How a Wedding Dance with My Boyfriend Became Indian Porn: A Cautionary Tale

The evening started out like every other Indian wedding reception I had ever attended: surrounded by a thousand loud, festive strangers for whom the main entertainment was strategizing their plan of attack with the buffet. You can probably guess from my name that I, myself, am not Indian, but rather a white girl with a popular prostitute name who just happens to have quite a few Indian friends. In this instance, my boyfriend (now-husband) and I were there to help celebrate his management consultant colleague’s recent nuptials – an event to which we had not been invited because of “limited venue space.” Which, loosely translated, means “you’re not important enough to make the A- or B-list, but maybe if Samir’s fourth cousins and fifth cousins and third cousin’s dog can’t make it, THEN… Just kidding! You are never, ever, ever getting invited to this wedding.” (Cue the requisite Taylor Swift parody.)

In other words, it was the ideal situation. Don’t most wedding guests merely tolerate the mushy ceremony stuff in order to earn their pass to the free food and rare chance to do the Electric Slide without judgment, or is that only sentimental fools like me? Regardless, my boyfriend and I were more than happy to sit out of the actual nuptials. We did not pass go. We did not collect a wedding program. We went straight to the open bar.

This is where things took a turn for the sordid.

Although there was no Electric Slide, there were plenty of other songs to inspire embarrassing dance moves. Yes, unfortunately, we were guilty of DUI (dancing under the influence) – and no amount of disapproving glares from elderly Indian grandmothers could stop us. Because, like so many inebriated people before us, the alcohol had seized the Good Judgment region of our brains and deluded us into believing that we were decent – nay, AMAZING – dancers. I was the Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire. The Frances “Baby” Houseman to his Johnny Castle. The Coco to his Ice-T. There may or may not have been grinding involved. I have a fuzzy recollection of instructing my boyfriend to “stop pulling up my dress.” So, basically, we were keeping it classy. But so what? We were tipsy! And AMAZING dancers! Not to mention we would never see most of these people again, anyway, right?

CUT TO: FOUR MONTHS LATER

The groom walks into my boyfriend’s office with a purposeful stride and makes a show of closing the door before demanding to know: “What, exactly, were you and Candy doing on the dance floor at my wedding?” As a montage of drunken flashes overwhelm my husband, impairing his ability to respond beyond an eloquent “Ummmm,” Samir interjects: “So I talked to my 16-year-old cousin in India this weekend to see how he liked our wedding video, which I hadn’t seen yet, and you know what he said? ‘Oh, man. That video was AWE-SOME.’”

Aware that “AWE-SOME” isn’t the typical teenage boy’s reaction to a wedding video, Samir decided to sit down and finally check it out himself – only to discover that the wedding videographer not only filmed our li’l bump-and-grind session (during which my boyfriend was attempting to infiltrate my dress), but he also zoomed IN to capture the unsavoriness of it all and lingered there for a good 40 minutes. So instead of receiving video of beautiful, romantic memories of stolen moments with his bride and congratulatory hugs from family, he got… amateur porn. With dance moves that were even more cringe-inducing than most porn background music.

More to the point: Amateur porn that had been sent to all of their family members in India who had been unable to attend the wedding. Including grandparents.

Boom chicka wah-wah…wahhhh.

Given that pornography isn’t as readily available in India because of the country’s tight restrictions and whatnot, Samir informed us the video would also likely make its way to the black market, where even more desperate teenage boys would get to “enjoy” our moves, giving whole new meaning to Bollywood. (See what I did there?) I can only imagine what the title of our porn debut may be. Probably something along the lines of, “Wedding Guests Gone Wild!” Or “An XXX-tra Special Wedding Dance.” Or “Not Particularly Good or Sexy or Revealing Porn, But, Hey, It’s All We’ve Got.”

Oh well. Whenever I feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment at the memory, I reassure myself it could have been worse – I could have been doing the Electric Slide.

Featured image via Shutterstock