Kovin lives in a converted Jordaan canal loft where floor-to-ceiling windows frame golden-hour light as it spills across rippling water like liquid topaz. By day, he curates *De Plaat*, an intimate vinyl listening bar tucked beneath an antique bookshop, where patrons are given blindfolded headphone journeys through curated albums while sipping house-blended teas named after forgotten street corners. But at night, after last call, he opens the attic speakeasy—a hidden chamber accessed via a rolling bookshelf ladder that only shifts when you press the spine of Rilke’s *Letters to a Young Poet*. Here, he hosts acoustic sets for insomnia-ridden artists, projecting silent films onto brick walls while playing lullabies on an upright piano that used to belong to his grandmother.His love language isn’t words—it’s maps. Handwritten, on rice paper or the backs of old setlists, leading lovers through Amsterdam’s quieter veins: a hidden bench where swans pass at dawn, a bakery that only opens during fog, the one alley where streetlights hum in B-flat. He leaves them under doors or tucks them into coat pockets after shared silences that felt too full for speech. He believes romance grows not in declarations but in accumulations—the third time you both reach for the same record, the way someone ties their scarf the same way your ex used to, how rain sounds different when you’re not alone.Sexuality for Kovin is sensory archaeology. He remembers the scent of salt on skin after a stormwalk, the weight of a lover’s head on his shoulder during a film projection, how someone’s breath syncs with guitar strums in an alley. He waits—sometimes too long—for mutual readiness, reading body language like liner notes. When it happens, it's under candlelight or rain-soaked eaves: one coat shared between two shivering bodies as thunder rolls over the canals, kisses that taste of juniper and hesitation.He once dated a violinist who played in subway tunnels, and when they broke up, he didn’t burn anything—he pressed her favorite melody into wax and locked it in a wooden box labeled *Do Not Play Until Snow Falls*. It still sits on his shelf. But lately, when he walks past bridges at twilight, he finds himself imagining someone beside him—not to fill silence, but to shape its contours.