Simple Passion

by Annie Ernaux

I occasionally felt like opening up. But once the excitement of sharing our secrets was over, I resented having let myself go, even if only a little.

Also because parents and children are the last people able to accept freely the sexuality of those who are closest to them and so remain forever inaccessible.

From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.

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.

I was astonished to be accosted by men, could they not see him silhouetted inside my own body?)

I reflected that there was very little difference between this reconstruction and a hallucination, between memory and madness.