Chapter 7 -- Colleen (Revisited)
It turned out my little escapade into the club scene bought me a week's worth of mental peace. I couldn't decide if that was a long time, or just a little bit. But in the middle of that week, I got an invite to head up to Vancouver and visit Colleen on the set of "Distant Lives," and I decided that it was fine to take a little time off.
One of the things they never tell you about working in the tech industry is that while you're going to get a ton of paid time off, they're going to do everything they can to discourage you from actually
taking
said time off. Oh sure, sure, they'll send emails out regularly, stressing that mental health is important, and that PTO should be used, but when it comes time to actually
request
PTO, they'll do everything they can to discourage you from doing so without actually saying it. But seeing as I'm basically head of my division, I can take PTO any time I damn well want, and have made a habit of basically
forcing
my people to use their PTO whenever their stockpile gets too full.
I told you, I'm a great dude to have as your boss.
Despite my ability to take PTO any time I wanted to, I also had a tendency to ignore my own advice, and my pool of PTO was nearly always full. So when I filed for a week off, I still had a few months worth of banked PTO waiting for me.
Colleen had kept up her end of the bargain, as had I, and we'd been swapping dirty pics once a day for the better part of two weeks when she finally sent me a message saying "Dude, I just need
dick
. Get up here. You can see the set and everything."
She sent that message when I was at work and in the middle of something, so about twenty minutes later, another message came through with a picture of her with one arm over her tits, but her face fully framed in the shot, and the look on her face was one of the sexiest things I'd ever seen in my goddamn life, so I headed into the bathroom to take a shot to send her back, as well as a note that I'd booked my flight up to see her for Friday and would hang around until Wednesday or so, so she'd have plenty of time to get whatever she had in mind.
The flight from Seattle to Vancouver's only about an hour long. I mean, it's only a little more than 3 hours by car, but I didn't feel like putting the excess miles on my car, and because of work, I have so many free airline miles that any time I want to go somewhere for fun, it doesn't cost me a dime.
When I sent her the message with my itinerary, she sent back a text telling me not to bother with either a hotel or renting a car, and that she would keep me busy the entire time I was around. She did, however, insist that I don't show up too early in the morning. It turns out that shooting television can often run very late into the evening.
By the time I got onto the plane on Friday afternoon, I was starting to feel the pressure from the bracelet again, and I started to wonder if it might have been safer to drive instead. But I'd been studying how the bracelet worked, and I'd found ways to help manage its need to exert influence on people. If I wasn't looking at or hearing people, it meant the bracelet didn't have anyone to focus on. That meant I was watching something on my iPad with the music all the way cranked up. The flight was short enough that they didn't offer drink service, which was all the better. When I was walking through the airport itself, I had my headphones blaring music into my ears, and didn't have my contacts in, so anyone more than a few feet away from me was out of focus.
That didn't mean I could completely avoid the pressure from the bracelet, however. It wanted to exert its will on someone, to be pushing its agenda into the world. But I kept reminding myself that I would be hanging out with Colleen soon, and I was very interested to see how the bracelet responded to repeat customers. Would it lessen the pressure a bit, or would a sexual encounter with someone who'd already passed on me have no impact on the bracelet's carnal needs?
Because I didn't have my contacts in, I nearly walked right past the dude holding up the whiteboard with my name written on it. He was big and muscular, dressed in a very expensive looking suit, and believe you me, I know expensive suits when I see them. His skin was pale white, a stark contrast to his jet black hair. On the whiteboard was written "D. King" and the whiteboard looked tiny in the man's massive hands.
I pulled my headphones down around my neck and tapped my iPhone to stop playing the Herbie Hancock album I'd had queued up. "Uh, you looking for Derrick King?" I said to him. Colleen had told me not to bother with renting a car, but I'd expected her to meet me at the airport herself.
"Da," the man said in a heavily Russian accented voice. "Ms. Yi had the production company send me to pick you up. Is that only bag, or do you need baggage claim?"
"Oh, this is all I've got man. What's your name?"
"I am called Armen," he said, turning to lead me towards the car. "Is good. You come. We go."
We headed out and into the parking lot, where Armen led us to one of two dozen identical black Escalades, his fingertips pressing the keyfob in his pocket to make the lights blink, so we both knew where we were heading.
A few minutes later, we were on our way out of the Vancouver airport parking garage and were heading north. Colleen had told me they were working out of a studio lot just on the outskirts of town, and told me to be prepared for security to be a little intense.
I'd never been to a movie or television studio before, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but when we got to the lot, Armen had to sign us in before they even let us onto the lot itself, and I also had to both sign in and let them take a picture of my passport and driver's license.
I sort of thought that would be the end of the scrutiny, but I guess that just goes to show how little I knew about the entertainment business. Once we were on the lot, we drove over and parked in a lot, with Armen getting my little wheelie suitcase for me, refusing to let me carry it myself.
We headed into a small little office-like building that was attached to a fence, and it wasn't until we were inside that I realized it was another checkpoint. I found it a bit much, but I guess HBO took their filming security extremely important after the Game of Thrones leaks they'd gotten over the last year or so.
Here, they made copies of my passport and driver's license again, but they also handed me a four page Non-Disclosure Agreement to sign. Normally, I give these things the once over and then just sign them, but because this was my first entertainment industry NDA, I decided to take the time and read it quite carefully. It was basically the standard sort of stuff -- no talking about what I'd seen, no reporting on any scenes, sets, costumes or dialogue I may have seen or heard. If I
did
say or report on anything, they'd own my house, my car, my job, my bank account, my life and the lives of the relatives I liked best.
So, basically, the same as any other NDA.
They're all like that.
(No,
really.
)