Going to college, however, turned the tables for me, something no one seemed to have considered. Most families worry about sending their children off into the world, but my grandmother, who had seen so much disappointment and failure, had put her unflinching and stolid faith in me and I knew it. And she knew that I knew it, having no reason to doubt me, convinced that her hour was near. Yet when I stepped through the gates of those hallowed halls at North Carolina Central, I became acquainted with the intoxicating rush of freedom. I was far from the roving eyes of the deacons and deaconesses. I was in my own hands.

Looking back, I see my escapades were relatively innocuous, no different from the average freshman debauchery, but at the time I was sure I was the antichrist come, and was perfectly happy to be so. I slept with anything that was willing. I got drunk almost every weekend of my freshman year, many times during the week as well—until I almost flunked my freshman courses. And I went on, from every pillar and post that held something titillating, my only regret being that my aunts and my grandmother never seemed to suspect that I was a hypocrite, a liar. For when I came home I still read the Scriptures in church and taught Bible school, only to return to school and recruit the first co-ed who gave me a willing glance. I realize that this was the true sin.

I met Anne during the second semester of my sophomore year. I didn’t sleep with her for almost two years; bedding her had not been my original goal. She fascinated me. She was one of the militant leaders on campus. This was 1971, the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement and the student uprisings of the sixties. And though we didn’t realize it then, students were becoming less radical, less questioning, less vocal. So Anne stood out, shockingly.

I felt something like defeat the first time I saw her. There had been nothing in my life to compare to this dashiki-garbed, lemon-skinned, Afroed radical. I amused her at first. She was from the privileged black bourgeoisie of upstate New York. Educated at a fine prep school, having spent a year studying in the south of France before college, she defiantly chose North Carolina Central over Wellesley and Sarah Lawrence. To her I was a smart, though naive, country boy, with fresh chickenshit between my toes, hayseeds in my hair, and hands callused from hoeing. The genuine article. Big, strong, black, and painfully sincere. Though I had become adept at the biting and sucking and kissing involved in the more direct contacts with the fairer sex, I was clumsy and inept in expressing anything as subtle and strong as the emotion I held for her. I was not in love at the time, but bound by admiration, wonder, and awe.