After a semester the foreign student adviser called me into her office. She flushed with restrained anger as she spoke, “I know there have been cultural adjustments for you but you have to make more of an attempt. If your grades don’t pick up ….”

I began to study nonstop.

I met Louise in a biology course. She was from the South and was very thin and pale, with huge blue eyes and brown hair that she wore straight down her back. She stopped by my room every day at supper time to go to the dining room. We began to study together and, on Saturday nights, when everyone went on dates, she and I stayed in the dormitory and talked. Her major was art to which she devoted herself passionately. She began to confide in me that she had never had a menstrual period, that her breasts were no larger than coins and she wore padded bras, that her parents were disturbed that she never went out on dates. Later she told me she was in love with one of the art instructors. The instructor was tall, blond, wore a wedding ring, and walked around with a grin on his face. I asked her what she liked about him. She said, “Oh, he’s so brilliant. He’s the brightest man I’ve ever met.” She was not sure how to get his attention. She knew he read late into the night in the library of the art department. But that building was closed to students after six. She decided to hide in a closet until the janitor left and then come out and try to talk to the instructor.

After that she would disappear one or two nights a week into the art department. I was envious of these nocturnal visits.

When Christmas came she stayed in Boston and her brother Jim came to visit her. He looked very much like her, except for his expression which was tense, and he talked all the time with his lips close together. One night, when Louise went to the art department again, he and I went to a movie and then to a drive-in restaurant. We ate hamburgers, french fries and milk shakes. His father was a successful broker and wanted Jim to share the business with him once he got out of college. He and Louise, he said, were considered rebels by everyone—for instance no one he knew in his hometown would date a girl from a foreign country. He squeezed my hand to make sure I was not offended. We drove to a dark street overlooking the Charles River and we kissed. “You’re very pretty,” he said.

Around noon the next day, Louise came to my room. She had pulled her hair back into a bun.

“I like your brother,” I said.

“You have to be careful with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, he has delusions of grandeur.” Then she said, “I wonder what it would be like to do it all the way with a boy.”