I sit back on the couch of my hotel room at the W, and sip some morning coffee. Man, what a night. I hadn’t watched the tapes of the performance at Barclay’s yet, but just based on how my body feels, I'm pretty damn sure I must’ve knocked it out of the park.

I hear a knock on the door. “Come in!” I call out, hoping it’s room service with my vegetarian omelet. I'm starving.

I hear the key reader register in the door, and then the door opening. 

“Hey Stone,” Frances says, peering around the corner of the door at me.

“Hi,” I say, cocking my head at her weird behavior. She’s normally bouncy and happy and cheerful. She’s certainly not normally hiding behind doors.

“Have you seen the morning news yet?” she asks nervously, sidestepping into the room and closing the door behind her, shoving her thick glasses up her nose.

“No. Why? What’s up?” 

I reach for the remote and she hollers, “It’s okay!” I freeze, my hand over the remote, and just stare at her. To say that this is unusual is … the understatement of the century.

“I … uh … well, I have the video on my laptop. I don’t know why you did that, Stone, but we need to clean this up, and quick.” She pulls her laptop bag off her shoulder and begins riffling through it for her laptop.

Oh fuck.

Why I did what? I want to ask.

But I can’t. 

So I just stare at her, waiting for her to produce the video, the evidence of whatever it was that I did this time, dread coiling in my stomach. For her to be acting like this, it can’t be good. 

I was on stage, at a concert. Surely I couldn’t have done anything too horrible, right?

But if that were true, why is Frances acting like I murdered someone?

With shaking hands, she finally gets the laptop set up, and then swivels the screen toward me. 

“Last night, Stone Slayer gave an … unusual concert performance,” the morning show host says with an awkward yet somehow gleeful smile. “I think our editing team has cleaned this up to the point that we can show a clip of it on our show. Let’s watch.”

Cleaned it up? What the—

There I am, dancing around on stage, doing all of the same moves I do every night and then …

I unzip my pants and start waving my cock in the air like I just don’t care. Except, because this is a video being shown on a morning show, there’s this giant gray blob over the top of my cock.

But I know what’s behind that gray blob. I know what I did, even if I can’t remember any of it.

Oh lord almighty, I'm fucked.

Thank god my assistant pauses the video when the bouncers start dragging me off stage, and I don’t have to watch myself make an ass out of myself any longer.

“Sir, I’m not sure what you drank or took beforehand to make you do that, but we’re in a world of shit now.” She’s biting her lower lip and I know she’s right, but the thought is making me ill. 

I can’t let her know how much this is affecting me. I can’t let her know that it was news to me just as much as it was to the rest of the world that I did this.

I plaster a smile onto my face, forcing it on there even if I want to rage against the world.

“So what now?” I ask, flipping the laptop lid closed. I can’t stand looking at me anymore. The Gray Blob Cock being dragged off stage.

“Well, we’ve been getting a lot of interview requests this morning—” I bet we have “—but the one I actually accepted was Blush.” At my confused look, she says, “It’s a women’s fashion magazine and they do some celebrity interviews, but they’re mostly known for lipstick and hemline advice articles. I can’t imagine you’d have any real reason to have read their magazine before.” I just stare at her, not even deigning to respond to that comment, and she takes that as encouragement to continue. “I think that they’d be the nicest to you, since they don’t normally do a lot of celebrity interviews, so they probably don’t know how to ask the really hard questions. Plus, this is a huge scoop for them, so they’re going to be on their best behavior in hopes that you’ll continue to grant them interviews.”

If I still have a career a month from now…

“Frances, you haven’t mentioned police yet. What’s going on with that? I imagine I could be arrested for public indecency.” I try not to let the panic overwhelm me at the thought. I certainly am no stranger to being arrested for doing stupid shit, although I used to actually have fun doing that stupid shit. Now, I just get to watch it played out on national TV.

“Ted is on it,” she says with a shrug. “He thinks he’s going to be able to plead it down. I’ll keep you updated on that.”

I nod my thanks. At $3,000 an hour, Ted damn well be able to get some sort of magic to happen. Maybe I can do community service. My eyes flick back down to Frances’ laptop, closed on the coffee table, like a coiled snake in the hot sun.

A lot of community service.

“But,” she checks the time on her phone, “you need to get ready to talk to Blush. The reporter should be here soon.” I set my coffee cup down on the table, about to push myself up to get ready when she stops me with a hand on my arm. “Stone, you have to fix this. Whatever you say, whatever you do, you need to make this better.”

I nod again.

Her advice is completely impossible, and completely true.

In other words, I'm fucked.