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I was looking for a side job that paid well. I saw an advertisement from someone who was looking for nude models, whom he paid 200 euros for 2 hours. It concerned bachelor parties. After I had emailed him, he replied within a few minutes. He also added a photo of himself in the attachments. He presented sending that photo as a sign of willingness: ‘you send a photo of yourself, then I will also show you my own face.’ He seemed to want to come across as relaxed.

On our first appointment we went together to a company in Den Bosch, where I was allowed to keep all my clothes on. We were going to give a normal workshop there, for which he used his own, normal name: Mark. His other workshops, where nude models were involved, he sold under a pseudonym. ‘Clyde,’ he would be called then.

He picked me up behind the Central Station in Utrecht, at the kiss and ride opposite the NH hotel. He was somewhat older than in the photo he had sent, in which he still had blonde spikes on his head. Now he was almost completely bald, and the hair that he had was grey. His face was fleshy and a bit swollen.

He was actually supposed to interview me on the way to the company, by way of an application, but began to talk about himself without interruption. He was very proud of his workshop business, which in itself was a cynical invention. He said it cost him little effort, but that he earned a lot with corporate workshops, about 800 euros in an afternoon. ‘I earn more than I did as a consultant!’ he kept repeating and he kept doing calculations out loud, 800 times three, or six, times four… do the math… count your profit… it came down to about 10,000 euros per month.

It was busy on the road. I settled into the passenger seat. The car was full of food packaging and banana peels; between us there was a bag of wine gums, in the glove compartment there were marshmallows. He kept offering them to me, while he himself grabbed from the bag. Under his nails were black, dirty edges. He kept saying that he liked working with intelligent people, because he himself also had a very high IQ.

He said that he had done a PhD in ‘storage’: how you can arrange a warehouse in the most efficient way. From his research it had turned out that the smartest way to pack a suitcase was to just throw everything into it, because then you spent the least time and your things found their own way, causing them to fold into each other and fit by themselves. He had therefore also thrown the painting supplies for the workshop into two large suitcases, so that a whole pile of tubes, glitter and pencils rolled out of one of the suitcases.

It was very quiet in the company; the employees were sitting in a kind of gigantic hall with only a number of glass walls dividing the space. Many of them wore headphones while typing with hammering fingers, occasionally casting a glance to the side, as if they wanted to look suspiciously over their shoulder. At the edge of that hall a number of long white tables had been set up; that was where we had to give the workshop.

He had disposable aprons for the participants with him, and kept explaining to me that there was also size XXL, which I had to subtly pass to possible fat participants. He himself had a very fat belly, but seemed to have the illusion that he was slim, because when he talked about fat people, a meaningful, scornful expression appeared on his face, of pity for an inferior kind; the class of the ridiculous fatso. When the participants arrived, I saw a very strange, contented expression on his face, while he pressed the folded white plastic into the hands of a small, round little man, the only fatso present, with a meaningful gesture. ‘Here…’ he said, and the little man looked at him questioningly for a moment.

I shone in my role as instructor; I made the people laugh. They told me about the company. They had several factories where they bred insects, which might in the future be processed into human food, but were now only used for dog and cat food. They showed videos of the factories: people in special suits walking through all kinds of corridors and rooms of which the walls were completely filled with swarms of grasshoppers and worms and other dark brown, winged creatures. It was disgusting but fascinating.

In the parking garage Clyde asked what I wanted to have for my work that day. I turned dark red because I did not know how to compose myself. I wanted to get as much money from him as possible and would have seen it as a humiliation if I did not come away with an unreasonably large amount, but at the same time resist the game he was trying to play with me, in which I was a whore he had just had sex with, a game that visibly excited him and in which I did not want to participate, so as not to give him the wrong ideas.

I eventually asked him for three hundred euros, upon which he gave me three hundred and fifty, to also compensate the travel costs and because he liked to show his banknotes, which he slowly and clumsily, with trembling hands, counted out for me.

He had a studio in an old school building where many other workshop companies were also located. He kept his room somewhat shielded from the rest, because he did not like to advertise his nude models. Against the walls stood mediocre paintings he had made of naked women: greyish pink skin and flat shadows against a brown, meaningless background, static bodies without life. The studio was very dirty. On the table lay cheap snacks from Albert Heijn, an enormous quantity of store-brand chocolate balls, peanut clusters, cocktail nuts and cashew nuts. He had furnished the studio as he imagined the life of artists: run-down and impoverished, with stains of ink, paint, and caked dust everywhere.

In order to be able to offer me as a model on his site, he wanted to take photos of me. They could be anonymous photos; it was even actually better, to reinforce the somewhat shady character of his website. After all, he himself also lived a double life; it was all part of the experience; the website was a portal to another world, a dark mist from which the pale, somewhat cramped bodies of the models emerged.

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As I delved through the page owner’s archives, I felt myself drawn mostly to pictures of women who are fully naked inside a house, laying on a sofa, a bed or a divan covered in carpets; closing their eyes, smiling or curving their backs to show their bodies. They look like mermaids who have landed on shore.

When I called Soviet Lust for an interview, they emphasized their wish to remain anonymous, wanting the page to keep unspoiled by any kind of pretense. I was not allowed to describe to the public their gender or even the sound of their voice, because, as they said, my guesses and estimates about their age or appearance, would probably be wrong anyways.

There was something baffling and hilarious about having this anonymous person on the phone and becoming an accomplice in their sense of mystique, while at the same time being confronted with a very specific, slightly obnoxious character.

What follows is my account of our conversation, that, even though it was not supposed to reveal too much about the person being interviewed, had something of a confession.

M: How did it start?

SL: I left the USSR very young, at a time when everything crumbled. And so, my knowledge of Russian society and culture is a time capsule from the ‘80s and ‘90s. I don’t know shit about Russia after that. I never followed up. I’ve never been back. And so the only thing I have is those images, those movies, those cartoons.

I just started sharing stuff inside the Soviet aesthetic. And I wanted to create a world of those memories. I started surfing Google Images. I would type in something like, “Russian gangsters 1990.” I swear, in English, you know?

And then I would get a picture of a BMW, or a Mercedes, typically, with maybe a guy on the floor getting arrested or an accident or a bombing.

And then you click that, and it brings you to more similar images. And one of the images will be the gangsters hanging out, and then that leads to gangsters hanging out at the banya (bathing house, red.). And then you click on that- ... and then, all of a sudden you find adult content, you know? And once you get on the adult content, it just keeps recommending more and more adult content. So it’s actually pretty easy to source- ...

I don’t know how people acquired these images. I barely ever even, like, spend the time to read... for example, I’ll find an image in a crazy Russian porn forum from the early 2000s. And there’s just pages and pages of hardcore amateur porn from those times. I’m not super good at reading in Russian. So I just don’t even bother to read because I don’t give a shit.

I’m all about just surfing the images. I don’t care how they got there, who got them there. But it seems like maybe there was a time where there was an underground amateur porn trade thing going on, you know? Where people would have sex and take pictures and then they would trade maybe, or sell them on the black market. It was before there was cellphones where you could just record yourself having sex on a cellphone and post it on Pornhub. People took pictures with disposable cameras and maybe they traded them. Maybe a lot of these women were paid. Some of them are paid prostitutes, I’m sure. I think there was a trade going on, but I’m not deep, I’m not deep like that.

Editor’s note: upon doing some research on the internet, I found out that after the fall of the USSR, there was an explosion in Russian amateur pornography because heavy Soviet censorship and prohibition on pornography lifted, and the underground sex market suddenly became openly available and the creation of pornography flourished.

SL: Sometimes I’m grouping 10 pictures together that are kind of mid, but when you group them all together, it becomes something more interesting. Just the same girl over and over, but it’s a different girl. It looks like one girl almost.

Here’s something I’ll share that’s real. I initially did not want it to become what it is now. I didn’t want the focus to be just the girls. Just the lust. A lot of it, I wanted to be more about some of the music, some of the culture that I remember, some cool gangster shit. Sharing cool stuff from the Soviet Union. But obviously, the girls is what pops off, right?

So by default, you end up sourcing that content more- ... ‘cause that’s what everybody wants to see.

But it kind of pisses me off because that’s not... There was a time in the beginning where it was, one photo of the lust stuff and then it’d be four or five different ones.

Because I had the naivete of someone who thinks, “Everything I’ll share, I want people to find interesting.” When in fact, they just want to see the fucking girls, you know?

I like it to be innocent in a sense where it’s in someone’s apartment, an intimate moment, that happened when you were, you know, young and stupid and didn’t think that the internet was a thing. And now there’s some fucking asshole somewhere, halfway across the world, who’s digging that shit up and posting it on Instagram, you know?

But how many of these women, specifically, want this: these photos to be there? I would say very few.

I think, this is a guess of mine, there’s no facts behind it obviously, but I think the majority of the women who have those photos out there, they either don’t even know they’re out there, or they know and they came to terms with it ‘cause they’re freaking 50, 60 years old now. Or they to this day probably fucking regret it. Not like a super deep regret; it’s not like, ‘I killed someone’ or something. I’m sure 99% of them, 100% of them didn’t know that this thing called the internet was gonna come out in just a few years, where all these photos were gonna end up online, ‘cause men are perverted and they can’t not share other people naked online.

M: Why do you do it then?

SL: I just find it interesting. It’s just interesting, it’s fun, it’s cool, it’s a hobby. It’s cool to not be known by anyone and not have a whole personal thing attached to it. My life is completely separate from this, you know?

But these pictures are like: you’re just done having sex or you’re about to have sex and your cheeks are red and you’re all horny and this guy has a camera and it makes everything 10 times more exciting and he’s taking pictures of you and it’s like, “Oh my god, this is so hot.” And then, 10 years later, you’re a mother of three and every Russian porn site has your pictures from when you were 19, you know? Getting slammed by the neighborhood hooligan, you know? So I’m just being real about it.

These are things I think about that morally might not even sit super straight with me. I just have to be real about it. I know that this is to some degree shitty. In my defence: I’ve had zero women hit me up and say, “This is me. Can you take it off? I don’t want this picture there.” Never once this happened.

M: But it’s also nature’s beauty. You can’t escape it.

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DIEDERIK

O How I was in love with Diederik. He was the first sugardaddy I didn’t flirt with pragmatically. He didn’t want to be called a sugardaddy anyway - he believed in equality.

Diederik was tall and blond and, coincidence or not, my masseter botox doctor. He had a classic upper class accent, a wife, and two rosy-cheeked children.

He also owned a second home in South Africa where he had private ayahuasca ceremonies to wash his botox sins away.

The first time I went to the Botox clinic - innocent as I am - I happened to look ridiculously hot. I wasn’t prepared for how charismatic he was, I was used to boring men. So when he examined my face and said, “You absolutely don’t need anything with a face like that,” I felt flattered and reassured.

“Thanksss. Still, maybe just a little here,” I said.

Afterwards, he gave me his private number, in case anything medical came up. As I walked out of the clinic, I sent him a message with a medical question. He replied I should send a photo - for medical reasons.

I asked if he could come hang a painting for me, because I had just moved into a depressing flat, and my relationship had just ended, so who else was going to hang my postmodern painting?

That same evening, he showed up at my door. With a Black & Decker, and a long monologue about how I should use the Black & Decker. And that it was a Black & Decker - not a toy - and that the battery was brand new, and I needed to be careful with the torque setting because THIS IS A BLACK AND DECKER BABY, and it wasn’t meant for concrete.

But Diederik, I can’t do that myself! I’m a pretty, petite angel girl. My net worth is my pretty, petite angel skin and my pretty, petite angel waist. I never had to learn how to use a drill!

So that same night, he hung up the giant painting. Afterwards, he drank herbal tea and smoked a cigarette with me on my carpet because I didn’t have a couch. From that moment on, I see him every time my botox starts to wear off. Sometimes he brings me oysters. Sometimes I sit in the doctor’s chair and casually lie that I had a sex dream about him - just to spice things up.

He always gives me free Botox if I want it.

But I’m not allowed to call him daddy.

PAVLOV

It was a dreary Sunday when I decided to spend my last money at the sauna. While I stood in line for the steam ritual, I got tapped on the shoulder by a fat, bald Russian with a shady-looking face. He asked if he should buy the entire sauna complex for me. I told him I was willing to entertain the idea.

In the sauna restaurant he wanted to order wine. I suggested two mint teas instead.

(I DO NOT DRINK, AS I’VE SAID BEFORE. ALCOHOL LOWERS MY SPIRITUAL FREQUENCY.)

He asked me if I liked stealing. I told him I liked stealing from the self-checkout, because how else am I supposed to afford my expensive taste? I want fresh organic blueberries and fresh wild-caught salmon. He was delighted to hear that I stole.

He started telling me mafia-style stories about his life. Something about taking out whistleblowers, tax evasion and being a board member of an Israeli spy company. He asked if I would rob people too. We fantasized about robbing the entire sauna. I didn’t know if he was joking.

And me? Would you rob me? he asked.

Sure, I said.

Here’s what we’re going to do: you give me your number. I’ll leave my locker open. You take whatever cash you find.

He looked excited.

Sounds like a beautiful plan to me.

I walked over to his locker, which was indeed open, and saw 400 in cash lying there, along with a gold wedding ring belonging to his beloved wife. I took the cash but left the gold wedding ring untouched. I’m a people person after all.

In the car, I googled his name and saw that almost all the wild stories were true. I wondered if I just received blood money, whether I was a bad person, and if he’d kill me someday. But those thoughts quickly vanished - cause 400 euros is just kinda nice

Yara still needs a Dyson Airwrap.

Do you want to help her out?

You can contact Yara Baas @yara_baas on Instagram

Or directly send your money to: NL68 ASNB 8844 8627 78

Would you like to share your Thirst Traps on the Thirst Trap Review? Do you have a sexy métier, or strong opinions about female matters, please hit me up. ; mette@vanacker.art

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She was the very first girl who applied for the Thirst Trap Review, sending me a short message with businesslike determination. ‘I would like to know more about Thirst Trap Review‘ she wrote, and I knew she would show up and deliver.

I don’t know anything about Rose-Ellen’s religious beliefs. She herself says that she romanticizes absurdity and is willing to derail her life for it. But when I look at her, I see anything but absurdity, I see someone who is not cynical at all, and who lives solely through her own, felt truth, that only becomes absurd when shared with other people. She is not vain, yet, like Queequeg, she directs and orchestrates her own life according to mystical laws that only she knows.

In Rose-Ellen’s poems I found a deep sense of calm. Like she is completely at peace with life and death. Read her poems and scroll till the end to watch her slowly unveil herself, under the bright pink light of her apartment.

Love, Mette

Remembrance

I thought about becoming a bog body,

Decided it was too outdated.
I’d like to be buried alive in cement.
Lay down,

Let it pour over me.
They’d question premeditated murder,
Until they see the big smile on my face.
I am forever concrete in the sidewalk.

Cracker

I am never prepared for the blessings that come my way.

Turn the stone in my hands.

Take the leash off,

Bury the fantasy,

Run around the field until I get tired.

move your tongue counterclockwise on the roof of your mouth so subtly that it’s imaginary.

Would you like to share your Art and your Body on Thirst Trap Review? Send a DM to , @mette_maria_maria on Instagram or e-mail to mette@vanacker.art

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Yara sharing her Sugar Daddy experience, looking for something extra sweet to come her way.

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Oli’s dance reminds me of that feeling, of seeing my own vagina for the very first time.

I sold nudes for four years to a Broadway billionaire’s son.

If I’m being honest, I was groomed into it. And once it started, I was too afraid of what he might do if I stopped. But four hundred dollars a photo didn’t sound so bad, right?

My body had belonged to other people for most of my life anyway. To my mom’s boyfriend when I was a child. To my college boyfriend who complained every time I said no.

So I kept selling them—almost every week—for years.

My body wasn’t mine.

Dancing is how I reclaim my body and my sensuality. I dance for myself. Not for an audience—though an audience is always welcome. Whether I’m on the floor, in a chair, or up on a pole, my practice asks me to listen.

To gravity, breath, and instinct.

To every muscle and ache.

To fear.

Not ignoring it, but listening to it, negotiating with it, and deciding anyway.

Do you trust yourself?

There is a difference between pain that’s information and pain that’s a warning. Between fear that keeps you safe and fear that keeps you small.

Over and over, my body learns this strange, simple truth: when I believe I can do something—when I commit, breathe, and stay—I often can.

That choice alone feels revolutionary.

For a long time, other people decided where my limits were, and pushed past them without my consent. When I dance, I’m the one choosing how far to go, when to stop, when to soften, when to push.

I feel in my body more than I ever have.

There is freedom in moving this close to the ground, in choosing slowness, control, and surrender all at once. I feel sexy—but not in a performative way. Sexy in the way that belongs to me alone. The kind that doesn’t ask for permission or explanation.

I’m proud to practice a style of movement that was born in the club, shaped by sex workers who knew how to command space, desire, and power long before it was sanitized or renamed.

It’s raw.

It’s political.

Its embodied knowledge passed knee-to-knee, hip-to-floor.

This isn’t just dance. It’s memory. It’s resistance. It’s me coming home to myself—one slide, one roll, one unapologetic moment at a time

Haven’t sold my nudes in two years. Just here being sexc on substack for you. I want you to see.

Are you a beautiful girl with something to share? Don’t be shy and join Thirst Trap Review! DMs or @mette_maria_maria on Instagram. E-mail: mette@vanacker.art

NEXT UP: Rosellen’s poetry

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