Mary Katherine Laurick—“Kay” to her friends and lovers—was intelligent, attractive, confident, and engaging.  It was the summer of 1975.  I had just graduated from OU but didn’t have a job waiting.  So I followed that old adage, “If you don’t have a job, go to grad school”.

Kay and I were part of a group of grad students working for Residence Life.  We managed the dorms for the participants in conferences, camps, and workshops.  Often in the early evening, before the “campers” returned from whatever they were practicing or learning, the bunch of us would go out to eat or do something uptown along Court Street.  It was one summer evening that Kay and I drifted away from the others.  We were slowly walking up Court Street when things kind of started to…click…between us.

Kay was upfront that she had a regular boyfriend.  He was back home for the summer.  But he’d be back in the Fall and our relationship would end. While she didn’t come out and say it in so many words, she really just wanted someone to have sex with over the summer.  So I obliged.  Again and again.

It was hard to just walk away. (The sex was good.)  In a “normal” breakup something bad usually happens.  In this case though, I knew the date it would end.  It was years later before I understood what happened.