“Look, I just think we have to stop seeing each other. I … you’re taking this a lot more seriously than I am. I can see it when you look at me. I just can’t.” She got up and walked away.

She never came to another meeting of Afro, and when I saw her on campus, she would not meet my gaze. My friend Vaughn counseled me, “Man, what’d you expect? She was just looking for a little dark meat. I don’t think she cares about what we’re trying to do one way or the other.” So that was that. There was no one else I could turn to.

I was alone after Jennifer left me. Not long afterward, I wrote in a journal I kept at the time, “She’s killing me. Why is she killing me?” Occasionally I spotted her on campus and I would begin to shake as though palsied at the sight of her. I do not think she had any idea of the effect she had on me. Vaughn was probably right. I was simply an experiment for her, a walk on the wild side, as the slang of the time would have it. Imagine me, a walk on the wild side.