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Cory nodded, backing away with the guiltiest face I’d ever seen.
“What’s going on?”
I stopped in front of her desk, peeking around her monitor. She might have stopped the sound, but she hadn’t closed the browser. I saw…me. In the classroom, in my ridiculous pimp suit.
“Please tell me you filmed that yourself.”
Cory’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Instead he shrunk away.
I turned Barbara’s monitor and the moment I noticed the red and black logo in the top left corner, my stomach roiled.
YouTube.
Someone had posted my talk on YouTube.
“Motherfucker.”
“It wasn’t me, Ben. I swear.” Cory held out his hands in
a defensive position.
“I know.” I nodded at him. “I know it wasn’t you.”
When I looked over at Barbara, she couldn’t even meet my eye. So I decided the only way to show that this was no big deal was to make fun of it. “Did you get to the ‘have you gotten an STD’ part? It’s the highlight.”
“Oh, Ben. I’m sorry.” Barbara was sincerely sympathetic. “You don’t deserve this.”
I shook it off, heading to my office. There was too much to do today.
Cory followed me in. “It’s really not that bad,” he said as he sat in the chair opposite my desk.
“Not that bad?” I laughed. If I had any hopes of wanting to be taken seriously, that video meant I shouldn’t even bother.
“You had to have encountered this kind of thing before. People who look down on you just because you work in porn?”
Sure I had. And I was prepared for it under normal circumstances. When I was just Ben, porn director. But I was not expecting it to come from students who were supposed to be open to learning from others, especially when I was trying to be a professional for the first time in my life.
What a joke.
I was the joke.
And so was my expectation that I’d get through my to-do list before I left the office to take Cory to the set. The day had gone by as slow as molasses, and after taking a call from the merchandising manager of one of the biggest retail outlets we supplied and finding out our deliveries had been wrong for the last three months and she just wanted to call and voice her displeasure, Hirsh skipped out on another meeting—the monthly marketing meeting where we strategized the website ads, social media content, and other items.
Perfect. Exactly what I needed.
How was I supposed to prove that I could do this job when Hirsh didn’t have the courtesy of showing up?
None of that, and not even bringing Cory to his first porn shoot, kept my mind from focusing on the YouTube fiasco. Although in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have taken him to an orgy scene. I was positive his eyes were going to be bugged out for at least a week.
When the day was done, I knew I needed to be around friends, so I headed to Max and Everly’s house.
“There he is,” Max yelled from the living room just as I walked through the door. “The YouTube star has arrived.”
I was never going to live this down.
“How the hell do you know?”
Max laughed. “Because the first thing Ryan did after you told him was text me the link.”
