My closest friend during my last two years at Princeton was Eric Olson. He came from an East Coast family. His father was Princeton Class of ’55. Eric and I met at the Tower Club, a so called ‘eating club’, where upper-class students had their meals and socialised. We hit it off immediately and spent many an afternoon at the Tower, mostly playing pool. The big table stood under an even bigger banner, reading: ‘A good game of pool is the sign of a true gentleman. A very good game of pool is the sign of an ill-spent youth’. It reflected well the context, and at times we came close to an ill-spent youth, especially in the last semester of our senior year, when our futures were clear and our course load very low.

I had taken enough courses, so that in the spring semester of 1980, I only had one more class to take. I chose ‘The Anthropology of Gender’ in part because I was attracted to the subject, but also because there was only one lecture per week, every Wednesday from 4 to 6pm. 

In February 1980, I had been the first in my class to hand in my senior thesis (due in April), which meant that I had a free schedule from Thursday until my anthropology class the following Wednesday. I used the time to play pool with Eric, attend many more parties than was healthy, but also to visit the areas of the US that I had not seen with Kirsten. I got myself another Greyhound pass and travelled through the Midwest, as far as Oregon. I also went to see plays and concerts in New York. By the time I had to defend my thesis in May in front of a panel of three professors, I had mostly forgotten what I had written, with the consequence that I received an A minus for my work. I nevertheless graduated from Princeton magna cum laude. Had I paid a little more attention to my thesis defence and gotten an A, I would have graduated summa cum laude. In retrospect, I think that the travel and socialising were well worth the lower academic distinction. In the last days of school, when the Class of 1980 gave out a series of awards, I won the dubious distinction of ‘Senior man who went out with the largest number of freshman girls’. Eric picked up the award for me, since I was in New York at the time, sightseeing and going to see a play with…a freshman girl.

Graduation came with more parties and of course the visit of my parents, who were incredibly proud (especially Paul). By this time, Paul and Lisl had been divorced for two years and Sylvia accompanied Paul, so my ‘three parents’ were present. It was a perfectly harmonious time, a lesson of civility that had a great impact on me, and that I would remember when, faced with the same situation, my own children graduated from college.

I spent the summer between Princeton and Harvard in New York. I obtained a job at Bank of America, which served only one purpose: it proved to me that I was not made to be a banker. I didn’t like wearing a suit and tie, I hated the procedural workflow, the hierarchy and the immobilism (‘we’ve always done it this way’ was most employees’ favourite phrase). Worst of all were the people—boring and bored, hoping that the day would end, and counting the days before they would retire. In frustration, at the end of my summer I wrote a long memo to the head of my unit, telling him how completely uninspiring it all was and bringing forth ideas on how to create a more dynamic environment. It earned me a session with the manager, who tried to convince me that my ideas were not really needed at Bank of America, that everything was quite good and that the least amount of change was best for the bank (and, presumably, for his own career). 

But the summer of 1980 was very good for me in other ways. Kirsten and I had decided that it was time to experiment with living together. She also found a job in banking in New York, so we moved in together to a one-bedroom apartment on 25, Fifth Avenue. Only two blocks away from Washington Square Park, we sublet it from a Polish professor at NYU, who spent his summers in his home country. It had a magnificent view of the Twin Towers and was located in the heart of Greenwich Village. It was my first flat and my first living experience as a couple.

I loved the apartment and the life it offered, especially the kitchen. Kirsten and I would regularly go to the nearby markets and buy fish, read recipe books and try out new ideas. I waited anxiously for Sunday to arrive, so I could buy the Sunday New York Times, which included dozens of recipes in its many supplements. 

The flat was always filled with people, mostly my Princeton buddies and their friends, many of whom stayed overnight and throughout the weekend. Sometimes we had six or seven people staying in what was a 40 square-meter apartment. They would occupy every free space available. In a time when mobile phones didn’t exist, people would often just show up and we would make plans on the spot. I cooked for everyone. There was a lot of pot and drinking, accompanied by loud music.

Kirsten was less than amused by this onslaught of the American lifestyle. After a few weeks, it became obvious that our summer together was not working out and she returned to Denmark long before the summer was over. I felt remorse, but also a sense of liberation, and had more than one affair until the summer was over. 

Several weekends I spent on Fire Island, on the New York coast, about 90 minutes away from Manhattan, reachable by public transport. It included a nude beach, which is where I usually spent my time. I would leave on Friday after work, returning on Monday morning with the 6am boat.

It was during this summer that I started running. There was a small, but very steady group that ran in Washington Square Park every morning at 7am. We would run six or seven times around the small park, a total distance of about 5 km. I absolutely loved it. I discovered that running made me feel good all day long, not only physically, but also mentally. Running also naturally regulated my appetite. The routine of morning runs has stayed with me for the rest of my life, helping me keep a happy and healthy life balance. 

In 2005, 25 years after I started running, and after a long time without visiting New York, I stayed for a few days at a hotel close to Washington Square Park. One morning, I went to the park for a run at about 7am and was flabbergasted to bump into Jim, one of the people I had run regularly with in the summer of 1980. He was running slower than before, and looked much older, but I recognised him immediately. I joined up with him and, without stopping, said: ‘Hello Jim, how have you been all of these years?’ He stopped, looked at me and said: ‘Pedro, I can’t believe it, you’re still running?’ We had dinner together that evening. Since then, whenever I am in New York, I try to hook up with him and we run together in Washington Square Park. 

It was also in the summer of 1980 that I got my first exposure to the gay community. My friend Lynda was a lesbian, and one day she suggested that I accompany her to one of the bars she regularly went to. At the time, gay bars were springing up like mushrooms throughout the US, and Greenwich Village was full of them. Homosexuality, especially in New York, had become a lot more visible and the gay scene much more open. From then on, for most of the summer, I often accompanied Lynda and her group of friends to gay bars and restaurants. I was struck by the openness, friendliness and good vibes in this group, which I had never been in touch with before. It also struck me that everyone readily accepted me, even though it was clear that I was straight. These were artsy, fun and generous people. I felt happy for my new gay friends, that they could finally be out in the open and start to live a normal life without being stigmatised. Many of my friends since this time are part of the gay community.