«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

BB-Each country has its own sexual sensibility. Take France. Since my books are published there and I speak the language, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to sample French “meat”-- as we say in certain sexual subcultures. I’ve found that there are only two basic French modes for sex: either tenderness and romanticism, which aren’t very genital; or a kind of genital macho Latin brutality: wear-you-out sex.

- And that’s different than, say, American sex?

BB: Are you kidding? I’d characterize American sex as athletic. If it is sensual, this comes from the pleasure of the sport, an Anglo-Saxon interest in action, contact. But it’s not good mental sex like French sex.

-Bruce Benderson.