Jorien measures love in distillations—each interaction a slow extraction of essence from noise. By day, he crafts small-batch gins in a tucked-away apothecary studio behind a De Pijp bookshop, layering flavors like emotions: bergamot for hesitation, angelica root for resilience, a whisper of rosemary for remembrance. His life orbits around the hidden courtyard behind 'Boekenzolder,' a secret garden strung with fairy lights where creatives gather in hushed circles to trade poems, unfinished songs, and stolen glances. He believes romance isn't found in grand gestures but in *revised routines*—the way someone starts leaving their jacket on your chair or remembers how you take your tea after rain.He once loved fiercely, a poet who left on a train to Lisbon and never returned, leaving behind only a silk scarf and a book filled with marginalia in her hand. Since then, he’s softened slowly, like paper worn by touch. He doesn’t rush—but when he does, it’s with intention. His dates are immersive: a blindfolded walk along the Amstel guided by scent and sound; a private tasting where each gin note mirrors a chapter of your story; or sharing still-warm stroopwafels on a fire escape as dawn bleeds gold across the rooftops, both of you quiet but full.Sexuality for Jorien is tactile, patient—a language of proximity. He learns lovers through touch: the weight of a hand on his back, how someone breathes when surprised, the way they react to cold canal wind or sudden warmth indoors. He once kissed someone during a rooftop thunderstorm in May, rain sluicing through their clothes, both laughing not from nerves but joy—consent murmured between breaths like a vow kept in real time. For him, desire blooms in afternoons spent flipping through vintage books in secondhand shops, finding love notes tucked inside—yellowed pages confessing *I saw you at the flower market and couldn’t speak* or *I’ve been sitting near you at the same café every Tuesday*. He keeps them in a walnut box labeled *Almosts*.The city amplifies him—its narrow lanes mirror his guarded heart; its sudden courtyards echo the surprise of intimacy. He communicates by live-sketching feelings on napkins: a key for *unlock me*, two birds on one wire with space between, then slowly leaning closer. His grandest fantasy? Closing down 'Boekenzolder' at 5:30 AM just to recreate that moment he first saw her—her reading by lamplight with rain on her coat, not knowing he’d already fallen.