serve as a “mixer” for the boys and girls. All my aunts and uncles were there and they introduced me to some youngsters with whom I would be great friends later on—Tico, Coco, Luchín, Mario, Luquen, Víctor, Emilio, el Chino—and they even made me ask Teresita to dance. I was dying of embarrassment and felt like a robot, not knowing what to do with my hands and feet. But afterward I danced with my cousins and other girls and from that day on I began to dream romantic dreams of being in love with Teresita. She was my first sweetheart. Inge was the second, and Helena the third. I made a very formal declaration of love to the three of them. We boys rehearsed the declaration beforehand, among ourselves, and each of them suggested words or gestures so that all would not be lost when one fell for a girl. Some of them preferred to declare their love at the movies, taking advantage of the darkness at the matinee and making the declaration coincide with some romantic moment of the film, which they presumed had a contagious effect. I tried that method, once, with Maritza, a very pretty girl with dark black hair and very pale skin, and the result was farcical. Because when, after hesitating for a long time, I dared to murmur in her ear the time-hallowed words—“I like you a whole lot; I’m in love with you. Would you be my girl?”—she turned to look at me, weeping like a Mary Magdalene. Totally absorbed in the film, she had barely heard me and asked: “What’s that? What did you say?” Incapable of taking up again where I had left off, all I managed to do was to stammer what a sad movie it was, wasn’t it?
But I made my declarations to Tere, Inge, and Helena in an orthodox way, dancing a bolero at a Saturday night party, and I wrote love poems to all three of them that I never showed them. I dreamed about them all week, counting how many days were left before I saw them again and praying that there would be a party that Saturday so that I might dance cheek to cheek with my sweetheart. At the Sunday matinee I grabbed their hand in the dark, but didn’t dare kiss them. I only kissed them when we played spin the bottle, or forfeits, when my friends from the barrio , who knew that we were sweethearts, sent us away as a punishment if we lost at the game, to give each other three, four, and even ten kisses. But they were kisses on the cheek and that, according to Luchín, the one who wanted to be considered a grownup, didn’t count, because a kiss on the cheek wasn’t a smacker. Smackers were given on the mouth. But at that time couples from Miraflores twelve or thirteen years old were still more or less innocent little archangels and not many of them dared give each other real smackers. I, naturally, didn’t dare. I fell in love the way calves fall in love with the moon—a pretty expression that we used to use to define boys who were enamored of a girl—but I was abnormally timid with the girls from Miraflores.
Spending the weekend in Miraflores was an adventure in freedom, the possibility of a thousand entertaining and exciting things. To go to the Club Terrazas to play fulbito or have a swim in the pool, from which great swimmers had come. Among all sports—I liked all of them—the one I was best at was swimming. I came to master the crawl quite well and one of my frustrations was not having been able to train in the academy directed by Walter Ledgard, the Sorcerer, as did some Miraflores boys my age who later became international champions, Ismael Merino or Rabbit Villarán for instance. I was never a very good soccer player, but my enthusiasm compensated for my lack of skill and one of the happiest days of my life was the Sunday when Toto Terry, a star from our barrio , took me to the National Stadium and had me play with the youngsters of the Universitario de Deportes against those of the Deportivo Municipal. Wasn’t going out onto that enormous field, wearing the uniform of the top team, the best thing that
But I made my declarations to Tere, Inge, and Helena in an orthodox way, dancing a bolero at a Saturday night party, and I wrote love poems to all three of them that I never showed them. I dreamed about them all week, counting how many days were left before I saw them again and praying that there would be a party that Saturday so that I might dance cheek to cheek with my sweetheart. At the Sunday matinee I grabbed their hand in the dark, but didn’t dare kiss them. I only kissed them when we played spin the bottle, or forfeits, when my friends from the barrio , who knew that we were sweethearts, sent us away as a punishment if we lost at the game, to give each other three, four, and even ten kisses. But they were kisses on the cheek and that, according to Luchín, the one who wanted to be considered a grownup, didn’t count, because a kiss on the cheek wasn’t a smacker. Smackers were given on the mouth. But at that time couples from Miraflores twelve or thirteen years old were still more or less innocent little archangels and not many of them dared give each other real smackers. I, naturally, didn’t dare. I fell in love the way calves fall in love with the moon—a pretty expression that we used to use to define boys who were enamored of a girl—but I was abnormally timid with the girls from Miraflores.
Spending the weekend in Miraflores was an adventure in freedom, the possibility of a thousand entertaining and exciting things. To go to the Club Terrazas to play fulbito or have a swim in the pool, from which great swimmers had come. Among all sports—I liked all of them—the one I was best at was swimming. I came to master the crawl quite well and one of my frustrations was not having been able to train in the academy directed by Walter Ledgard, the Sorcerer, as did some Miraflores boys my age who later became international champions, Ismael Merino or Rabbit Villarán for instance. I was never a very good soccer player, but my enthusiasm compensated for my lack of skill and one of the happiest days of my life was the Sunday when Toto Terry, a star from our barrio , took me to the National Stadium and had me play with the youngsters of the Universitario de Deportes against those of the Deportivo Municipal. Wasn’t going out onto that enormous field, wearing the uniform of the top team, the best thing that
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