But I’d decided to take Herb’s advice: the ’fro was getting a little unruly. Surabhi and I had been dating seriously for nearly two years. We’d met during a jazz appreciation concert series at Northwestern. The attraction was immediate, the chemistry undeniable. However, I was housebound, still at the mercy of my parents’ escalating war of words. The atmosphere at home was toxic to a burgeoning romance. And since Surabhi shared her small apartment with her younger sister, we had no safe place to go when we wanted to be alone. I had, of course, experimented with women on the road. A sexual darkhorse, I lost my virginity when I was twenty years old. But my less than imposing stature and sub-standard physique had made successfully wooing conscious women fairly uncommon. Let’s face it: the irony of my particular situation is that I could “seduce” any woman on the planet, if I were as psychotic as some of my colleagues.
