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"Did you try to inspire Antonovna into some sexual adventures with you?" asked Ushi at one point as we stomped through the snowdrifts to a restaurant that had been suggested to us for its fine dinners.
I shook my head. "No Ushi, Anton and I met at the Seventh Heathen Restaurant high up on the Ostankino tower, a thousand feet above the lights of Moscow. The atmosphere was heavenly indeed and ideal for a grand romance. In a sense both of dinners there were rich and serene sexual experiences without a single physical touch, Ushi. I didn't need to inspire Anton. Antonovna is a proudly feminine woman and an exciting and generous person to be with, which is reflected in her allowing me to call her simply, Anton. That's a sign of generosity on her part. It seems that no one else is given that privilege, except perhaps her boyfriend Nicolai."
Ushi nodded. "That's not what I asked, Peter. Did you end up in bed together afterwards?"
I shook my head slightly. "That would have been impossible, Ushi, I think! That's the very thing that Anton was afraid of. She said no in so many different ways, although no such suggestion was actually made. In fact she accused me of ultimately aiming for that."
"And so you lied to her and said no, am I right Peter?"
"Actually I didn't lie. I agreed that I would love to, but suggested that sex isn't such a big factor compared to all the other qualities of our spiritual nature as human beings."
"And so, in this case you lied to yourself, Peter. Did you invite Anton for dinner because of your embrace of her as a woman? Or did you invite her there to talk politics? What were your real intentions? You could have talked politics endlessly in a second rate coffee shop. In fact, I think she regarded herself to have been invited as a woman, and you might have sadly disappointed her. I think sex is a big factor with Antonovna, or Anton as you are allowed to call her. As far as I can tell, she never experienced any deep intimacies in a lateral relationship. Sex had always been a vertical thing in her life. It had always been imposed. I think any person longs for a lateral relationship, sexual or otherwise. My hunch is that she is scared of the vertical trap. So you lied to her when you said that sex wasn't a big thing. It was a big thing for you when we first met, and you were honest about it then and proudly so. I appreciated that. Why couldn't you have been honest with Anton? I think Anton was honest with you in her own way. She told you that she is scared of it only in the vertical dimension. So it is a big thing with her. But you turned her down. What a cruel thing to do, Peter!"
Ushi began to laugh.
"But Ushi we couldn't even talk about it, without it causing her pain, Ushi. When I invited her to dance with me after dinner she avoided the answer and later said no. It never came to even that. I asked her repeatedly."
"You probably asked her after you had already closed the door on what you really wanted. Why would she want to dance with a dishonest person, Peter?"
"But if I had asked if she would be open to some sexual intimacies after dinner, she would have walked away right there and then, Ushi?"
"She might not have, Peter, if you had kissed her first and enveloped her with kisses. Of course, once you closed the door to the universal kiss that happens naturally in the lateral lattice, the door that you closed thereby you also closed to everything else. I suspect that even the political discussion that followed was probably largely meaningless."
"But could I have dared to greet her with a kiss, Ushi?"
"That would have been honest, Peter, wouldn't it have been so? You probably said to her that she is already in your heart. Those must have been empty words to her, Peter. If you had greeted her with a kiss the moment you met, then those words would have meant something. Of course you are right that sex isn't such a big thing in the larger context, but it is big in a world that is deeply divided by it. No deeper division exists right across the whole of humanity, than the sexual division. You know that as well as I do. To greet her with a kiss would have taken a lot of that division away from the scene of your unfolding relationship and put some light into it right there and then. It would have let her know that you value her as a human being and most of all as a woman. The sexual division that splits us apart effects almost every human being around the world. I think Anton has been boxed in by it more than most people. She wants to get out of this box. A kiss for a greeting would have said that there is a way to get out of this box. The kiss would have told her that you are fighting for her, that you are on her side. You would have made her feel comfortable being with you. She wants to be assured in some way that she won't be stepping out of one box into another box of the same kind. A kiss on the cheek might have accomplished that. Instead you created an atmosphere of tensions. Actually, you did something worse. You opened a door to hope with your invitation, that she responded to with joy, probably begging you to establish a bridge for her to get out of her trap. And what did you do? You talked about politics. You might even have described universal love as a political necessity instead of as a principle that offers humanity's riches for its own imperatives, unattached to any other imperative. You probably told Anton in effect that love by itself isn't enough of an imperative. I bet you told her that we must love primarily as a political objective to save civilization. That's like building a house from the top down. Love, for its own sake, needs to be the foundation for everything, inspired exclusively by our humanity. If that is missing as a foundation, everything that is built subsequently is doomed to collapse. Without love as the sole focus in meeting Anton for dinner, you denied the riches of the very thing that you promised her with your invitation. I find it amazing, Peter, that she stayed with you for all those hours to talk about politics and then came back the next day fore more. What do we have to support civilization with, as a society, even in politics, if there is no love for our common humanity at the grassroots level, or not enough of it to uphold its light there, not even enough for a kiss? Without universal love for our humanity as a strong force in society, the civilization that we have built over the centuries on the foundation of some form of universal love is vulnerable to collapse. And it will collapse when the foundation erodes. The changing political objectives will reflect this underlying erosion. I would say that there is no point in talking about politics when our love is eroding at the grassroots level. The kiss is needed there. Without it everything will crumble into dust like a hundred-story building that is set up for controlled demolition. Once the foundation is melted away, the collapse is unavoidable. A civilization that has been robbed of universal love at its foundation is a civilization set up for controlled demolition. And that describes our present world. Its downfall cannot be prevented by means of a political crash program, even by drawing love into it. Love has to be society's first and primary concern, underpinning everything that society stands for. That is true on all levels, Peter. That's where you failed with Anton. You lacked that foundation in your heart, Peter, and didn't care to build on it as your first step. You came empty handed. Anton should have walked away at this point. My hunch is that you were both afraid to love. You didn't trust her response to the Principle of Universal Love. You were afraid to be honest with yourself and with her. If you had been half as generous with Anton in meeting her in the land of love, as she had been with you, you would have spent the whole night together with a great joy. Instead your nights ended on a sour note to say the least."
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