Chat Show Host

He moved to Los Angeles when it was over. He had lived in LA before he went to New York and for some reason it felt safer to him.
He never expected any of it. Not the rise, not the fall, not the love, and not the hatred that followed.
When it started he thought it would last a few days. Everyone told him it would last a few days. After a few weeks he started getting scared. He knew, despite what they were saying, that they were turning on him. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but his instincts told him something.
He started taping phone calls, it was legal in New York.
Taping phone calls with the agents, the editors, the PR people,the producers of the show, the executive producer of the show.
None of them knew he was doing it.
He went on the show. It wasn’t what he was told it was going to be. He got berated, yelled at, booed, scolded, lectured, humiliated. He knew there was no way to stop it, or defend himself, so he went along with it. Some people said he deserved it, some said he didn’t, he understood both sides of the argument.
It got covered live.
It was the lead story on the evening news, ahead of the war, the political shooting, the continued disintegration of Middle-Eastern governments.
It was in every newspaper in the world.
He went home. There were reporters outside both entrances to his building. He hoped it was over.
The phone kept ringing. He got calls from the agents, the editors, the PR people, the executive producer of the show. She apologized and said they did what they needed to do and they hoped he was okay. Two days after the host called she was worried he was going to hurt himself. They talked for almost an hour. What she told him directly contradicted all of her public statements. She told him a story about her life before she was famous, about some mistakes she made. She told him a story about a book she wrote, and about what was in it, and about why she decided to halt the publication of it, and who helped her make the decision. He taped everything.
The reporters wouldn’t leave, so he left. Before he did he made copies of the tapes he put one set of copies in a safe deposit box in New York, he took one set of copies with him and put them in a safe deposit box in Monaco, he sent another to a friend who put them in a safe deposit box in Washington DC. He stayed away until it passed. He came back to America and moved to Los Angeles. He didn’t speak to anyone in the media, give any interviews. He kept his head down and his mouth shut.
He’s working again. He’s happy again. He loves what he does and he loves his life. It comes up every now and then he tries not to let it bother him, he never comments, he tries to focus on work and friends and family.
Someday he might discuss it.
Someday he might tell his side of it.
Someday he might play the tapes.
Someday.

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