Eleven Minutes

And so Maria’s adolescent years passed. She grew prettier and prettier, and her sad, mysterious air brought her many suitors. She went out with one boy and with another, and she dreamed and suffered – despite her promise to herself never to fall in love again. On one such date, she lost her virginity on the back seat of a car; she and her boyfriend were touching each other with more than usual ardour, the boy got very worked up, and she, weary of being the only virgin amongst her group of friends, allowed him to penetrate her. Unlike masturbation, which took her up to heaven, this hurt her and caused a trickle of blood which left a stain on her skirt that took ages to wash out. There wasn’t the magical sensation of her first kiss – the herons flying, the sunset, the music…but she would rather not think about that.

She made love with the same boy a few more times, although she had to threaten him first, saying that if he didn’t, she would tell her father he had raped her. She used him as a way of learning, trying in every way she could to understand what pleasure there was in having sex with a partner.

She couldn’t understand it; masturbation was much less trouble and far more rewarding. But all the magazines, the TV programmes, books, girlfriends, everything, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, said that a man was essential. Maria began to think that she must have some unspeakable sexual problem, so she concentrated still more on her studies and, for a while, forgot about that marvellous, murderous thing called Love.

From Maria’s diary, when she was seventeen:

My aim is to understand love. I know how alive I felt when I was in love, and I know that everything I have now, however interesting it might seem, doesn’t really excite me.

But love is a terrible thing: I’ve seen my girlfriends suffer and I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. They used to laugh at me and my innocence, but now they ask me how it is I manage men so well. I smile and say nothing, because I know that the remedy is worse than the pain: I simply don’t fall in love. With each day that passes, I see more clearly how fragile men are, how inconstant, insecure and surprising they are…a few of my girlfriends’ fathers have propositioned me, but I’ve always refused. At first, I was shocked, but now I think it’s just the way men are.

Although my aim is to understand love, and although I suffer to think of the people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and that those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart.

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