The architecture of the mind is rarely as sterile as the white walls of a gallery. At Temptress, we know that the most vital parts of the archive are the ones we are taught to burn—the frictions, the "low-wattage" desires, and the abject thoughts that pullulate in the dark. We are opening a new rubric: CONFESSIONS.
This is a space for the radical stripping back of the ego. We are inviting you to share your visceral experiences with erotic art, your unclassified sex fantasies, and the complicated, "tenebrous" topics that require a witness. Whether it is a reflection on power, a "hot story" from the archives of your own life, or a moment where the "human" was stripped away, we want your truth.
THE CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: We are waiting for your "sacred and unhinged" reflections. Send your stories and reflections via email to confessions@temptress.me
Whether they are polished or raw, your shame is safe within the Temptress sensorium.
Our first confession arrives from the dark of an 11:00 AM cinema—a study in control, trauma, and the "mischievous intimacy" of the shadow self.
SORRY, BABY.
BUT YOUR BIGGEST NIGHTMARE TURNED ME ON.
Not an article about Sorry, Baby by Eva Victor
BY NOSEFERATA
Content note: sexual abuse, sexual fantasies
I’m alone in the cinema. It's 11 in the morning, that’s why. No normal person goes to the cinema at 11am on a weekday. A man walks in. He's bought nachos. No normal person eats nachos at 11 in the morning. I'm glad not to be normal and to be here. He's glad not to be normal and to have his nachos. I'm happy I'm not entirely alone. He sits down two rows in front of me. Not that I wouldn't prefer my space. But the appeal of the cinema isn't the film, the bigger screen, the better sound. It’s the experience of being in the same film with strangers, sitting in the dark, exposed and yet so intimate. This man is the only one here today. My only projection surface. My only subject. He must feel it in his back, because he doesn't dare touch his nachos once. He doesn't want to be the man the women on screen are talking badly about, the man the woman two rows behind him would judge. He wants to get it right. He wants to be wanted. While he makes no nacho sounds for me, I make paper sounds for him. I'm writing in the dark.
This is not a text about a film. I just happen to be writing it while watching one. I won't take my eyes off the screen for a second. I won't. I can do both. Agnes, you have my full attention. Lucky for you, I'm sharpest in the mornings.
I once had a crush on my professor. One time I meet him for coffee to discuss my work. I'm wearing the red sweater that makes my nipples impossible to ignore. I'm wearing love balls in my vagina. He recommends a text that never lets me go. A gift. There's something paternal about him that wraps around me warmly. And something forbidden. My pussy contracts and wraps the ball warmly inside me. I trust him. I'm not scared. But if something had happened, they probably would have said I'd been asking for it.
Is something being given to me? Or is something being taken? My story with my professor is not Agnes's story with her professor.
While Agnes describes her rape in detail, I'm fantasising about fucking the guy two rows ahead. I want to sit on his lap and kiss him. Will he taste of nachos and cheap salsa? Or has he still not touched them?
Has he touched them?
Why do you think so many women have rape fantasies? To glorify what might be the worst thing that can happen to a woman? Please. Many people do in bed what they protest against in the streets. Fantasies stay fantasies. Whether we act on them or keep them in our heads forever. Either way: they're on our team. And for good reason.
I don't owe you an answer about whether I'm one in three women who has experienced sexual abuse. But please don't ask me why I can't let go of control. We may only have limited control over our fantasies, but when we lose ourselves, what tends to surface is what's really there. What we need, what we want. I don't want to be raped. But I need control in case it happens. My fantasies are answers to reality. And they are my closest friends.
Sorry, Baby.
The film doesn't hate men and it doesn't glorify women. It urges us to hold together and be there for each other when life shows up naked. And yet: men have a lot of catching up to do. They should be the ones giving us the best sandwiches of the year instead of sex that was only the best of the year for them. Sexual abuse starts earlier than we've been taught. Don't expect me to be a victim. Don't expect me to hand over control either. And don't expect me not to compensate through fantasy.
I'm writing this in the dark. No one is watching me, while inside me another film is playing. One that might be the biggest nightmare for the film on the screen. I write in the dark because maybe I think less when I do. And because I don't have to immediately see in black and white what’s going on in my head. My answer to a question that we women have never been asked is loaded with shame. We're not supposed to say it out loud. Not to be branded a sick, crazy bitch, and not to wound other women.
Sorry, Baby. But your biggest nightmare turned me on.
The thing is, I have no desire to rape the man in front of me, nor do I have any desire to be raped by him. It simply turns me on when Agnes tells her best friend Lydie about her worst nightmare – one that wasn’t just a dream. So I drift, in the rhythm of my pussy. The worst nightmares don't happen at night. We've borrowed that word because we hope so badly that what happened to us was only a dream. When we fantasise sexually, we are actually dreaming. Don’t mix that up. So we no longer have to be ashamed. Of our answers to your actions.
Sorry, Baby. But your biggest nightmare turned me on. Maybe I just didn't know a better way to sit with the feelings your story brings up in me. It catches me cold. And turns hot between my legs.
Link: Instagram.
VISCERAL DIALOGUE: ANNA STÜDELI
Anna Stüdeli operates in the visceral gap between the "perfect world" of advertising bodies and the "abject" reality of the corporeal. Currently based in Barlin, Anna operates in the visceral gap between the "perfect world" of advertising bodies and the "abject" reality of the corporeal. She dissects what lies hidden beneath the smooth surfaces of the urban landscape, seeking truth in the juxtaposition of opposites. Her work moves along the boundary of the uncanny, utilizing modeling clay, latex, foam, and steel—sometimes supplemented with organic sheepskin or hair—to create strange hybrids that are simultaneously industrial and fleshly.
In her photographic practice, Stüdeli has "extracted" an archive of over 1200 close-up photographs from large-scale billboards and posters. By isolating dense areas of skin or framing fragments—like a hand with a knife removed from its kitchen context—she forces harmless advertising into a drift toward the dangerous and the uncanny. Her work is a socio-critical analysis of the "phenomenon of advertising posters" and the way mass media employs framing to heighten and distort its own message.
THE ARCHIVE IS OPEN
The dark is a fertile place for the "obliterated speech" of our inner lives. Now, we are asking you to step into the booth.
Temptress is waiting for your reflections, your secret architectures of desire, and the stories that refuse to be seen in black and white. Whether they are "sacred" or "unhinged," your confessions are the real substance of the Temptress sensorium.
