I feel that it is also being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.

Later on, I thought it meant leading the life of an intellectual.

All I have done is translate into words—words he will probably never read; they are not intended for him—the way in which his existence has affected my life. An offering of a sort, bequeathed to others.

I discovered what people are capable of, in other words, anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them. Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.

The man who returned that evening wasn’t the man I was carrying inside me throughout the year when he was here, and when I was writing about him. I shall never see that man again. Yet it is that surreal, almost non-existent last visit that gives my passion its true meaning, which is precisely to be meaningless, and to have been for two years the

I can still believe this is something private, almost childish, of no consequence whatsoever—like the declarations of love and the obscene expressions I used to write on the back of my exercise books in class, or anything else one may write calmly, in all impunity, when there is no risk of it being read. Once I start typing out the text, once it

Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to f ind out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal.

A sort of further investment, this time in imagination and craving through absence.

My condition was such that not even the sound of his voice could make me happy. It was all infinite emptiness, except when we were together making love. And even then I dreaded the moments to come, when he would be gone. I experienced pleasure like a future pain.