In the end it was really difficult to tell who kissed who. It was night, and neither of us had ever kissed a woman before, so the whole thing was tentative at best. It's fair to say that our lips just collided gently in the dark.

For the rest of my life I guess I will hold that moment up as a yardstick, a precedent, what I can do if caution is thrown to the wind. It will also be a mark against which all future romantic interludes are measured.

Every kiss I enjoy will be compared to that kiss. I don't mean that I'll sit down and give them a running score out of ten in my head, I just mean that the emptiness inside me will be more or less filled, depending on the measure of joy I feel and how it compares to that moment. Forever. That point in time will, without a doubt, represent absolute fulfillment.

It colours you, shapes you. It might not be fair, but I'm realistic enough to recognise that I can't run away from it.

I married that girl, in a little ceremony that lasted ten minutes. Most of those ten minutes were filled up with forgettable platitudes from the town mayor. Fittingly, the only thing I remember about those words is that they were instantly forgettable, and I filed them into that never ending filing cabinet of experiences in my head, never to be dusted off again.

Then there was the first kiss of our marriage, the only kiss ever to rival what I call the Kiss of Ultimate Fulfillment. That was seven years ago. Funny what can happen in seven years.

That filing cabinet in your head contains ghosts too. Everyone has them, but some are more vocal than others. When I got divorced 12 months ago I put the memory of our wedding into a memory drawer, and the girl herself crept silently yet insistently into my drawer full of ghosts, closing the door firmly behind her. If she had stayed in that drawer, I wouldn't have any need to write this.

As everybody who knows anything about ghosts knows, ghosts are spirits with unfinished business. Once your mind becomes haunted, you have three choices: exorcise it, learn to live with it, or move out.

Well, there is a fourth choice. You can fall in love with it.

My ghost tends to be less troublesome than the real-life woman ever was. She never acts irrationally, and never gets hurt by the thoughtless things I do. She hangs around and reads me love poetry in the dark, puts up with my taste in depressing music, and never complains when I've had enough and roll over to go to sleep.

She sometimes lies behind me with her arms around my shoulders to help me sleep. The biggest problem is that she comes when I'm lying naked in bed with my lover, so I'm trapped between the real woman I love and the phantom woman who just hangs out in my head to tease me. It gets tight, difficult to breathe.

My ghost cheers me on when I hit home runs. She's always there sitting on the sideline with my old, battered yankees cap sitting backwards on her head, brown hair shoved roughly behind her ears. No one else sees her, or hears her yelling to support me. But I hear it, echoing.

She's strong, but not stubborn. She'll let me have my way sometimes. Most of the time I take her presence for granted, but every now and then she lashes out at my mind to make me remember she's there. She's my friend, my enemy, my lover, my soulmate. She is my past, my future, my madness. And she will never leave.

THE END

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