6 November 1962. The stationery has a cartoon charactor at the top - a buck-toothed little urchin - and a tag that says: "Don't ask me. You'll do what you want to anyhow."

Wonder if it's some kind of response?

Nothing much happening here. He's in clerical school, and is happy that he is meeting other "intellectuals," or at least, fellow college graduates instead of the "morons, punks, etc." with whom he is otherwise billeted.

I was probably of a similar mind, being all Ayn Randy rational, or so I aspired to be. I don't remember when I became a little more broad-minded, or what prompted it. What prompted my acceptance of and even identification with the "morons, punks, etc." Was it when I realized that I was a failure at Randian rationalism? Was it later, when I grew tired of being the proper little intellectual and thought perhaps the morons and punks were having more fun? I don't remember.

I do remember hunkering down in an alley someplace in Green Bay, Wisconsin - years and years later - to smoke a bowl of hash with some - well, no - not morons, not even punks. These were fellow "intellectuals," fellow students from the University of Wisconsin. I had come from a meeting of some humanities group, met these guys at the bar, and now we were proceeding to get as sublimely wrecked as possible. I remember think I was lucky - lucky to be equally at home in both places. Humanities seminars and dark alleys with an illegal substance. I still think so.

Nearly 25 years after receiving this letter, I met another boyfriend while he was bartending at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle. He had also been in the clerical corps. In Vietnam.