Say cheese!

At some point in any sexual relationship, one or both partners get the urge to document their playtime, either with a video camera or a regular camera. Here are some thoughts on the matter.

First of all, thanks to the power of honest mistakes and the internet, photos and footage will most likely get out. If you take it on your phone, you can bet someone sometime will start leafing through your footage and discover it. If you use a real video camera, how will you keep that footage safe? If you use a film camera, how will you develop those photos? Some retailers will actually confiscate sexual images; I've had that happen to me. Where will you keep them so that they are safe? If you're using a digital camera, you need to either use a dedicated camera for that purpose (a camera that stays with your toybox) or get the images off the camera and onto a computer, stat. You don't want to forget about them and start a slideshow of your vacation for your loved ones.

Secondly, there is the issue of trust and being a good person. Your girlfriend may seem like the sweetest person right now, but you have no idea how she will act if you two break up. She may decide to show the photos to her friends. She may post the video to the internet. I've dated amazing, wonderful, trustworthy people who turned batshit crazy when the relationship went bad. Is it worth risking that?

Also, don't forget that it is incredibly easy in this day and age to make copies of things. Let's say you break up with said girlfriend and she "gives you back all the photos." Do you know for sure that she didn't make copies? That she didn't scan them to her computer? Think about it. 

Of course, there are some people who actually WANT footage and film to get on the internet. If that's you, great! But just remember two things:
1. Once it goes on the internet, it can never truly be destroyed. There is always sharing, there's always file backups, there's always linking, there's always downloading. The minute you upload it, you have no idea where it will go or what will happen to it. And that means to you.
2. Employers and family members google you. Use a really unusual alias and either don't show your face or your birthmarks or wear a mask. That goes for tattoos and jewelry as well. You may think that the footage doesn't show your foot tattoo, but you may be wrong and your new boss may have just discovered your bondage fetish. Sometimes even your hair, if it's distinctive, can be enough to give you away. And again, as stated in #1, those photos you took during a crazy time in college may come back to haunt you decades later. Be smart. What's worse is if you have a common look. Let's say you rock a light brown bobbed hair cut. You like it. You've been wearing it since high school. You only let one boyfriend take photos of you and he swears he never released them. But your boss is googling around and sees images of someone with your hairstyle in sexual positions. Do you really want to take the chance that said boyfriend kept his word? Be smart.

Years ago, I fooled around with a man who used a wheelchair. We never filmed anything, but we did get to third base. A couple years after that, he decided to make footage of himself and a different brunette messing around and submitted it to a Sexy Gimp Website. He linked it in his blog. A mutual friend of ours, who was also an ex-boyfriend of mine, found it and saw blurry footage of the man and a brunette having sexy time. He immediately contacted me and warned me that there may be sexual images of me out there on the internet. I can't tell you how important it was to be able to securely say "That's not me."

What I have discovered is that whenever I get the urge to film or photo me and X, the best thing I can do is to set up some mirrors in our room. I can watch our playtime as it's happening and get excited by watching the two of us. Is it permanent and something I can look at later? No. But it fills the exhibitionist need and lets me analyze my technique. Plus, it's sexy. And it's totally safe, which is also sexy. You only need one or two full length mirrors to have a lot of fun. Try it out.