We each run smack into a Pelham on our first day of college. That family forms something of a unified theme for Ronnie and me.

In Ronnie’s case the meeting is intentional. She’s taken by what she reads of the Pelham Seminar Program in the course catalog so she goes to the introductory meeting and listens to the man himself. Professor Ernest Pelham believes that the humanities should be delivered by the great books and discussed in Socratic seminars; the four dozen students who will be admitted to the program will each devote two years to it, and fulfill all lower division liberal arts requirements.

My best friend likes that unified approach. Me: I’m more into ala carte course selection. If I’d wanted that kind of guiding I would have chosen a small school.

So Ronnie goes to hear Prof. Pelham, and I attend a little class in the Oriental Languages department that has nothing to do with oriental languages. It’s the only 1-unit course available in Letters & Science, and it is famed for requiring just one thing from each student: a book report, on any book.

I think my schedule needs that unit. I carry a paperback copy of Stranger in a Strange Land into the small lecture room. I don’t know then that it’s the last book by Heinlein I’ll enjoy. But that’s just one of a myriad of things, a plethora even, that I don’t know.

Fifty minutes later, exiting the classroom where nothing happened (really: a mixed group took the desks and waited 25 minutes for the instructor, who then introduced himself and had each of us stand, state our name, show or tell the book we intended to read, and sit), I am approached by a lanky guy who turns out to be Peter Pelham.

“How do you like that book?”

“I haven’t started it yet. But I’ve always liked Heinlein.”

“So far.”

By the time we’ve exchanged those sentences, he is pacing beside me, and we are approaching the entrance to the lecture building. Without commenting we take the same path and walk together.

We don’t talk about books. Peter asks me questions about me, and describes himself as a life adventurer, born and raised around the campus but destined for farther things. He is supposed to be enrolled and two years ahead of me but he is taking time off. He says he popped into the OL class hoping to get an idea for a book to read, but he is delighted to meet me instead.

I am charmed. I like his height, the length of his limbs, the way his blue eyes seem to want to laugh. I like the way his brown hair curls and the shape of his fingernails. I’ll never know what he sees in me; if I did, I might make it last.

We walk all afternoon. I skip dorm dinner but we grab cafeteria Chinese food at an Asian “hofbrau.” I almost miss dorm lock-out. I am kissing Peter in the stairway near the side entrance and I think it is only my virginity that sends me into the dormitory as the doors are about to be locked for the night. The kissing is amazing, the temptation is strong, the fear only prevails by a little.

Our relationship lasts four days before it is interrupted by what he describes as a necessary trip to LA. We walk, we talk, we kiss deeply. I admit his hands everywhere by the third day. He wants to put his mouth where his hands have been and I am sorely, heatedly tempted; who knows what the course of my sexual development would be, if he puts off this trip?

As it is, I have four memorable days, and I miss him more than I want to after he leaves. He sends one postcard, sweet and sexy and suggestive. But it postpones his return, for reasons he doesn’t specify in the small postcard space, and then I don’t hear from him again.

I talk about him to Ronnie. She’s my best friend and my roommate. Her full name is Veronica and she’s as far from the Archie Comics character as she can be, except for her dark hair and Episcopalian religion. She’s the only Veronica I’ve ever known.

Ronnie is enraptured with the Pelham program, reading Pope’s translation of the Iliad, and I don’t even know Peter’s last name. It isn’t till I receive the postcard that I learn it and I don’t make the connection then. But I’m getting ahead of myself.