I was in an attic in an airport; straw was strewn about as in the loft of a barn. I was wearing a tie and I had my backpack with me. Somehow I was planning to sit holding my thumb out the window of the attic to try to catch a ride. When no cars passed, however, I finally noticed there was no road outside the window. So I walked over to another window on the other side of the attic.

Two men who worked for the airport walked up to where I was. I had earlier drunk some milk up there and I was now glad that I had not simply thrown the empty milk carton on the floor where they could find it. The men said many hitchhikers stayed up there.

I looked out the window where I was now standing and saw a road in the distance. A path led straight to the road from the window and no fence blocked the way. Some men were engaged in working on the road. I looked in a mirror and fixed my tie; my hair was rather long and blond.

I climbed down out of the loft and I found myself standing in the airport. I was supposed to leave for Europe soon. Vickie Nimitz (whom I dated a short while in 1977) was standing at the door. She was wearing a red jacket and looked beautiful. Her body was slim and trim and her complexion was pretty. She walked over to me and said she wanted to go with me. Her father and aunts had called her back that morning and tried to keep her from going, but she had already decided and she was ready to go. That pleased me.

However, another girl was also in the airport who wanted to go with me. The other girl was not so pretty and her teeth stuck out in front. She was a girl I had known about seven years earlier. She seemed to care a lot about me.

Finally, I left the airport and climbed into a car with Miss Herman (an English teacher whom I had met in Puerto Rico), who seemed a little like Emily Dickinson. I sat close to her and she began reciting poetry. I in turn recited a poem by T.S.Eliot that I knew by heart. She recited more poems and then she began to recite Eliot's "The Wasteland." I threw my arms around her and began crying as I heard the words.

The poem was short and was not really "The Wasteland." Still, it was beautiful. I knew "The Wasteland" began with the words, "April is the cruelest month ...." She saw the tears in my eyes and I said, "I love you. Not in the sexual sense, but love which one man has for another."

She seemed satisfied with that. I thought, "I will marry her."

But she was five or six years older than I. Besides, I also thought I was going to be leaving for Europe in a month.

She dropped me off at a house and I walked inside where I sat down in a room with T.S. Eliot and we talked about books. He was about 45 years old. He was wearing glasses. He asked me if I had read a book by Pearl Buck. When I said no, and smiled, he noticed my smile. I said that I had started to read David Hume's An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. I told him that I had not yet finished the book, and that I had read only the first two chapters.