Chapter 7
Avery
Because she gave me homework this week, I think about Nic a lot. I’m sure it wasn’t her intention, but that’s how my brain works, apparently. Whenever I catch myself having a bad thought—considering myself inadequate again—I think of her asking me to push back against it.
It’s only been three days since our last session, and I can only conclude that I don’t think so highly of myself, what with how my thoughts are now suffused with images of Nic—looking fucking scrumptious in all of them—to drown out whenever I think of myself as too little or too much of something.
Not gay enough to attract the kind of woman I’m into—although god knows what kind of woman that might be.
Too famous now to stroll to my local coffee shop and have a normal chat with the barista.
Too uptight to call my mother and ask her how she’s doing.
I’m about to call Sienna to ask her everything she remembers about Nic, but I stop myself.
I’m still resisting becoming that cliché on top of all the other clichés I seem to be.
Oh, bam. Another not-so-good thought about myself.
I check my email instead and there’s a message from my agent, Leslie—Nic’s sister.
It’s an invitation to her sixtieth birthday party in a few weeks.
If it’s the kind of party that mixes professional acquaintances with family, Nic will be there.
It makes me want to RSVP straight away, but I keep my cool.
I also make a mental note to ask Nic what the protocol is for occasions like that—for when you run into your therapist in a social situation. It must happen to her all the time.
I check my watch. I have a meeting with the PR team for my upcoming movie, Deadline for Love, in an hour.
It’s all on Zoom these days, and I’m feeling antsy.
I switch on the TV, and there’s an old episode of Echo Bay on.
Toward the end of my time on the show, my storyline became increasingly ridiculous.
There I am. I try not to cringe at seeing myself, but it’s impossible.
I’m not ashamed of my work on Echo Bay and, for the most part, I loved doing it.
It was steady but hectic work in a world I only ever dreamed of.
I learned a lot about acting during my time on that show.
On screen, I’m shouting at my TV dad, who has just told me that my best friend is also the half-sister I never knew about.
In many ways, my life was a lot simpler when I only had Echo Bay to worry about.
Now, I have to actually put myself out there and entice people to see the movie I’m in.
For Queer Girl Summer, it was almost fun because I’d grown very close to Stella and Sienna, and I perfected a way of letting them answer the questions I didn’t feel like replying to, like “What was it like to act in such a queer movie?”
In my opinion, any reporter asking such an inane question should never be allowed to interview an actor ever again. Neither Stella nor Sienna shared my view, however. They both thought it a wonderful, even pertinent question.
I switch off the TV because I can’t bear to watch myself any longer, but my mind drifts back to when Nic said she’d seen Queer Girl Summer a few times.
Now that’s a lovely thought. For a few minutes, I allow myself to be the cliché.
I imagine my hot therapist showing interest in me beyond the boundaries of therapy.
Then I shake off the thought. I need to sit in front of her with a straight face.
But she did stare at my biceps when I flexed.
I don’t know much about therapy, but I’m fairly sure that’s not part of the standard toolkit.
Or maybe it’s how Dr. Nic works. Oh, fuck it.
Like my thumb has a mind of its own, it’s scrolling to her website on my phone.
It’s very minimalist, making her solemn headshot stand out all the more.
Nicola Forbes, Psy.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
What am I doing? My meeting is soon, and I have some preparation to do. I close Dr. Forbes’s website and restlessly pace through my house until my Zoom call with the PR team starts.
When it’s time for my next session, I’m in such a state, I consider canceling. Even though these days, when I’m scheduling something, I always keep two hours free on Wednesday afternoons. One hour for the actual therapy session and one to process it afterward.
“How are you?” Nic asks when I sit down.
“It’s been an interesting week.” I can barely look at her.
“In which way?”
“The homework you gave me was quite confrontational,” I admit.
“Yeah,” is all she says. She looks even better than last week. She’s wearing a dress, and her long, smooth legs are on full display.
Obviously, I can’t tell her that the exercise she had me do made me think of her all the time—and not always in an appropriate way.
“It made me aware of how often I think of myself as… not good enough, I guess.”
“Can you give me an example of such a thought?”
“I was thinking about when the girls and I were doing promo for Queer Girl Summer and they seemed to love all the questions about the movie being so gay and the three lead actors all being queer, and how much I hated that.” While it’s not really something I want to talk about, I know that I have to—it’s why I’m here.
And it beats admitting to some other thoughts I’ve had.
“Why did you hate it?” Nic makes a note in the small notepad that’s always in her lap.
“Because I feel like we should be beyond this. Why does it even matter that we’re lesbians?”
“The movie is called Queer Girl Summer, so the question seems kind of fair.”
I huff out some air—it’s almost a scoff. Not you too, I want to say, but don’t, because Nic can’t be that basic. She’s a Doctor of Psychology, not a two-bit reporter looking for a clickbait headline.
“I guess what irks me the most is that I seem to be the only one who feels this way about it. I don’t get what’s so wrong with wanting to be… post-queer, I guess.”
“Post-queer?” She arches up a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Can you tell me what you mean by that?”
This time, I can’t suppress my eye roll.
“Do you think I should understand without you explaining it to me?” She paints on the slightest of smiles.
“Fuck yes, goddamn it.”
Nic chuckles softly. “It’s not that I don’t get it, Avery. But I like to hear it in your words. I’d like you to tell me how you feel.”
“This is the twenty-first century—it’s not the eighties anymore, when queer people were demonized. Why can’t I just be gay and not say anything about it? My personal life is nobody’s business, either way.”
Nic just nods. By now, I know that a pregnant pause means I should continue.
“I’m just as gay as Sienna and Stella, but I simply don’t feel the need to be such an outspoken member of the community.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“After QGS, I feel like I do. Sometimes, I regret doing the movie, even though it has completely transformed my career.”
“I can’t imagine anyone else in that part,” Nic says, pulling me from my poor-gay-girl self-pity trip.
“Plenty of people could have done it.” I’m not one to roll over easily—not even when my therapist says something unexpected.
“Nah.” Nic shakes her head. “I mean, maybe, sure, but the fact is that you played the part, and you must have chosen to do so for a reason.”
“It’s just not the kind of part you turn down. Ten, fifteen years ago, it would have been far more controversial, but not anymore now. I wanted to work with Silke Meisner, and I definitely wanted to act alongside Stella and Sienna.”
“Even though they’re all gay?”
“But that never even factored into the equation for me. For me, it’s a great movie. For everyone else, it seems to be a great queer movie.” I expel a sigh. “The movie isn’t even about being queer, despite the quite obnoxious title.”
“It’s not?”
Now, she’s really goading me. Dr. Nic’s really good at it as well.
“No, it’s about freeing yourself from the shackles of capitalism.”
“Sure.” What did she say the first time I was here? I’m not here to judge. I’m feeling pretty judged right about now.
I give the kind of shrug that I imagine my teenage self excelled at.
“Avery, Queer Girl Summer is a queer movie,” Nic says. “A beautiful ode to sapphic women, in my opinion.”
“Well, you would say that.” I all but stomp my foot on the floor, but the plush rug underneath my chair muffles the sound.
“Why is it so difficult for you to just say you’re a queer actor who starred in a queer movie?” she asks, ignoring my jibe.
“Because…” As an argument, it’s rather weak.
“Could it be, and please, correct me if you think I’m wrong,” Nic says. “Which I’m sure you’ll do.” Her smile is kind of sexy but infuriating at the same time. “That you’re not completely okay with being gay?”
“What?” My hackles go all the way up. “Fuck, no.”
Nic opens her hands, as if to say, do elaborate.
“Not all gay people are the same, simply because not all humans are the same. Just because I don’t volunteer at a queer homeless shelter, doesn’t mean I’m not okay with being gay.
I’m just a different person than Sienna who, by the way, had no interest in volunteer work before she got with Justine. ”
“Have you been to the shelter?” Nic asks.
“No. Have you?”
“I have not.” She smiles again. “You got me there, but my point is that the Rainbow Shelter wouldn’t need to exist if we were really post-queer. If it no longer mattered.”
“That is such a fucking unfair comparison.”
“I’m just pointing out that activism is still extremely necessary and, whether you like it or not, starring in QGS has made you a queer icon.”
“But I don’t want to be a queer icon.”
“What do you want to be, then?”
“Just, I don’t know… a stealth lesbian. Just a woman, really.”
“I know fame is tricky. I know that being under a microscope does funny things to you. It invariably messes with your head. It always does. And when you compare yourself to your friends, you may feel less-than, but let me assure you they’ve had the same struggles as you. Not identical, but definitely similar.”
I shake my head. “I can’t talk to them about this stuff. They’re always on my case about being too defensive and not in touch with my feelings and other bullshit like that.”
“You can talk to me,” Nic says.
“Can I?”
“Of course.”
“For a minute there, I felt quite judged by you.”
“It’s not just my job to listen to you.” That edge of strictness in her voice does something to me it really shouldn’t. “I’m also here to challenge you, which is not the same as judging.”
“I know I’m not easy.”
“No one’s asking you to be easy, whatever that even means.”
I take a breath and look out the window for a few moments.
“I can’t make it next week. I’m in Europe,” I say.
“We can talk over Zoom if you want,” Nic is quick to say.
“It’s too complicated with the different time zones and the schedule always changes on PR trips like that.”
“I’ll see you the week after, then.” Neither Nic’s tone of voice nor facial expression leaves any room to contradict this.
“Yeah…” I’m both relieved and a little deflated. Then a thought pops into my head. “I’m invited to Leslie’s birthday party.”
“Great. I’ll see you there, then.”
“How do you deal with running into clients at social events?” I ask.
“I always leave it up to the client whether they disclose their relationship with me or not. It used to be a lot trickier, but these days, in Hollywood, everyone’s in therapy.”
“We’re post-therapy?” I joke.
“Hardly. But to answer your question, I won’t come up to you and greet you. The initiative lies with you, and I won’t be offended if you ignore me. I totally understand.”
“I figured.”
“It’s going to be a huge shindig. We may not even see each other,” Nic says.
That would be extremely unfortunate. I’d love to see Dr. Nic outside of this office. In fact, I can hardly wait.