Chapter One

I need a drink.

A Pellegrino sweats on my makeup artist June's vanity. It falls somewhere in the corner of my vision; June and the understood Stay still form a brick wall between me and even pretending to placate the dryness in my mouth. They'd offered me a laundry list of nonalcoholic drinks when my manager, Trish, and I first walked into the Late Late Show with Winston Gray, everything but what I need. I consider asking the intern with the infected nose ring for a glass of wine, to see if she'd bend the rules, but I don't. I sit, and the wisps of June's eyeshadow brush ghost featherlight across my skin.

I've never needed alcohol to get through an interview before. I've certainly enjoyed it, maybe even used it as a crutch once everyone got talking, but it's never been on my mind like this before. That said, I've never done an interview where I've talked about my directing before. It's never mattered like this.

June pulls away. "Gonna set you and you're good to go." She glances down at her phone. "And right on time."

In other words, T minus five before I'm on with Winston.

"You're promoting TV today, right?" June asks, her back facing the mirror.

"Yeah, Strange Prey's second-season opener."

It was one of the first things Trish booked me when I signed with her, one of those pick any random thing you'd love to do bucket list items. An experiment. What Trish calls an excuse to own my narrative. I thought being out would be no big deal, that that was going to be me owning my narrative. When I reshuffled my team, that I'd get more opportunities that aligned with my values, my creativity and passions. A few new types of opportunities and I truly thought everything would change for the better. But then the media branded me as only one thing. I tried to deal for a while, but I could handle being taken even less seriously than before I came out for only so long. I disappeared from the public eye not even a month after throwing myself into the spotlight. Focused on the work. No press. I acted and directed and ended up finishing my PhD all while sustaining myself off delivery groceries and forcing my friends to meet at someone's house.

While productive, it wasn't healthy. Over the past month, I've reentered public places for the sake of my social life. Trish insisted press was the next step. I'm back, and the layers of makeup and hair spray feel heavy and unfamiliar on my skin. I haven't given an interview in front of a camera since the Goodbye, Richard! promo last spring, and something that used to be second nature now feels terrifyingly foreign.

Trish won't say it, but I can also read between the lines: I'm promoting this episode, but Hollywood is watching me. Gay actress Valeria Sullivan is a commodity worth investing in, but is director Valeria Sullivan? Oakley in Flames, my directorial debut, and its upcoming tour around the festival circuit hinges on how I do tonight.

June sprays my face as my heartbeat picks up. She smiles, gloss shimmering on her lips. "Beautiful."

Nothing else. June stands up, her fingers ghosting my shoulder in a moment of assurance. Then she disappears, and a curly-haired guy mics me up. Another leads me to the side of the stage. Trish is nowhere in sight. She insisted when we signed that she'd be different from my helicopter parent manager, Steven, that I'd have the freedom to say and do what I wanted. That she trusted me. And, yes, originally I hadn't felt I needed her here, and she'd come only because we both decided why not, but my skin crawls when I can't find her. I know all the interview questions, but I can't shake an almost superstitious dread that I need to see her before I go on. Like I've given her the key to my brain and just remembered the lock was there.

But there's Winston Gray onstage, saying, "Valeria Sullivan!" to a roar of applause.

The mic is attached to the lapel of my blazer, so I can't give myself a pep talk under my breath. That this will go well and I'll get my career—the career I want—back on track. Instead, I walk out with my best fake smile and the assurance that none of the bright, grinning faces in the audience or those watching this while falling asleep in their living rooms will be able to see my shaking hands or hear my hammering heart.

Valeria Sullivan, whoever the fuck that is, is back.

Winston is one of those hosts whose best feature is his grin. Nothing else about him is memorable. He's white, maybe midforties, wears generic suits, has a flat California accent, and can't even claim an embarrassing laugh as a trademark. We've met once before, when I hosted SNL some years back and he was still a cast member.

"Valeria, it's so good to see you again," he says, making easy eye contact. His caramel-brown eyes sparkle in the harsh stage lighting; his handshake is firm.

I wish I remembered more about him from our time together in New York. But as a reckless closeted lesbian, I was too busy floating on cloud nine because the writers wrote me sketches where I got to make out with female cast members. As jokes, but sometimes jokes and costumes and wink wink, nudge nudge can be water in an oasis of fame and closeted queerness.

"So great to see you too," I say, wondering what he remembers about me that I can't recall.

I take my seat. He's got a more modern setup than most talk show sets, dark blue leather couches for both of us instead of the host behind a desk. He's one of those trendy hosts, and he's given me, Trish, and my publicist, Frankie, a list of bits we could do, ranging from video games to a version of Russian roulette where I take shots of condiments. It all feels a little like I signed up for All That or some shit. I believe my exact words to Trish were I'd gladly live through the homophobia of the nineties if it meant just doing a normal fucking Rosie O'Donnell interview.

So, yeah, I opted for just the interview, and I can see the disappointment in Winston's eyes as he adjusts his legs before speaking.

"Love the suit, by the way." He doesn't sound quite as smarmy as Hannibal Lecter did saying that line, but it's still an early curveball. It's too close to the lesbian-fashion comments for my comfort.

"Thank you. I don't know what my stylist is doing, but she needs a raise. People have been noticing so much more lately."

Winston gives a polite laugh, but the audience seems to genuinely enjoy that one. I can't really make out faces given how brightly lit the studio is, but the audience seems to be enjoying themselves. I relax my shoulders, letting that sink in. There aren't any comments I have to avoid, truths I have to skirt anymore. This should be—and can be—easier than before. I want people like me to feel seen by me.

"So, coming back to the promo circuit, you're bringing something a little different here, aren't you?" Winston says. "How has switching hats affected you? Do you think you're a better director because of your experience acting?"

It's a standard actor/director question, and one for which I've been studying countless answers from actor/directors. "I don't think I necessarily am, especially when it comes to directing for TV. I have more experience with the ins and outs of features, so I actually had a ton to learn from the actors, who've become experts in their own rights about TV as a medium."

He snakes the ball as I take a breath. "You think it's that different, even with a streaming show like Stranger Prey?"

I dig my nail into my side, knowing it's obscured from cameras. Interviewers are just a part of the process. I let my thoughts go and try to answer his question directly. "The scripts and my ultimate vision don't differ much from what I would do for a feature, which is amazing. I think I just wanted to not feel like I was barging onto Justin and Pete's scene like I knew everything. I suppose that's what I took from being an actor, knowing most of us don't thrive under a patronizing director."

"Do you see yourself as a natural leader?"

The wording throws me, seconds ticking as I scramble for puzzle pieces, baking in the lights. Then, thank god, I remember. "Somehow, yes."

"You told me that you've almost unwittingly found yourself in a leadership role with your family."

I take a sip of the water they provide on set before answering. My response is one of those anecdotes that cracked up all my friends, and the moment I told Trish, she said it was time to incorporate it into the late-night circuit.

"Yeah. So I'm Jewish on my mom's side, and she's one of five kids, so holidays like Passover were these huge family affairs for me growing up. I'm the second oldest of the cousins and started the, shall we say, rainbow train."

This gets a laugh from the audience, who must be a little queer if they're laughing at that.

"I come out to my larger family at twenty, and my mom warns me before Passover, saying, ‘Val, sweetie, you know everyone's just curious. They're just gonna be curious.' Which, if you know, you know."

The audience laughs as I give a shrug, quick to keep the story focused. It's not that I'm unwilling to talk about being gay. It's an integral part of my life. But I want to decide when it comes up.

"And I'm a bookish college student on spring break," I continue, "that's the absolute last thing I want to answer, so I decide I'm gonna buy weed to take the edge off."

The audience rumbles in laughter.

"I'm sitting through Passover, and I'm blazed out of my mind. Definitely took too much. To the point where I don't even really remember who talked to me or what happened during the seder. Just that maror and haroseth have never tasted that good before."

Winston, who I think is Jewish, laughs especially hard at that.

"God, that is saying something," Winston says.

"Yeah." I sit up straighter, rub my hands together. "So the next year my cousin Eric pulls me aside before seder starts. He's maybe seventeen at the time. He takes me into our grandma's bathroom, and goes, ‘Can I have some of your weed?' And, of course, I'm like ‘Hell no.' I'm pretty dumb, but I'm not give a minor marijuana dumb. But this kid looks me right in the eye and goes, ‘I'm gay too, and the only way I'm getting through this seder is high.' And—" I throw up my hands, getting into the dramatics a bit. "I give him one of my edibles, and we have a great time. I have to support the community. A couple more years pass of us secretly doing this. At this point, I'm twenty-five, working in Hollywood, should probably know better. But my teenage cousin Kenny pulls me aside—not Eric, mind you, who's now twenty-one—and says, ‘Hey I'm gay, can I get the weed?' And I'm thinking I already gave Eric the edibles, and what kind of cousin would I be if I didn't also give Kenny some? So the duo became a trio."

"You became the family drug dealer?" Winston says, holding back a laugh.

I grin and shrug. "I guess I did."

"So what happened? Did a family member catch you, or how did it stop?"

I smile; now for the punch line. "Oh, no, it's still going on. I prepared my grandma for this, said I was going to tell this story on the air, and all she said was ‘That's fine, it's not like you need your brain for acting.'?"

The room roars in laughter and OHHHHs.

"Which, usually is pretty fair," I continue, resisting the urge to bite my newly manicured nails. "But I gotta teach a guest semester at USC in a few weeks, so godspeed to me and the administration."

The guest-teaching was another one of those anything you want to try requests from Trish. She said she would've secured it regardless of the fact that I finished my PhD a few months ago, but I still get a little flame of pride in my chest knowing that even if I weren't famous, I'd still be qualified to teach the course. I couldn't get a real adjunct professor job without more experience, but close. Another opportunity where I'm not my face, my body, my sexuality.

Now, to get deeper into academia with Winston.

"It sounds like your sexuality has been a big part of your life for a while, then. Were all your family surprised when you came out publicly last year?" Winston asks.

For a moment, I'm in my first dissertation defense again, getting my oral presentation notes out of order. The interview is supposed to go directing, Passover anecdote, USC, end. I only agreed to tell the drug story that makes me look like a clown knowing that we'd be focusing on my academics. That we'd end on a serious note. Under the armor of the black suit, I'm sweating. On camera, I adjust the way my legs are crossed.

"Not really. My family's known for years and knew why I wasn't out to the public. There wasn't really anything new to ask."

The fluttering panic drives nervous energy through me. I want to look everywhere but at Winston, so I keep my eyes locked on him. I watch the way his lips turn, how tightly he's holding his hands in his lap, looking for clues, anything to guess what he's thinking right now, where he's going.

Still, I try to course-correct as smoothly as I can. "At this point, I find exploring sexuality comes more naturally from behind the camera—"

"Not even why you chose to come out when you did?"

I know somewhere behind me, there's a countdown clock that will end this interview, but only Winston knows what it says. And as I process that question, each second in silence a second that some asshole body language expert will rip me to shreds for, every muscle in my body aches to turn around to see that forbidden clock.

"It was the right time," I answer before I can think anymore. "Which was a theme I wanted to explore with this episode—"

Then Winston smiles. But it's a pinch before the burn regardless. "No person who prompted it?"

Person who prompted it.No, no one's asked this before. They're too polite to. But the words flood into my head like I've rehearsed this one to death. Her name is Luna. She's a sweet, oh-so-talented young cinematographer who reminded me there was cerebral connection in my vapid world, who was so tortured under the weight of what society had drilled into her, who still got up and made herself happy through the tearstains. Who—just like every other closeted Hollywood girl who's ended up in my bed over the past seven years—I'd never out in a million years.

And I don't know what comes over me, but it feels a hell of a lot better than the squirming panic. If he's going to keep fucking interrupting, I can play too. I smirk.

"You really want me to name names, don't you? You want to imagine it was some costar whose name you can use for clickbait? You don't have to be so coy."

I wait for him to back down, ignoring the burning embarrassment that's fallen over my skin. But all he does is shrug.

"Well, will you?" He says it with a laugh. "People were really shipping you and Phoebe Wittmore during the Goodbye, Richard! junkets."

Of course they were. That was the last junket I did before coming out of the closet last year, where my anxiety was so bad that I could barely eat or sleep and existed in a perpetual state of nearly blacking out between the carousel of interviews; where every brush of Phoebe's shoulder against mine reminded me of the mediocre "experimental" sex we had indeed had; where I still laughed and flirted and charmed her because even if she was straight, she was the person I knew. In those junkets where one wrong word could out me, I took whatever comforting presences I could.

I laugh, despite the fact that my insides are melting as fast as my sweat-slicked skin. "Are you gonna bust out the real people fanfic next?"

The laughter is getting thinner and thinner. Winston, in fact, is the only one who's laughing in any meaningful way. "Man, testy. And they say the best time in a celebrity's life is after they come out of the closet."

I can't see Trish. I can't see Trish, and it's a good thing. Because when I stand up and walk out opposite the way I came on, I only make it behind the curtain because I don't see anyone's faces. My ears are ringing, my insides are as liquid as the tears in my eyes. I only take in one thing.

There were thirty seconds left in the interview, and I just walked off.

Trish finds me within seconds—but they feel like hours. She grabs me like a summer breeze, whisking me out with barely a touch on my shoulder. A tinted-window Escalade picked me up for the interview this afternoon, but Trish leads us to her midnight-black BMW. She blasts the air-conditioning against the lingering furnace of LA August. Winston's studio's in Downtown LA, one of the few places in this sprawling town that captures heat the way New York City does. I take a seat in her cushy white leather, acutely aware of how my neck sticks to it. As I undo my hair from the updo my stylist could barely create with my growing-out pixie cut, Trish turns the knob on her radio and backs her car out of a parking spot.

"I'm not mad at you," Trish says, slicing through the silence. "I know you said Steven was pretty harsh about missteps. This isn't a misstep. At least, I don't see it that way. I'm on your side."

I snort. "You're my manager. You have to be."

"As a lesbian woman, I was horrified on your behalf."

It's a brief, but familiar, spark of comfort, one I've felt since I connected with powerhouse Trish: queer woman topping Hollywood best-of-business lists that are otherwise stuffed with lukewarm straight people, and then landed her as my manager. It's a start.

"You know doing interviews with people like us aren't going to get me trending."

"And I don't particularly care about that."

We merge onto the 101. It's so late that there isn't any traffic.

"You were off before the interview even started. I can't imagine you'd have flipped out otherwise, not with your poise. So, what's on your mind?"

"He was supposed to be interviewing me about my directing and teaching. He couldn't even stick to it for two questions."

Trish frowns. "Val—"

"I was an idiot to think that I could change that. People only want me if I'm a gay actress."

"And you knew you'd be wading back into the bullshit. I know we didn't expect it to hit like this, but it's just nonsense we have to deal with to get to the art. You've always wanted to act and direct. Remember? You told me that when we first signed. You were so excited to make art without having to justify your identity or views. We're almost there."

"Do you really, truly think, even if Oakley sells, that I'll ever direct another feature? Would anyone buy one if I'm not acting in it?"

"You know I can't predict the market that way."

"But you've seen a hell of a lot of actors try to break into directing. You've seen what kind of folks make more than one film." I squeeze my hands together. "Do you think I'm one of them?"

Trish is silent—painfully silent—for a long time. Enough time for a lump to migrate up my throat. "If you woke up tomorrow and could only act, would you quit Hollywood?"

If I woke up tomorrow and all I could ever do was sift through scripts hoping for one written with empathy for people like me, hoping I'd get paired with a director who was organized, talented, and kind, and then throwing myself through the press ringer after being cornered into another obtuse lesbian role and only talk about that—yeah, I know the answer to that.

"No." Panic beats its wings in my stomach. "But what choice do I have? What else would I do?"

Trish doesn't have an answer.