Paulie threw his textbook down and hopped up from the giant beanbag in enthusiasm. ‘Hell, yeah!’

So that made at least three boys for our audience. We weren’t exactly on a roll, but we were still going and Mary Kate was still by my side. When we came across rowdy jerkoffs playing catch in the hallway, she raised her hand to her nose protectively, but still braved her way to the next door. And, on the third floor of St Francis Hall, she was rewarded for it.

To me, the ordinary preppy dude who opened this door – our eighty-first – was nothing special. But, to be fair, sometimes looking at too many homogeneous, wholesome doofuses on this campus gives me face blindness. To Mary Kate, his telltale tasseled loafers and dopey face were a godsend.

‘Theology John!’ Mary Kate blurted out in surprise. Immediately, she turned bright red.

‘Theology Mary Kate!’ Theology John blurted out at almost the same moment. Immediately, he turned brighter red. Even his ears were crimson.

As much as my shriveled black heart hates to admit it, it was kinda cute. These two sexually clueless dorks were so clearly meant for each other.

‘How are you?’ Mary Kate asked.

‘Good, how are you?’ Theology John replied automatically.

‘Good!’ she answered, all blinky and alert. Then, after a second, panicking as if she’d forgotten her manners, ‘How are you?’

This friggin’ thing went on for nine whole minutes. I know because I finally had to look down at my phone when it became too cringeworthy to watch. There was Mary Kate, jumping from startled mode to Super Seductress, desperately flashing her oh-so-subtle signs of allure: blinking to show off her long, silky eyelashes, putting one hand on her hip to emphasize the ideal cavewoman breeding ratio of waist to hips, leaning forward to waft her pheromones towards Theology John and bursting out in hysterical strained laughter when he made the slightest attempt at a joke (and, trust me, this kid was about as funny as Paul’s last letter to the Corinthians).

And there was poor terrified Theology John, shifting awkwardly from boat shoe to sweaty boat shoe, probably trying to conceal his theological boner in his basketball shorts, blushing and stuttering and smiling hopefully at Mary Kate as she smiled hopefully at him during one of the long silences that I wondered if I should interrupt with a dirty joke. It was like a Wild West shoot-out between two scared virgins armed only with their social awkwardness and fear of rejection, each daring the other to shoot first.