I wondered then how much experience she’d had, if what I wanted from her was even possible. As one of the first small wave of girls in a newly co-ed prep school you’d think Kathy would have gotten her fair share of male attention, if only from sheer force of numbers, but that was far from the case. Maybe it was the ingrained institutional habit of trolling in the nearby all girls schools or, more likely, something more complex in the male psyche, but what developed at Prep was that a few girls (like say, Virginia) went out a lot while a lot went out rarely, if at all. At the prom the number of purely Pitt Prep couples was surprisingly small, and many of those were basically platonic one shot deals. Kathy, typically, was on the Prom Committee but didn’t actually go to the prom.

Similarly, despite the fact that our college had gone co-ed only ten years earlier and still maintained a heavily unbalanced ratio of men to women, the latter were far from guaranteed male attention. Though there was much more rampant and casual fraternization there than at Prep, there were still a disproportionate number of women who were relentlessly pursued while other women were largely ignored, even by guys who weren’t that popular themselves – and in this case there weren’t any girls schools on our doorsteps, only pastures filled with farm animals.

And it’s not as if the guys in those highly hormonal days of high school were totally unaware of Kathy’s assets. After all, she’d been a cheerleader (a small talent pool granted, but why not? – even though she wasn’t the prettiest girl in school she was certainly athletic, nimble and spirited enough), her legs revealed in their glory by short skirts and high kicks, and during the gymnastics team’s annual exhibition (which more resembled a cheesy Los Vegas floor show) more than one elbow was delivered to a buddy’s ribs at the sight of the well developed rack stretching her leotard. But as she found herself juxtaposed in the chorus line between the head to toe stunner Heather and the over the top pneumatics of Ungie such revelations were soon eclipsed.

But I didn’t see things that way anymore, and not just because Virginia had so firmly put me in my place in the pecking order. It was more a question of me finally beginning to get some perspective, of being able to focus on what I’d overlooked, and learning, as Kant said, to treat a woman as an end rather than as a means.

But in that brief, golden liberal hour, the interregnum when VD had been conquered, birth control was plentiful yet AID’s had not yet reared its hideous death’s head, when the sexual revolution had seemingly been won and sexual freedom become the lingua franca, it was rare, unheard of even, for a couple to part chastely at the door with a kiss. Clearly Kathy was operating under a different set of rules. I slowly made my way back to the bar, in the grip of the sort of overwhelming thirst which seemed to afflict me frequently in those days.

I sat at my friend’s table to much hooting and hollering and some outright hostility emanating from Ungie. What the hell, UBU? She bellowed over the umpteenth rendition of Brick House. What was that? What the hell are you doing with that stuck up narco bitch?My only reply was to grab her beer and drain it, which didn’t improve her disposition any. Grosse Points Palffy, who had been my spectacularly mismatched roommate freshman year and my nemesis ever since, leaned over from the Deke table to make a few barking, dog like noises in my ear. I silently gave him the finger and he chortled and returned to his own kind.

Only Keith, my blood brother who knew me so well, understood. This is one of your things, isn’t it?

Yeah, I said, I guess it is.Ungie pouted prettily, but the beer and quaaludes soon rendered her mostly inert and she didn’t say another word.

But, just when the magnetic attraction between us was at its height, she pulled back, quite consciously, with a start, as if forcing herself awake.

Well, she said flippantly, quickly regaining her composure. I’d better go. Can’t let you get me drunk.

She’d drunk a beer and a half in the time I’d sucked down four or five.

She stood up. Really, you don’t have to.