And there is something else too that was maybe more important: most of the students were girls in their late teens or early twenties, and it was impossible, or at least I found it so, to be in the room with them all of that time without becoming aware of their sexuality and their sexual expectations. I wanted them to like me, and I must have flirted with them and made myself seem attracted to them. I was uneasy with the men in the class; I always supposed that they wondered what I was doing in this dead-end job. I was careful not to pay too much attention to the one or two that I liked.

Before going to meet Donald and Susan Ford, I went to the bar on the corner of Lavalle and Esmeralda after my day’s teaching and sat alone beside the window reading a newspaper and drinking a beer. It was half an hour of pleasure and relief away from the strain of pretending that I liked girls, away from time passing slowly and monotonously. It was the part of the day I loved most: the first sips of beer, the casual noises in the bar, the smell of coffee, the night outside, the shadows around me, the end of work. A few times I stayed for more than an hour, but they found this strange in the bar, and they looked at me oddly as I paid and left. So normally I just had two beers and went home alone after half an hour.

THE SECOND TIME they invited me to dinner, I told them I couldn’t, that I was busy until nine o’clock.

“Come whenever you can,” Susan said. “We don’t eat until late. We’ll wait for you.”

“Who else will be there?” I asked.

“Just you and us, or just us until you come. Please come.”

I found myself smiling as I taught my classes that evening. I realized that I was looking forward to seeing them again. Yet when the time came to get a taxi out to their house, I wanted to postpone it. I stood outside the school wondering what to do. Why did I not want to go? What sudden urge was this to sit alone? That evening I went to my bar as usual, had a beer, watched the minutes passing, wanting them to pass more slowly, so that I could put off this social encounter with these two people who fascinated me and whose company, in those early days, also made me uncomfortable.