Excerpt from At this Time, In this Place

The first time that I saw Takuho, a young, good-looking Japanese exchange student was in the summer of 1985 when he had come to Topeka, Kansas to attend college. My parents owned an old two and a half story house in College Hill just a few blocks from Washburn University. I went bounding up the stairs to the third floor and startled this Japanese man who sat up in bed, clinging to a sheet to cover his bare chest. Unbeknownst to me, our foreign exchange student had arrived very late the night before . . .