Chapter 4 #5
She smiles, though she’s so nervous her lips are trembling. “Okay, queer people in music,” she says, and everyone laughs.
The tension lifts. I’ve got this, she thinks.
Heather had tried to coach her on what sorts of questions to ask, but Susan found all Heather’s ideas awkward.
Things like, What’s it like to be a queer person in music?
As though their queerness made their music something different, as though there haven’t been queer people in music since the invention of music.
Instead, she made a list of questions about their craft, their ambitions, their hopes and dreams.
The conversation that follows is a blur. There’s no lull, not for one second.
When it’s over, each panelist gives her a hug before they’re whisked off by their publicists and she’s surrounded by her friends. Susan’s heart is still pounding. She feels high.
“That ruled,” Jonny says. “You’re so iconic, babe.”
The day after the panel, one of the artists uploads a photo of the five of them onstage and tags Susan in it.
She wakes up to several hundred new followers.
People are combing through her entire Instagram liking things.
Before her eyes have even fully adjusted to the daylight, Susan starts deleting old photos; anything overly earnest or too revealing, she gets rid of, until her feed is tightly curated, showing only things that look impressive or vague enough to seem cool.
When she gets to work, her desk mate says, “I saw you blowing up on the ’gram.”
Throughout the rest of the day, she watches out of the corner of one eye as her follower count goes up and up and up. Finally, she calls Heather.
“Girl.” Heather picks up on the first ring. “Did I forget to tell you how amazing you were last night?”
“Yes.” Susan laughs. “But thank you.”
“You’ve got something special,” Heather says. “Your passion. It really comes through. You better watch out. I’m going to start forcing you to star in all my brand campaigns.”
“Honestly, whatever you need,” Susan says. “That was really fun. Also, I got, like, a thousand new followers overnight.”
“Look at you. You’re an influencer now.”
Susan spins in her desk chair. “Oh, god. I definitely do not want to be an influencer.”
“Yeah, yeah. You just want to have influence.”
“I guess so,” Susan says, and what she means is: That’s exactly what I want to have.
“Oh, and listen, babe, I know you trusted me to get you the best rate I could, but in the future, I don’t want you to ever accept the first number someone says.”
“What?”
“When you negotiate for money, just know that no one is ever going in with their best offer. And if they’re not willing to be flexible, they’re not worth your time.”
Susan tries her best to internalize this advice, though it terrifies her.
A few days after the Fender Pride panel, Tamara summons Susan into her office. “Goldstein, I want to start pitching you as talent to brands.”
Susan perches on the couch. “You want to what?”
“Pitch. You. As talent. To brands.”
Susan often wonders if Tamara thinks she’s an idiot.
“I’ve seen your Instagram,” Tamara continues.
“It’s good. It’s cool. It’s exactly what our advertisers want.
” Tamara always talks like she doesn’t have time for the conversation she’s having.
“And I know you’ve been asked to be in campaigns with an outside agency, and frankly I don’t think you should be going out of house for that sort of work, but you don’t have a noncompete so there’s nothing I can do other than start booking you with our own brand studio. ”
“It was just one,” Susan says. “It was a gay Pride thing.”
“Regardless, I think it’s important we start driving some business using the talent we have here. Like you. You could be the type of online personality that people come to us for.”
Susan is flattered, but she can’t let that distract her from what she knows she has to ask. Heather has prepared her for this moment.
Despite her trepidation, she says, “Thank you so much. What would my talent fee be?”
“Funny,” Tamara says, but she’s not laughing. “I was hoping you could be a good team player.”
The rush of disappointment is overwhelming. Susan had hoped that having a female boss might mean she’d be exploited less.
She smiles as politely as she can. “I can be a good team player and also want to be compensated fairly.” Her heart is pounding.
Tamara sighs, taps her red nails on the desk. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You’re not famous yet. This would be a great opportunity for you.”
Susan hears Heather’s voice in her head. If they’re not willing to be flexible, they’re not worth your time.
“It’s still work,” Susan says, holding firm, though she’s also sweating profusely now.
Tamara sighs. “I’ll have to look at the budget and talk to the brand team about what we usually pay people. Then I probably have to get permission from HR and figure out what a pay structure could look like since you’ve got a salary.”
Susan thanks her and leaves.
Tamara never follows up. In fact, Tamara never asks her to star in branded content again.
She wonders if she’s made a mistake, not doing the labor for free. If she should feel lucky to be here, not demanding more money. But she’s been here for a while. Luck has less and less to do with it.
Susan is in a cab scrolling through Instagram, despite the fact that it’s making her carsick, when she gets a notification that someone named Angie has started following her. This isn’t unusual; her follower count is constantly going up since the panel. But something about the name makes her pause.
She visits Angie’s page and sees a cute girl with short black hair.
The door girl from Jonny’s release show.
Susan had declined to go out with her. She hadn’t been ready to go on a date with someone who wasn’t Eliza.
She wonders if she’s more ready now. It’s worth a try, she thinks. If Angie is still interested.
Susan follows Angie back, and then gets a DM: “hey, I thought you might want your coat.”
A few nights later, Angie is waiting for Susan outside a small Italian restaurant in Clinton Hill that used to be a pharmacy. She’s looking at her phone and doesn’t see Susan walk up.
Susan is wearing a simple, tight black jumpsuit with a zipper in the front.
She thought it looked chic, until she sees that Angie is wearing slouchy plaid trousers and a leather jacket, white T-shirt, and Vans, clothes that hang loosely off her, the epitome of effortlessness.
Susan’s skintight ensemble feels tacky in comparison.
Angie doesn’t have the coat with her, but Susan has already forgotten about it. Angie is even hotter than Susan remembered, or maybe Susan was more distracted when they met the first time.
Susan clears her throat as she approaches and Angie looks up, smiling. She puts her phone away.
She has a perfectly square jawline, thick black eyebrows, piercing brown eyes. Susan begins to sweat.
There are a few tables outside the restaurant, and Susan notes with a kind of nauseous amusement that a woman with pretty red hair is looking at Angie with one eyebrow raised.
She knows abstractly that hot people always attract a lot of attention and hopes she can just enjoy this, instead of feeling paranoid about it.
Angie takes a step toward her, but they don’t hug. “Hi,” she says. “I was worried you wouldn’t remember me.”
“Oh, please,” Susan says. “I bet nobody has ever forgotten you.” She immediately blushes. She hadn’t meant to be so direct.
“Thank you.” Angie laughs, confident and easy. Like she’s used to receiving and accepting compliments.
It occurs to Susan that Angie might be very well adjusted. Imagine that, she thinks.
Over steaming rolls of bread and arugula salad and broccoli rabe and house-made pasta and several glasses of cab franc, Susan learns that Angie is not just a nurse but a pediatric one.
“You must love children,” Susan says. “God, I wish I did something that actually helped people.”
“Music helps people,” Angie says. “Art is important.”
“Sure,” Susan says. “But I’m not making the art. And I mean, it’s not like I grew up dreaming that one day I’d get to be the one to hit ‘send tweet.’ The older I get, the further away I feel from the music itself.” She tears a piece of bread in two, dunking it in olive oil.
“Isn’t that the case with all creative jobs? At least, under capitalism?”
“For sure.” Susan nods. She likes how smart Angie is.
The server stops by their table, an older woman in orange lipstick. “You need anything else, girls?” she asks.
“I think we’re good,” Susan says. When the server walks away, she says, “It’s so funny to be pushing thirty and still get called girls.”
Angie tugs at her lip. “Yeah, I mean, that’s not why it was awkward for me.”
Susan doesn’t get it. “Why was it awkward for you?”
“I’m not really a girl,” Angie says. She smiles when she says this—charming, even while she’s schooling her.
“Sorry, sorry,” Susan says quickly, embarrassed by her queer faux pas. “I forgot to ask your pronouns.”
“Oh, it’s chill. She/her is actually fine, but the older I get, the less comfortable I feel with the idea of being called a woman.
I don’t know what I am, but I’m not that.
I guess that means I’m probably nonbinary, but I’m still thinking about what that would entail.
Gender is a process, you know?” Angie’s elbows are resting on the table, and she’s leaning toward Susan in a way that’s making Susan’s head swim.
“Though, when queer people say it, I do feel that the word girl can be gender-neutral. Like, girl, bye.”
Susan laughs and then racks her brain, trying to remember if she’s ever dated a nonbinary person before, and realizes that she hasn’t. “Still, I’m sorry I didn’t think about it. I blame my cis privilege, or maybe my femme privilege.”
A half smile plays across Angie’s mouth. “Are you femme, though?”
“Am I not?” No one has ever questioned this before.
“I can’t really tell. There’s something kind of masc about you, but it’s hard to pinpoint.”