like an actor, not a theologian. Currently playing a Beatnik, are you?... my mom surrounds me with debutantes... escort them to plays, movies, concerts, luncheons and she constantly works on a wedding list. Don't you hate being pushed into the marriage bed? And maidenheads are so scarce this century! Since you are so teasingly frank, I'll just be Randy and say I DO KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN! Getting the proverbial piece leaves me-ah, unmoved. But this season my analyst is beat with business.... I'm his next patient. Being different can be fun, ya know. Wish you'd sent a snapshot so I could see what I called a reverend.' And these were the sentences, the lines that Kip read over and over to himself. Someone seemed to want to correspond with him, and Kip wanted to. Besides, what harm could possibly come of it?

So letters arrived and departed, one being written each week. The exchange of snapshots accelerated correspondence. Randy wrote how much he loved Kip's haughty Latin face and handsome large-boned body. Kip sat dreaming and musing at Randy's photograph. Randy seemed to have such a fresh face and sensual mouth-full lower lip whose upper attempted to conceal itself beneath a thinly curved mustache. Randy appeared slender, graceful, and it was easy to see why he had won cups at swimming and tennis meets. Randy seemed to be living a glittering life as an only child in a wealthy family. Probably he had his own reasons for working in a publishing house. Their letters conveyed the barings of the soul which described their share of promiscuity and short lived affairs while they searched for the same elusive things which no lover had yet satisfied.

Then the letters increased from two, to three, to four a week. Then one day came when Randy wrote, "I love you. The wonderfully impossible, at last seems possible with you."

Kip read this, pondered on it the whole day through, even allowing himself a second day to convince himself of his reply. After returning from walking beneath starlight, he placed a sheet of paper in the typewriter and commenced his thoughts, letting his fingers fly over the keys.

I love the others still for my own reason and in my own way. I gave myself completely to their happiness. But I am a demanding chap, too; give freely until I can give no more without something back to nourish my soul. No one has ever made a fuss over me as you have. I keep hoping they will out of gratitude or a miraculous reaction catch afire from my happiness. Yet, I am loved or cherished, I guess, according to their rules. But what is it that I want? It's wanting something that won't come or can't be reached; won't budge the door that asks the password, 'Open Sesame!'

I see you sailing to me, a sturdy but slender sail boat, a bark coming into view across the blue distance. It is a distance I gaze on from which a few very precious barks have sailed away from me, not finding in my port their ideas of eat, drink, be merry for I die. There's not any death in my port.

Similar to what God once created, I, too, have created a special tree of life, which, if eaten, instead of tended and cherished, destroys the Paradise I plan too idealistically.

Disembarking you say the password and I let down the Flaming Sword and there is the Paradise waiting so long. I stand there in my loneliness, waiting for you to share the garden, designed uniquely for only one other person to complete when the blueprint is known.

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