Past 'tense'

I just finished reading Philip Roth's latest book Indignation. It's a wonderfully revealing book about, who else?, Philip Roth aka Marcus Messner, the son of a Newark kosher butcher breaking away from 'old world' ethnic Jewry into the new world of waspish private college during the Korean War. Not only is the book full and frank about the sexual mores of the early fifties, it is pitch perfect in describing first love and the inabiltiy of an ethical Jewish boy to adapt to the ways of the broader world: get along by going along. The plot is thrilling, the dialogue rivetting and, even though the book ends in tragedy, deeply satisfying. It got me to thinking about my own college experience and what I regard as the single most significant cultural event of my time: the sexual revolution which began with the advent of the birth control pill in 1965. This changed everything - even the way movies would be made from then on. I wonder what it would have been like to live in a coed dormitory...