“You smell like grass.” A few weeks earlier, we had finished The Sound and the Fury at school. I thought it was a clever thing to say.

“It’s the grass that smells like grass. You’ll still don’t understand the passage.” Katie rolled over and tugged at my zipper, and I forgot all about AP English.

Instead, my thoughts turned to her parents. Which, when I think about it now, is pretty damn embarrassing. Because Katy was rolling onto me, pouring out of her blouse, and smothering me with every eighteen-year-old’s dream. “When are your mom and dad coming home?”

“Would you stop worrying?”

Her drawers came off. Mine came off. And rolling around that immaculate patch of green—the world doesn’t make lawns the way they make them in Princeton, NJ—I found myself lost somewhere between ardor and angst. “Easy for you to say. Your father was a marine.”

“You obviously don’t understand Princeton reunions. Every class comes back. There are twenty thousand people here this weekend. My parents will be out partying all night with the class of fifty-five.”

“The government paid him to beat the crap out of people.”

“He’s an astronomy professor!”

Katy, who would have made a damn good hippie, had heard enough. She bounded to her feet, pushed through a small iron gate, and raced across a skid-proof deck. The last thing I saw was her cannonballing butt naked into the family pool.

Which, trust me on this one, was a beautiful thing.

That’s all it took. I dismissed the Great Santini from my thoughts, chased after her, and forward-flipped into the pool. A spectacular feat of athleticism—under normal circumstances, I probably would have awarded myself a nine.

That’s when the night exploded with light. Under the water. All though the patio. Everywhere in the backyard. The pool, the lawns felt like Giants Stadium during Monday Night Football.

“Katy, is that you?” her father called, his wife behind him.

They weren’t alone. The Princeton Reunion Class of 1955 started filing out of their house through the atrium doors. They came with their wives (Princeton didn’t go coed until 1969), with their plastic tumblers full of beer and scotch and other go-drinks, with their happy memories and friendships that had crusted over with a fine patina through the years.

Twenty. Thirty. Forty people. I’m not sure how many harrumph, harrumph alumni had joined Katy’s parents for a nightcap. I just know there were a lot, some number less 20,000. I began calculating how long I could hold my breath underwater—like six hours or so.

“Who’s that with you?” the marine hollered, as a classmate handed him his daughter’s bra.

Damn, that thing looked big.

I suppose most stories, no matter how painful, should be told during somebody’s lifetime—the beginning, the middle, and most of all, the humiliating end. Sorry, folks, I’m taking this one with me.