It’s cold in my apartment. The fourth cigarette of the morning is burning wildly; the fourth glass of tea is two sips shy of a refill. The light snoring coming from the bed has now stopped and I only wonder: is he coming out of a REM cycle or going into one?

Of course, looking at him sweetly sleeping begins a whole new set of thoughts. I’m not dreaming of a wonderfully fantastical future with him, no. In five years’ time, the one characteristic I’d like remaining in our relationship is the innocence, the freshness we have maintained so far. In five years, I want to stop typing away at my ultra-sleek black keyboard and turn my head to see him sleeping, pillow creases on his face and all. It’s at this time that I feel the most love for anyone, you see, because people are always on their best behavior when they are sleeping. Not me, though. I can’t even behave properly when I’m unconscious!

Tom Robbins once wrote of the perplexity of making love stay. This may have always been (and, surely, always will be) the biggest problem humanity has, because love is desire and love is passion and love is the catalyst of our battles, epic or personal. He answered that love cannot live without lust, and I am inclined to believe him. The question is, then, how do we make lust stay? If someone with loose lips discovered the answer then surely the pharmaceutical companies (or some equally exploitive governmental facility, I suppose) would bottle the greatest Lust Prolonging Ointment (for those couples that were married in their teens during military enlistment crazes) and Lust Extinguisher (for those military boys who simply cannot help themselves and may forget their high school sweetheart thousands of miles away) the world has ever known. Perfumes, colognes and questionable herbal supplements (New! For longer love-making!) may just go the way of the dinosaur. No, no. I can’t see those old has-been celebrities going out of business because their Eau De Toilette is all but extinct so I will keep my big mouth closed and let the world continue searching for the elusive lust with the unknown expiration date.

Perhaps a better question is this: what makes cigarettes stay? I’m now whittling down the sixth of the morning (I know it’s morning because traffic from the adjacent highway has lulled as it does between 8 AM and Noon and the birds are still too optimistic about the day) and looking at a nearly empty pack with sad, sad eyes. Yes, I smoke entirely too much. When nagged about my habit my mantra is always “Yeah? Well it could be crack that I’m smoking.” Sometimes I like to break it up with “Everyone has to die sometimes, right?” Either option is effective in cases like that. The truth is, there is simply not much I care about. I especially do not care for my own mortality because, like any romantic, I’m too inclined to put Destiny in charge of such nonsense. I care even less about the opinions of strangers who choose to judge based on outward characteristics, such as smoking.

There is something, though, that I deeply care about. As previously mentioned, it’s that boy sleeping on the pile of sheets and blankets on the floor in front of the usage-deprived television. When he is asleep, his intensely thirsty eyes are nowhere to be seen. His passion for living and eagerness to please are interlaced with that conscious thought that all sleeping people lack (and that’s possibly the most fabulous part of sleeping, isn’t it?) is dreaming away with him, possibly jumping over purple six-headed aliens while shooting a well ripened banana at moving targets (this is how I imagine he dreams. We don’t often discuss it and I believe he doesn’t often remember them, anyway).

Is it love, lust, a sociological urge or a coy societal ideology to fit with another human being? Although a romantic, I don’t particularly believe in “soul mates”. Even that is over my head. I do, however, believe that no matter the source of the urge most feel to connect with another it is too strong to deny. In fact, the more it is repressed the more it will present itself. Along with the necessity of finding (and keeping) love, there comes the uncontrollable compulsion to dissect it, bottle it and force it down the throats of others.

The latter, like the dwindling of a cigarette, is just not fair.