On Secrets

Vito Acconci lies underneath the floorboards at Sonnabend gallery in 1972, masturbating. He speaks his fantasies about the owner of footsteps overhead into a microphone, which broadcasts across the gallery. His body is hidden, separated, but each visitor is implicated in his desires as they run from his mind to his mouth through speakers.

I think of this performance piece often. Who is this man? Why is he lauded for masturbating in a gallery space but when I do it I’m “disturbing the peace”? I admire (and am jealous of) his exhibitionism, moving a private activity into the temple of a public gallery space and aestheticizing it in the process.

This Scorpio season I am thinking of secrets, of privacy, of interiority, and how delicious those all become the second they’re shared. I seek to stretch beyond the protective and precursory discretion required of a professional dominatrix into the realm of play. How sticky and sweet a secret is, enveloping its keepers in a cushy interiority and slicking both parties in a fine film of knowing. The agreement of a secret is the peak of potential energy; it’s fantastical edgeplay that threatens to slip. In this collection: panties under trousers, the threat of molestation, blood and cum and piss the second before spillover, the moan you save for when you’re being penetrated “just like that oh god.” All vulgar and sacred in equal measure.

I am always, always honored to be trusted to build an altar of fantasy. It begins at the moment of confession.

To confess your secret,