You take a deep breath. This will be the first of many of these. You look around your office and find courage. Your awards are adoring the walls and accomplishments are all within your site. You tell yourself this meeting will be important but it is not THAT important. You tell yourself this will not make or break your career. You tell yourself that if today goes bad then you will have other days. You will have other opportunities. You tell yourself this over and over again. You almost believe it.
You can’t help but smile and laugh just a bit. The truth though is that this will matter. This meeting can make you or can break you. As much as you want your pulse to slow a bit you still feel like you took two lines of coke instead of the poppyseed muffin. Interestingly enough, ingesting both would probably cause you to fail a drug test. You shake your head and want to laugh but your stomach tightens. Laughter will have to come later.
You know what this presentation means. It is not as though you haven’t prepared. You spent the better part of the last two weeks crafting your vision and recording and editing. Then you edited that. Then you edited that. It went on like that. You didn’t sleep but you can remember the entire 20 min video frame by goddamn frame.
You sit and look up at your twin monitors. You hate online meetings. You would sell this so much better in person. You have on your black power suit and white blouse. You have on the heels that make your calves pop. You know how fierce you look. They will still see you on camera. They will probably still see you on camera. You have the shutter on the webcam closed for now. Video will be optional of course and some of the prospective members will just be on a call, still the more that see you the better. You click on the link for the agenda for what feels like the thousandth time. You have it memorized. Do you have it memorized enough?
You shake your head at your rotten luck. You are scheduled to go 5th if the agenda. You are 5th out of 11 slots. Meaning you cannot go and be done with it. Meaning you cannot tune out and prep again for most of the time. Fifth means you will address the members right when they are their most bored. You sigh and think they might as well have lullaby music going in the background when it is your turn. You take a deep breath. You aren’t going to let anything derail you. You psych yourself up and tell yourself you got this. You are even wearing the lucky suit and, truth be told if only to yourself, your lucky lingerie. You smirk, they will not know what hit them. Will they know, will they already know before you can even get out a sentence?
You hear the bell go off signaling the meeting has been started by one of the members. You review your open windows on the computer. You have your notes in bullet form on your right. The references are lined up in a window just behind it so you can switch back and forth with ease. You glance it the monitor on the right. You see the slide deck you prepared and emailed again this morning with the 4th revision. You wince, you should have reviewed it again, you didn’t have time to do a fifth revision. You should have prepared earlier and not slept ALL six of those hours this week. You would have had more time and it would have been more polished.
You breathe again. You push the doubt away as you exhale. No, you tell yourself, no the deck is perfect. The notes are perfect. The remarks are perfect. The video is perfect. You are perfect. There is no way to be stopped. They will be eating out of your hand. Will they be eating out of your hand?
The moderator goes through the usual hellos and pleasantries with some of the other members on the call. This is the sort of small talk that you let yourself do when you are more relaxed but it would just be a distraction now. You will not be distracted and you will not be side tracked. You close your eyes and see the slides roll by one at a time with the perfect highlight of remark with the perfect emphasis. Each note is serious without being overly dramatic. The comments are humorous without becoming campy. You got this. Do you?
The moderator says that you will wait just a few more minutes to let people that are arriving late the chance to log in to the meeting. He also lets you and the other firms know that they plan to come to a quick decision on this. The winning firm should know rather quickly. You got this. Do you have this? You don’t think you do. Your stomach knots up. Who in the hell are you kidding? You can lie to them but you cannot lie to yourself. They will all see. They will all see what you already know. Your palms get sweaty and your left eye starts to twitch.
There is a knock at the door. You open your eyes. How can there be a knock at the door? The entire office was told to be silent for the next hour. Your secretary was given explicit instructions not to let anyone get near the door let alone knock on it. It made no sense. Why was someone knocking at the door? Margret, she was a bulldog about the outer office and your door. If someone had tried to get by her she would have latched on to their neck with her teeth and wouldn’t release until either she was dead or they were. How could there be a knock?
You glance down at the monitors. The meeting was already 1 minute over already. They would start any minute. If someone got past Margret it must be really important or Margret was either dead or a hostage. Why was there a knock? You make sure the microphone for your computer is still on mute. You rise and walk to the door. Well whatever this was Margaret was going to have to explain or there would be a “come to Jesus” moment… as your grandmother would have said.
You move to the door and as you open it say the words, “what part of no disturbances did you…” but you can't get the words to come out. You stand there with no ability to speak or to move. You have no control. You have no control at all. I stand there looking at you with an enigmatic grin. I am wearing the same Italian suit you know. I smell the same way that you remember. I look the sound way that you remember. When I say “good afternoon.”
Your mouth refuses to make the sound. Your lungs refuse to take in the air you feel faint and completely alert all at once. You can’t blink. You feel the heat rise from below and rush all over you like a fever. You stagger back one step looking for a hold or purchase. Your gaze shifts to Margret. You see her there behind her desk. You see her but she will not look at you. She is only looking straight down. She wouldn’t even look up if you screamed.
All the other workers in the office have also suddenly found something on their shoes or something interesting on the floor to watch. They will not look up. They will not meet your gaze. They will not help you. No one will be coming to save you. The dizziness stuns you and you take another step backward. You make enough room that I seize the chance and move inside your office and slowly close the door.
I don’t speak but stand there in my dark gray suit and move my eyes across the room and have them stop at you. As you stand there I completely take you in with my eyes and slowly move them down then up the entirety of you. I completely take you in the way I always do and see you in that way that no one else can. You are always naked before me, no matter what power suit you try to wear, no matter what lucky silk panties you have on. You can NEVER hide anything from me.
I don’t speak but just continue to stand there and watch you. You shake your head and look again at your computer. The time has ticked by and you are now 3 minutes over. They are going to begin any moment. You turn back to me and walk forward. You look me in the eyes. You begin to beg. You say the words “Please, I can’t now, I can’t I just need an hour. I just need…” I don’t reply. I merely reach out and grab your little chin and smile. I give you a reassuring nod.
It is the kind of nod that seems to say it will be alright. It is the kind of misplaced gesture that would seem to tell you that I understand and that I was only kidding. For a minute you think you will hear those words from me. For a brief flash of time you think I will turn and walk away and leave you to this meeting, leave you to what you have been moving towards for what seems like your entire career if not entire life.
I pull your chin forward so that you are brought in closer. I pull so that your left ear is next to my mouth. Your heart skips a beat and as you hear me say, “go and bend over the desk” you feel the heat intensify and rise over you again. You pull back and again think of speaking the words again to beg and protest. As you inhale for the breath to speak, you see the smile fade from my face and the stern look replace it. You will do as you are told and you will not speak again until I tell you to speak. I follow you to the desk. You place your hands over the desk trying your best to keep the items exactly laid out like you need. I am behind you. I tap on two areas of the desk. You see where I am gesturing and place your hands there palms down. You then bend forward again lower just like I want. You wait. You wait as the heat becomes unbearable. The time ticks over to 4 minutes past the start.
