For a year I traveled around on the cheap in Europe and its fringes. In Istanbul my three-day limit was up at the youth hostel, so I looked for a modest room nearby. At eight in the morning I went to a pansiyon to see if a room was available. The desk clerk grabbed some keys and we went upstairs. We walked past one door and he said an Italian couple were staying there, and he informed that the woman was noisy during sex....

I began dating a twenty-six-year-old woman I met in an evening French class. We talked while walking in the same direction home after the class. On one such walk, I asked her out. She was an artist, who worked with visiting artists in fabric print media. Usually, the visiting artists were new to working with fabrics and she helped them with the new media. Sketches and paintings from the visiting artists hung in the rooms...

After traveling for a year, I returned to home and work and discovered that while I was away a lot of 976 numbers were advertised in the local weekly papers. I learned that a person could talk for thirty minutes for free but after that, your number was charged an exorbitant rate per minute. I spoke with local women who called into these chat lines -- women talked for free -- and within a few days after I burned through th...