Going to California?

Chapter 10 – Dr. Roth Session 1

I settled down in my seat and started sizing up Dr. Winterbourne's temporary replacement. He was in his late fifties, thin, a sharp dresser, with longish dark hair and dark-framed glasses. He reminded me of a young Harlan Ellison. "Could you advise how much information you have about me?"

"Dr. Winterbourne and I are in the same group practice, but I don't have access to her session notes."

Interesting. "And she won't have access to yours, correct?"

"That's right. Not unless you request it."

"But you know about my anxiety and trichotillomania, correct?" Did I have to advise him of my requirements for treatment regarding Vought and Homelander? With the new…understanding between John and me, maybe it wouldn't be necessary. Maybe I could talk about what was going on with him, get some insight, and not betray his trust.

"Dr. Winterbourne gave me the bare bones. The anxiety is related to your work situation?"

It was my turn to nod. "What's going on at work is…stable, at the moment. I'm not having any difficulties there right now. Family—that's a different matter. There have been some developments on that front. My father's an artist and has just put on his first retrospective. I was invited to it. It—didn't go very well from my point of view."

"What happened?"

"It may have been unrealistic expectations on my side, to be honest. I had the idea that maybe he wanted to have a better relationship, maybe mend some fences, but no. He'd invited me there so I wouldn't be able to throw a scene when he introduced me to his pregnant girlfriend, pardon me, fiancée, who's several years younger than I am."

"Did he tell you this?"

"What, about not wanting me to make a scene? No, that's way too direct for him."

"Why do you think he expected you to be angry?"

"He's willing to marry this girl, who is a good fifty years younger than he is, because she's pregnant with his son. I don't know when the engagement started, but I'm reasonably confident it was after the ultrasound that proved it was a boy. My mother always swore he would have married her if I'd been a boy, and now I don't have any choice except to admit she was right."

"Did your father treat you as less important because you were a girl?"

I shrugged. "I don't have anything to compare it to, so I couldn't say. He was…I guess you could say around, but he wasn't really present. My mother was my primary caretaker until she died."

"How old were you when she died?"

"Seventeen."

"Did you move in with your father after this?"

"No, he didn't make any attempt at parenting. His art always came first. This was a couple of months after I'd graduated high school. I'd already been accepted to college and had a dorm assignment for freshman year, so I wasn't homeless. I just wound up going to college and trying to forget about both of them, Mom and Dad."

"Tell me about your mother."

A harsh, bitter laugh escaped me. "She liked to take advantage of feminism, present herself as one, but she was one of those who'd pull up the ladder behind her. You know, the 'I got mine, fuck you' type. She was the first female to hold important positions at a few of the galleries she worked for, but once she and my father got together, she switched over almost completely to managing his career. So she was dependent on him in that respect. But he wouldn't have half the reputation that he has if it hadn't been for her."

"Did he take advantage of her dependency?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. A lot of their relationship was out of my sight, and I was a child. They never lived together, so I didn't get a sense of them as a couple."

"You didn't even go to spend weekends and holidays with him?"

"It wasn't like they were divorced. Since they never got married, he—I think—felt like he didn't have any responsibility to either of us, and he liked it that way."

"But you said he's engaged to the woman who's pregnant by him."

"Because the baby's a boy." A mild headache began throbbing in my temples. "The baby who will be a Junior. Little Chickie told me that when I met her. At least he'll be happy with her and she won't take it out on the bouncing baby son."

"What did your mother take out on you?"

Shit. "I…I don't really like to talk about it. I don't even think you could actually call it abuse or anything like that. She never hit me or kicked me."

"There are other kinds of abuse. What did she do?"

"Well…" How had we even gotten onto this? "I told you that she always told me that he would have married her if I'd been a boy. She…made it very clear to me that I'd ruined her life by being a girl. I'd destroyed her hopes for a suitable life with my father, which included marriage. Both of them did a lot of bohemian-adjacent posturing about how artistic and unconventional they were, but they were both middle-class bourgeois. She had a quick temper and a sense for where to drive in that verbal dagger."

"Psychological abuse is a thing. Where did she think your vulnerable spots were?"

"This didn't happen day in day out, though. A lot of the time she was happy, loving, but I just couldn't tell when Bright Mom would leave and Dark Mom would show up."

"That's what you called it? The change of personality," he clarified..

"She didn't have DID or anything. It was just how I saw it when she stopped being nice and started attacking. My main vulnerability was my looks. She couldn't do anything with my intelligence because I was honor roll all through junior high and high school and I wouldn't have believed her."

Dr. Roth made a note. "She didn't think you're attractive?"

"I don't know what she thought about it, but she knew I didn't think much of how I look. When Dark Mom was around, I had a few nicknames. Snaggletooth, even though I just have a gap between my front teeth and they're all straight. She knew I was sensitive about it. Froggy because my eyes are shallow-set and large. Sometimes she called me Ferret Face. She used to say I was homely as a mud fence. I don't know where she got the expression because she was suburban and that sounds a little more down-home than she was."

"Did she think that, if you'd been conventionally beautiful, it would have made a difference in your father marrying her?"

I took the time to consider it. "If she did, she never said anything about it. I think if he'd wanted to marry her he would have, daughter or no daughter. Maybe he saw things in her that he didn't like. He and I aren't close enough for him to talk about her, though."

"Did she have any nicknames for you when she was in her Bright Mom phase?"

"She used to call me Sunshine because she said I lit up her day."

He nodded. "Did he know that she spoke to you abusively, said these things?"

I shook my head. "I never told him about it and I'm sure she never did. He didn't do well with unpleasantness. Said it might interfere with his creativity, and she guarded that like Fort Knox."

"Was she an attractive woman herself?"

"Oh, yes, she was beautiful. There was this actress from the Seventies named Barbi Benton who was almost a double for her."

"It seems like she could have broken off a romantic relationship with him, found someone else who wanted to marry her if he wouldn't. She was beautiful, intelligent enough to manage someone's career. Is it possible she thought your father would replace her in her professional capacity if she found someone else?"

"She could have, but I don't think that was a rational fear. He liked having money—still does—and she was a big help with that. I think she could have broken up with him, but she didn't want to. He was the whole world to her. She would never have left him."

"Was talk the extent of what she did?" When I looked at him blankly, he said, "You said she never hit you or kicked you. What did she do, other than talk? If anything." Something struck me then, something that was blindingly obvious once I realized it, and he leaned forward, concerned. "Lily? Are you all right?"

"I just had a realization. I tried to forget about Mom after she died, but it's all pretty clear once I applied myself to thinking about it. She used to pull my hair. Whenever she did that, it meant she was winding down and the Dark Mom episode was almost over. She'd wrap a strand of my hair around her finger while she was saying vicious things, then she'd yank and rip it out of my head. After that, she'd calm down and go into her room, and I could relax. So I think that's why it was trichotillomania, instead of cutting myself with a sharp edge."

Dr. Roth leaned back into his chair. "That seems likely. And your father also didn't know about this?"

"No."

"Was there anything else your mother used against you, other than your physical appearance?"

"No. I barely dated in high school, so she didn't have much opportunity to tell me that whatever boy had asked me out was only interested in sex and could never love anyone as ugly as me."

"That sounds like she told you that at least once."

"Rob. He was my first serious boyfriend. He was on the football team and we sort of drifted apart after we both went to college. Not the same one, of course."

"How do you think her attitude affected your romantic relationships?"

"It's…made me more realistic, I think. Less trusting. I had a very bad relationship while I was college that I probably could have avoided if I hadn't believed I was lucky to be in a relationship with someone as handsome and successful as he was." This memory was nothing I intended to explore, with him or with Dr. Winterbourne. To divert him, I said, "It may be why I'm in the situation I'm in now with John and Zach."

"I'm not familiar with them. I don't have your previous session notes."

"I'm sorry." But I already knew he didn't, and I could avoid talking about Master. I never wanted to talk about Master. "I'm seeing two men right now. One of them offered me a job as a full-time, live-in dominatrix. The other one—well, he and I have had some interpersonal difficulties in the past." John would laugh his ass off if he heard me describe it that way. "He wants me to turn down the job and suggested that I have scenes with him where I dominate him so I'll get more comfortable with him. I've done that twice so far."

"Being in the dominant position makes you comfortable?"

"Yes. I don't much like being submissive. And I don't like sex much. It's too physically painful to suit me, so scenes work better."

"Physical intercourse is painful?" I nodded. "That can be a sign of some underlying illness. Have you seen a doctor for this?"

"Yes. I read WebMD and saw that could be a sign of cancer, but the doctor said I was good to go. I think it's just that I don't get physically aroused enough to get wet. This has been consistent in my relationship with Zach."

"Have you discussed this with him, that you don't find the physical side of the relationship satisfying?"

"No. I noticed not too long ago, or maybe I realized, that he and I don't have many in-depth conversations. Mostly we talk about common interests. I don't know anything about his family and upbringing, and he doesn't know anything about mine."

"Do you think this indicates communication problems in the relationship?"

That made me laugh. "Well, when you put it that way…"

He didn't laugh back. "Do you have the same physical issue with John?"

"Well, he and I haven't had…intercourse yet. I don't think I will have, though, since I feel more physically aroused with John than with Zach."

"What's the quality of your communication with John?"

"Since we started having scenes, it's been a lot better, even outside the scene itself. I actually haven't had any real scenes with Zach yet, just some verbal humiliating—which he likes—but I'm going to see him this weekend so it should happen then."

"But he's offered you a job doing that nevertheless?"

"Yes, based on the verbal humiliation, I guess." Was that weird, that he hadn't even wanted to wait to see what I was like as a dominatrix before giving me a job doing it? Like hiring a carpenter before you know whether they can hit a nail with a hammer. I didn't fool myself about being so desirable that he'd lost his head over me.

"And taking the job with him entails quitting your current job and ending your current relationship with John? It's my understanding that a dom/sub relationship doesn't have to include sex."

"Zach lives on the West Coast, so it wouldn't be very convenient to commute every day. And I don't think John would like me being in even a sex-adjacent relationship with another man."

Dr. Roth steepled his fingers and looked at me for a bit. "I know this is the only session I've had with you, but you seem much more relaxed talking about John than you are when you speak about Zach. What are your actual feelings about each of them?"

"Zach…there's no power imbalance in our relationship, so I feel like we're more equals. We have more interests in common, and I don't feel anxious with him the way I did with John. I'm not in love with him, but it could become love if I allowed it. With John, it's an employer/employee relationship so there's that power imbalance I mentioned. I'm much more physically attracted to John and we've developed better communication. I haven't had a real anxiety attack in the past couple of weeks, since we started talking. I've started feeling more relaxed with him, and we've actually been on a date, which would have been unthinkable for me a month ago. With him it's not just a matter of me, though. He has a child."

"Do you get along with the child?"

"Oh, yes. He was asking me all kind of questions about us, like whether John and I were getting married, whether we loved each other. He's a good kid."

"So being in a relationship with a man who has a child isn't a problem for you."

I shook my head. "It is a complicating factor, though. We both have to think about what's best for his son. With Zach it's just the two of us."

"Are you interested in a conventional long-term relationship with either of them?"

"You mean like marriage? Neither of them has offered, and I think it's still way too early in either relationship for me to make any decisions like that which would have lasting consequences."

"Are you in love with John?"

The question felt like a punch in the chest, although I should have known it was coming. I'd volunteered that I didn't love Zach, so it was an obvious question. "I—don't know. It's new. I haven't had time to figure out my emotions yet."

At the end of the session he said, "Dr. Winterbourne will be back on Monday, but I do want to advise that, when you see Zach this weekend, please try to have some open, clear communication with him. No good relationship can last without lines of communication being open."

I nodded. "I'll try. Thank you, Dr. Roth."

Before calling the Uber to take me back to Vought Tower, I got out my cell phone and called Adam. "I just wanted to let you know that I'll be coming out on a later flight Friday. My usual flight was booked solid."

"Will you fly back later on Sunday to make up the difference?" His voice was teasing.

I let my amusement show in my own voice. "I think it could be arranged."

"Anyway, I've got some good news for you. This morning I turned in the final cut of Tiaras and Cocaine to the studio, so this weekend I'm all yours."

"Wonderful. I want to have our first scene on Saturday, so it helps if I have your undivided attention."

Adam laughed. "Now that's a fine reward for finishing the movie! "

"I'm glad you think so."

"Something else that might be good news. When you take the job—"

"If." Even though it annoyed me that he still took it for granted that I would, I didn't put any sting into my words.

"Okay, if." He chuckled, and I got another sense of humoring the silly woman. "If you take the job, I plan to take a year off from filmmaking. I don't have any jobs set up right now, and I was thinking we could travel. You haven't done a lot of that outside business trips."

It took a second for me to answer. "No, I haven't. I've always wanted to, though. It's sweet of you to do that for me, but aren't you worried about what this could do to your career?"

"Nope," he said. "I've got a solid reputation in the industry: Dawn of the Seven, one of the top five moneymakers in history, then Tiaras and Cocaine, a smaller, indie-type movie to burnish my reputation with the critics. I think I can coast on those for a year. And I have enough money that I can afford to take the time off. I think we need it, too, to get to know each other better."

"Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. We're not quite as intimate with each other as we could be." And I'd like to be able to stop lying to you about John.

"A year together will fix that right up. What time are you arriving on Friday?"

"Seven PM your time. I'll call you if there are delays."

"And this time I'll pick you up from the airport myself. I can't wait to see you."

"Same here."

"Do you want to arrange our scene now?"

"No, I want to do that in person on Friday. Maybe when we're having dinner?" I preferred to plan scenes face-to-face to read the other person's reactions, suss out things they might not want to tell me outright.

"If you come in at seven it'll be late for going out. Do you want to have something delivered from Nobu?"

"That would be great." For the first time I wondered if he cooked. I didn't know, as he'd never mentioned it. Did he know that I could cook? I doubted it.

"Well, then, dinner will be waiting for us on Friday, and we'll get our ducks in a row for the scene. Sound good to you?"

"Perfect. See you then," I told him before the call disconnected, but I couldn't deny the ball of anxiety in my stomach. Dr. Roth had made some good points about my relationships with Adam and John, and now I couldn't deny how much Adam and I didn't take, how I ignored problems when I was with him. It wasn't healthy, and I vowed I'd take the doctor's advice and try to open some communication with him.