Much to our mutual surprise, I was able to rouse myself early enough to join Kathy for breakfast the next Sunday, and we had another pleasant, relaxed conversation free from the erotic tension of the Friday before.

And so began an odd bifurcation between nights spent as would be lovers and mornings met as dispassionate friends. On date nights the final kiss became more important – and often lengthier – than the movie which proceeded it. That lighted entranceway to her apartment became the scene of our little drama as kiss followed kiss and she pressed grudgingly ever closer to me. Our bodies would wrestle like the possessed on Friday, often surprising us with what they would and wouldn’t do, and then our minds would calmly discuss it over breakfast on Sunday.

It seemed as if we were in constant physical negotiation – concessions granted one evening would be withdrawn the next. Like a dough boy whose whole world consists of one small plot of no man’s land endlessly contested over, it only made me more aware and appreciative of every inch of her.

Complicating things was the fact that, unlike most of the other college girls who wore t-shirts, jeans and as little else as possible, Kathy dressed traditionally, archaically even, adding extra challenges as I groped over, under and around various unfamiliar garments – blazers, sweaters, blouses, slips, complicated bras – which created a greater surface area, more room, more material, as it were, for sensual play, an enlargement and elongation of erotic possibility, more veils to pierce, more mysteries to solve, and beneath it all burrowed that final layer of fantastic, hungry young flesh, itself warring with the even more archaic notion that maybe she wanted to remain a virgin until she married.

It was ironic because this college relationship with all its awkward groping and slow progress through contested territory resembled what you’d expect from high school, while my actual high school fling with the equally virginal NC had been much more typical of college, where the women were just as often the aggressor, and the jump into bed that transformed friend (or even stranger) into lover casual and quick.

Unlike NC who was afraid I’d lose interest if she didn’t immediately show she was eager to go all the way, Kathy was afraid I’d drop her once we did. But they were both wrong – what’s important to me is the knowing, the sheer, intimate experiencing of another person, body and soul, not the notch on the bedpost – which isn’t to say that Kathy didn’t render me highly horny in a short period of time.

But despite any degree of frustration, I’d never do anything to a woman that I wasn’t absolutely sure she wanted me to do. I really wouldn’t have been devastated if our relationship had ended without me making love with her – but I knew that, despite her protests and evasions, SHE wouldn’t be. In her milieu and at her age it was absolutely freakish to still be a virgin, and I knew she saw me as a way to lose it with honor. We were both aware that not only wasn’t our relationship going to last forever, but that neither of us really wanted it to, so she was, in fact, as is so often the case, accusing me of wanting to do the very thing she wanted to do – consummate at last and then break up.