The first time Darrell ever told me he loved me, we were on a school trip. Theoretically, all the students were assigned in groups of four to same sex bungalows, but various trades had been engineered. It felt incredibly good just lying there together mostly clothed with no fear of interruption.

So Darrell stroked my back and said, "I love you; I love you more than anyone else in the whole world."

"Really?!" I exclaimed, "even your parents??!"

So, one of the myriad times we had broken up, Darrell and I ended up at the same party. Victor, the Bolivian Ambassador's kid, had convinced the father of a Bolivian friend of his to allow a party to take place in his apartment. (The Ambassador was not letting the Residence fall prey to high school students.)

I showed up early and started working on getting smashed. By nine or so, the turn-out was amazing, lots of teenagers all crushed together in this apartment. I pretended not to notice or care that Darrell had arrived and was doing shots of a Greek anise-flavored liquor called Uzo in the kitchen. (Does Uzo sound like the name of something good to put in your body? Maybe it sounds more like an alluring licorice intoxicant when pronounced with a Greek inflection.) By ten, the party was so crowded, it was surreal. Someone had turned off almost all the lights and the apartment was laid out strangely. Or at least it seemed so to me. The bathroom had a window that looked like it should open to the outside, but when I opened it to get some air, there was just another room and Darrell's older brother was in it. He threw oranges at me and tried to engage me in a game of citrus catch, but I was no athlete under the best of circumstances. (I am NOT making this up.)

Finally, Darrell was plowed enough to ask me to dance. Darrell told me that he hadn't had anything to eat all day and boy was he falling down drunk and he still loved me whether or not I wanted to hear it and could we get back together. I remembered where the coat room was when I got there so he and I groped our way down the mostly dark hallway and went into the totally dark coat room. We ignored how lumpy and uncomfortable a bed this was with all the coats on it. And we proceeded to neck and talk about our relationship and do all the best things two pretty innocent teenage virgins can do.

All of a sudden, the door was thrown open. The hall light had been turned on and Victor was silhouetted in the doorway. "Oh my G-d!" he screamed, "You're doing it on the old man!" It seems that Victor's friend's dad had come home at some point, evicted the coats, and gone to sleep. He had awakened with the two of us on top of him. Only he didn't speak any English so he had just been lying there unsure of what to do.