Wednesday morning, I made the drive down to Phoenix for my meeting with Mr. Gardner. The hour long drive gave me ample time to dread what he might say to me, although it's not like I'd felt anything else for the past two days. I'd hardly ever spoken to him; when he first agreed to support my channel, we'd made all of the arrangements by email. Even after that, the few times I'd met him had been at little weekend conferences he held for his network of conservative and religious creators. Claire had met him a few more times, but they were all extremely brief -- usually some paperwork formality that needed to be done in person.
He loved to tell people his backstory. By his account, he'd gone off to Hollywood when he was young, working his way up from the bottom through various backstage roles until he was a powerful studio executive, making money hand over fist. After that, so the story goes, he became dissatisfied with the lifestyle he was living and found religion, choosing to focus his work in the accompanying conservative niches. The exact details of this conversion experience tended to move around, but the overall tale remained consistent. He chose to turn his back on all the success in exchange for more morally upstanding work. I had a nagging hunch, though, that both his level of prior success and the purity of his intentions were at least slightly exaggerated; he may have just wanted to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. However, none of our limited interactions provided any strong evidence. If he was only playing a part to profit off of conservative audiences, he was playing it well.
Claire was waiting for me in the parking garage; I'd asked her to so I didn't have to walk in alone. She had gladly agreed since she didn't want to either. We greeted each other, each exchanging terse "hey"s, not sure what else to say.
"It passed a million this morning," she said, trying to ease the tension by addressing it head on
"Yeah, One million one hundred and fifty-eight thousand as of nine this morning," We'd both been checking these numbers obsessively. A car door shut somewhere on the other side of the garage and echoed around the concrete walls. This reminder that we weren't alone made me realize the real possibility that anyone on the street may have seen my video. Maybe whoever just shut their door had. Would they recognize me? Would they laugh at me?
she strode by Claire and me a few moments later, directly to the elevator, not taking a second glance at me to my relief. I checked my watch, "we should probably start heading up." Claire nodded in agreement.
"Oh, ****, by the way, I have your key in my purse. I figured after the last two days you might..." She trailed off, but I understood her meaning: I might want to take it off, throw it away, and try everything in my power to make it like this never happened.
"No, I don't need it," I replied. Ironically, until she asked me, I hadn't thought about my physical denial at all. I'd been so overwhelmed with this sudden unwanted burst of attention that there was hardly room for me to think about what my body wanted. Now that Claire's question brought my attention back to it, it dawned on me that this was the start of my ninth day locked and there was already a tight knot of desire behind my belt that begged to be untied. I was almost thankful for the swarm of other worries and emotions that kept my focus off of it.
Claire and I walked across the garage and rode the elevator up in silence. Whatever was going to happen, it was out of our control now.
