A public interview in a bookstore in Rotterdam, q and a.
A woman said: "I'd like to know why your columns [in De Volkskrant] are filled with eroticism?"
I answered: "I don't agree with your assessment. My sex column stopped a while ago."
"No," she said, "it's not your sex column. You brag about it. Your adventures."
"Not at all," I said, "I write with melancholy about past adventure. Do you know Emmanuel Berl's book 'Rachel et autres grâces' (roughly translated as Rachel and other graces] - he is a source of inspiration for me when it comes to writing about past affairs."
She was not convinced.
Later she told me: "If I were younger I would fall in love with you, but you are dangerous, you don't know how to commit yourself to anybody."
"You have been with men like me?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I'm like you."