"Were you staring at me?"

"What?" I say, distracted.

My eyes try to focus on the pale, thin brunette looking down at me from across the table. She’s dressed as a geisha in a flowing silk kimono of many colors, hair tied atop her head in an eloquent spiral, a tender nautilus. Her gaunt complexion comes from powder covering tight cheeks and angular chin. It highlights the wide European shape of her eyes and thick, naturally dark lashes. "Were you staring?" she says again.

I wasn’t. If anything, I’d been staring into space. "I don’t understand."

Placing her hands on the table, she leans in close and smiles. Her mouth’s abyss stretches through the opaque caricature she’s made of her face, a deep black chasm as she speaks. "Were you watching me?"

"Yes," I lie.

"What’d you see?"

"A perfect woman."

"Perfect for what?" she says.

"My eyes. What else is there?"

Her smile masks a face already masked by powder. It’s clear we’ve connected even before she accepts my unspoken offer and sits down. She leans in and says, "I’m Lynn." Then, oddly enough, I know her SECRET name, the one I’ll use to write of her in verse. She’s ‘My painted whisper,’ a label I find erotic, alluring.

My lips relax in upward arcs. "Mars," I tell her.

"I know," she says, humbly bowing as if to avoid my gaze. In the same motion, her chin moves up and her eyes overpower mine. "I watched you read," she tells me. "Stirring."

"Thank you."

"I enjoyed what you had to say. Your words disturbed me." There’s an paradox in these two sentences. She must find some similarity between her life and mine. It’s that connection that disturbs her, frightens her, harasses her and overwhelms her. It makes her hurt to see that, and it feels so good to hurt.

"Happy to disturb you. Stay. I’ll torment you as much as you like."

"With anyone else that’d sound like a line. Not you. You come across so calm and dry, so very. . ."

"Detached?"

"Not sure. But to hear you say it, I take you at your word."

"Then you already know me better than anybody else in the room."

She tries to laugh, but it fades into a solemn grin. "And what do you know about me?" she asks, coquettish playfulness in her tone.

"You don’t drink."

"What makes you say that?"

"You’re sober. You’re not drinking now. It’s late. Party’s almost over. If you drank, you’d have touched oblivion or you’d be closing in."

"Interesting approach. What if I say you’re wrong?"

"Maybe I am. But let me add to the myth."

"By all means," she agrees.

"As young as you are, let me suggest you’re an alcoholic."

"What?" she says excitedly. "Where do you get that?"

I laugh, slow and guttural, finding confirmation in her voice. Our eyes meet for a tense moment as I see she’s staring nervously, angrily, awaiting my reply. "Another educated guess. You’re not drinking and you’re not drunk, but you’re not unfamiliar with your surroundings. You come to the Galapagos Club. You join the party dressed as an alluring geisha. You’ve been here before. You’re reliving your past without reliving your past."

She hesitates, then confesses with a nod.

"You’re shy, too. True, you came up to me. But I was alone. It’s easier to approach individuals than groups."

"How do you know I didn’t come in a group?" she asks.

"I don’t. But you’re not with anyone now. If you came alone, you kept the status quo. If you came with others, you’ve lost them to the Hallows Eve madness. They’re off enjoying strange beds or sleeping off their euphoria. You’re left alone now."

She nods. "You have a good eye. No wonder you call yourself an historian not a poet."

"You pay attention, too. My painted whisper, I love you for a moment."

I keep expecting to see the flush of embarrassed cheeks, but they’re masked beneath white powder. Instead of blushing, she leans closer and whispers, "What did you call me?" This adds new proof to my label for her.

"My painted whisper."

"Why?"

"I need a name to remember you by once your moment passes and another day encroaches on our time."

"Like the names in your poems? Your histories?"

"Exactly," I say, pleased to have her know me like I know her.

"Sounds like you’re flirting with me."

"Why do that? I’ll just be me and let the moments come as they please."

"If that’s true, kiss me. Can’t be more direct than that."

"In a moment," I reply. "Let me finish devouring you with my eyes."

Her lips tremble. She smiles widely and accepts.

We don’t kiss right away, though she frequently makes her invitation. I accept as always but defer until the moment her demands overtake me. In the mean time, I learn more about her. She tells me she’s an only child, the daughter of two commoners. "What do they know about detachment?" she asks, her eyes stretching back in mockery. "They’re too caught up in themselves, their jobs, the people they share space with at office parties and occasional affairs. They’re every parent, neither brutal nor ambitious, happy or afraid of what’s ahead. But I love them. They’ve been good to me, and they have their moments of. . ."

"Awakening?" I suggest.

My painted whisper shrugs and sighs. "No. They sleep like bats in a cave. They’re lost in the cluster. Sometimes they fly, but never alone."

I offer a brief, distracted smile. Our parents share the slumber. I explain that to her, watching as she nods.

"They can’t walk in your shoes," she says, "or see the world through your eyes. They’re trapped in their old ways—the ways of others, perhaps, but theirs now, too."

"So true." I’m under the spell of her voice. I know I love her for this infinite pause. It’s not a matter of making love, but of giving myself over, letting myself touch her and be touched in turn. We’ll come together like two moons temporarily aligned, two children joined in harmony on the swings.

I can tell by the flutter in her tone that she understands and accepts that as readily as I do, though she keeps talking about her parents. Her father’s a low-level bureaucrat in city government, obscure to higher ups but high enough to get by without getting buried. Her mother was a housewife for many years, then recently took a job selling cosmetics. She explains her theory that it’s more for companionship than to earn an extra buck. "She’s been lonely since I went to college. Worse since I graduated. I hardly ever visit because of my work." She doesn’t mention what job keeps her so busy.

"There are parts of you I can’t see," I tell her, wooing with my tone.

"The things we keep hidden make us unique. In a group, there are no secrets. A person’s what the group perceives. I’d rather be alone with my private meanings."

I urge her on with a stroke of her hand.

"Even YOU have secrets. You reveal yourself in great detail, but because you do it lets you keep lots more about you hidden."

"Wise words. My painted whisper, let me touch the SECRET you. I can’t learn it, but I’ll wrap myself in its darkness."

She smiles humbly as if agreeing to let herself be conquered. This time, I don’t hesitate when she tempers her surrender with the demand for a kiss. And there it is: my beautiful ambivalence, my philosophy of openness to each new moment and every momentary offer however precious or bizarre. It’s in the taste of skin and what silence surrounds a moment of consumption. What can there be more focused than a kiss? The relations of man to man, man to woman, man to beast, and the conflicts that arise from each, they’re snuffed out one by one in a moment of tenderness and grace. Concepts like peace and war, love and hate, tomorrow and the day before mean little during an embrace. One tunes them out to concentrate on the feel of chapped lips, the flavor of wintergreen chewing gum, the accidental scraping of teeth, the leaning in toward a touch of tongues. Impossible to think of anything else and still have real awareness of the kiss. Either one respects the moment, studies it, gets lost along the way, or else one’s distracted by other moments, and the kiss is something less than a kiss, perhaps more of a lie. My approach to life, my “beautiful ambivalence”—it’s about stretching the feeling found in a kiss over every conscious moment, every thought.

Some folks take steps toward the permanent kiss. A fisherman sitting on a shaded bank—watching his neon bobber drift in isolation barely tasting the lake surface—has no thoughts for the waning of his epoch, the slow decline in his frail human form. He lets the moment guide him, comfort him in his singular purpose, embracing the unseen where it lurks beneath the surface. A fisherman busy finding the world is lost to his fish. To be sincere in his art, he must invite detachment, open himself with equal pleasure to the possibilities of success and failure. Does the bobber bob or rest? The current pull or pause? The catfish hesitate, nibble, strike? A fisherman learns my beautiful ambivalence, tries to take each moment as it comes.

Other things as well. . .

The first raindrop to hit one’s face in stagnant heat on a summer inspires it. Likewise, should rain pass by, one might enjoy a streak of red lightning in a purple sky as the dry, dying thunderstorm passes over. It’s there at the opening of a sporting event when neither team has an advantage. Athletes and spectators vanish in a single beautifully ambivalent pause before the competition that’s to come. And a magic show has that power, too, if a man isn’t caught up trying to see the smoke and mirrors.

But the kiss is the purest form. To say “I” and “Thou” to ready lips, is to go beyond reason. Awareness waits in the taste and touch, the symmetry of bodies joined at a lone point. It’s something not even the fisherman understands. In the kiss, every sunset fades, every rush melts into slowness, and every joke dies in the crackling voice.

My philosophy’s a search for one eternal kiss.

Yet a kiss often leads to more: the feel of fingers teasing the ties from a geisha’s hair, second hand losing itself in folds of a kimono, only occasionally touching secret skin. Detached from the festivities by distance and the walls of her apartment, I’m lost in her affections. Pressing my naked belly against her bare thigh, I massage her side with my lips, tasting her in slow strokes, feeling her body ripple with delight. It rises and falls, arches and pulls away. Each movement convinces me of her love as much for the moment as for my touch. She accepts each kiss as passively as I give it. We’re united in our indifference and the ecstasy it brings.

Reaching down, my hand traces lines on her knee before climbing her inner thigh’s icy trail. My mouth licks circles around her navel, feeling her abdomen jerk and relax below. She gasps in tremors like water dancing in the wind, like a clarinet’s reed vibrating from song. Her breathing grows erratic. "Mars," she groans, "My warlord, don’t you tease me."

I sigh, stretching to suck at her shoulder, then her curving neck. I linger, savoring moist powder mixed with perfume. "I never tease," I tell her, sampling soft flesh beneath her chin, "or test the water before diving in."

She hums affectionately. Bringing her hands to the back of my head, she tugs at my scalp, urging me to meet her in another kiss.

Happy to appease, I possess her lips as I move parallel against her. I study her closed eyes, head arcing back as in reverie. Her lengthy hair’s tangled in clusters now, so I separate dark strands with my albino fingers a vivid contract of white. Then I stroke her forehead, moving eyebrow to eyebrow with my thumb.

My painted whisper gasps and jerks in excitement. Frantic, no longer at rest, she twitches from eagerness, clutching me tightly to her breast. Her eyes open to slits and she’s watching me through the blur of her lashes, waiting. I notice her face is unsymmetrical, tilting slightly to one side. Her lips are off balance, nearly aligned with her right eye. Her left eye leans over a pale cheek bent toward curving chin. Hard to imagine I’ve overlooked this so long. My painted whisper’s an abstract shape, her form what makes her different. It’s that difference in turn that makes her perfect. She enchants me by being as she is: beautiful and unassuming despite her cubist lines.

Still humming as I kiss her lips, chin, cheek, neck, she begs, "Make love to me," her whisper a purr from deep in her throat.

I laugh softly at her misunderstanding. She thinks I’m taking an active role, directing the encounter with each word and urgent caress. How can I explain to her that’s furthest from the truth? I merely greet her body as she offers it, accepting what she gives me niche by niche. I don’t control the moments. I can resist them should I choose, but little else.

I resign myself to the simple fact I love her. Not the kind of love to survive a passing hour, it’s exclusive in this moment sharing our exquisite tenderness. As different as we are, we’re the same. By expecting me to act she’s revealed her nature as passive and accepting as mine, her willingness to react but not advance. THAT is why I love her. It binds us like a wedding candle, snuffed once the expectations cease. We’re together, neither of us acting. I accept her as she accepts me, and we both accept time and all it brings. That makes every touch seem twice as pleasing.

But then I’m inside her anyway, finding a new awareness, a new instant. I get lost in movement—more fugue than symphony. I know as little of the world just now as the world can know of me. Masks have been dropped, illusions shattered. Halloween’s a shadow in yesterday’s mythology. The pagan festivities now make way for the feast of saints, and I devour the possibilities unafraid. What spiritual forces guide the lives of men, strong-willed and indifferent alike? I feel them now in this culture of the body: adding joy to pleasure, knowledge to joy. I’ve transcended Celtic goblins and Druidic ghosts, passed over the bonfires and secret faces worn by children dancing. Witchery’s high sabbath has faded behind clouds with the moon.

I suspect Pope Gregory understood this beautiful ambivalence when he moved All Saints Day to the onset of November from its previous home in May. Druidic festivals and high sabbaths went on for centuries before Gregory climbed the high cliff of Catholicism, reached the summit where only sun and sky stood between him and his God. He knew about the pagan rites. How could he justify merging a celebration of ascension with the brooding collapse of the Celtic year? He must have seen how evil and good unite in man as in the world. To be complete, a man must deal with each, accepting the jack-o-lantern’s hideous grin as readily as that awkward miracle of prayer. Saints are sinners, after all, with only a few great deeds and faith to hold them up. Gregory knew, and he grasped the moment tightly in his hands, that single moment he placed at midnight where the two extremes have shaken hands for all the centuries since.

So dark around me. Exhausted, I lie on my back, naked except for a cold sheet and her lazy arm draped across my chest. My painted whisper’s collapsed beside me, lost to sleep. Her breathing’s steady, echoing in night silence like an ongoing series of sighs.

That sphere of yellow light looks in on me through the bedroom window—a blurry eye watching. With my glasses on a stand by her bed, I can’t say if it’s the moon or an arc lamp looming over the tired Pittsburgh street. Makes no difference. I’m too caught up in the moment, the sleeper beside me, this instant’s love I feel for her. In my head, I’m already composing new lines too add to the history in verse I keep like little photos for the scrapbook to save this scene from my life:

     			My painted whisper touches 
     			immortality, awakening into sleep, 
     			a new face built from
     			older feelings . . .

AND I CAN DIE NOW. Those words I believed my first time with a body in my arms, those words the “older feelings” I’ll note in verse.

My painted whisper rests against. In her arms I feel as accomplished in life as a soldier who earned his command from dedication rather than desire. Here, in a moment with her, I’m complete. What better time to go than in an instant filled with real transcendence, a warmth inside more pristine than happiness, more calm almost any beautifully ambivalent breath that I’ve exhaled? If it comes before this moment passes, even my death is an offering I won’t decline. I could die content and fully realized should my most recent but perfect kiss now be my last.

Beside me, she stirs. In her dream state, she’s taken the next step, too. She loves me in this instant severed from the infinite, not needing more when daybreak brings a different now. Could I hear her dream self speak, the second her would say, "And I can die now," though she knows two histories converged will fork. She and I will follow different highways bound for different pairs of arms, each of us ready to die again, again, a. . .