Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

by Andrea Lawlor

  “Dear heart,” said kind perceptive Ruffles. He draped a long auntly arm around Paul, and led him right up to the makeshift stage area. “You’re going to love this!”

  Should he stay or should he go? The fashion show had evolved logically into a combination of fat femme burlesque and old-time drag performance, as if the entire space was eating a flourless chocolate cake of glamour.

  After the show, Ruffles’s friends moved outside and Paul moved with them, like a teenage leopard following a pride of tolerant lions. In the dark, in the lee of the warehouse, they passed a pipe containing a tiny ball of hash, and then another. Paul gazed upon Ruffles and his friends without his Terminator goggles; they were guardians not to be defiled with his hunterly eyes. He accepted their gifts, pushed his bike with them back through the drifty warm streets of the Mission to Dolores Park, where they sat on the swings kicking their legs. Paul played his role, letting himself be swung or pushed on the carousel. He noticed, with his hash-enhanced senses, Ruffles’s shaved head, the brown contours of his skull. Ruffles was maybe losing his hair. They were all going to die. He had thought Ruffles kept his head shorn for wig-wearing purposes but now realized Ruffles was trying to preempt the inevitable. Paul would not have to shave his head. He was full of grace.

  * * *

  ×

  After closing the next night, he went for drinks with his coworkers and found himself at Uncle Bert’s, which was hosting yet another benefit for ACT UP Golden Gate. They sat awkwardly at the bar naming zines they liked (Mousie, Slant, Brat Attack, Queer City, I Heart Amy Carter, Whispering Campaign).

  Paul drank his first beer quickly, his coworkers gossiping around him. He recognized a lot of people, fags he knew from the bookstore or the street or the bars, a couple of the cool Wesleyan girls from Provincetown, even that confrontational gay poet from Iowa City—normally any of them would be a welcome opportunity for adventure. But Paul said hi to no one. He was being a stoic butch. His coworkers drifted away into their friend groups and now he was in the position he liked best: surrounded by people he sort of knew, but alone. He was only two beers in so he ordered a whiskey, no harm there.

  The theme of the benefit was County Fair. Booths ringed the tiny dance floor: a penny pitch, a water-pistol shooting game, a balloon and dart game, a wheel of fortune, a ticket seller. Paul bought a few dollars’ worth from a drag queen in red gingham and ponytails, and looked around for a game to play. He decided on the makeshift bowling alley set up in a corner.

  “Three chances for a ticket,” said the diffident boy at the booth, a brown gingham shirt under loose overalls, a flower in his moppy hair, a Silencio = Muerte pin on his one done-up overall strap. The boy was not much of a salesman; he had picked the corner of the room for a reason. Paul thought he had seen the boy around the Castro, flyering by the BART station or buying juice.

  Paul handed over his ticket. He concentrated on his bowling form, adding a little kick at the end like he’d seen on Laverne & Shirley, and knocked down two pins on his very first try.

  “You’re not very good,” observed the boy.

  Paul aimed more carefully. With his second ball he took down a total of zero pins. The boy raised one eyebrow. He handed Paul the last ball.

  “You can do it, tiger,” he said, in the lightest of quotation marks, without any hint of camp.

  Paul let loose and hit three of the remaining pins.

  “Hmm,” said the boy. “I think you’ve earned a Most Improved prize.”

  “I agree,” Paul said. “I am very much improved.”

  He accepted a small stuffed pig-dog from the boy, and raised it in the air in a victory salute.

  “Thank you,” Paul said.

  “Any time,” said the boy.

  Paul walked back to his coworkers, making a point of standing next to Divya and not Franky. As unobtrusively as possible he looked back at the boy. The boy caught Paul staring and Paul waved a tentative wave. Why was he tentative? He had no idea. And then Robin walked in and the brass section blew its bold angelic chorus, a great unseen remote changed the channel of the universe. Robin walked directly over as if they were friends, as if Robin was meeting Paul here, as if they had an assignation.

  “Hey,” said Paul. He patted the sleeves of his new blue workshirt in a short stroking motion he hoped might call subtle, as if unconscious, attention to his musculature. He might not have a motorcycle, but he could be butch. Or at least tuff. He flexed a little, straightening his shoulders and widening his stance.

  “Cute shirt,” said Robin, touching his sleeve admiringly before scoping out the room. “Hey, did you see who’s here?”

  Robin named a famous butch performance artist whose show Paul had seen at Luna Sea on Ruffles’s recommendation. Robin had touched his sleeve, which was universally known to be a good sign. But also Robin thought he had good taste in shirts, which was a mixed sign. Paul followed Robin’s gaze to a short person with very spiky hair accepting adoration from a circle of young dykes. Famous people really were always short, Paul noticed for the millionth time, pleased with his own compactness, which he knew would come in handy someday.

  “Ooh, also—” Paul nodded in the direction of a handsome photographer, notorious for portraits of chickens with chickens. The photographer wore a pair of Levi’s with a giant rip in the ass. Paul admired one bare sculpted butt cheek. He must be an inherently special person, Paul thought, to have such finely muscled ass cheeks.

  “That’s a little desperate,” said Robin, following Paul’s gaze.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Paul. “Totally.”

  He wished he weren’t so agreeable, such a suck-up. He tried to think of something slightly disagreeable to say, something independent, but he was entirely blank.

  Robin had premium gossip on the performance artist, a complicated and funny story also involving a hotel room, the lead singer from a famous all-girl pop group from the ’80s, and a broken toe. Paul felt vicariously famous even hearing this story. He scanned the bar for people about whom he might comment. He noticed the bowling-pin boy, now being leaned in upon by a peroxide-blonde gym bunny. He indulged his prejudice against blonde men and butches, and combined this with his long-held but only recently articulated disdain for professionally colored hair.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Robin said, and just like that led Paul, who resisted a backward glance at the bowling-pin boy, through the street-lit sidewalks of the Castro to an enormous flat inhabited by a sleepy old spaniel whose owner was on a spoken-word tour of the South. Robin switched on scarf-draped lamps all over the living room. Paul helped, wondering all the while exactly what kind of sex he and Robin would have. He would have liked to have seen the rest of the flat but instead stood and examined the flat-owner’s CDs (lots of Prince but also Melissa Etheridge and Two Nice Girls, clearly a white lesbian) while Robin poured kibble in the kitchen. He cupped his hand to his mouth and covertly checked his breath. Okay, not great.

  “Wow,” Paul said, frowning, and placed his bowling alley pig-dog on the glass coffee table. He sunk into the cracked leather sofa. “Nice place.”

  “She has a trust fund,” said Robin, handing Paul a glass filled with a thick green liquid from a cut crystal decanter. “I like your stuffed toy.”

  “Thank you,” Paul said. “His name is Aloysius.”

  “Of course it is,” said Robin.

  Paul smiled involuntarily, then tried to compose himself, embarrassed by his pleasure in having his reference appreciated. Be cool, he thought. He suspected he was now blushing. He bit back the also-embarrassing question rising up in him—was this Chartreuse or absinthe?—and looked around the room for something on which he might remark wittily.

  “So, you are more than you seem, Paul,” said Robin. “You are hiding in plain sight.”

  To buy himself time Paul pretended to not un
derstand, arranging on his face an expression of humble naïveté. He would know what to do in a minute.

  “Don’t you want to show off for me? Show me something nice.”

  He accidentally chugged his drink. “Like what?”

  “Oh, we both know what we are,” Robin said, sipping gracefully. “Don’t let’s be coy with one another.”

  Okay, thought Paul. This is happening now. He could feel the absinthe (Chartreuse?) settling in.

  “Hang on.” He found the bathroom and inhaled deeply. He squeezed a dab of toothpaste on his finger and rubbed his teeth quickly, then concentrated on being younger: a peppering of acne, two or three stray facial hairs, wider eyes, fatter face. More fat and grease. To all appearances, Paul hoped, he was fifteen. He walked back out.

  “I’d card you,” Robin said.

  Paul shrugged, with a hint of youthful brattishness, and ducked back into the bathroom. He salted his hair, let his cheeks sag and his skin weather; he overrode his own vanity and allowed himself to manifest graying stubble and a more pronounced paunch: early forties? Aging was harder: waxy, a little gross, but also cozy.

  “Never needed an ID,” said Paul, back in the living room. He reached for his glass.

  “It is one of the benefits,” Robin said, suddenly older, stern Deneuve-ian mien broken by the hint of a smile.

  Paul laughed.

  “It’s really all benefits,” Paul said. “Right?”

  Robin gave him an appraising look.

  Paul shrugged.

  “Hmm,” said Robin. “What else can you do?”

  “Lots of things,” Paul bragged.

  “Let me watch,” said Robin.

  Paul fumbled open his workshirt. His mosquito bite breasts poked at the ribbing of his A-shirt. He knew Robin would see his dark nipples through the white, and went bigger, his breasts heavy against the cotton. He absorbed his extremities, slurped in facial hair, body hair, cock, balls, and stood loosely in the doorframe.

  Robin matched him, but sweeter, more feminine. Paul couldn’t look away, couldn’t believe he was being allowed to look.

  He shifted into leatherman: darker arm hair, a bulge in his crotch, muscles popping. Robin shifted too, slight but wiry, some lucky young matador. Paul saw a small mound grow in Robin’s pants, just the soft presence of a penis, and felt his own pants tighten in response. Paul’s arousal was a simultaneous source of pride and helplessness. He did not look at Robin, but let his wrist drop between his legs suggestively.

  Robin didn’t seem to notice, and Paul let the moment be, content to watch. He’d never seen anyone else change before; he could watch the manifestations of Robin all day, revel in Robin’s mystery.

  He wanted to say do more. He wanted to say but what are you! He wanted to press the buttons of Robin’s jukebox, that was a pretty one, play it again!—but he knew he was not in charge.

  “So what else?” said Robin. “Can you look like someone else? Can you look like me?”

  “Like the T-1000? No,” said Paul. “Why, can you?”

  “What are you? I mean, ethnicity.”

  “Irish mother and Greek father,” said Paul. “I think. Maybe Turkish.”

  “You don’t know?” Robin said.

  “No,” said Paul. “I’m a bastard.” He enjoyed the rakish connotations of the word. He was, he felt whenever he said this word, a lucky bastard; he had been born outside the patriarchy.

  “And you?” he said. He thought probably Robin was Mexican but didn’t like to assume.

  “Cuban,” said Robin. “Well, half. My mother came over from Cuba. My father’s Irish.”

  Paul decided this new coincidence must be a sign.

  Robin reached one arm over to Paul’s. As they watched each other, Robin began to sprout freckles, to lighten by barely a shade.

  “Try,” Robin said.

  Paul felt shy, lavatorial; he let his own freckles sink deep into his skin. He’d never done that before; it had never occurred to him to change his freckles. They were a part of him.

  “No, that’s good, close,” said Robin.

  “I can’t really,” Paul said apologetically.

  He looked up, and Robin was gone. Paul was looking at himself, a version of himself. Or was he? Maybe he had switched bodies with Robin and was looking at himself? He was a little dizzy. He touched his face, cradled his nose for a minute—familiar, yes, his—then checked his right hand for the stitches scar from the broken wine glass at the restaurant. He looked at Robin/himself. He looked cute in Robin’s bright blue polyester Cubs uniform shirt. He watched “himself” check “his” ironic radiating baby Swatch and felt a disturbing genital blankness, almost revulsion. Change back, he thought fiercely. Be you again.

  “So?” said Robin.

  “That’s amazing. You know that song—‘You be me for a while and I’ll be you’?” Paul wanted to stop talking. All his references were so mainstream and earnest; he was devolving or perhaps revealing some profound truth about himself. He simmered in his shame. “Or Sweet Valley High! Can you teach me? We could totally do that and trick people, like Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield.”

  “Sure, sometime,” said Robin, not unkindly.

  And then Robin changed back, was Robin again, and Paul was the only Paul.

  “I should probably…” Robin said, stretching.

  Paul started.

  “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Me too.”

  “My boyfriend’s coming over to walk the dog with me,” said Robin. “I have to get ready.”

  * * *

  ×

  Paul walked home via the tracks behind the Safeway then looped back around onto Church, then Webster, rambling out of his way to take the quiet streets. Boyfriend, Robin had said. Paul mulled over the word. Boyfriend. He remembered all the stupid talking he’d done, how he’d wasted what might be his only opportunity to talk to someone like himself.

  The rain stopped. He had no idea where he was, and then saw the entrance to a pocket garden he could never find when he was looking for it—like Brigadoon. He entered, and there was the bowling-pin boy, sitting on a bench with his eyes closed.

  Paul soft-shoed over to the bench, sat next to the boy, and closed his own eyes. He smelled jasmine, or was it honeysuckle? Something sweet and light.

  “Oh, it’s you!” he heard.

  Paul opened his eyes.

  “Hi,” he said. “Yeah.”

  He tugged the ear of the pig-dog out of his shirt. The boy smiled.

  “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “What’s your name?” Paul countered.

  “Derek,” said the boy, extending his hand somewhat formally.

  “Paul,” said Paul. He shook Derek’s hand.

  “It’s so pretty here,” Derek said. “This is my favorite place in the city.”

  “I know! But I can never find it,” Paul said. “It’s like one of those unmarked dungeons where you can’t remember the address.”

  The boy looked at Paul oddly, and Paul felt embarrassed. He had never been to any actual dungeon, marked or not. Why did he need to brag? Plus he’d sounded queeny without intending to. He was losing the moment; his tricks were not working. He wanted to impress this boy, this easy target, and felt a little nonplussed that he hadn’t already.

  Paul sat his pig-dog on the bench between them. Derek smiled.

  “What’s your secret?” Paul asked.

  “How do you know I have one?” said Derek.

  “Do you always answer a question with a question?” Paul said.

  “Why do you ask?” he said.

  “Should I ask a better question?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  They smiled at each other in the night air, street light pe
eking above the hedges. Paul admired again the boy’s brown gingham shirt (’60s Levi’s with pearly snaps, hard to find), his silky hair, his prominent Adam’s apple, his dark stubble. He was lovely and doe-eyed without being androgynous in the least. Paul wondered what to say next to unlock this boy. He tried his trusty method of starting to talk without knowing what would come out.

  “So, hey…” he started.

  “Hey,” said Derek, smiling.

  Paul had nothing. He smiled back.

  “Okay,” said Derek. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  Paul stood up out of an almost natural chivalry.

  “Good night,” Paul called out as Derek walked out of the garden and in the opposite direction of Paul’s house.

  A few paces away, the boy turned around, and Paul waved. As he strolled home he had to make a conscious effort to not snap his fingers like Riff in West Side Story. He was better than that.

  * * *

  ×

  The girl he was subletting from was maybe now coming back, Paul’s transfer application was due, he still had to pay off his old tuition bill so they would release his transcript from Iowa, there were messages from Jane to return, and when was he going to see Robin again? He had to call his mother. But today was poetry inventory day, which Paul loved—he could legitimately spend his whole shift sorting through chapbooks and slim volumes of homosexual verse, skimming lines off the tops of poems and following one poet to the next via a dense web of blurbs, dedications, and acknowledgments. From Delany’s memoir, he recognized Marilyn Hacker, then Auden (Auden was gay! He knew it!), who led to Frank O’Hara, who led to James Schuyler, who led to Eileen Myles, a celestial firmament hovering above the pages.

  Silver walked by with an armful of Naiads.

  “This is so great,” Paul said, clutching Not Me as he sat surrounded by a stack of O’Hara Selecteds and Schuyler Collecteds.

  “You know who you’d like?” Silver said.

  “Who?” said Paul. “Turn me on!”

  “Ted Berrigan,” she said. “He was friends with all those guys.”