3 SEPTEMBER, 2021

Dear Harry,

Timidity! This is the quality I wish I had not learned at school. Oh, I was pretty smart, Harry, after all that education! I was articulate, well-spoken, and I had learned to present myself with a certain natural—though some might think affected—English public schoolboy charm. I knew Latin! I could speak both French and German fluently. My head was filled with an awful lot of stuff. What I didn’t know was how to be a man.

There I was in Paris, Harry! Just a couple of months later, in the fall. The city was glorious, glowing. I was free, for the first time in my life! Free from school and all its rules and regulations. Free from you and Peggy! I was in love, and I was pretty sure that Jeannine loved me too.

And what did I do about it, Harry? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. I could hardly summon the nerve to kiss the girl I loved. Oh, we held hands a lot. We strolled along the boulevards as lovers are supposed to do. Lingered around the book stalls on the banks of the Seine. Talked books, because Jeannine had recently passed her baccalaureate and was ten times smarter than me. We went to the Louvre—and this was in the days long, long before the glass pyramid, before the whole world was lining up with cell phone to take selfies with the Mona Lisa. The galleries could still echo with the lonely visitor’s footsteps.

I was in lover’s heaven, Harry, and could barely bring myself to touch the girl I so much wanted to make love to. I had only the vaguest idea about what it was I wanted, and still less the guts to make it known, or ask her if that was what she wanted, too.

What a klutz, Harry (again that word you probably never heard)!

Your son, Peter