for complete chaos in the mornings).
Since BYU was a Mormon university, most of the students were also Mormons. Therefore, they had their own ways of keeping track of all of the students and making sure they didn't get into too much trouble. Even though I was not a Mormon, I was expected to belong to a student "family" made up of a "father" and "mother" (two seniors who had been appointed by the church to head up the "family" as well as several boys and several girls who assumed the role of the kids. Every Monday evening, the "family" would meet in the house next to my garage apartment for informal activities.
As I was unpacking my stuff in my apartment, there was a knock on the door. A guy and a girl were standing there when I opened it. They had a plate of cookies, and they said they were there to welcome me to the family. Since I had no idea what they were talking about, I invited them in and they explained how things worked at BYU to me.
They were very surprised that I was a Catholic (even though I wasn't really active), but after I showed them my acceptance letter from BYU, they settled down and told me a lot about university life and life in the family. Guy (the father) asked me to participate in the Monday night family home evenings, and I agreed, provided I wouldn't be asked to pray. I had been around Mormons enough to know they did things differently than I was used to.
He agreed. We talked for a while longer, and they explained that all of the girls in the house next door were in the family, along with six boys from an apartment building around the corner (where Guy lived). Gina (the mother) said that members of a family usually didn't date, so I should look elsewhere for girls. Gina lived in the house next door. When pressed, though, she admitted that there was no actual hard and fast rule about this, but if I did date a girl from the house next door, I should be very discreet. I was left with the impression that, in any event, she didn't really want me (a Catholic man) dating any of her Mormon apartment mates. Goodness knows what could happen.
My second task was to register for school. This was where things fell apart a bit. Yes, I had been accepted to the university, but they had already completed registration for the next semester and wouldn't accept late registration (which was interesting since classes were starting the next day). The soonest I could attend classes would be in six weeks (mid-February). That was a hard pill to swallow, but I should have checked on it earlier, so it was my own fault. I would just have to find something else to do for the next six weeks. I did get signed up for some mid-term accelerated classes for when they would allow me to attend class.
I was a rock climber, so I asked around about places to climb (BYU is right up against the mountains, so I knew there had to be some good spots nearby). Sure enough, there was a great climbing area, with short climbs and bouldering problems near the mouth of Rock Canyon, not far from the university. I went up to the canyon, scouted around, identified several possible routes in the quartzite slabs and several challenging bouldering problems as well. Little Cottonwood canyon had some good granite, and a lot of great routes, so that was also a possibility (although it was quite a bit further away).
I met some local climbers on my first scouting trip up Rock Canyon, and I spent a lot of time during the next six weeks climbing and bouldering (most of it in Rock Canyon) with local climbing partners. Also, since I knew how to self-belay with ascenders, I would often set up self-belayed "top ropes" and do climbing problems solo (with no fear of falling). Self-belaying, using an ascender, had the added benefit that I could use the full rope length for them. That meant that I could practice full pitch climbs by myself. That was important, because I often wasn't able to find a climbing partner, and I climbed almost every day that first six weeks.
I also took walks on and off campus pretty much every day. Doing this, I met a lot of girls during my first few weeks at BYU, some on-campus and some off-campus. Nobody seemed to mind that I wasn't going to classes yet (since I had been accepted as a student by the university, the other students saw me as a student as well), and I had several dates where I took girls (who said they wanted to learn how to climb) up to Rock Canyon. In reality, most of them were just looking for a husband. It was a joke that there were more girls at BYU pursuing an MRS. Degree than any other kind of degree. That wasn't all bad though. It meant there were a lot of desperate girls looking for a man.
While some girls were only looking for a return Mormon missionary to marry, others weren't nearly so picky. Several that I met saw me as an opportunity to live on the wild side a bit. Others just saw me as a potential Mormon convert. Since I had a private apartment with a private entrance (that couldn't be seen from the house), that meant that girls I met sometimes felt free to visit me at my apartment.
I actually met Carmen the first time I went to the house next door for the Monday "family home evening." She was one of the eight girls living in the house, and was supposedly one of my "sisters." Carmen was a freshman from Monterrey, Mexico, and she had the Mexican look (black hair, dark brown eyes and a deep tan). She had a good body (though just a little on the stocky side) and a cute face, but she was shorter than most female BYU students I met.
It turned out that Carmen was another oddity at BYU. Though she was a Mormon, she had been raised a Catholic, and had just joined the Mormon Church because her parents had joined a couple of years before. She wasn't totally sold on the Mormon teachings, and she sometimes felt like an outsider at the university because she didn't know much of anything about the Mormon Church.
Carmen hadn't had a date since she had arrived in the fall, and she was getting very desperate. When we were alone in the kitchen getting some refreshments for the "family" members, I asked her if she would like to go to Rock Canyon with me to do some climbing and bouldering. She looked up at me and said, "I know nothing about rock climbing, but yes, I would go with you. When?" We discussed schedules really quick, and I found that she had no classes the next day (Tuesday). I told her to just come to my apartment when she was ready to go.
Mid-morning on Tuesday, there was a knock on my door. There was Carmen, standing there shivering. I hadn't realized that it was going to be so cold that day when I invited her to go bouldering.
