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 forQueer Girl Summerand 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 calledQueer 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.”
“AfterQGS, 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.”
