October 3, 2025 • 16 mins
Follows the journey of Maria, a young Brazilian woman, from her innocent childhood dreams of love to her experiences as a prostitute in Switzerland. The narrative explores themes of sexuality, loneliness, the search for happiness, and self-discovery, contrasting Maria's professional life with her personal quest for meaning. Interspersed within Maria's story are philosophical reflections on love, pain, and human nature, along with a Hymn to Isis and an Afterword by Paulo Coelho discussing the inspiration and themes behind the novel, connecting it to his broader body of work and the sacred nature of sex.
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You can listen and download our episodes for free on more than 10 different platforms:
https://linktr.ee/book_shelter
Get the Book now from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Minutes-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0007166044?&linkCode=ll1&tag=cvthunderx-20&linkId=767627fcad4ca844534d2151bc4b5110&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What truly defines the most intimate moments of our lives?
Is it, you know, something we measure in just fleeting minutes,
or is it maybe a journey far.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
More profound, something built on lessons learned, maybe truth's uncovered
along the way.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Exactly Today we're embarking on a deep dive into a
really remarkable story that explores just that. And it's from
a perspective you rarely hear one that challenges our usual
ideas about love, pleasure and freedom.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We're talking about public o whales eleven minutes, right, that's
the one.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
And we've got quite a story to tell you today,
really getting into the details straight from the book itself.
Our journey starts with Maria. She's a young woman from
the well the unassuming interior of Brazil, pretty quiet background.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Like a lot of people, I suppose, yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And like many, her early life was filled with those
universal dreams of you know, a prince charming swooping around
her feet, the whole fairy tale.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Ending, the classic dream.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
But as we're about to see Maria's path to really
understanding love and pleasure and ultimate her own sense of freedom, well,
it was anything but conventional.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It sounds like a winding road took her far from
home I imagine, Oh definitely, And Maria's story it isn't
just about recounting events, is it. It's more like this
profound internal quest for self knowledge, for meaning.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It really shows how circumstances can well undeniably shape us, yes,
but maybe more importantly, how we can actually shape our
own destiny, how we can redefine what happiness really means
for us.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
It's about her internal world shifting just.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
As much as the external one, precisely.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Okay, so let's unpack this early understanding, or maybe misunderstanding
of love for Maria. Her first crush she was only
eleven oh young, Yeah, with a boy from school she
called the pencil boy. And it wasn't really about connection,
more like the silent kind of agonizing longing, you know,
that classic childhood thing that never quite happens.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Totally all in her head, probably.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Pretty much the best part of her day was just
those ten minutes walking to school with him, filled with
conversations she imagined, but devastatingly never actually had. He even
asked to borrow a pencil one.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Ah, the classic move.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Obvious excuse, right, But Maria was so shy. She just
ran away, left her loving and suffering in silence.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And it's those early, most unrequited experiences, plus maybe a
stricter upbringing, that led her to this well pretty cynical
conclusion early on, didn't it that love spoiled everything?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, that's what she decided.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Her first real kiss at fifteen, which she build up
so much in her mind, turned out to be this awkward, clumsy,
closed mouth thing. Oh no, Yeah, led to teasing from
friends and just his crushing feeling of inadequacy. So you
see how this initial idea of love as suffering, as
something bringing more pain than joy. Yeah, such a critical
setup for the changes she goes through later.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It pushed her towards a very pragmatic view of life,
almost guarded exactly. So for Maria, relationships with boys just
kept bringing more pain, more frustration. It really cemented that
belief right she'd made a firm vow no more falling
in love period. But interestingly, during this time she made
a very personal discovery masturbation.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Ah, a private source of pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Exactly, a huge contrast to the pain she associated with boys.
And this practical, almost cynical mindset about romance. Then led
her to work really hard in a draper shop, saving every.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Cent for what what was the goal for what.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
She imagined as this dream vacation to Rio de Janeiro.
Rio wasn't just a city for her. It was like
a postcard image of freedom, you know, where film stars
lived a world away from her small town. So in Rio,
those hopes for Prince churning, they got redirected pretty quickly.
She met Roger. He was this charming but much older
(03:45):
Swiss impresario. She met him through an interpreter, a guy
named Maelsen, and Roger offered her what sounded like a
massive opportunity, a star role dancing at his club in Geneva.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Geneva, So not quite the romance heed.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Picture, definitely not. But it was an adventure, a chance
at serious money, and Maelson hinted at maybe three hundred
dollars a night, which was huge for her.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So despite her fears and her mother's very practical advice
just to marry for money, Maria took a leap of faith.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's a huge moment, isn't it, going against her mother's
advice like that. Yeah, it shows this deep, maybe unspoken
desire for something.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
More, something beyond just financial security exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It wasn't just the money. It was that craving for adventure,
for a life beyond her town, even if she couldn't
quite name what that more was. Yet, she felt this
real sense of freedom just walking by the sea in Rio,
knowing she was grabbing an opportunity she could have turned down.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That willingness to step into the unknown. It's a real
turning point, absolutely so. Maria lands in Geneva full of
a different kind of hope, maybe hoping for a new freedom,
perhaps validation even in Roger's Club. But the reality of
Cabaret Colonia was well a brutal awakening, a really stark
contrast to her dreams. What was it like just a
(05:00):
place where Brazilian women dance this samba they barely knew,
got underpaid, felt totally trapped, often working for a whole
year just to pay off their travel costs.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Wow, exploitative basically pretty much.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Her optimism just eroded fast. She found herself among women
who were either clinging to these distant, prince charming dreams
or just complaining endlessly about the long hours. Then things
take another turn. A brief affair she has with an
Arab guy, a fellow French student. Oh yeah, it led
to her being fired on the spot from the cabaret.
Roger was furious, accused her of setting a bad example.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So was setback.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Seems like it, but ironically it turned into an unexpected win.
Her Arab lover had told her about Swiss labor laws.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Ah, useful information.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Crucial information. She learned this magic word lawyer.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
She marched right back into Roger's office, said that one
word and secured an amazing five thousand dollars in compensation.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
No way, that's huge.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Beyond her oldest dreams. Then suddenly she's free, she has money.
She tries her hand up modeling.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Did that work out?
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Nope, failed to pan out, which left her alone again,
financially insecure after spending some of it, and just deeply lonely.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And her diary from this time it really captures that shift,
doesn't it. She's wrestling with this big question do I
retreat now or do I fight?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
What does she choose?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
She chose to fight, and she came to this really
dramatic conclusion that despair could actually be a quicker, maybe
more potent transformer than well.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Oh that's intense.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
It is, and that realization, combined with being broke again
after the modeling failure, it led her to a decisive,
though maybe heartbreaking choice. Rue de Berne the Red Leg
District to a bar called Copa Cabana. Yeah Yeah, to
embrace what she saw as her only viable option left prostitution.
She saw it as temporary, you know, just to earn money,
(06:53):
despite all the internal conflict about dignity and self respect.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So she enters that world. She learns the hard realities
pretty fast, the unwritten rules at the Copacabana, like what, well,
there was the standard three hundred and fifty franc fee,
Milan the owner took a fifty franc cut for the table,
and the absolutely crucial forty five minute limit per client.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Forty five minutes start to finish.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
From the initial drink to leaving the hotel room.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And it was here, in this really transactional environment that
she discovered the shocking truth behind the novel's title.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
The eleven minutes.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
The actual time men spent on the act of sex
itself was, on average, a mere eleven minutes. That number
just became this profound symbol for her, devastating.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Almost that's a really sharp point. And discovering that the
eleven minutes, did it just make her more cynical or
did it maybe paradoxically push her to look for something
deeper beyond just the transaction.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Well, it definitely shifted her perception, right. She started seeing
sex less as love or pleasure and much more, is
just a commodity, a quick release, devoid of real life connection.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So she hardened initially.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Oh, absolutely developed these coping mechanisms. She started categorizing clients,
didn't she, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
The exterminators just quick business, the pretty woman types offering
marriage proposals.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Right, and the understanding mothers who mostly wanted to talk
about their loneliness.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
She learned to use her body, her brain, but kept
her heart fiercely guarded just for her diary. Vowed never
to fall in love again.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
In that context makes sense as a survival tactic.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
But then her journey takes this really surprising turn. Two
very distinct clients show up and fundamentally challenge that hardened perspective.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Who were they?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
First? There was Terrence, wealthy English record executive, and he
wasn't looking for ordinary physical pleasure. He wanted to explore
the very boundaries of pain and submission, offered her a
thousand francs for it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Wow, way more than usual and pain and Submission BDSM Exactly,
So Terrence wasn't just introducing her to BDSM. He was
kind of reframing it for wasn't he in a way
she'd never thought about?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Absolutely? He explained the whole thing, the safe words yellowed
for caution read to stop immediately, building.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That trust crucial in that context.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
He shared its history too, how different cultures from penitents
finding joy and self flagellation during the Black Death.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Right to Spartan warriors desert priests, people seeking ecstasy through pain.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah. And for Maria this experience it unlocks something totally new,
her first true intense orgasm. She described it as a
black hole where intense pain and fear mixed with total.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Pleasure made her feel closer.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
To God, she said, exactly, a profound, almost spiritual kind
of self annihilation, completely unexpected.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Wow. Okay, so that's Terrence who was the second client.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Then, in complete contrast, she met Ralph Hart. He was
a renowned painter, h an artist.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
What did they meet in a.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Cafe actually near the road to Santiago, that old pilgrimage route,
and he was captivated not by her body or her job,
but by her light, something she couldn't even see in herself.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Interesting, So a different kind of connection.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Totally different. Their conversations were just different. Ralph was successful, famous,
but also deeply unhappy and disengaged from sex. He told
her he lost the fire despite trying with lots of women.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
And what's really remarkable there is how quickly this emotional
intimacy started to grow between them.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, almost immediately with Ralph.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Maria started rediscovering an emotional connection she thought was gone forever.
She told him everything, didn't she her job, her life.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Story, A first since leaving Brazil. She admitted, I'm a
prostitute through and through and found this weird freedom in
just saying it.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
That radical honesty. And Ralph he didn't judge, No, he.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Actually challenged the stigma. Started talking about sacred prostitution from
ancient texts like Ishtar and vesta right.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Goddess is served by women who initiated men into sexuality
as a kind of divine communion, reframing her profession entirely.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Their connection deepened through these really symbolic Jeffs too, way
beyond anything transactional, like what she gave him her treasured pen,
the ones she used for her diary, her secrets.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Wow, that's significant.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And he gave her an electric train carriage from his
childhood set that he'd never played with, symbolizing maybe their
own unlived joys, those untouched parts of themselves.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
If we zoom out a bit Ralph and Maria, they
really started to redefine intimacy together, didn't they completely? Their
sacred sessions, as they call them, often involved blindfolds, slow
deliberate touch, focusing on pure sensuality deep.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Desire, allowing Maria to in a way recover her virginity emotionally.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Exactly exploring touch without the immediate goal of orgasm, focusing
on the journey of desire itself. It proved that real
connection could go way beyond those eleven minutes of transactional sex.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
That slow exploration meticulously rebuilt her understanding of desire of intimacy,
made her see it could be so much more profound,
and Maria's durned towards self discovery it was further eliminated
by this unexpected encounter with Heidi the librarian.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Right Heidi seems like such a contrast, a conventional married.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Woman exactly, But Heidi shared her own story of a
late life sexual awakening. She talked openly with Maria about
discovering the clitorists and the g spot and how crucial
they were for female pleasure.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Things often overlooked or even pathologize.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
She pointed out how difficult it often is for women
to achieve orgasm just through penetration alone, a truth society
often ignores.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
It really makes you wonder, doesn't it. How societal norms
and just well widespread ignorance about basic female anatomy still
impact women's pleasure and self understanding today totally.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Heidi's story, including her own little adventure with a writer
during a train delay, it provided this poignant parallel for.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Maria, showing that even seemingly conventionalized can hide deep desires,
unacknowledged pleasures. Just waiting showed Maria she wasn't alone in
that journey of awakening.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So as her time in Genevo was nearing its end,
she had the date marked on her calendar, Maria bought
her ticket back to Brazil.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
She'd made the money she needed, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Enough for the farm for her parents the original goal,
But then standing by the floral clock near the lake,
she had this huge epiphany, Oh it was. She realized
she didn't actually want to leave, and the surprising, really
simple reason wasn't Ralph, it wasn't Switzerland. It was money.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Money.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
How so, she saw she was caught in this trap,
constantly chasing enough money to escape, but always feeling like
she was about to lose it. She realized staying longer
would mean being trapped forever, just endlessly chasing a goal
that kept moving.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
That realization at the clock, It's such a moment of
radical honesty, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
It highlights how money worries can subtly hijack our deepest desires,
our sense of freedom, perpetuate this cycle of compromise. She
saw she'd already hit her financial goal, and continuing on
that treadmill of earning more would just trap her further
and make her lose the freedom she'd thought she.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Was chasing a moment of real clarity, true self awareness,
and this epiphany it led directly to this raw, uninhibited,
utterly transformative sexual encounter with Ralph in his kitchen of
all places, no rules, time, all rules, abandoned, pure instinct,
flesh against flesh, unhurried but incredibly passionate, and no preliminaries,
(14:21):
no pretense, just him inside her, and her as she
put it inside his soul. Not eleven minutes, definitely not
an eternity, a shared moment where they both felt they
left their bodies, walked through paradise together. She had multiple orgasms,
felt this light explode inside her, a true culmination.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
The morning after, Ralph read to her from the Bible,
from Ecclesiastes, those verses about a time to get and
a time to lose, a time to keep and a
time to cast away. Yeah. But despite that profound connection,
despite Ralph passionately pleading for her to stay, Maria chose
to leave. Why after all that she wanted to preserve
the dream, Maybe to stop love from becoming sl slavery,
(15:00):
turning into that mundane, frustrating reality she'd seen elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Protecting the ideal perhaps, maybe.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
But fate and well, Rumph, they had other plans. At
the airport. Literally, as she's about to leave, he shows
up with roses, echoing that famous movie scene. Will always
have Paris.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
No Way, classic romantic gesture and Maria, she.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Was finally ready, ready to surrender to love. She kissed
him indifferent. Now, the book says, to what happens after
the words the end appear on the cinema screen.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
She chose the risk, Yeah, chose love, chose the unpredictable
adventure exactly. So what does this whole journey mean for us?
Listening to this Maria's path from this naive girl to
a jaded prostitute to finally a woman capable of deep,
authentic love, It teaches us that real freedom it isn't
found by just avoiding suffering or trying to control everything.
(15:51):
It's found in the courage to embrace life's full spectrum,
the pain, the pleasure, the unconventional bits, and in that
radical honesty to just acknowledge our desires, even the messy ones.
Her story really shows that love isn't something you find
in someone else, but something awakened in ourselves, though often
beautifully with the help of another.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
A powerful takeaway and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Maybe our final provocative thought for you today is this.
Maria's story started with this search for external validation for
Prince Charming, right, but it ended with her finding profound
self worth and a love that went way beyond the transactional,
beyond just the physical. So, how many of us, maybe,
in our own relentless pursuit of what we think we want,
(16:34):
how many of us might be overlooking the real adventure,
the sacredness hidden, the unexpected turns of our own lives.
What eleven minutes are you maybe holding onto when a
whole eternity might be waiting just beyond that
What truly defines the most intimate moments of our lives?
Is it, you know, something we measure in just fleeting minutes,
or is it maybe a journey far.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
More profound, something built on lessons learned, maybe truth's uncovered
along the way.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Exactly Today we're embarking on a deep dive into a
really remarkable story that explores just that. And it's from
a perspective you rarely hear one that challenges our usual
ideas about love, pleasure and freedom.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We're talking about public o whales eleven minutes, right, that's
the one.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
And we've got quite a story to tell you today,
really getting into the details straight from the book itself.
Our journey starts with Maria. She's a young woman from
the well the unassuming interior of Brazil, pretty quiet background.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Like a lot of people, I suppose, yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And like many, her early life was filled with those
universal dreams of you know, a prince charming swooping around
her feet, the whole fairy tale.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Ending, the classic dream.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
But as we're about to see Maria's path to really
understanding love and pleasure and ultimate her own sense of freedom, well,
it was anything but conventional.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It sounds like a winding road took her far from
home I imagine, Oh definitely, And Maria's story it isn't
just about recounting events, is it. It's more like this
profound internal quest for self knowledge, for meaning.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It really shows how circumstances can well undeniably shape us, yes,
but maybe more importantly, how we can actually shape our
own destiny, how we can redefine what happiness really means
for us.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
It's about her internal world shifting just.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
As much as the external one, precisely.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Okay, so let's unpack this early understanding, or maybe misunderstanding
of love for Maria. Her first crush she was only
eleven oh young, Yeah, with a boy from school she
called the pencil boy. And it wasn't really about connection,
more like the silent kind of agonizing longing, you know,
that classic childhood thing that never quite happens.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Totally all in her head, probably.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Pretty much the best part of her day was just
those ten minutes walking to school with him, filled with
conversations she imagined, but devastatingly never actually had. He even
asked to borrow a pencil one.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Ah, the classic move.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Obvious excuse, right, But Maria was so shy. She just
ran away, left her loving and suffering in silence.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And it's those early, most unrequited experiences, plus maybe a
stricter upbringing, that led her to this well pretty cynical
conclusion early on, didn't it that love spoiled everything?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, that's what she decided.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Her first real kiss at fifteen, which she build up
so much in her mind, turned out to be this awkward, clumsy,
closed mouth thing. Oh no, Yeah, led to teasing from
friends and just his crushing feeling of inadequacy. So you
see how this initial idea of love as suffering, as
something bringing more pain than joy. Yeah, such a critical
setup for the changes she goes through later.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It pushed her towards a very pragmatic view of life,
almost guarded exactly. So for Maria, relationships with boys just
kept bringing more pain, more frustration. It really cemented that
belief right she'd made a firm vow no more falling
in love period. But interestingly, during this time she made
a very personal discovery masturbation.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Ah, a private source of pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Exactly, a huge contrast to the pain she associated with boys.
And this practical, almost cynical mindset about romance. Then led
her to work really hard in a draper shop, saving every.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Cent for what what was the goal for what.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
She imagined as this dream vacation to Rio de Janeiro.
Rio wasn't just a city for her. It was like
a postcard image of freedom, you know, where film stars
lived a world away from her small town. So in Rio,
those hopes for Prince churning, they got redirected pretty quickly.
She met Roger. He was this charming but much older
(03:45):
Swiss impresario. She met him through an interpreter, a guy
named Maelsen, and Roger offered her what sounded like a
massive opportunity, a star role dancing at his club in Geneva.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Geneva, So not quite the romance heed.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Picture, definitely not. But it was an adventure, a chance
at serious money, and Maelson hinted at maybe three hundred
dollars a night, which was huge for her.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So despite her fears and her mother's very practical advice
just to marry for money, Maria took a leap of faith.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's a huge moment, isn't it, going against her mother's
advice like that. Yeah, it shows this deep, maybe unspoken
desire for something.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
More, something beyond just financial security exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It wasn't just the money. It was that craving for adventure,
for a life beyond her town, even if she couldn't
quite name what that more was. Yet, she felt this
real sense of freedom just walking by the sea in Rio,
knowing she was grabbing an opportunity she could have turned down.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That willingness to step into the unknown. It's a real
turning point, absolutely so. Maria lands in Geneva full of
a different kind of hope, maybe hoping for a new freedom,
perhaps validation even in Roger's Club. But the reality of
Cabaret Colonia was well a brutal awakening, a really stark
contrast to her dreams. What was it like just a
(05:00):
place where Brazilian women dance this samba they barely knew,
got underpaid, felt totally trapped, often working for a whole
year just to pay off their travel costs.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Wow, exploitative basically pretty much.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Her optimism just eroded fast. She found herself among women
who were either clinging to these distant, prince charming dreams
or just complaining endlessly about the long hours. Then things
take another turn. A brief affair she has with an
Arab guy, a fellow French student. Oh yeah, it led
to her being fired on the spot from the cabaret.
Roger was furious, accused her of setting a bad example.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So was setback.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Seems like it, but ironically it turned into an unexpected win.
Her Arab lover had told her about Swiss labor laws.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Ah, useful information.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Crucial information. She learned this magic word lawyer.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
She marched right back into Roger's office, said that one
word and secured an amazing five thousand dollars in compensation.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
No way, that's huge.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Beyond her oldest dreams. Then suddenly she's free, she has money.
She tries her hand up modeling.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Did that work out?
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Nope, failed to pan out, which left her alone again,
financially insecure after spending some of it, and just deeply lonely.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And her diary from this time it really captures that shift,
doesn't it. She's wrestling with this big question do I
retreat now or do I fight?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
What does she choose?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
She chose to fight, and she came to this really
dramatic conclusion that despair could actually be a quicker, maybe
more potent transformer than well.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Oh that's intense.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
It is, and that realization, combined with being broke again
after the modeling failure, it led her to a decisive,
though maybe heartbreaking choice. Rue de Berne the Red Leg
District to a bar called Copa Cabana. Yeah Yeah, to
embrace what she saw as her only viable option left prostitution.
She saw it as temporary, you know, just to earn money,
(06:53):
despite all the internal conflict about dignity and self respect.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So she enters that world. She learns the hard realities
pretty fast, the unwritten rules at the Copacabana, like what, well,
there was the standard three hundred and fifty franc fee,
Milan the owner took a fifty franc cut for the table,
and the absolutely crucial forty five minute limit per client.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Forty five minutes start to finish.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
From the initial drink to leaving the hotel room.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And it was here, in this really transactional environment that
she discovered the shocking truth behind the novel's title.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
The eleven minutes.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
The actual time men spent on the act of sex
itself was, on average, a mere eleven minutes. That number
just became this profound symbol for her, devastating.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Almost that's a really sharp point. And discovering that the
eleven minutes, did it just make her more cynical or
did it maybe paradoxically push her to look for something
deeper beyond just the transaction.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Well, it definitely shifted her perception, right. She started seeing
sex less as love or pleasure and much more, is
just a commodity, a quick release, devoid of real life connection.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So she hardened initially.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Oh, absolutely developed these coping mechanisms. She started categorizing clients,
didn't she, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
The exterminators just quick business, the pretty woman types offering
marriage proposals.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Right, and the understanding mothers who mostly wanted to talk
about their loneliness.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
She learned to use her body, her brain, but kept
her heart fiercely guarded just for her diary. Vowed never
to fall in love again.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
In that context makes sense as a survival tactic.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
But then her journey takes this really surprising turn. Two
very distinct clients show up and fundamentally challenge that hardened perspective.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Who were they?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
First? There was Terrence, wealthy English record executive, and he
wasn't looking for ordinary physical pleasure. He wanted to explore
the very boundaries of pain and submission, offered her a
thousand francs for it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Wow, way more than usual and pain and Submission BDSM Exactly,
So Terrence wasn't just introducing her to BDSM. He was
kind of reframing it for wasn't he in a way
she'd never thought about?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Absolutely? He explained the whole thing, the safe words yellowed
for caution read to stop immediately, building.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That trust crucial in that context.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
He shared its history too, how different cultures from penitents
finding joy and self flagellation during the Black Death.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Right to Spartan warriors desert priests, people seeking ecstasy through pain.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah. And for Maria this experience it unlocks something totally new,
her first true intense orgasm. She described it as a
black hole where intense pain and fear mixed with total.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Pleasure made her feel closer.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
To God, she said, exactly, a profound, almost spiritual kind
of self annihilation, completely unexpected.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Wow. Okay, so that's Terrence who was the second client.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Then, in complete contrast, she met Ralph Hart. He was
a renowned painter, h an artist.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
What did they meet in a.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Cafe actually near the road to Santiago, that old pilgrimage route,
and he was captivated not by her body or her job,
but by her light, something she couldn't even see in herself.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Interesting, So a different kind of connection.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Totally different. Their conversations were just different. Ralph was successful, famous,
but also deeply unhappy and disengaged from sex. He told
her he lost the fire despite trying with lots of women.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
And what's really remarkable there is how quickly this emotional
intimacy started to grow between them.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, almost immediately with Ralph.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Maria started rediscovering an emotional connection she thought was gone forever.
She told him everything, didn't she her job, her life.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Story, A first since leaving Brazil. She admitted, I'm a
prostitute through and through and found this weird freedom in
just saying it.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
That radical honesty. And Ralph he didn't judge, No, he.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Actually challenged the stigma. Started talking about sacred prostitution from
ancient texts like Ishtar and vesta right.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Goddess is served by women who initiated men into sexuality
as a kind of divine communion, reframing her profession entirely.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Their connection deepened through these really symbolic Jeffs too, way
beyond anything transactional, like what she gave him her treasured pen,
the ones she used for her diary, her secrets.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Wow, that's significant.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And he gave her an electric train carriage from his
childhood set that he'd never played with, symbolizing maybe their
own unlived joys, those untouched parts of themselves.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
If we zoom out a bit Ralph and Maria, they
really started to redefine intimacy together, didn't they completely? Their
sacred sessions, as they call them, often involved blindfolds, slow
deliberate touch, focusing on pure sensuality deep.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Desire, allowing Maria to in a way recover her virginity emotionally.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Exactly exploring touch without the immediate goal of orgasm, focusing
on the journey of desire itself. It proved that real
connection could go way beyond those eleven minutes of transactional sex.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
That slow exploration meticulously rebuilt her understanding of desire of intimacy,
made her see it could be so much more profound,
and Maria's durned towards self discovery it was further eliminated
by this unexpected encounter with Heidi the librarian.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Right Heidi seems like such a contrast, a conventional married.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Woman exactly, But Heidi shared her own story of a
late life sexual awakening. She talked openly with Maria about
discovering the clitorists and the g spot and how crucial
they were for female pleasure.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Things often overlooked or even pathologize.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
She pointed out how difficult it often is for women
to achieve orgasm just through penetration alone, a truth society
often ignores.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
It really makes you wonder, doesn't it. How societal norms
and just well widespread ignorance about basic female anatomy still
impact women's pleasure and self understanding today totally.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Heidi's story, including her own little adventure with a writer
during a train delay, it provided this poignant parallel for.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Maria, showing that even seemingly conventionalized can hide deep desires,
unacknowledged pleasures. Just waiting showed Maria she wasn't alone in
that journey of awakening.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So as her time in Genevo was nearing its end,
she had the date marked on her calendar, Maria bought
her ticket back to Brazil.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
She'd made the money she needed, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Enough for the farm for her parents the original goal,
But then standing by the floral clock near the lake,
she had this huge epiphany, Oh it was. She realized
she didn't actually want to leave, and the surprising, really
simple reason wasn't Ralph, it wasn't Switzerland. It was money.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Money.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
How so, she saw she was caught in this trap,
constantly chasing enough money to escape, but always feeling like
she was about to lose it. She realized staying longer
would mean being trapped forever, just endlessly chasing a goal
that kept moving.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
That realization at the clock, It's such a moment of
radical honesty, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
It highlights how money worries can subtly hijack our deepest desires,
our sense of freedom, perpetuate this cycle of compromise. She
saw she'd already hit her financial goal, and continuing on
that treadmill of earning more would just trap her further
and make her lose the freedom she'd thought she.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Was chasing a moment of real clarity, true self awareness,
and this epiphany it led directly to this raw, uninhibited,
utterly transformative sexual encounter with Ralph in his kitchen of
all places, no rules, time, all rules, abandoned, pure instinct,
flesh against flesh, unhurried but incredibly passionate, and no preliminaries,
(14:21):
no pretense, just him inside her, and her as she
put it inside his soul. Not eleven minutes, definitely not
an eternity, a shared moment where they both felt they
left their bodies, walked through paradise together. She had multiple orgasms,
felt this light explode inside her, a true culmination.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
The morning after, Ralph read to her from the Bible,
from Ecclesiastes, those verses about a time to get and
a time to lose, a time to keep and a
time to cast away. Yeah. But despite that profound connection,
despite Ralph passionately pleading for her to stay, Maria chose
to leave. Why after all that she wanted to preserve
the dream, Maybe to stop love from becoming sl slavery,
(15:00):
turning into that mundane, frustrating reality she'd seen elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Protecting the ideal perhaps, maybe.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
But fate and well, Rumph, they had other plans. At
the airport. Literally, as she's about to leave, he shows
up with roses, echoing that famous movie scene. Will always
have Paris.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
No Way, classic romantic gesture and Maria, she.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Was finally ready, ready to surrender to love. She kissed
him indifferent. Now, the book says, to what happens after
the words the end appear on the cinema screen.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
She chose the risk, Yeah, chose love, chose the unpredictable
adventure exactly. So what does this whole journey mean for us?
Listening to this Maria's path from this naive girl to
a jaded prostitute to finally a woman capable of deep,
authentic love, It teaches us that real freedom it isn't
found by just avoiding suffering or trying to control everything.
(15:51):
It's found in the courage to embrace life's full spectrum,
the pain, the pleasure, the unconventional bits, and in that
radical honesty to just acknowledge our desires, even the messy ones.
Her story really shows that love isn't something you find
in someone else, but something awakened in ourselves, though often
beautifully with the help of another.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
A powerful takeaway and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Maybe our final provocative thought for you today is this.
Maria's story started with this search for external validation for
Prince Charming, right, but it ended with her finding profound
self worth and a love that went way beyond the transactional,
beyond just the physical. So, how many of us, maybe,
in our own relentless pursuit of what we think we want,
(16:34):
how many of us might be overlooking the real adventure,
the sacredness hidden, the unexpected turns of our own lives.
What eleven minutes are you maybe holding onto when a
whole eternity might be waiting just beyond that
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