Eleven Minutes

"When we met, I asked you to teach me about sex, because I had lost all my sexual desire. Do you know why? Because after a certain age, every sexual relationship I had ended in tedium and frustration, because I realized how difficult it was to give the women I loved the same amount of pleasure they gave me."

I didn't like the sound of "the women I loved," but I feigned indifference and lit a cigarette.

"I didn't have the courage to ask: show me your body. But when I met you, I saw your light, and I loved you at once, and I thought that, at this stage in my life, I had nothing to lose by being honest with myself and with the woman I wanted to have by my side."

My cigarette tasted delicious, and I would have liked him to offer me some wine, but I didn't want to break the thread of the conversation.

"Why is it that men only think about sex? instead of doing as you did with me and finding out how I feel?"

Who said we only think about sex? On the contrary, we spend years of our life trying to convince ourselves that sex is actually important to us. We learn about love from prostitutes or virgins; we tell our stories to whoever will listen; when we are older, we parade about with much younger lovers, just to prove to others that we really are what women expect us to be.

"But do you know something? That's simply not true. We understand nothing. We think that sex and ejaculation are the same thing and, as you just said, they're not. We don't learn because we haven't the courage to say to the woman: show me your body. We don't learn because the woman doesn't have the courage to say: this is what I like. We are stuck with our primitive survival instincts, and that's that. Absurd though it may seem, do you know what is more important than sex for a man?"

I thought it might be money or power, but I said nothing.

"Sport. Because a man can understand another man's body. We can see that sport is a dialogue between two bodies that understand each other."

"You're mad."

"Maybe. But it makes sense. Have you ever stopped to think about the feelings of the men you've been to bed with?"

"Yes, I have. They were all insecure. They were all afraid."

"Worse than afraid, they were vulnerable. They didn't really know what they were doing, they only knew what society, friends and women themselves had told them was important. Sex, sex, sex, that's the basis of life, scream the advertisements, other people, films, books. No one knows what they're talking about. Since instinct is stronger than all of us, all they know is that it has to be done. And that's that."

Enough. I had tried to give him lessons in sex in order to protect myself, now he was doing the same, and however wise our words--because each of us was always trying to impress the other--this was so stupid and so unworthy of our relationship! I drew him to me because--regardless of what he had to say or of what I thought about myself--life had taught me many things. In the beginning, everything was love and surrender. But then the serpent appeared and said to Eve: what you surrendered, you will lose. That is how it was with me--I was driven out of paradise when I was still at school, and ever since then, I have been trying to find a way of telling the serpent he was wrong, that living was more important than keeping things to yourself. But the serpent was right and I was wrong.

I knelt down and gradually took off his clothes, and I saw his penis there, sleeping and unresponsive. This didn't seem to bother him, and I kissed the inner part of his legs, starting at his feet. His penis slowly began to respond, and I touched it, then put it in my mouth and--unhurriedly, so that he wouldn't interpret this as: "right, get ready for action!"--I kissed it with all the tenderness of someone who expects nothing in return, and for precisely that reason I got everything I wanted. I saw that he was getting excited, and he began to touch my nipples, circling them with his fingers as he had on that night of total darkness, making me want to have him again between my legs or in my mouth or whatever way he wanted to possess me.

He didn't take off my jacket; he had me lie face forwards, with the upper part of my body bent over the table, and my feet still on the floor. He penetrated me slowly and unhurriedly this time, no longer afraid of losing me, because, deep down, no longer afraid of losing me, because, deep down, he too had realized that this was a dream and that it would always be a dream, and would never become reality.

At the same time as I felt him inside me, I was aware of his hand on my breasts, my buttocks, touching me as only a woman knows how. Then I knew that we were made for each other, because he could be a woman, as he was now, and I could be a man, as when we talked or when we initiated that joint search for the two lost souls, the two missing fragments needed to complete the universe.

As he simultaneously penetrated and touched me, I felt that he was doing this not only to me, but to the whole universe. We had time, tenderness and mutual knowledge. Yes, it had been good to arrive carrying two suitcases, ready to leave, and to be immediately thrown to the floor and penetrated with a kind of fearful urgency; but it was good too knowing that the night would never end and that there, on the kitchen table, orgasm wasn't a goal in itself, but the beginning of that encounter.

He stopped moving inside me while his fingers worked quickly and I had one, two, three orgasms in a row. I felt like pushing him away, for the pain of pleasure is so intense that it hurts, but I resisted; I accepted that this was how it was, that I could withstand another orgasm or another two, or even more...

...and suddenly, a kind of light exploded inside me. I was no longer myself, but a being infinitely superior to everything I knew. When his hand took me to my fourth orgasm, I entered a place where everything seemed at peace, and with my fifth orgasm I knew God. Then I felt him beginning to move inside me again, although his hand had still not stopped, and I said "Oh God," and surrendered to whatever came next, Heaven or Hell.

It was Heaven. I was the earth, the mountains, the tigers, the rivers that flowed into the lakes, the lakes that became the sea. He was thrusting faster and faster now, and the pain was mingled with pleasure, and I could have said: "I can't take any more," but that would have been unfair, because, by then, he and I were one person.

I allowed him to penetrate me for as long as it took; his nails were now digging into my buttocks, and there I was face down on the kitchen table, thinking that there wasn't a better place in the world to make love. Again the creak of the table, his breathing growing ever faster, his nails bruising me, my sex beating hard against his, flesh, against flesh, bone against bone, and I was about to have another orgasm, and so was he, and none of this, absolutely none of this was a LIE!

"Come on!"

He knew what he was saying, and I knew that this was the moment; I felt my whole body soften, I ceased to be myself--I was no longer listening, seeing or tasting anything--I was merely feeling.

"Come on!"

And I came at the same moment he came. It wasn't eleven minutes, it was an eternity, it was as if we had both left our bodies and were walking joyfully through the gardens of paradise in understanding and friendship. I was woman and man, he was man and woman. I don't know how long it lasted, but everything seemed to be silent, at prayer, as if the universe and life had ceased to exist and become transformed into something sacred, nameless and timeless.

But time returned, I heard his shouts and I shouted with him, the table legs beat on the floor, and it didn't occur to either of us to wonder what the rest of the world might be thinking.

And suddenly he withdrew from me and laughed; I felt my vagina contract, and I turned to him and I laughed too, and we embraced as if it were the first time we had made love in our entire lives.

"Bless me," he said.

I blessed him, not really knowing what I was doing. I asked him to do the same, and he did, saying, "blessed be this woman, who has loved much." They were beautiful words, and we embraced again and stayed there, unable to understand how eleven minutes could carry a man and a woman so far.