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The student couldn't help but stare at the smoke, creeping from the harlot's cigarette, which was grasped idly in her bright red-nailed fingers, next to the perfectly-shapen lips, which could only make him think of the color of the fruit of the knowledge of evil and good. How deeply crimson that temptation must have been. He'd always fancied that it must have been a pomegranate. At least, that seemed so much more seductive in his mind.1

"So?" the harlot repeated.2

He was shocked back into the reality his mind had so subtly tried to avoid.3

"My virginity? No. I haven't lost my virginity yet; not physically. I mean, there's no such entity as an adolescent or post-adolescent who hasn't lost it mentally; that's pure biochemistry. But I haven't transgressed my internal biochemistry into the outside world. I mean, how could I possibly bring myself to that?"4

He couldn't believe he was talking so frankly with a harlot, of all people! The object of his most intense passions, desire and hate, apathy and despair, how was he doing this; how was he speaking honestly and almost respectfully to this entity which, of all entities, existed far more actually in his mind as a concept than as a person, wholly outside of his conception.5

"It's easy."6

She interrupted his reflections, jerking her thumb behind her shoulder, almost acting as though the cigarette dangling from her almost synthetic lips was a joint.7

"Just twenty bucks or a crackstone and a joint. Easy as a magazine."8

"And about as real" he couldn't help muttering under his breath.9

He revolved the thought about in his mind, as though it hadn't been he who had formed it.10

"A little less real, for all the impersonality of it" he thought.11

"I appreciate the offer, and I appreciate your beauty" he said.12

"But no. I could never bring myself to that. I'm far too idealistic to want to turn you into nothing more than an experience and chemical reaction."13

She shrugged in indifference.14

"Please yourself, or don't. None of my business then."15

She exhaled a deep white smoke, and let the cigarette fall to the concrete sidewalk and adjusted her dress, if it could be called a dress, in its translucency, and smiled emptily at a passer-by.16

"No, really" the student continued, almost desperate to understand himself in his expostulations.17

"How could I possibly bring myself to bridge that gap between my mind and reality? If I were ever to love someone, to Truly Love someone, enough to actually bring myself to that point, to the point of desire, of lust, of wanting to please and be pleased so..." he almost couldn't help spitting the word into the gutter, filled with the dead ruddiness of autumn, "Physically!"18

The student paused.19

The harlot stared off, seeming almost mesmerized by the sheer emptiness of the night sky.20

"Well, I couldn't" he said, almost pleadingly, looking into her heavily mascara-ed eyes, which in no way returned the desperate stare.21

"I just couldn't. I despise even the thoughts which arise in my mind which cause me to think things that I will never do; that I can never do. If I loved someone that much, how could I ever do something that unforgettable, that indelible, that... impossibly un-undoable thing? How? How? And if I could, if I did, how should I forgive myself? How should I cope with knowing that my love is capable of lust; is potent with lust?"22

"But what if she wants you to?"23

That same, bored stare.24

"How should I love someone whose love for me was lust? I couldn't if I tried! Love is so far beyond the physical, and lust so far entrenched within it."25

"But what if she wants you to?"26

It almost seemed like a mantra now.27

"For Love, suicide is all" he replied, for lack of any better explanation.28

"Hardly sounds fair to her." The prostitute lit a hand-rolled cigarette in the air, already rife with smoke from fires and exhaust pipes. She took a drag, then let it drop to the gutter.29

"Got a joint?" she asked.30

"Yeah, I guess so." The student dug around in his pockets. He pulled out a lighter, some rolling papers, and a small, one-ounce bag of marijuana. As he prepared it, he continued.31

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. But it's not as though I'm in love with her. I could hardly care less about anyone I would be in love with. It's only the *idea* of the person I'd be in love with, anyway. That's why suicide is the only answer. If she is truly lustful, then I have given myself wholly over to lust, and for that there is no atonement. There *are* those who drown their sorrows in chemically-stimulated experience."32

He twisted the ends of the joint, and lit it, taking a quick drag, and gave it to the harlot.33

"But there's no escape from the memories; from the blood on one's hands. There's no escape from the blood of an ideal except death, and I would have certainly had the blood of Love on my hands, if she were truly Lust. Suicide is all."34

"So you'd bridge that gap after all."35

"I've spent the years searching for bridges I can't burn. It would bridge the gap, but I would burn the bridge at the same time. If I ever truly bridged that gap, I wouldn't be able to bear it, except to burn the bridge."36

His face became increasingly concerned, as he seemed to slip deeper and deeper into thought, staring into the ripples of the concrete sidewalk.37

Suddenly, he looked up at her, with almost agony.38

He grabbed her softly by her shoulder, and looked into her eyes.39

"Don't do this to yourself" he pleaded, his voice potent with sorrow.40

Then he disappeared into the streets, fresh with rainfall.41

She looked for a while in the direction the student had gone then directed her gaze back to the sky.42

The harlot felt something caught in the strap of her dress, so she brushed her shoulders off, adjusted her dress, and bummed a cigarette from a passer-by.43

As she looked down to light it off of the remaining few embers, barely a milimeter away from her lip, she noticed a twenty dollar bill, folded in half on the ground beside her.44

Laughter came from her mouth like a quick firecracker, and she breathed out a stream of smoke into the already smoke-filled, black night.45