This disagreeable feeling that we were imitating all the others was added to by our dependence on pleasure, like that induced by drugs. We had to increase the dosage, step up the frequency of our bouts of lovemaking. And our bodies would give way, exhausted, like those of the moths intoxicated with light. And every night we would be pained by this growing realisation of a trite and bitter truth: pleasure only aims at itself, being a marvellous end in itself. A repetitive loop, heady, exhausting, delicious, perfumed with the scent of tanned and salty skin, moulded by muscles made firm in
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