I had always wanted to visit Holland, and I finally got the chance when I was offered a teaching position there. I’m a professor of cinema studies and somewhat of an expert on the Western. The chairman of the film department at a university in Amsterdam knew of my work and wondered if I might like to spend a semester teaching Dutch students all about John Ford, Howard Hawks and Sergio Leone. I jumped at the chance.

As I walked around the city a bit, soaking up the atmosphere, I had a premonition that I would have an exciting affair. After seeing all the tulip gardens pictured in the travel books, the licentiousness of the red-light district provided quite a contrast. Curious, I popped into a live sex show. The acts exhibited nearly caused my skull to explode. They made similar shows in Times Square seem like grade-school Christmas pageants. Amsterdam was a carnal delight.

I began to attend live shows with some frequency, and thus slipped into a state of highly charged sexuality. I was also reminded of my youth. I’m fifty-two, and though I have gained a little weight and lost a little hair, I haven’t forever abandoned any of the frivolity of my twenties. Amsterdam helped me relive it. In many ways it reminded me of a college town in America’s 1960s-long-haired youths strumming guitars and wearing tiedyed fashions, the unmistakable aroma of cannabis permeating the cavern-like basements of coffee shops. I felt as though I had walked through a time tunnel.

It was Mirjam who reconciled the nostalgia for Ann Arbor, 1960, with the Amsterdam of 1990. I first saw her across a crowded nightclub filled with Dutch youngsters hopping and flailing to discordant music I had no taste for. Still, I relaxed with a mug of ale and vicariously enjoyed their youthful energy.

She was easily the most beautiful girl in the room. Not much older than twenty, in a black leather jacket, tight blue jeans ripped strategically at the knees and red high-top sneakers, she danced zealously, limbs seemingly without joints, long, golden-blonde hair whipping in arcs to the beat of the Europop music. Watching her bop was an injection of youth serum.

I never dreamed I would end up spending the night in her apartment! had not even fantasized talking to her. I was a middle-aged American academic; she was a bright ray of sunshine, who had not yet experienced a cloudy day. But there she was, skipping toward me with a glowing smile on her face.

“Hello,” she said in her delightfully accented English. “I can guess you are an American. Am I right?”

“Does it show all the way across the room?” I laughed.

“I can tell,” she laughed back. She introduced herself as Mirjam. I introduced myself, and she told me that she was always eager to talk to Americans, for she had long wanted to visit the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“You must tell me all about New York City,” she insisted. “And have you been to San Francisco? Or Dallas? How about New Orleans?”

We passed the evening in happy fashion as she listened to my tales of America. At one point she pulled me out onto the dance floor for a hot number. I had put away my dancing shoes when the Watusi was popular, but I guess I didn’t make a complete ass of myself, for she invited me back to her apartment.

I practically held my breath the entire way there. I had fallen a little bit in love with the beautiful Mirjam, and I was sure that she was not experiencing the same feelings toward me. After all, I was more than twice her age. She couldn’t possibly be interested in a fling with a guy like me.

“I live with my sister,” she said as we climbed the narrow stairway to her room, “but she is away visiting relatives this weekend. We will be undisturbed.” I was really sweating now.

Her place made me smile: posters of rock stars adorning the walls, stuffed animals covering the bed and the latest fashions scattered across the floor. “I am so sloppy sometimes,” Mirjam said, straightening up her room.

I was offered and accepted a beer, and we sat and talked on her little bed. The conversation gradually turned more intimate, and I asked Mirjam if she had a boyfriend.

“Well, there’s this guy who lives in Germany. I see him now and again. He’s a musician.” She turned the tables on me. “And you? Are you married?”

I explained that I had been divorced for about five years and at present had no one special in my life, no “sweetheart,” as she put it. We both fell silent for a spell. I sensed that she was making a decision. She nervously bit her lower lip. I remained passive. She would have to make the first move.

And she did. Mirjam stood and stretched, making a profoundly phony yawning sound. “I’m a bit tired. Are you? It’s so late. You don’t have to go back to your place this late. You can stay in my sister’s bed.”

I acquiesced to this arrangement.

She went into the bathroom to change for bed. I stripped to my underwear and slid under the covers of the second bed. When she came out, she was wearing an oversized t-shirt. Her feet and legs were bare. My gaze unabashedly lingered on them. She blushed and got into bed, turning out the light.

A few minutes went by before her soft whisper floated across the darkness and she asked me if I was comfortable. I assured her that I was. The next thing I knew, she was standing at the side of my bed. “Any room for me in there, you think?” she asked, her voice barely audible. I answered her by throwing back the covers and moving over. She slid in beside me and I held her tight as she laid her head on my chest.

At first we just hugged and explored each other. Her small hands crept under my t-shirt and lightly scratched my stomach and chest. I pulled my shirt off, and she began kissing my nipples.

My hands circled her body, massaging her back and cupping her spherical asscheeks. I daringly slid one hand between her panties and the flesh of her ass, and she responded by pressing herself closer to me, one thigh rubbing against my stiff erection.

We stripped entirely. I asked her to turn on a bedside lamp because I wanted to see her. She did, and giddily I basked in her beauty. Slowly I began to kiss her entire body, starting with each little pink toe and working my way up, not stopping until I nibbled on her earlobes. I then returned to the splendid patch of auburn curls between her legs. She surrendered to me and moaned deliriously as I lapped at her glistening pussy. One thing age brings is experience, and my skill at cunnilingus has improved with time. Before long she was sighing, her pungent juices coating my tongue.

In a flash she climbed atop me and told me she was going to return the favor. I crossed my arms behind my head and relaxed as she took my cock in her tiny mouth. Up and down and all around, her tongue swabbed my hardness, making my mind reel with happiness.

Her impetuosity was markedly different from the calmer fellatio I had received from women nearer my own age. I ran my fingers through her golden tresses as I shot my seed down her throat. She threw her arms around my neck and lovingly — held me tight, telling me that I was wonderful. “Not as wonderful as you are,” I assured her.

We continued our amour well into the wee hours. I did not have a condom, so we did not have intercourse that night. The next night we did though, and many nights after that. Mirjam was my companion all through my stay in Holland, making it a time I’ll always remember. She was like a tonic for me, reviving my spirits and brightening my outlook. I have her pledge that she’ll visit me when she makes her long-awaited trip to the States, but for now I have only the memory of her, though it is as vivid as any photograph.