Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop:

He said, "So what's the big deal about this one?"

"Well, she was a walking balance in purity and desire. You know? There was something pure--something consciously naive--something selfless. I trusted her. I really did. She was younger than me, but I don't know if that was it. She was one of those people that is born with an old soul, and because of it stays young and uncorrupted much longer than most of us; maybe forever, I hope so anyway. Yet, she was a fanatic for desire. She bathed in it; slept in it; let it permeate her every thought and movement. She was ravenous and insatiable. I'm not just talking about the bedroom either, Old Man. I am talking about allowing desire to overtake you in a way that splits you open at the core, leaving you to be overwhelmed by existential absurdity and the height of ecstasy. She had that. She let it have her. Desire carried over into everything she did--every way she related to me. It would dominate our conversations of love, religion, literature, people, and death. Desire would waft in the air of all these places; intoxicate the water that nourished our relations--every word, every phrase, ever word, every wink. And it all carried over into our love making--into passionate, expressive, verbal and non-verbal, deep, painful, open love-making. The kind that leaves you breathless for days. The experience of coming so close to someone else's soul--so close to the infinite abyss that they don't know how to give you directions to because they have never experienced it--never seen it--never known how to explain to anyone something they know they know is not there. We would come to the peak--to the edge--of that infinite--of that mixture of two untouchable spaceless, atemporal realms. In those moments--in those seconds--I hoped so hard, so expectantly, so wishfully. In the moments and days afterward I wept over the impossibility--the absurdity--of such an endeavor. Why so broken up? I guess alot of it is knowing I'll never know how she did it--how does one balance such naivete, such kindness, such purity with the waves and waves of desire that pour over and in every second? How can desire permeate every parcel of her Being while she stays so young, so beautiful, so exquisitely generous? How can the absurdity of Being not corrupt the Good? She's a walking non-answer to this question, and that's why there is no just forgetting her, it, all."

"Okay, son, sounds like a mouthful. You need another drink?"

I didn't respond.