I don’t pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman’s body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else - just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe - beyond the universe - because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being - of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night - and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind.