My happiest memory from college

[fpb]

Before my first year at SOAS was done, I was head over heels in love with Debbie. I got into the habit of kissing her on the cheek whenever I saw her. However, one day she brought her little boy to college for some reason, and I thought nothing of it. It came back to me - not from her - that he had later asked her: "Mum, why does that man kiss you?" From then on, instead of a kiss, I would touch my fore and middle fingers to my lips and then to her cheekbone.

I had more or less forgotten this habit. It was twenty years ago. But I happened to perform the same act - fore and middle finger to my lips - when singing an old song, and all her beauty and that extraordinary mix of sharpness and sweetness came back to me.

I did not treat the women I loved as they deserved. But I have been lucky in every one of them.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Unrelated: I hadn't realised you attended SOAS and YET managed to remain pro-Israeli. Par quel miracle?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I was at war with the institution from the moment I entered to several years after I left. Why do you think I always talk about Oxford (and Dumezil) and never about SOAS? Even so, it was not as bad then as it has become since. I suspect that a disastrous financial miscalculation that happened a few years after my time, which cost them at least half a million pounds, may have contributed to the downward slide.