Sex. Rhoda, then, and what happened something like-ten years ago?

Ten years ago.

Ah, how weird this it! I sit here trying to remember, trying to recapture just exactly what it was like. It is hard, even, to remember the person one was that long ago, let alone the actual feel of an incident, the texture of a relationship.

It was at college, a girl’s college not more than forty miles nor less than five hundred years from the house I live in now. Rhoda and I were sophomores, and roommates. The previous year we had been freshmen and friends, and now we roomed together.

Those were desperate times, now that I think back on them. We were both dating furiously, and not quite getting slept with by Yale boys, most of whom seemed secretly more interested in strong drink than in us. And we tended to date the same boys, which has about it an air of incest, I think. Oh, you were out with Garrett tonight? Did he give you the sneaky hand-on-thigh routine? I think hes sort of sexy but just so obvious, wouldn’t you say? A bit much, all in all.

We both drank too much-no one had more than heard of grass, but all of us drank as a regular thing. And studied too little, until exams came up or papers came suddenly due and we dropped Dexedrine and worked the clock around. And we leaped constantly back and forth between exhilaration and despair. Yes, despair-they really were desperate times.

One night, then, wintry (I remember the ultra-long Yale blue-and-white scarf I wore then, wrapped endlessly around my neck) and bleak, and I came back from the library where I had gone to study and had instead dozed over some unreadable swill. Rhoda was sitting up in bed with a half-gallon of California wine. There were stains of spilled wine on the bedsheets.