I am the one who does love herself, who last night made her hair shine again with a hundred careful strokes of the brush, who rediscovered the childlike softness of her lips, and who kissed herself, sharing the love that yesterday had been denied her.

20 December 2001

A time of gifts and false smiles, of coins tossed-with a fleeting burst of good conscience-into the hands of gypsies holding babies on street corners. I don't like to buy gifts for other people; I always buy them for myself alone, perhaps because I have nobody to whom to give them. This afternoon I went out with Ernesto, a guy I met in a chat room. He immediately seemed like a kindred spirit. We exchanged phone numbers and began seeing each other like dear friends. Even if he is slightly distant, absorbed by the university and his mysterious friendships.

We often go shopping together, and I'm not embarrassed when I enter a lingerie shop with him. On the contrary, he frequently buys something too.

"For my new girl," he always says. But he has never introduced me to any of them.

He seems to be on very good terms with the salesgirls. Their talk avoids the social niceties and they giggle away. I rummage through the racks, searching for things I might wear for the person who managed to fall in love with me. I keep them carefully folded in the first drawer of the dresser, intact.

In the second drawer I keep the lingerie I wear during my encounters with Roberto and his friends. Thigh-highs shredded by their fingernails, lace panties slightly frayed from being stripped off too many times by lustful hands. They attach no importance to these things; to them what matters is that I'm a slut.

In the beginning I would buy only lingerie in white lace, carefully coordinating each piece.

"Black would suit you better," Ernesto once told me. "It goes better with your coloring, the shade of your face, your skin."