Becoming the Storm
71 LA Story
ROSE AND I FLEW to LA on the fifth and spent the next five days at the cable TV trade show called The National Show. I guess I’m just a hick. Doug used to say he was former FBI—Farm Boy of Indiana. I liked that phrase and planned to use it sometime. Even though farming was behind us by the time I was growing up, I felt like I was a total rube in LA.
Jennifer had done her research and worked with Sarah to develop different pitches for Rose and me to use when we talked to potential distributors. There was kind of a four-tier approach in the industry. At the top were the cable companies. They owned the lines and if you wanted a show to air on Cable TV, it ultimately had to be listed and carried by one or more of those dozen. It wasn’t at all like broadcast television. For broadcast, you needed an FCC license for a certain frequency and a tower. The only ones who had FCC licenses in this industry were the ones who owned airwaves.
The second tier were networks and their channels. Back in the broadcast space, the network was a kind of franchise that provided national programming and advertising for independently owned local television stations. In cable, a network was an owner of channels. One group had six different movie channels that played different kinds of content around the clock. One channel played westerns. One played new releases. One was strictly sci-fi. The company that owned Lifelong Women’s Network had six other channels, including, to my surprise, a soft porn channel. We learned the difference there, too. Soft porn meant there was a lot of kissing and moaning with exposed tits. Hard porn—yes there were entire networks of channels that provided hard porn—focused on dicks. I just didn’t understand that. The programming was obviously meant for men, but most of what they showed were dicks in mouths, pussies, and asses and coming all over. We heard one promoter actually calling the spewing of come on a woman the ‘money shot.’ It gave me a new perspective. Why the hell were guys so interested in watching other guys come?
The third tier were the channels themselves. Whether it was part of a network or not was irrelevant. There were over three hundred channels represented at the show, not including the porn channels that were in a separate area of the show entirely. When you look at a cable directory, you see channels. What I didn’t realize was that you don’t see all of them. I think our cable directory in Indiana had maybe fifty channels, which seemed like forty-eight too many. That’s when I learned that every cable company (top tier) doesn’t carry every channel. And even those it carries aren’t available in every market. Part of the cable franchise that was awarded by a city or community included local programming. The city set how many stations had to be provided. They might want a city council channel that would broadcast all the meetings of the city council and their various committees. A hotel chain might want the local broadcast channels, a movie channel, a few porn channels, and a channel dedicated to hotel services that repeated the same content every half hour.
At the bottom of the pile were the program providers. That’s us. We produce a daily show and send it to our syndicate. But little independent producers aren’t the only program providers. Organizations like the NFL provide programming. Movie producers like MGM and Paramount provide programming. Even national broadcast networks like CBS and NBC provide programming in the form of reruns of popular shows. We were the bottom of the bottom layer, but without content providers, none of the rest of the system would exist.
There were opportunities to pitch our wares. We had content and we needed distribution. We went from booth to booth at the expo trying to find a programming executive to pitch our shows to. Since we had two successful shows, we got a few ears. Most were piranhas. They wanted content, but they wanted it for next to nothing.
There were also sessions in which I’d booked a slot where we had five minutes to pitch our content to a roomful of programming execs. We handed out our portfolio, showed a quick clip of Elaine, and gave a pitch for new shows coming from Hearthstone Entertainment this fall. None of the new shows actually existed. They were all concepts that we could develop if someone showed a real interest. Program directors are as sleazy as any Hollywood producer. What they were primarily interested in was getting Rose alone ‘to make a deal.’ We even had a porn channel approach us about doing a quick video in their private studio ‘upstairs.’ They were willing to pay me $200 and Rose $600. To have sex. On camera. To broadcast!
One of the side benefits of the program exec pitches, though, was that there were also potential sponsors attending the sessions. Sponsors looked for programming that was an appropriate vehicle for their advertising. These guys hired people like Sarah to define exactly who could and should buy their products. You didn’t put tampon ads in the middle of a football game. We got a lot of business cards from companies looking for shows to advertise on.
By Thursday, we were exhausted. All week alone with Rose and we’d only made love once.
“I’m not going back to that place tomorrow,” Rose told me finally. “It’s going to take me a week of showers to get clean again. Why are we even in this business?”
I pulled Rose into my arms and kissed her softly. I’d have suggested we just order room service and stay where we were, but the only hotel we could get didn’t have such luxuries. I was actually thankful that we had clean sheets and towels. Rose hugged me tightly.
“No parties tonight. No bars. In fact, we need to go someplace completely different and away from this convention center. LA’s got a huge Chinese population. Let’s find a good Chinese restaurant and hide from everyone else.”
We talked to the concierge at the hotel and he understood what we wanted. He told us the best, of course, was in Chinatown and we could get there by cab. He gave us the name and address and called a cab. Half an hour and $40 later we were at a dim sum house in Chinatown. And it was good! And the service was attentive. And it ended up being a little more expensive than we expected because they kept bringing around little dishes of food and baskets that had been steamed and we just kept selecting things and eating them. Then they charged by the basket or plate. Sure, that plate of wontons was only $2.50. But that was only one of about fifteen plates we had on the table by the time we’d finished. Fortunately, I had cash with me and we paid for the meal. If we’d had anything other than tea to drink, I’d have ended up washing dishes.
“I have to tell you about what happened to my girlfriend Rose and me,” I said after we’d showered and crawled into bed.
“Hmm?” She turned to look at me with an eyebrow raised. It slowly dawned on her what I’d just started and her smile cut through all the gloom of the week. “Tell me about it,” she whispered.
I won’t go into how we got lost. Just that we were. There were pavements and street names that sounded familiar, but we didn’t quite recognize them. Huge buildings towered around us. But it was a jungle. We could hear the sounds of predators everywhere we turned. The two of us were alone and frightened. I clutched her hand to reassure her and was reassured.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered to me. “We’ll find our way home.”
We huddled together in the night, scarcely sleeping for listening to the night sounds.
In the pre-dawn light, we heard a voice.
“You two are just what I need.” We looked up into the eyes of a squat little toad of a man whose beady eyes were scanning up and down our bodies. “Come with me. I’ll get you food and a shower. You’ll have a place to be together. And you’ll get money. All you have to do is be yourselves.”
Mama always said not to go with strangers, but we had no choice. We were alone and tired and hungry. We followed the stranger.
“I’m scared, Brian,” Rose said as I told her the story. “Hold me lover. Will we be all right?”
“We’ll be fine, darling Rose,” I said. “How would we know happily ever after if all we’d known was happily ever before.”
“Just don’t let me be hurt, my cónyuge. I trust you.”
“Now,” said the squat man when we’d showered and eaten our fill. “Let’s get you to a nice comfy bed where you can be yourselves. Don’t worry about the others in the room. They won’t disturb you. Just do all the things that come naturally. You are young and in love. You want to kiss. You want to explore each other’s body. You want to make love. This is where you can do that. We won’t disturb you. Just do what comes naturally and in the morning, you will be rich.”
Rose’s hand stroked my dick and I had her breast in my hand, bending forward to flick her nipple occasionally as I told my story.
The toad was right. I wanted to go to bed and kiss Rose, all over her lovely body. I wanted to massage her lovely breasts and suckle at her nipples. We kissed as we fell into bed and began pulling at each other’s clothes. Rose was even more fervent than me. I was naked in seconds and standing before her, aroused at her ardor. I drew her into my arms and kissed her once again.
“But the cameras,” she whispered.
“There is no room in my heart or my mind to consider them,” I said. “There is only room for you.”
I lay Rose back on the bed and kissed her body. I found the spot behind her left ear that makes her shoulder come up and a smile appear on her face. I circled her magnificent breasts with my hands and laved her nipples with my tongue. I kissed down her smooth, flat tummy to her trimmed mound and delved between her folds with my tongue.
Rose in the throes of orgasm was beautiful and in the aftermath pulled me to her. She held my cock as I slid into her. There is no feeling in the world like my cock sliding in and out of Rose’s ready and willing pussy. Being held in her warmth fills my entire being with joy. We scarcely moved, just relishing the joining of our bodies, gazing into each other’s eyes and touching our lips softly together. When we reached our peak, my breath caught and I held it until I nearly passed out. Rose clutched me to her as we held each other in love.
My story faltered. Rose and I had moved together as I told my little tale and I was too caught up in her to continue talking. In fact, our orgasms were intense, gripping, and almost silent. We rolled to our sides, still connected, and held each other until we were nearly asleep.
“We just made a porn video,” Rose whispered. “You are so naughty.”
“Oh, that isn’t the end,” I said.
“Are you awake enough to finish the story?”
“Cut!” the toad yelled. “This will never do. You didn’t do anything. You just lay there and… and… made love. She needs to give you a blowjob, then you fuck missionary, then doggy, then anal. And what about those magnificent tits? You didn’t fuck her tits! You can’t make a porn movie if you are going to come inside her. You have to pull out and spray all over her. Get some in her mouth so she can show it to you. You two obviously know nothing about sex. Pack up. Collect your money and get out of here. That was a waste.”
The cameras were put away. The crew rolled their eyes. I gently helped Rose dress and she smiled as she tucked me into my pants and made sure I didn’t get caught on the zipper. By the time we were dressed, everyone had gone. Even dressing with Rose was exciting.
Not know anything about sex? Perhaps we didn’t know beans about movies, but we knew about love.
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