True love is something poetic, magically shot straight out of Casablanca for your viewing pleasure. Composed of sultry coiffed hair, lathered Revlon and puckered hues of crimson; love is the things fireworks are made of. Love is Rick and Isla Tan going to a new land in a dangerous time. Lovers in a dangerous time…or so the story goes.

Then there is the love of fine vandalism, bountifully lathered in the shape of contour lines, plastered on alley walls in the heat of passion. Quickly now, before the po-po come to reveal my lecherousness for this hefty jiffy marker. Passion for this chick comes in the throes of feverish line movement onto public objects, under the blanket of wickedness. Momma should never have let me be rebellious with my Crayolas on the dining room walls all those decades ago.

But then comes that moment when the familiar becomes too mundane, too resolute, too obsolete. The act of contour lust – graffiti assignation in the night – becomes blah. Where’s the spark gone? When will the hunger return to bed with canisters, markers, and stencils commence?

But then “they” show up. The sultry sublime simplicity of dreamweaver, of mystery. Some nightwalker creeps through the shadows and relieves their creative urination on neighborhood territory. The North End. My home. My territory. How curious my mind rambles when come daylight, my walls are caressed with slapdash murals of one-lined fantastical caricatures of imaginative ruffians. Oh lord, be still my heart, there is a vandal Casanova on the loose…and he has my bosom going pitter patter.

Or is this a he? Perhaps a she? Maybe an it, that, or who? No matter; this late night citizen, under the guise of Kauz, has my love. No material vanity, no marketable goal or capitalist empire to fuel with the art of creation; Kauz just wants to play with the clean canvases of the concrete jungle, the city. Simple tools, no carriage of spray cans lining his “studio”, no murals of elaborate tags to proclaim “I COPIED FROM THE BEST!”, Kauz just wants to invite the world into “his” imaginative noddle.

I am getting ahead of myself like a lovesick puppy sucking back on the teat of marrow. This lust, this passion, this craving to view more of Kauz on the walls, street signs, sidewalks and doors. I want “him” all the time. Now the game of cat and mouse begins, and I aim to tango with my new-found desire. Tit for tat, Mr. Kauz, Ribbon is on the art attack. You tag my heart, and I’ll entice yours by similar means; graffiti wheat pasting.

So here’s looking at you, Kauz, I’m on the prowl for you tonight.