I avoid men who try to involve me in negative scenarios but sometimes fall into their net. Lately, my mood has been heavier than a London fog since Greg, my latest romance, left me for an L.A type his age who uses crystals to repair her car. I let our affair drag on too long and regretted it. Wallowing in self pity, I cursed myself for being bacchante in an era that worships computer data and downplays human emotion. These days the AID's crisis makes every new sexual encounter a game of Russian Roulette. Although Greg believed that Kahlil Gibran was a greater poet than Shakespeare, he had his virtues— downstairs if not upstairs.

Meanwhile, rather than rush into a new affair I open my bible: Cheri and the Last of Cheri. Colette's heroine Lea, an aging woman of pleasure attached to a callow youth, resonates with me. Wearing black garters and a Parisian negligee, I imagine myself standing beside Lea, sharing her frisson of trepidation as she greets Cheri, who returns after his marriage to a younger woman proves unsatisfying.

I flinch in pain for Lea watching the look on Cheri's face change from anticipation to dismay. Colette allows us to read his mind and witness his confusion at his ex mistress' metamorphosis."Where is she? Where is she," he wonders? This old woman is hiding her from me." Ever the jaybird, unaccustomed to self examination, he acts as though Lea's loss of glamour were a mean joke on him, typically flattering himself that he caused her decline. "How in the world did old age come upon her? All of a sudden upon waking up in the morning or little by little? And this surplus fat under the weight of which armchairs groan. Was it some sudden shock that brought about this change and unsexed her? Could it perhaps be grief on my account?"

I have chosen bacchanthood over serenity. Invariably, like Aphrodite who rose from the sea, I emerge from despondency to love again-open to the "someone" meant to teach me another refinement in the oldest game on our planet. Whether he dials my number tomorrow or next year is not critical. In a lighter mood, my reading veers toward amusing authors—often French. Traditionally, the adult female has been a desirable species in Parisian society. Her worldly experience acted like an aphrodisiac on raw youths desiring a "sentimental education." Pierre de Bourdelles Brantome, the 16th century author of La vie de dames galantes, in his scandalous memoir which records the customs of the French court, wrote favorably of "certain old ladies who take as much pleasure in love as young ones. Whereas men of a certain age are no longer capable of an erection, woman at no matter what age, is endowed with a furnace. All fire and fuel within."

I hope my flame will illuminate the path of Dionysiacs of both sexes, in business suits or sequined gowns who celebrate the power of the Divine Female. The subversive power of the feminine, like water, is mighty enough to erode rocks. Enter with me the labyrinth of spirit to perform an orgiastic rite. We are in sacred time, which is identical with the now. You will fathom my design. I am neither choreographer nor leader. Dionysus, the supreme dance master, dictates the pattern that will open the door to "deathly quiet pandemonium."

A equinox or solstice is not mandatory. Night is! A new moon, which looks fondly on revivifying rituals, or a full one about to burst into the heavens, are trusty handmaidens. A pair of golden sandals, plus a desire to purge all unhealthy aspects of civilization from the system and dance back into harmony with the cosmos, make my feet move automatically.

I turn in a full flowing whirl, enter each house of the Zodiac. Fire breathing stars singe away the dross that induces torpor. My heart picks up the earth's palpitations. Don't mistake my dazed smile or tipsy look. I dance to a tune composed at the time of creation. I place heliotrope and lotuses on an altar to the muses, thanking them for making me nimble of foot and metaphor.