Fletcher’s S(ex) Tapes: How To Break Up Like a Lesbian

Cari Fletcher just leaked her own sex tapes. No, not that kind—but these are almost more intimate.  

The S(ex) Tapes, a seven-track EP originally set to be released later next week, tells the very detailed story of her breakup with LGBT YouTube icon Shannon Beveridge. After letting the gays wonder for years if they were even together, the two decided to simultaneously announce both their relationship and the end of it, turning her official website into an archive of their personal photos, videos, texts, and voice-notes to promote the EP. As the respective “ex” in their #shotbymyex marketing, Beveridge indeed shoots all of the extremely erotic accompanying videos. You know, like lesbian ex-girlfriends do.

They take turning pain into art to a different level. Close-up shots of honey dripping down Fletcher’s body, the two rolling around in bed, and Fletcher broody in her underwear make you feel like you’re definitely intruding on something—and when you realize what she’s singing about, it doesn’t make it any better. They’re not just making intimate videos together—redefining the sex tape, if you will—they’re making videos for songs about their sex life, their breakup, Fletcher’s longing for independence and liberation, and her sexual endeavors that don’t involve her ex. 

After years of privacy, they’ve opened an extremely personal window into their lives, and the lyrics show us the juxtaposition between yearning for self-love and romantic love. She wants to discover who she is alone. She wants independence. She wants to test the waters and explore the fluidity of her sexuality. She also knows Beveridge is her soulmate. The entire EP is about how it’ll always be them, circling back to each other like it’s meant to be. And having a lot of sex.   

In the most depressingly intimate way, the project serves as representation of horny WLW heartbreak. I’ve never been in a lesbian relationship that didn’t feel like falling flat on my face in the most excruciatingly pleasurable way possible. When it ends, it’s like touching the ground after skydiving—catching your breath, coming down from an adrenaline rush, comforted by the fact you made it. Bittersweet that it’s over, readjusting to the floor. Learning my body and stepping into my sensuality with women was just as intricate and exhilarating. While the archive and the visuals and songs are Fletcher’s, I saw my own experiences in them. Being a woman deeply in love with another woman and feeling like it’s the end of the world when you lose her (then get her back, then lose her again). Being excited to be 20-something and gay and independent. Being horny as hell and not giving a shit who knows it. She makes these things feel beautiful and natural in the most intriguing and messy way. The whole situation is sexy, bold, and sad.

It’s the most lesbian thing I’ve ever seen. Sapphic Twitter discourse has called Fletcher and Beveridge “emotional masochists” for the mess that is working with your ex on your breakup album, likened the chaos to that of The L Word, and pointed out that Beveridge’s previous ex—the other half of the infamous Shannon and Cammie—streamed the EP on Spotify as soon as it dropped. In pure lesbian fashion, the three of them are friends.

The S(ex) Tapes in its entirety—the mess, the contents of the archive, the feelings—is the pinnacle of lesbian culture and deserves its flowers for that. It’s our representation of the intrinsic inability to cut off your ex. Of good sex and gentle affection. Ridiculously thoughtful anniversary gifts and wearing big pantsuits for fashion purposes. Of loving so hard it takes up your entire body and heart. Of sapphic melodrama. Of that hug in the street when you’re broken up and wish you weren’t. Of feeling free and powerful in your truest self.

Maybe it’s self-destructive, or maybe it takes a level of maturity I don’t possess, to so openly memorialize a relationship you’re both mourning and holding close, hoping it’s predestined somewhere that it’ll be yours again one day. Either way, the EP is a reminder to allow ourselves to love so deeply, because it truly is better to have loved and lost (and made some sex tapes) than to have never loved at all.

Anonymous

Photo by Shannon Beveridge