Dykes With Baggage: The Lighter Side of Lesbians in Therapy - Softcover

Not likely to end up next to the April 1974 National Geographic in your psychologist's waiting room, this irreverent collection of cartoons, personal essays, and short stories about the torments of therapy goes down well with half a Paxil and a glass of orange juice. In Ivy Burrowes's "Therapeutic Insurrection," two women in group therapy break the rules and begin an affair with each other. Leslea Newman displays an obsessive streak in "What Do You Say to a Naked Therapist?" and in C.C. Carter's "On Becoming a Woman," a full-figured lesbian finally rejects her "food counselor" and embraces her own size 14 beauty. Although the book is not always as funny as its jacket copy suggests, there are a few gems, including editor Debra Riggin Waugh's brief sketch of a couples' counseling session with a new therapist, in which the main character, suffering from a bad cold, fails to hear the crucial first two words of the sentence, "Do you tell her what you like in bed?" and launches into a graphic description of their lovemaking. This is antidepressive reading; keep out of reach of therapists. --Regina Marler

Riggin Waugh is the author of Homo Neurotica and the editor of Ex-Love Weird Shit, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 19XX.