I shrivel under the sudden glare of all three men. It was like having a figure in a Rembrandt painting turn its eyes and suddenly become aware of its viewer. 

Ovid, in particular, had the most stunning raven-black eyes and deep chestnut locks. His blood must have run thicker and bluer than raw lapis, judging by his lovely high brow and full lips. I imagined that he had accompanied his parents to all the grandiloquent functions, toting golden pacifiers in his hungry little mouth while everyone fawned over his girlish looks. 

"Charmed," he says, and he extends an elegant hand in which we shake. "I'm Ovid Naso."

"What an unusual name! Let me guess, French?"

"Italian, actually. I have the nose to go with it; can't you tell?"

I felt as if I were in the presence of a phantom made of cashmere and smoke. Whatever gods had come together to create Ovid Naso before sending him down to Earth were conspiring against the human race because there was only one of him and not enough to go around. My God, if the other Poets were as beautiful as Ovid, I had no chance of learning anything here.

"What's going on with this?" John questions from where he paws through a few of Ovid's papers and notebooks on the desk, "Are you already doing homework, Ovid? The professors don't start handing assignments out until the second week at least!" 

"I think he is, Johny!" Homer exclaims gleefully, a sheet of notebook paper clutched in his big hands. "What is this? Are you writing nasty poetry again?"

I watch them squawk and tumble with laughter like boys while Ovid frantically jumps up and down and tries snatching the paper from Homer, who stands up and holds it over his head. Any earlier elegance that they'd had vanishes, and they become human and solid, something very real to me at that moment.

"Give me that!" Ovid snarls finally and launches over the table to snatch his papers back. "It's called erotica! And it's a perfectly acceptable form of poetry!"

"No words can capture what their bodies say!" Homer shouts with laughter as he reads Ovid's poetry. "In the depths of pleasure, worries drift away! A cock, roughly the size of a barge! A cunt, as tight as your mother! Ah, Ovid, are you dreaming about fucking my mother? So filthy!"

"Pig!" Ovid seethes and slaps the papers out of Homer's hands. "I suspect that's why you grew up on a farm! They have slop for you to roll around in there!"

John comes over to me when he sees the perplexed look on my face. "Don't mind them," His laughter is gentle, and he slings an arm around my shoulders as if we'd known each other for ages rather than one day. "They roughhouse like this all the time. It's the only place where they don't have to act like they have sticks up their asses. Ovid's father is one of the richest men in Vermont, and Homer's family runs a cattle business that supplies five-star restaurants with beef."

Truly, I loved the idea of being so free like Ovid and Homer, who had to go back to their families and pretend to be something that they weren't. I imagined that once they both graduated and went their own ways, even John, they would all find wives and have children. 

Despite Ovid's earlier remark about blowing strangers in the dorm rooms, nothing would come of it when we left Camden and stepped into the real world. We would never marry or kiss in public just because we felt like expressing our fondness for one another.

My father's ghost stands behind me while John and I watch Homer and Ovid gather his fallen papers and argue about what to have for dinner that night. Silently, he warns me to stay away from the Poets and Virgil, whom I was ready to meet.

I had never been good at following orders.

"Are you sure you're ready for tonight, Dante?" John asks me as we prepare to go, "Virgil can be a little intimidating. I don't want him to scare you off."

"We like you," Homer adds when he steps into view with Ovid at his side. "If Virgil and the others don't want you, we do. In fact, you're pretty much already one of us. Right, boys?" He looks over at the others in question, and everyone seems to agree. 

"Well, then," I respond, "why don't we begin our descent?"