After graduating from high school, i applied for admission to the University of Michigan. I would check the mail daily to see whether I had been admitted. Finally, after a couple of months or so of waiting impatiently, I received a fat envelope from the University including my admission letter, academic scholarship and room and board information. This would have been in the early part of 1974, before I had actually graduated from high school That spring and summer I was consumed with the fact that i had been accepted by such a prestigious school and by the fact that I had been granted what amounted to a full ride scholarship-grant. There was an orientation session that summer, and then in early September, my parents moved me into the dorm. When I arrived at the dorm room, I found that my roomie had not yet arrived. I had wondered what she would be like. Her name was exotic, Amal, but I knew nothing more about her. That night i slept by myself, and dreamed of all the things that I would accomplish in myeline. The future was limitless.

The following day, around noon, Amal arrived and we became acquainted before walking down to the cafeteria to share the first of countless lunches we ate together. I was just about to turn 18 and Amal was 19. She had flashing black colored eyes and black unkempt hair. She talked about her family in Beirut, Lebanon. She was fluent in English, French, Modern Greek, and, of course, Arabic. Amal was naturally inquisitive in a non-intrusive way. She would ask questions that American girls would never ask, and ask them in a totally innocent and naive manner. Over the course of the next few day, Amal and I had become fast and best friends, sharing everything together, laughing together, discussing our classes, boys, our future lives, our families. We never held anything back from each other.

Initially, both of us were rather shy about disrobing in front of the other, but that seemed to pass, too. Amal was about 5'4" tall and weighed about 135 pounds. She had lovely pendulous breasts, a shapely bottom, and pretty legs. But her best feature was always her eyes and her heart-melting smile. Her family back in Beirut had sent her to Michigan to obtain an excellent education. Her father's brother was a banker working and living in Birmingham, a plush suburb of Detroit. His name was Mazzin and he repeatedly reminded Amal that if she were ever in need of anything, that he would take care of it. Mazzin would visit us about once a month, always taking us out for a nice lunch or dinner and always insisting that I accompany the two of them, which i did more often than not.

Ah, the things that Amal and I did together. We would go to movies, parties, dances, together. We would ride our bikes through the cemetery near our dorm together. We made a point of eating as many meals as we could, depending on our class times together. We were like sisters and she made my transition from high school to college, incredibly easy.

One evening, as we sat on our respective beds, Amal was laughing about a particularly dorky guy that I had seen a couple of times, a true nerd complete with pocket protector and pens in his shirt pocket. Leonard was tall, walked with a bit of a stooped gait, was usually wearing a lab coat and was never to be found without a calculator nearby. He wasn't really my boyfriend, but we did see a couple of movies together and he took me to dinner once or twice. Amal was twisting her pretty face in a contorted manner trying to emulate Leonard, and somehow she grasped his facial tics just right. We both fell into a fevered laughter and neither of us could stop. In fact, each time the laughter started dying down, we would begin laughing hysterically again. Pretty soon both of us had tears in our eyes and she got up from her bed and sat down next to me on my bed, giving me a hug, something we both did a lot. As we sat there next to each other in our bras and panties, the laughter finally died off, and then for the first time, I felt something different, a warmth spreading through my crotch, a longing for Amal, not only as a friend but something far more than that. I let her cradle me, my head and my tousled hair laying against her shoulder, and when i looks up at her, i could see that whatever it was that I was feeling, Amal was feeling, too. As she held me, she leaned down and kissed me, not the sisterly pecks on the cheek and forehead that we had been used to giving each other, but rather her lips against mine, and soon as we held that embrace and that kiss, our mouths opened and her tongue became entwined with mine, and the kiss felt as if it had supplanted everything that had come before, a life changing event.

That night we fell asleep on my bed together, still wearing our undies, me laying in her arms and Amal laying against me. When I awoke, I saw the Amal was still sleeping, and although i really had to pee, i didn't want to awaken her, i didn't want to spoil the moment. Soon thereafter, Amal awoke and smiled and kissed me. She told me that she loved me and i responded that I loved her, too, and that i always would love her. We undressed each other and made love to each other in a way that women have made love with one another for millennia. We brought each other to repeated orgasms, and found each other's faces soaked with our own shared secretions, our own sexual juices, our own saliva, the fruit of our passion.

We spent the rest of the day and that night, making love, talking, laughing, crying. For us, for Amal and for me, our lives had undergone a fateful and permanent transformation. Where once we were caterpillars, now we were butterflies and as butterflies we were ready to soar into the remainder of our days, no longer alone, but as lovers.