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The time, rather than spatial terms, is very important in Six Sex Scenes. As I  mentioned before, the hypertext doesn’t follow a chronological order, the scenes are like the pages of a diary which have been untidy, so there are  a world of a difference when temporal terms I refer.

That’s way there are grounds for including temporal markers because in this the viewer can be placed into the different life’s periods of the main character: childhood, puberty, adolescence, maturity, etc. The time is essential to comprehend the narrator’s psychological evolution. So, the time here and the psychological background, what is behind this hypertext,  go holding hands.

Sometimes, as you never read this hypertext in the same way, can it so happen that you choose two or even three scenes which are continuous temporally talking but it would be a coincidence. I’m going to analize the temporal markers  or time expressions in this hypertext and to put the scenes into groups, depending of whether they do reference to the earlier ages from her life or to her madurity, when she lives in couple with her partner Andy.

Reading the scenes more or less chronologically, you can see an evolution from which I am going to talk later.

Doll: “For my tenth birthday”. The viewer knows that the main character is ten years. CHILDHOOD

Gi Joe: “then”. Here we can suppose that we are in her CHILDHOOD because the toy, but there aren’t references. She’s describing an scene with her little brother.

Christmas: “Christmas”, “We spend the day”, “In the afternoon”,”It takes us twenty minutes”, “When,” “After dark”. She is describing a Christmas day at home and the viewer can suppose that she is a CHILD or maybe ADOLESCENT.

The Magic Kingdom: “a half hour”, “Then”, “After”, “While”, “at 5:00”. CHILDHOOD

Liberation: “before”, “when”, “yesterday”, “at lunch”,  “after lunch” .  CHILDHOOD

Hebrew School:“every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:30″,”never”, “in fourth grade”, “fifth and sixth graders”,”that day” . CHILDHOOD

Risk: “ This is the third day”, “After two hours”, “taken me two hours” . CHILDHOOD.

Janey: “during the depression”, “Then”, “When”, “Sometimes”,” never”, “The next Thursday”, “every day”, “In the morning” . CHILDHOOD.

My Room with a view: “My Seventh birthday was five days away when”, “The next day” .CHILDHOOD

When I was Twelve: “Sometimes”, “Other days”, “a lot of time”, “always”, “Then”. CHILDHOOD

Married Life: “After”, “it’s time for”, “in the middle of the night” .  CHILDHOOD

Staying Alive: “One day”, “The next morning” . CHILDHOOD

What Is Important: “last night”, “tonight”, “early”, “Then”, “never” . CHILDHOOD-ADOLESCENCE

Bored: “my life was“,”until“, “after a while I noticed”, “never remembered”. This chapter is written in past tense because the narrator is telling a memory from the earlier ages of her ADOLESCENCE.

Sunday Afternoon: “I’m too old to spank. Fourteen is too old,”again“, “Every time”, “After a while”, “now”, “anymore”. Because of the first expression we know that girl is 14, she is an ADOLESCENT. Here happens a rape and the explain us the last rape but she makes references to previous rapes and probably these which  will take place in a future.

Purim: “for right now”, “I spent a lot of time that week”,” On Tuesday”, “at dinner”, “On Thursday”, “Usually”, “just not that Friday night”, “Friday”,”all day”, “until Monday”, “After school on Friday”, “When I got home”, “They never came home early”, “it was the best Purim I ever had.” She tells the story in the past when she was ADOLESCENCE, now she is in MADURITY and describe everything that she had to do for going to the party. Finally she went and had a good time, nonetheless she knows now that family holidays are more important than going out with your friends. This scene is another example that temporal markers are so important in this hypertext; there aren’t images and the scene must be described very accurately. With this time references the viewer make a visual image without any problem.

On my Fifteenth Birthday: “Then”, “When”, “While”. She is an ADOLESCENCE and tells another sexual act with her father in a dressing room.
Mind Disorders: “never”, “first”, “when”,”that day”,”never happened”,”I lay there for about five minutes and then it was over”, “today” ,“Are youreading it for school?“. The girl went to department of neurology with her father when she was ADOLESCENCE and tells us all the scene in past tense and the dialogue with present continuous.

The Reading: “After”, “by the time”, “then” . ADOLESCENCE or maybe MADURITY, we can’t identy this scene with one period of her life because any temporal reference says this.

Another Sunday Afternoon: “my fourteen-year-old body”, “at this age”, “In six weeks”. ADOLESCENCE.  We can appreciate that the narrator doesn’t say literally “I’m 14”, she uses another ways to say the same.

Socio Path: ADOLESCENCE or MADURITY. The viewer doesn’t know if this scene is from adolescence or madurity because she feels tired about boys and could occur in this two periods. Anyway, I think she says it at the final stage of adolescence, after some bad experiences with boys.

Sweet: “Afterwards” . ADOLESCENCE

Em Oy El Xi Fi: “just”, “always”, “the only time” . ADOLESCENCE

Mom Says to Aim for a Nice Arc: “Today”, “Some days”, “Once”, “the day before”,” for the past twenty minutes”, “Then”. Here the girl tells what has happened to her that day and some days before. PUBERTY

The Wisdom of Puberty: “late”, “as soon as”, “when” . PUBERTY

Therapy:  “today”,” more often”, “ten minutes apart”. Today is the most important temporal term in this scene, since “more often” refers to practise oral sex and “ten minutes apart”, the next visit that the doctor has to attend. MATURITY

You Suck by the Yeastie Girls: “now” refering to her husband’s turn to practise oral sex. MATURITY

My Snow White Story: “I realize”, “I distract myself”, “When”. She tells another day of her life when she feels depressed in a very visual form. MADURITY

Beauty and the Tea Sea: there aren’t time expressions but we now that she is in the MADURITY because is explaining in present another sex struggle with Andy.

Saving Andy from Himself: “The next time”,” after”,” for two weeks”. She reproduces another sex discussion with Andy. MADURITY

Chanukkah: “On the first night”, “The second night”,”never”,”The third night”, “The fourth night”, “The fifth night”, “The sixth night”, “The seventh night”, “When”, “The eighth night”. She is in her MADURITY and describe her travel with Andy and some habits with her partner.

It wouldn’t matter if she were here or not: “during the day”, “While”, “when”. Is another descriptive scene where Andy, Ann and she are talking about sex. MADURITY

Social Functions: “After I pee”, “then”, “now”, “while”, “never”, “always”, “when”. I would like to point out the expression “after I pee” because is so visual and clear that viewer imagines in his mind the girl in the bathroom  with all that this entails. MADURITY

Going somewhere: “spends the day”, “when”. Explain her feelings  and what she likes. MADURITY

Numb: “This morning”, “always”, “while”, “ever”, “two minutes ago”,  “all night, all day”, “By the time we get home”. MADURITY

Sylvia: “ten years later”, “one night”, “when”. MADURITY

Palm Springs: “once a year”,  “for most of the day”, “Then”, “always”, “sometimes”, “when” . MATURITY.

The Spin Woman: “When”, “for a second”, “never”, “until”. MADURITY

Vacation: “two hours”, “two hours”, “Then”, “Once”, “When”, “never”, “a while”, “After three hours” . MADURITY

Where I stand: “Three weaks ago”, “half as much time”, “For two weeks”, “spend the day”, “tonight”, “in weeks” . MADURITY

Introduction: “on my first date with Andy”, “every time”, “when” . MADURITY

Independence: “Now”,” even” .  MADURITY

What I look like: “when”. MADURITY -The main character in this scene is dying to seem attractive, “hot” to men.  She expresses her more femenine side.

Kathy Acker: MADURITY

My New Brand: “always” . MADURITY

Pro-Choice: “After”, “never”, “Then”, “Six month later”, “the next morning”, “a half hour”, “today”, “as soon as”, “When I wake up”. MADURITY

Firstly, I would like to say that the most of verbs are in present simple or continuous time tense because it makes me the impression the narrator writes it immediately after something had happened in her life. So, we could think  the girl has been writting a personal diary for ages and this hypertext is based in forty-eight “print pages or scenes in hypertext” from it. Nonetheless, there is a possibility that the girl hasn’t written this along her life and she expresses it in her madurity. I say that because of, for example,  in the scene “Staying Alive”, she uses the past tense because is a childhood memory but then in the last sentence “…but I couldn’t see over the seat…”, the viewer realizes time has passed and now she isn’t a schoolgirl. Anyway, this is an obscure point because in “Em Oy El Xi Fi” we know that she is talking about adolescence but she talks in present. So, When does she write it? I suppose there would be different answers to this question depending on the reader’s perspective.

Let’s assume that she writes it in her madurity, what does it have to do with time? Why do we analize time? Is it so important? Definitely, yes. The fact is that the passage of time  checks the psychological development of the protagonist.  “Socio Path” is the key  example of this, “I want to kill all the people who made me believe a boyfriend will save me". Obviously, she has just had a bad experience in love and she remembers all those small previous moments when someone told her a boyfriend would solve the life. She is older and she know that this is false and she would like telling all the people who said this to go to hell. There is a psychological development throughout the story line with the evolution of time. For example in this sentence from that scene, she, over the past years of believing what they said, that is, from ignorance, passes to the reality of everyday life. She is now mature and no longer she sees everything rose-tinted spectacles like  in childhood. The same way with her strange behaviour  or sexual frustration in her madurity, the result of sexual abuses that we perceive  reading scenes from when she was young, time ago.

The physical time has spent and this has been shaping the narrator’s  personality or character. This is the reason to understand the plot of the play: The protagonist’s strange behaviour because of the experiences of some time ago.