like Waldo from the Where’s Waldo? children’s books.
“It was Halloween.” He spoke in a dull, strained voice. “The costume was Kayla’s idea. She was dressed like Carmen Sandiego, but you can’t see that in the video, just like you can’t see the way she was egging me on.”
Music started to play, superimposed over the video. Something electronic with a pronounced, throbbing beat. On screen, Josh began to dance. Slowly and seductively.
“We’d been to a party,” he said. “I’d had a few drinks. Then we went back to her place. She told me she’d always had a—fetish.” He stumbled a little over the word, like it hurt him to say it. “For Waldo.”
In the video, Josh had started doing a striptease for someone off camera. Pulling up his red-and-white-striped shirt a little bit at a time to expose his stomach. Thrusting his hips. Someone had used video editing tricks to match Josh’s movements to the music for maximum comedic effect.
“I didn’t know the camera was there.” The muscles in his jaw contracted. “Obviously.”
His shirt was hiked up to expose his whole chest now. Pelvis gyrating, he licked his thumb and trailed it down his torso to his waist. It was incredibly sexual—and nothing at all like the Josh she knew. Even at the height of passion or in the most intimate moments they’d shared, Mia had never seen him so uninhibited. So loose and easy. She wondered if it was the effect of the alcohol, or if he’d been that much more carefree before the betrayal.
“This is the edited version that went viral.” He wasn’t looking at the video or at her. His eyes stayed focused on an empty spot across the room as he held the phone. “All over social media and on most of the entertainment sites. Even a few local news shows. People made gifs of it.”
Mia had seen the gifs before, she realized. She’d never seen the original video, hadn’t known the context or where they were from, but she remembered seeing sexy dancing Waldo gifs on social media.
“For about a month, I was everywhere, doing a striptease in a Waldo costume. Until something else came along for everyone to laugh at. It still gets used as a reaction gif though. I’m a classic.” He sounded so bitter.
She couldn’t blame him. If the whole world had seen her doing something so…overtly sexual. So clearly meant to be private. If her parents had seen it. Her exes. Her professional colleagues. She’d curl up and die of embarrassment.
On screen, Josh-as-Waldo was unbuckling his pants. Mia’s hand covered her mouth in horror as he shoved them down, exposing himself. A black bar had been superimposed over his genitals, preserving at least that much of his dignity in order to bypass the adult content filters. The video ended with him doing a sort of flourish as he bared himself to the world, his nudity comedically censored.
What kind of a monster could do something like this? Record him in private without his consent. Take a moment so intimate and…and generous, and make a public mockery out of it. Out of Josh.
“That’s not even the worst part.” He lowered the phone and walked to the opposite side of the kitchen again. “The original video, the unedited one, didn’t stop when I got naked.”
Oh. Oh no.
She could guess what was coming next, and it made her feel sick on his behalf.
He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, refusing to look at her as he spoke. “She didn’t just record my little dance for her. She recorded us having sex. All of it. And I never knew.” His mouth twisted in a scowl. “Until we broke up, and she decided to send the video to everyone we knew as some sort of revenge for rejecting her. I guess she didn’t care that people were looking at her too, although you couldn’t see her face the way you could see mine.” He paused, like he was trying to find the strength to say the last part. “The video made its way all over campus before ending up on a bunch of porn sites. It’s still out there as far as I know. I tried to get it taken down, but it’d just get re-uploaded again. Last I looked, it had millions of views racked up.”
Mia went to him, uncrossed his arms, and fitted herself against him. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how awful that must have been.” She held him as tightly as she could.