The Cut Where I Stop Editing Myself

There's a version of me that shows up the second the camera starts rolling. He stands taller. He turns his hip toward the light. He holds his breath and waits for the good angle.

I don't like that guy much.

The video going up this week is about the other one. Same room, same grey morning light, same man — but this is the cut where I stopped editing myself in real time. Where my stomach creases when I sit down. Where the scar on my knee is just there, and the skin around my ribs has gone soft in a way it wasn't ten years ago. Where I laugh at something off-camera and my whole face rearranges itself.

Most platforms will only let me post the covered version. The uncensored one is the one that's actually true. I keep making both, not to shock anyone, but because I want the honest take to exist somewhere in the world where somebody can find it.

Here's what years of filming myself naked have taught me: the fear of being seen doesn't disappear. It just loses its authority. It used to be a voice shouting in the room. Now it's more like a radio left on in another part of the house. I can hear it and keep going.

Naturism did most of that work. Not the first time I took my clothes off outside — that was mostly adrenaline and mosquito bites. It was the hundredth time. The point where nobody reacted, nobody stared, nobody cared, and I realised the catastrophe I'd been bracing for had never been scheduled. Somewhere in all those ordinary afternoons, my body stopped being an argument I had to win and became just the place I live.

A few things I hold to when I film. I shoot at home, or somewhere private with permission, never in a place where someone hasn't agreed to be there. I don't film anyone who hasn't said yes out loud. Consent isn't a formality in this work — it's the thing that makes the work possible at all. And if a location's rules say no, the answer is no. Freedom that tramples someone else's isn't freedom; it's just noise.

There's also a difference between being seen and being looked at, and it took me a long time to feel it. Being looked at is passive. It happens to you. Being seen is something you agree to. The uncensored cut is me agreeing.

Nothing profound happened in that room. I stood by a window, unclothed, and let the camera keep running past the moment I would normally have cut it. That's the whole thing.

It's enough.

What's the last thing you stopped hiding in front of a camera? Or a mirror — same question, really.