My First Suicide

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When great love comes along, a person always thinks he has fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. But when a person has fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, he can have problems.

If she wasn’t The Most Beautiful Woman in the World in the strict sense, she was in the top ten, and if it wasn’t the top ten, then the top one hundred — the details are unimportant. She was dazzling in a planetary sense.

I saw her, and I committed a rookie’s mistake. Instead of being satisfied with admiring, I resolved to conquer her.

I saw her at a certain reception — that is, I saw her for the first time and in person at a certain reception. Before then I had seen her likeness hundreds of times on various photographs, advertisements, posters, and billboards. The famous visage of the depraved madonna — which so excited photographers, cameramen, and directors — was universally known. The reception took place in the gardens of a Western embassy. It was a very significant, very ritual, and very annual reception. On the societal bond market, an invitation to that reception was considered an unusually valuable security.

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