But that night, Jonas sat in the dark of his apartment. He opened his private folder. He took the sterile, official voiceover about "mutual respect" and "enthusiastic consent" and laid it over the B-roll of Couple #3 on the park bench. Her pinky hooking his. His crimson ears. The silence that wasn't empty, but full.
But Jonas didn't cut that take. He saved it to a private folder on his desktop. He told himself it was for "reference."
The director, a tired woman with a headset, sighed. "Reset. Too much intimacy. This is an educational video, not a rom-com."
The script was a checklist. "How to say no." "How to ask for consent." "How to use a condom on a wooden model." Jonas worked methodically, slicing the lectures, inserting the mandatory animations of sperm and eggs. He was bored to tears. Sexuele Voorlichting -1991 Belgium-.mp4l
But six months later, Jonas was hired to edit a wedding video. A small, intimate affair in Antwerp. As he scrubbed through the raw footage of the couple feeding each cake, he stopped.
