I remember Petra perfectly after more than two decades, the sound of her voice whispering “ich liebe dich,” the way she looked when she dove naked into the water at Hippie Hollow, the arch of her back when she dried her hair after a swim, the way her bare feet felt next to mine, the sheer wonder of her pale hair as the dry wind blew it into my face while she napped, the slightly salty taste of her skin in the hot Texas summer sun. She will always remain as she was then and I would not know her now in her mid-fifties. As poorly versed as we were in that language that is not considered a language of love, but of war, German will always be for me an erotic language.
—H. Palmer Hall
—from “The Woman of My German Summer: A Sixties Idyll”
—found in Eclectica (Vol. 1, No. 1)