Writers, and I’ve known many, have always been among the most mediocre lovers I’ve ever encountered. Do you know why? When they have sex, they’re already thinking about the scene the experience will turn into. Every caress is ruined by what their imagination is doing or will do with it, every thrust is weakened by a sentence. When I talk to them during sex, I can almost hear their ‘she murmured.’ They live in chapters. Quotation marks precede every word they say. Als het erop aan komt—that’s Dutch, it means ‘at the end of the day’—writers like you are stuck in their make-believe. You’re
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