When Your Boyfriend Shows Your Sex Video to His Friends
And you’re completely ok with it.
It was after midnight when my phone rang. I answered it to hear my boyfriend laughing softly and saying, in a slightly drunken voice, “You’re not going to believe what I did…”
To put this in context, when he says something like that, I have absolutely no idea what’s coming next. Our relationship is characterized by a near-complete lack of rules. Even the rules that lots of couples take for granted, such as the rule against hooking up with other people. As long as we treat each other with love, kindness, and respect, almost nothing is off limits.
But this time, it wasn’t anything like that. Instead, what he was calling to tell me related to a video that he and I had made a few weeks earlier…
Perhaps I should start at the beginning. It began with the Rice Purity Test.
I assume that anyone who went to college in the U.S. probably remembers this genius source of entertainment and embarrassment being passed around their freshman dorm. It’s a list of 100 questions about things you may or may not have experienced in your (presumably) 18 years on this earth, to which you answer yes or no. You then count up the number of “no” answers to give a percent score, which provides you with the definitive answer to the all-important question of how “pure” you are.
As you would expect, the list starts off very tame: “Have you held hands romantically?” “Have you been on a date?” It proceeds to walk through a set of increasingly intimate sex-related and drug-related questions until you get to questions 99 and 100, which are, respectively, “Have you committed an act of incest?” and “Have you engaged in bestiality?” I suppose the creators of the test were trying to make sure that everyone would have at least a couple of “no” answers so that no-one was labeled entirely impure.
It’s been a long time since I was a freshman in college, but I was recently re-introduced to the purity test when my very own college freshman asked if I’d heard of it. I of course did what any parent would do: I laughed, then casually responded that I vaguely remembered something about it, went back to cooking dinner, and at the first opportunity, sneaked straight off to my computer to re-take the test for myself.
Upon doing so, I was a little disappointed. Both because I’m apparently still pretty pure (what do you have to do, exactly, to get below 22% on this thing?) and because the list is all wrong, at least for someone who’s been out of high school for more than 6 months. For example, I don’t find the question “Have you ingested alcohol in a non-religious context?” to be a relevant measure of how crazy or free-spirited or edgy I am. And as noted, thanks to the bestiality/incest dimension, you could never get to 0% pure without going to jail or hell (most likely both), so it’s not a very good scale on which to measure the non-deviant population.
At that point, I decided the test could use some improvement. Over the next few days, I enlisted the Young Hot Boyfriend’s help, and together, we put together our own list that we felt was more relevant to the group of people with whom we identify: healthily adventurous and sex-positive adults who aren’t the least bit attracted to animals. We removed anything disgusting or illegal and as a result, ended up with a list that was, for us, part purity test, part bucket list.
Most significantly for this story, Question Number 47 on our New and Improved Purity Test was “Have you made a sex video?”
Next was the fun part, when we started working through the items on the list that we hadn’t yet done. After a few evenings spent entertaining ourselves with duct tape and kama-sutra-style sexual positions, it was time for the sex video. We didn’t have any professional equipment, but we decided that an iPhone and a carefully positioned table at the side of his bed would have to do. Then we turned on all the lights and got down to it.
The result was a nine-minute cinematic masterpiece that has to be one of the funniest sex videos ever made. If there’s an Adult Film Awards category for Best Comedy Sex Video, I want to enter. The highlight is a post-orgasm segment at the end during which we’re discussing whether his phone has successfully captured all of the action, followed by our unbridled glee when we discover that yes, in fact, it has. The video ends with us both laughing uncontrollably.
We weren’t oblivious, of course, to the risks that one takes when making a sex video. As we all know, there’s a long and storied history of celebrities getting themselves into all kinds of trouble around videotaped sexual encounters. One of the YHB’s friends summarized it well when he heard about it: “Well of course, that’s great, because nobody’s ever regretted making a sex tape.”
But we’re not celebrities, so we decided we’re fine. Nobody ever even needs to see it.
Which brings us to the night of the slightly drunken phone call.
That night, through his laughter, the YHB explained to me that he had been at a bar all evening with a group of male and female friends. The conversation turned to sex, and he started telling them about our recent purity-test-driven adventures. One thing led to another, and he ended up handing them his phone and starting up the video before leaving them to it and heading back to the dance floor. His friends then spent the next nine minutes huddled together in the middle of the crowded bar, standing stock-still, mesmerized by the images on the screen. They watched the whole thing, all the way through to the slightly slapstick ending.
Apparently, once it was over, the video received positive reviews from the audience, as well as a number of suggestions for the next installment. Different positions, different angles. Less comedy, perhaps. All of which he told them we’d take under consideration.
But the conversation didn’t end there. His friends had questions. About me, and us, and the very specific details around how we like to have sex. Which he answered, and which of course led to more questions and more conversation.
Listening to him tell this story a few hours later, I was interested to discover how I felt about him having shown our video to other people. I didn’t feel a hint of embarrassment, regret, or annoyance. Instead, I was glad. (In part, if I’m honest, because we look good together. I don’t look bad for my age, and let’s face it, the Young Hot Boyfriend is, well, hot.)
But it’s not even my well-established exhibitionist streak that is really in play here. More than that, it makes me happy that he and I are open, unembarrassed, and carefree about our bodies and our sex life. I’ve never really understood why sex — which is such a universal and important part of life — is considered to be a taboo subject, even among close friends. I think we would all benefit if we were more honest with each other about our desires, our hangups, and our insecurities around our physical relationships.
So I take satisfaction from the fact that he used our video to further a conversation with his friends, one that perhaps will lead to more communication about sex and intimacy and vulnerability. And I believe the more conversations about those issues that take place, the more likely we all are to develop healthy attitudes around them.
So will we keep making sex videos? Undoubtedly. And is he going to continue showcasing them in the middle of crowded bars? Well, maybe not quite in that same way. But I expect that he, and I, will continue to be open about subjects that, in my opinion, aren’t discussed enough. And if our friends, as a result, get comfortable enough to start showing us their sex videos, I look forward to watching them.
