Some women make me feel wholly lesbian. It’s not that I’ve never been attracted to men, it’s just that there are women with whom I’m a lesbian only to a point. The lesbian is pitted against a whole series of simultaneous roles, as in a clash of intensities. My ego is permanently populated by protected tenants: the daughter, the sister, the friend, the former university student, the neighbor, the reader, the auntie, the landlady, the client, the user, the confident one and her opposite, etc. Every one of these scrappy women coexists with and rivals the lesbian. But faced with Veronika, the lesbian sounded her ear-piercing cry for so long and at such a volume that I had to force the Spanish teacher to speak up. And yet I wasn’t the one who spoke; the lesbian had subdued my innermost self and I was completely compliant.
Eva Baltasar, Permafrost