Page 15 of Caught A Vibe

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the story elsewhere?

As long as it’s anonymous

Knock your socks off.

It chafes that I can’t take credit for this. But I’ll be able to break Penny’s story to the world, and that is vitally important. The requested edits to the other pieces fly, and I put them to bed. Then I do a quick edit of the MiO piece, and before I second-guess myself, I post it on several open-contributor news and opinion sites. God, I hope she sees it.

PENNY

Ipace the airport, fuming. What a disaster! The T-Con organizers refunded my fee, but stood by the decision to revoke my status. I’ll lose thousands of dollars on swag alone, not to mention the lost revenue in presales because I’ve just gotten kicked out of my biggest marketing opportunity. The loss is staggering.

Fuck them and their biased bullshit. They banned me because I made a brilliant robot to give women pleasure without a man.Threatened much?

I have to go. I have to get back to the office. I am spiraling out of control here. There is too much chaos I cannot wrangle into submission, and there’s really no point in staying anyway, especially since Dash snuck out on me without a word.

I might have been persuaded to console my hurt feelings with a few more orgasms, but I woke up alone in a cold bed. Thinking of him spikes my anger even higher. He just left! Who the fuck does that? Dash Fucking Hall apparently. Name is destiny. I should have known.

It’s truly a shame to have this red haze coloring what could have been a lovely memory. And I thought the stupid wouldn’t come back to bite me… Needless to say, I wasn’t in the best of moods this morning when the all-male panel of judges came by, which might have influenced their decision a bit too. Telling them where they could shove their archaic opinions was probably not the key to getting invited back.

This is why I don’t do fun and stupid anymore. There’s too much at stake. I can’t afford the fallout. The patch job on my internal defenses is messy but it will hold until I get home. I need my familiar spaces. My office. My apartment. My couch with my cat Callie. Then I can figure out a new way forward.

I feel bad about leaving Nicola to finish packing up the booth, but she planned to stay a few extra days in Las Vegas anyway. If I’d waited one more minute, I’d have said something else I wouldn’t regret but would probably pay for. So here I am at the airport, rage-buying an expensive plane ticket to LA.

These idiots didn’t just pull a prize. They effectively pulled the plug on my three-year plan. All of my projections for the next six months are now bullshit. Projections I’ve been touting to secure my next round of venture capital funding.

My mind is already spinning with ideas for how to salvage this. This was the only major conference happening before our launch, but maybe there’s something regional I missed. Direct advertising is out most places because sex is a restricted category. I need something big to get those preorders up and prove to investors this product is worth supporting. That I am worth supporting. I refuse to lose my momentum.

Fuck.All this because God forbid we celebrate the female orgasm without a man getting the credit.

I spend the hour before my flight crafting emails and finding enough caffeine to fuel my manic spin into damage control. By the time I board, I am wild and wired, and no closer to a solution. I have reached livid levels of outrage as I shuffle onto the plane for my hour flight home.

When the dude in the middle seat tries to manspread into my space, my rage finds an outlet. I twirl my pen in my hand and boldly eye him up and down.

“I bet you have nice balls. Do you like them?” The jerk nods with a smirk. I twist my grip on the pen to hold it like a dagger. “Then you’d better press your legs in real tight, and keep them safe.”

It gives me small pleasure when he keeps his legs cinched together, and I have two armrests for the rest of the flight, but I hold tight to my rage. Anger is better than sadness. I just need to control my emotions for a little longer. If I lose it now, I’ll be the single lady crying on an airplane leaving Las Vegas, and I refuse to be a cliché.

I just want to get home, curl up in bed with Callie, and cry over the stupidity of men and my bruised ego for a few hours.

I am thoroughly disgusted with men on all levels.

I make my way to baggage claim and grab my suitcase. Surely I deserve a rideshare after the day I’ve had instead of the shuttle. I turn my phone on to check the app for surge pricing, and it explodes in my hand as notifications flood through my restored cell service. Through the rapid-fire dinging and flashing text boxes, I try to make sense of it all.

Emails, texts, missed calls and voicemails, not to mention my social media apps all pinging like mad.

What the hell happened during the hour I was in the air?Scrolling back, the first missed message is from Nicola.

Nicola:

Hot Guy from yesterday came by.

Seemed sad you weren’t here.

Left his card.

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