Somewhere between the post-date overthinking spiral, the decompression voice note to a friend, and that hollow therapy session wrap-up, there’s a space where everything unsaid begins to take shape. This is where the experimental video essay begins: in the zone of afters. After feeling, after failing, after hoping. It’s an accumulation of unsent messages—blurry drafts hovering between confession and performance—where the “I” reaches out without knowing exactly to whom. That kind of intimacy that flickers in the absence of reply, in a message left on read. In the tension of ghosting as both a refusal and a response.
Framed as a flow of text messages that appear on screen, the work inhabits the fragile threshold between public and private, turning viewers into quiet voyeurs of emotional residue. The texts drift somewhere between self-talk, seduction, breakdown, and overshare. Maybe they are for a crush, or a friend, or an ex. Maybe they are just for me. In this ambiguous narrative, writing becomes a practice of staying with the feelings that can’t be tidied up—especially when desire is uncertain, when language itself slips between shame and power.
If sexuality today is both hyper-visible and profoundly misread, this work lingers in that contradiction. What does it mean to articulate want in a climate of emotional detachment, romantic ambiguity, and collective burnout from trying? There is a dissonance between our hyper-literacy of emotional terms—trauma bonds, boundaries, unavailability—and the ache that still leaks through, messy and unprocessed. Somewhere between the performative “I’m so over it” and the late-night voice memo saying otherwise, there is a truth that can’t be fully theorized, only lived. This is that space—where soft words, impulsive confessions, and tired hopes still hold.
So at 3AM I open the chat with … and type:
Submissive behavior wasn’t my kink; it was my escape route, my Roman Empire, my own personal brand of heroin. Being submissive transfers the responsibility to decide, your will, and along with that, you transfer your restlessness and your void. That void described in countless papers on destructive romantic patterns and the necessity to start with yourself, disregarding that sometimes this self is ground to dust, chewed up and spit out, and remains the myth of being existent, happy enough, and complete a few years ago.
I’m not talking about submissiveness as a real kink, sexual role, or deliberate preference. A lot of people probably truly enjoy those roles or whose behavior is naturally submissive and brings them authentic pleasure. In my case, submissiveness appeared as a side effect of mental freeze mode. I got stuck and needed to feel pain to actually feel something. I was sure my ass and my thighs were made of steel because even with the purple marks all over, I couldn’t feel enough.
This submissiveness with elements of masochism manifested itself in deeper intimate connections as well, but each time it was denied and almost immediately turned into drama, jealousy, and an all-consuming mind fuck for both. Letting someone—THE one, the half-delusional limerent object—take away your already absent, fragmented self, unintentionally possessing it, penetrating it with their own meanings and goals doesn’t sound as erotically tensional and exciting as getting dominated in bed and playfully smiling the morning after in the metro on the way to work, because without any exaggeration, touching any surface with your butt feels like the first steps of The Little Mermaid after gaining that so-desired pair of human legs—as if you were treading upon knife blades.
Unreasonable, unapproachable — you and them, fading away the moment I recognize the uncompromising differences between them and you. You became an inevitable narrative, a fleeting rumination, and I use my entire verbal expression to frame you into something overwhelming, yet absent. Every person I meet seems to carry that same dark and mysterious essence I once saw in you — as if the monolithic structures of your sound, as someone once painfully noted with precision, echo through them. Bittersweet and ambivalent, like a dance — like the last tango in Paris. Your name penetrates my foggy mind as violently as his cock does her ass, smoothed with butter. I really wanted to see you, but I’m fucked — one of them accidentally described my intentions to another them (not you), with medical accuracy. I want to see them for the first date — the exciting one with a predictable or not-so-predictable ending. The second dates remain a myth.
Chain-smoking and serial dating — it is indeed a dance.