Yes, it’s true. I made a sex tape with my boyfriend. It was my first serious relationship, he was the first guy I slept with, I loved him. So making the video wasn’t something that I did on a whim exactly.
We’d met in our first year of college, become friends, fallen in love with each other. After two years of being together, though, it felt like we were drifting apart a bit. Neither of us was to blame for that. It was just that as we neared the end of our bachelor’s, it became clear that we had very different plans for life afterwards. He wanted to go abroad to study further, I wanted to start working immediately in my hometown. The emotional discord this created between the two of us eventually began to affect our physical interactions as well. Sex was beginning to feel disconnected and clinical, not an act of intimacy or connection.
We had a frank talk about it and came to a decision – we were going to spend a month trying to rekindle the spark between us, and if things didn’t work out, then we’d just part ways. It was as part of this “let’s try to spice things back up again” plan that we decided to make a sex tape. We hoped that watching a video of ourselves in bed together, reliving at other times the satisfaction and pleasure we felt in each other’s company – it would help us focus more on the good between us than the things that were going wrong.
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We made the tape on my friend’s DSLR. And then I cut him a DVD of it, and kept the original file with me on a secure pen drive. It was a slightly blurry video – we were no experts when it came to lighting and setting up the tripod in the best possible angle and whatever else that it takes to make a great video. And the thrill of making love to each other in front of the camera was so great that we didn’t take breaks to check video quality and stuff. In the moment, it was hot – and we just went with the flow.
Over the next two or three weeks, we re-watched the video many times – sometimes together, sometimes by ourselves. It was sexy, it did help us feel very attracted to each other all over again. For a while, it felt like we were back in our first semester – excited to be with each other, passionately in love. But as the weeks turned into months, the disenchantment and dissatisfaction began to creep back in again. Our problems were bigger than the things we knew how to fix. That tape had been great for recreating a momentary oasis of affection and closeness, but it was not enough. Things were different, we were different. It was time to walk away.
My heart felt like it was being shattered forever the day we actually broke up. Saying goodbye to your first love feels that way, I guess. It was right before our final semester exams, and we decided that it would be best to stay away from each other as much as possible. We stopped calling each other, doing nothing more than smiling distantly when we bumped into each other during the exams. I wanted to ask him to give the DVD back to me, but then there were so many emotions rolling in my mind – so much regret about things not having worked out – that breaking the silence just to say that was something I shied away from. There would be time enough after the exams, I thought. After all, it wasn’t like he was disappearing from my life forever.
But that is what happened. One fine day, he just disappeared. As we walked out of the last of our exams, I saw him heading out of the college gate. “Anil!” I shouted, wanting suddenly, desperately to speak to him after the weeks of zero communication. He stopped, looked back, and then, unsmiling, continued on his way out.
“He’s leaving today for Europe, didn’t you know?” whispered one of my classmates who’d seen what just happened. Everyone knew we’d broken up and had been nice enough to not comment. This was the first time someone had said anything.
“Oh,” I whispered back, feeling dismayed. He was going away, I could barely breathe for the misery I was feeling…and mixed in with that was a feeling of dawning horror. I had made a sex tape with a guy who had just walked out of my life…and he had a copy.
I never got the tape back. I tried to, a few weeks later, when shiny-happy vacation pictures of him in Europe with his family and a bunch of girls I didn’t know started appearing on Facebook. He looked like he was having the time of my life. It hurt. “Will you destroy the DVD please?” was all I messaged. His response was to remove me from his friends’ list and block me. I emailed, I sent him WhatsApp messages. No response to anything. Just utter and complete silence.
It’s been three years since then. I have never watched the video again – what would be the point? But I can’t bring myself to destroy the pen drive. For what if he hasn’t yet destroyed the DVD and someday the video finds its way to the Internet? I don’t know what purpose would be served by me having a copy of something that potentially millions of people could watch freely, but I still can’t throw it away. Not until I know for sure that he’s broken that DVD up into a million tiny pieces.
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I’ve never told anyone about this. How can I? All I do is hope that he decided only to cut me out of his life, and that he doesn’t actively hate me – hate me enough to maybe maliciously make public what we’d created together in the stupid hope of rebuilding our relationship. But I still wake up in a cold sweat over it sometimes. It’s always the same nightmare, that the video’s out there for everyone to watch.
There are not many things in my life that I regret. But making that tape? That is something I will never forgive myself for doing.
* Names changed to protect privacy.
Images: Shutterstock
