It was one of those days when you’ve just had it with school and classrooms and friends and you need a little alone time, so you chuck a sickie and your parents know, but they let it go.

I was 15 on this wonderful day when mum approved my sickie.

Everyone left the house and it was beautifully quiet.

I jumped out of bed and ate Nutella out of the jar as I planned my day of freedom.

It was a housebound day of course, because mum would call and check in, and we only had a house phone – it was the 90s.

It was sort of like being under house arrest, but in a pleasant sort of way.

I did what every teenager does when they are alone at home with no fear of being caught – they go through their family’s shit.

My brother had a few well-thumbed porno mags under his bed (again, it was the 90s) and a few coins he would definitely notice were missing, but nothing else of interest.

Next stop, my parent’s room. I found my mum’s vibrator (ew), my dad’s stale lung busters that he kept for emergencies (which I routinely bummed and smoked behind the dumpsters at the supermarket nearby), a book about the female orgasm way back in the cupboard, and a stash of VHS tapes.

It was weird, because we had our own impressive collection of VHS tapes proudly displayed alphabetically in the living room. So why were these in here? Hoping to find porn, I started sifting through them. Most were unlabelled, a good sign, I thought.

I took a few out to the lounge room. The first one was just snow and static. The second was a shaky hand held, out of focus home video from a funeral or something.

Then I thought I heard a key in the door and threw all the tapes under the couch and curled up on the lounge with a hang dog face for few minutes. But the coast was clear.

The third started with a couch.

It looked a lot like our couch, which was weird. It was shot on a tripod and was quite far away, but I could make out a naked woman on the couch.

Then a man, who was clearly fiddling with the camera controls walked away from the camera, naked bum in all its glory, towards the woman.

It was kind of dark, so really just silhouettes, but they started kissing and it was ok. Not really hot, but ok.

Then the dude jumped on the woman and they started having stiff, missionary sex.

It was the least sensual porn I had seen, and although I didn’t have much to compare it with, I was pretty sure this was amateur.

Despite this I tried to have a little wank. My heart wasn’t in it, but I felt obliged, watching porn and all.

There was a little grunting, and it went on for about 10 minutes. I was trying to get into it, but I got a bit bored so I fast forwarded a little and sat back down to watch what I hoped would be a glorious finale.

It wasn’t glorious. It actually made me wonder whether sex was fun at all.

Some porn, I thought.

Then the man got up and walked towards camera, doodle swinging around. He was smiling.

Then the next thoughts happened rapidly over about four seconds.

He looked familiar.

Really familiar.

He looks like my dad! Ha! How weird is that!

Oh my god that is our couch.

Oh my god it is my dad.

Oh my god…that’s…

My mum.

I have never run so fast to the VHS player to hit stop. But it took forever, my legs were jelly, the VHS player was so far away. I was screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOO but it came out all low pitched and slow.

I managed to get to the stop button.

But the damage was done.

My life was over.

I had wanked to a video of my parents having sex.

I went and did a tongue scrape and put all the tapes back.

I furiously smoked a stale Peter Jackson Red out the back.

And I went to bed, sick for real this time.

I was pretty awks around my parents for the next few weeks. I had trouble making eye contact.

Then my brain did something wonderful. It blocked the memory out completely for 15 years, until I could handle it again.

Then, one day, it just popped right back in to my consciousness.

I was able to tell my brother and sharing the burden felt good. We laughed a lot. And also, be quite impressed with our kinky parents, making a sex tape and all.

And I learnt a valuable lesson which I want to share.

If you find a random sex video with a couch that looks just like your couch in it, in a lounge room that looks just like your lounge room, then it’s highly likely that it is your couch and your lounge room and you better get ready cos you’re about to see something heavy.