Heaven’s Gate
5 Second Time
I HAD EXAMS on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday during my normal class times. Realizing we’d all take off anyway, my professors kindly let us off for Friday. I was glad since I’d be prepping for my second try at a pilot for the show. I wouldn’t have gone to class regardless.
I didn’t need a blowjob to calm down this time, but I got one anyway.
Jerry and I had both read Karla MacDonald’s book, Love Me Like I Am, so when she came out gunning for me this time, I was ready. Guess we’d all learned something. We’d been through a taping with each other. Karla learned what I was going to say about what guys want in a woman. She’d learned Jerry’s stance of how a guy should act, based on the agreement he’d abided by. I’d learned that both of them had weak points in their arguments, which made me re-examine some of my own points in light of the way Jerry understood them. The result was explosive!
KARLA: If men simply paid attention, there would be no need for any of this explicit permission nonsense. Why should a woman explicitly give permission for a kiss or to touch her breasts? It’s embarrassing. An attentive man would know.
JERRY: But if we misread that, you want to reserve the right to be offended, or even to press charges.
KARLA: Of course! We’re women. We have to be able to defend ourselves.
ME: Let’s look at this idea of embarrassment. [Walk into audience with mike.] Hi. What’s your name?
WOMAN: Jane.
ME: Jane, what do you think about the embarrassment situation? Would you prefer to simply fend off clueless guys or tell them exactly what you want and are willing to do?
JANE: It might make for some short dates if we told them what they could do at the outset. It seems like guys need to probe… so to speak.
ME: But embarrassed?
JANE: Maybe a little. But if I’m going to let a guy take my bra off, what’s to be embarrassed about telling him he can?
ME: Thank you, Jane.
KARLA: It’s demeaning.
ME: I want to tell you all from experience… in fact, I’m going to ask my producer to join me for a minute, because she is the first person I ever heard these words from. [Sam joins me in front of the camera. She’s blushing a little, but game.] I was fifteen years old. All I knew flew out the window when my hormones kicked in. Say the word ‘girl’ and I was hard. But I have to tell you that Samantha said the sexiest thing to me that I have ever heard when we were out on a date. Do you remember what it was, love? [Nods. Microphone in front of her mouth.]
SAMANTHA: I said, “Brian, I give you explicit permission to kiss me and touch me anywhere above my waist. Inside or outside my clothes.” [Leans up to give me a kiss.]
ME: Bar none! The absolute sexiest words I’ve ever heard.
SAMANTHA: Possibly the most exciting thing I’ve ever said. I’ll say it again later, darling. [Exits.]
We continued to argue… or discuss the issue and Karla admitted that it had been pretty damned sexy. We also emphasized that a guy had to be honorable and stick to the agreement. Hands inside a shirt did not equate to fucking. We didn’t end up killing each other and the audience loved the interactions. The sum total was a show that was killer.
“Are you ready to make a choice?” Hannah asked as we met on Sunday afternoon.
“I don’t think it’s my decision,” I said. “This is really going to be part of Elaine’s gig. Who did you like best?”
“Not good enough, honey,” Elaine said. “You’ve worked with them. They’ve been in the prep area and on the set with you. They’ve each guest-hosted a show. And it’s you being replaced. Who carries the flag better than anyone else?”
“Oh, crap.” I’d had a different ‘assistant’ on the show each week since we resumed on Labor Day. The assistant would work with me for four days and then guest-host on Friday. Six of the twenty or so people we’d interviewed had been selected as candidates and were paid for their participation—two men and four women. There just weren’t that many men who were able to fill the bill. And I didn’t really like any of them. For the most part, I thought they’d all make great chefs. But they were conceited little pricks. “Okay. If it were a perfect world, I’d choose Reese Mendenhall. She’s cute. She’s talented. She has a great camera presence. She worked well with Mary and the triplets. She’d be a good complement to Elaine.”
“Great. I agree,” Elaine said.
“I knew you’d choose her,” Hannah smiled. “She’s so cute!”
“Wait, wait, wait! I think we have to go with Beth Winston.”
“What? Why? I mean she was pretty good, but nothing like Reese,” Elaine said.
“Because Reese is still in high school and she’s only seventeen. We can’t ask her to drop out. And I think Indiana has a law that says you have to stay in school until you’re eighteen. How is she supposed to tape a show every morning? We just can’t put that kind of pressure on a kid,” I said.
“Oh, Brian. I love you so much,” Hannah said. “Of course, you are right. We can’t put that kind of pressure on a kid. Except…”
“Except what?”
“She’s going to graduate at the end of the semester, which is only two weeks into the new year. She’s that smart and ahead of her class.”
“But she’s still only seventeen.”
“The law actually states ‘until eighteen or high school graduation.’ Can you imagine if I’d had to stay in school for another month after we graduated because I wasn’t eighteen yet? We vetted the ability to serve for all candidates before we brought them in to audition with you,” Hannah said.
“Crap! You could have told me that. You’d already chosen her.”
“If your first choice had been one of the others, we’d have reconsidered,” Hannah said. “We needed to hear you say that she was your first choice.”
“Sometimes I feel…” I let it slide. What did I really have to complain about?
“…like a motherless child,” Elaine sang. We all broke out laughing.
“We need to cover her first two weeks of the new season,” Hannah said.
“I can probably do it. We don’t have a distribution contract yet. I’m fresh out of ideas. I’ll get replaced on Young Cooking and have the rest of the semester to write my thesis.”
“Something will come,” Hannah said. “Sam and Rose are working on it.”
Nominally, I was the Executive Producer and should have been working on it. But this last term of grad school was kicking my butt. I’d already shifted my program so that I would get the MS in Telecommunications and then come back for an MBA separately instead of doing them jointly. Otherwise I’d be in classes again next term.
My thesis proposal and abstract were on Dr. Z’s desk awaiting approval. When I changed my program, he had to work on getting me a new committee as well.
Normally, I had three hours between when I was cleaned up after the show in the morning and when I had to leave for class. But Tuesday, my class was canceled. Wish I’d known that before I drove to campus, but I turned right around and headed back to the ranch. I found Jennifer, Hannah, Samantha, and Rose all in Stall One. It was getting crowded. Louise had taken the accounting over to her house. Courtney had connected her computer to the business network.
“Brian!” Rose said. “Just who we need. Why aren’t you in class?”
“Canceled.”
“Good. I think we have distribution, and if it goes well, we have sponsorship, as well.”
“Whoa! That’s great! Tell me about it,” I said. This was really good news. I hadn’t heard anything about a solid lead.
“It’s happening pretty fast,” Rose said. “I’m so thankful Hannah and Samantha have been here to help me get through it. Armand Lockhurst called. Not one of his flunkies, but the man himself.” It took me a minute to remember who the hell Armand Lockhurst was. Oh, yeah. The dude who owned the majority of the holding company that owned the Star. I guess as stockholders, we were sort of partners with him.
“Oh. Him. What did he want?” I asked. I wasn’t all that enthused about the relationship, but Art had convinced us that owning shares in his company was a good thing. It was part of the settlement against Chase Sanborn. After his armed assault on us last spring, Sanborn wasn’t going to be out of extended psychiatric care for a long time.
“He was a little upset. Said he understood we were shopping a show around and wanted to know why he hadn’t had an opportunity to bid for it.”
“What’s he going to do with it? It’s a television show.”
“Lockhurst Media Company has acquired a cable station and has distribution on all the major cable providers. Unfortunately, they have a dearth of programming. You saw what it was like for those specialty stations when we were in LA.”
“Right. So, he wants us to provide programming. Do we even match his demographic?” I asked. We needed Sarah.
“It looks good. Rae-Rae is really appealing to an older women’s audience. LWN is all over the place, but in spite of being a women’s network, they’re more like Cosmo than Seventeen,” Rose said. We’d started comparing audience profiles to popular women’s magazines. Elaine was definitely in the Cosmo category. Redress was in the Seventeen category. The plan for XX/XY was that we would be more targeted to ‘emerging women.’ We hadn’t actually found a good magazine to compare it to. “Celebrity Entertainment Network targets the younger female market with lots of stories about young stars. You’d be surprised at the way the Star has started to reshape its content toward that market, as well. The stories are a little gentler, trying to focus on the success and romance of young stars rather than the scandal of those who have fallen.”
“That sounds great, but you saw how those vultures were in LA. They want everything for nothing. They have nothing to offer,” I said. I was being argumentative, but Rose was driving and I knew she had something cooking or she wouldn’t have even brought it up to me. She sighed.
“Lockhurst wants an evening show to anchor his station. Nine p.m. Just when school girls and college girls are settling in to study and get ready for bed. Just like we always did. Jennifer has been on campus for the past week interviewing in the sororities. It was partly to find out their prime viewing time and partly to line up audiences for our IU weeks. Anyway, most sorority girls are in by nine on week nights, even though frats tend to stay out until eleven. But the frat guys don’t turn on television when they get back to the house unless there’s a ballgame on. The sororities do.”
“Wow. We have all that information?”
“Sarah’s been busy, too. We’ll get a final report from her next week.”
“So Lockhurst wants us to provide entertainment for his station and believes we’ll profit from our share in the company?”
“Just what I thought. In fact, that’s where he started,” Rose said. “He didn’t last long there.” She blew on her brightly polished fingernails and polished them on her right boob. I laughed. “He wants to pay us to produce the show exclusively for his station. Locked down, no-cancellation contract.”
“No one makes a non-cancellable contract,” I said.
“He really wants in our panties.”
“No!”
“I mean that figuratively. He wants a foothold in Hearthstone Entertainment. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Brian, he’s got more money than God. His vision is that we become the production arm for CEN. I had to hold him back or he’d have been building a new studio for us.”
“Wait! CEN? Isn’t that the station…?”
“The station we gave an exclusive to for their Late Night program with Roslyn Knightly,” Rose completed for me. “This is it, darling. We’re ready to join the big time.”
Shit!
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