Long before the world learned via a sex tape that Dylan Napa’s shagging names were Big Papi and Big Papa, I fled Australia after a sex tape featuring me was widely circulated - thus ending my promising rugby league career before it had the chance to fully bloom.
Think of this piece as a cautionary tale. Or the long-overdue obituary of the stupid young man I was; someone who aspired to greatness through sport, but begrudgingly settled into mediocrity because of an act of drug and alcohol-fuelled foolishness.
She assured me it was just for us, and I believed her.
Even now, all these years later, the memory of her betrayal and its insidious consequences often emerges from the darkest corridor of my mind and snarls and barks like a rabid hell mutt.
There has been a lot of barking of late, what with the constant lurid reports linking NRL players to sex tapes.
My advice to NRL players, nay, to anyone, is don’t do it. Do what you like in bed with another consenting adult, just don’t film it — lest something similar to this befalls you:
It was Brisbane, 1990, and I was a 20-year-old fullback on the cusp of stardom: signed by the Broncos and playing first grade in the Brisbane competition while honing my skills.
I had been compared to Gary Belcher. But I thought I more resembled Garry Jack. It mattered not, because I didn’t get the chance to develop into either of them.
Lola and I had been together seven months when I arrived at her home one Thursday night to find a camera on a tripod in her bedroom. We had spoken about filming ourselves in bed, though I didn’t think she would go through with it.
How wrong I was.
Lola was so keen she elaborately staged The Wizard of Oz fantasy we had discussed over two goon bags the previous week. In full costume, she played dominatrix Dorothy, and I was submissive Lion.
From the stereo blared a German heavy-metal version of the film’s classic soundtrack, as booze and drugs were consumed recklessly.
We broke up, badly, four months later, and soon numerous VHS recordings of the deranged sex session were in circulation.
Humiliated, I abandoned my league dream, in favour of relative anonymity in Hong Kong.
So again fellas: it’s not worth it; it really isn’t.
Mark Bode is an ACM journalist. The events depicted in his writings are not meant to be taken literally. He uses satire and fiction in commentary.