One day in the summer before junior year at Oberlin, I was riding in Janice’s parents’ car with them and Tom and Janice. A few weeks later, Janice, several field hockey players, a boy named Ben, and I were scheduled to move into a big off-campus house. I mentioned something about this. Suddenly, Tom and Janice began silently gesturing at me with horrified expressions on their faces. I couldn’t guess what the problem was. Afterward, they broke it down for me that her parents weren’t supposed to know that Janice was living under a roof with males.

Some weeks after the start of the semester, Janice explained that she’d been adopted, her parents were very conservative, she never felt like she quite fit in with then, and her dad had once angrily turned off a radio playing the Kinks’ song “Lola.” Somehow in the same conversation, she mentioned that her favorite Rolling Stones song was “Wild Horses,” which surprised me because I hadn’t known of a Stones song by that name.

Janice owned a white cat whose name was White Cat. White Cat became the mascot and soul of the house.

Janice and I were in the same Environmental Studies class. I told her she was the second prettiest girl in the class, a judgment I felt was clear-eyed, rational, and justified by the evidence. She said, “Don’t ever talk like that to a woman.” I have followed that advice ever since.