Josh and Adam: The Hayloft Summer Pt 1 Prelude
Shepard's Mill is a small town. Like all small towns, everyone knows everyone's business. Growing up here, you get used to it. You kind of know if you go outsides the bounds, someone will find out, so you stay pretty much in the straight and narrow. Of course, there are always those who are always talked about, and those that get the hell out of here as soon as they can, as they know they just don't fit.
I'm Josh, 22 now, but when this happened, I was 19 after my first year away from home at State College, and back for the summer.
I have to say, even though the city the school was in was a "big" city, New York it wasn't. At just under a hundred thousand, it was still a metropolis unlike none I've seen after the few hundred in Shepard's Mill. Being a college town, there was always a lot going on, and even though, without a car, I spent most of my time on campus, it was an eye opener.
I was still pretty shy, not very outgoing so I didn't get in to anything wild or crazy.
We'd go to the ubiquitous parties, get our courage up to chat to girls, and every once in a while, managed a date.
I left high school a virgin, and left my first year of college a virgin too.
My roommate was Adam. Like me from a small town, just about 30 minutes from where I lived, so we had that in common. Both kind of quiet, didn't do things like get black out drunk or drugs or anything crazy.
He was in Engineering, I was in Business Admin, but we shared some common first year classes, and was good to have a study partner for that.
We got along well, and managed to be successful roommates. Both brought up to be tidy, respectful of others, etc. etc.
There are somethings though, even though you know everybody does, you don't really mention or talk about. One of these was my biggest eye opener.
I should explain, up to moving away, I never had a cell phone. You didn't need one in Shepard's Mill. Literally, everyone knew where you were and what you were doing. If you mom wanted you for some reason, all she had to do was ask a neighbor if they saw me, and soon the web expanded to reach me. Someone would say. "Mrs. Jackson said your Mom was looking for you." And that was that.
Going away I got a cell phone to keep in touch easily. We had school issued notebooks, and email, but it was nice to call home.
One thing you couldn't do on a school issued notebook was look at porn. And one thing you could do on a cell phone, was look at porn, in private, by yourself. It was a gamechanger as they say.
Even though we never talked about it, I knew Adam must have discovered that too.
Other guys would joke about stuff they looked up and it was common knowledge how easy it was to do it. Even how to delete your browsing history was part of the lore. Getting private time was a bit difficult. In someways dorm life was like its own small town. There were groups of three rooms each with two roommates, around a shared bathroom. So, six people to share two showers, two toilets and two sinks. You were not supposed to jerk off in the showers, but I am sure I wasn't the only guy who had to service himself there.
You weren't supposed to take long showers either, and especially in the morning if six people had to get through the bathroom all at once, you didn't have the time let alone privacy to have some self-service fun.
So occasionally, when you felt it was safe for a bit of time, you scrolled your phone until you couldn't take it anymore and had a shower.
Sometimes, when you go out, you would see another guy there, and kind of embarrassedly gather up your self back to the room.
