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drowned out all conversation. So then we danced and danced, rapturously, illuminated in the blues and reds and stark white of the ever-shifting club lights, unaware of anyone or anything else. It was electrifying.
    We walked home together at six in the morning and stopped at the beautiful Talpiot overlook to watch Jerusalem turn gold with the sunrise. We both knew that something extraordinary was brewing.
    From that night on, we saw each other when we could, and got to know each other in bits and pieces. Meanwhile, I had parted from my program and found myself an independent kibbutz to finish out my year. So when Adam’s group was coincidentally sent to my kibbutz for the weeklong wrap up of their program, it seemed that fate had intervened on our behalf. I was nearly paralyzed by anticipation and nervousness waiting for him to arrive. Had everything we’d experienced in the whirl and excitement of our brief episodes together been real? Could it be sustained beyond those moments on the dance floor or watching the sunrise?
    The day arrived. I didn’t know exactly when Adam would be arriving on my kibbutz that evening, so I went for a late-night swim (read: scaled the fence around the pool for a skinny-dip) with my friends. When I returned, I opened the door to my room to the surprising sight of Adam sound asleep in my bed. I had never seen anything so entrancing. I couldn’t explain what I was feeling, but it was colossal. I watched him sleep for a long time.
    As Adam tells it, he arrived on my kibbutz a bundle of nerves, and realized that he had no idea how to find me. He asked around until he was directed to my room, and let himself in. There wasn’t much else in the room besides the bed, and so he settled himself down for a bit of a rest while he waited. I find paraphrasing him way too embarrassing, so I’ll let Adam speak for himself here: “I got into your bed, and suddenly, my whole body seemed to be crackling with electricity. I could smell you in the sheets and the pillow. I closed my eyes to breathe you in and soon, exhaustion overcame me. The next thing I knew, you were waking me up, all cool skin and wet hair and sparkling eyes. I had never seen a more beautiful sight in my life.”
    It was in that moment that we fell in love.
    Adam blew off all of his group activities to spend every possible moment with me. I’d get up at four-thirty in the morning to go out to the fields, make it back by eleven a.m., and the rest of the day and evening was ours. We lost all track of time when we were together.
    I remember so clearly the day that Adam’sgroup was leaving to go back to England. We had already kissed goodbye a thousand times, the bus had been boarded and was lumbering away down the dirt road while I wept and waved. When the bus stopped at the kibbutz gate to wait for someone to come out to open it, Adam threw open the emergency window at the back of the bus, climbed out, and ran back up the road to steal another kiss.
    (Sometimes I amuse myself imagining how STM would have done it. I envision him leaping out of the back of the bus, sauntering over, looking me dead in the eyes and declaring (as he has in the dead of night), “Kissing’s good for your health. So pucker up, baby, I’m gonna make you live past a hundred!” Not quite the stuff of a great romance.)
    Adam and I soon found ourselves back in our respective countries, trying to navigate a relationship from opposite sides of the ocean. Remember, this was before the Internet; there was no e-mailing, IM’ing, text messaging, video conferencing. Transatlantic phone calls cost a fortune, especially for a couple of nineteen-year-olds. But it was also before the death of the written letter, and, even better, audio cassettes.
    Yeah, remember those? Adam and I raised the art of the mixtape to new heights: our foremost form of communication, we mailed back and forth recordings of us talking, intermixed with music. I so clearly remember those desperate trips