Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

by Andrea Lawlor

  Paul nodded and they set off to explore the house, one of those sprawling mansions on Brown Street formerly inhabited by university presidents or famous writers, and now, somehow, rented to a group of gay men who had full-time jobs and a lot of CDs.

  The rock star opened door after bedroom door, judging something Paul couldn’t see, choosing after all that deliberation the sparest room: no piles of clothes or books, no framed Patrick Nagel prints—only a bed, high off the ground, its thick green comforter bright in the street light through the window. Paul stood near the bed, waiting to be directed. The rock star closed the door and walked up very close to Paul.

  “Are you going to kiss me now?” Paul whispered.

  “I’m gonna do more than that, little girl,” growled the rock star, pulling Paul’s hair from the nape of his neck. Paul let himself fall back onto the bed and the rock star fell on top of him like a high-school quarterback, lithe with purpose, grinding expectantly into Paul.

  “What do you want?” the rock star breathed into Paul’s ear.

  Paul couldn’t think. You tell me, he thought.

  The rock star stuck her hand down Paul’s special vinyl pants, under his black panties, into his cunt.

  “You’re so wet,” she said. “You want my cock so bad.”

  Paul nodded. It was true. He was very, very, very wet. He could smell himself. His cunt was gaping and his stomach was gaping and his mouth was kissing, kissing, kissing. He whimpered as the rock star unbuttoned her jeans and pulled out her plastic cock, black and shiny to match her rock-star shininess. I am being penetrated by punk, he thought as she thrust into him, pushing his legs apart, collapsing onto him like a pistoning flesh blanket.

  Inside Paul something tight released: a rusted nut turned finally around its old bolt. White sheets were thrown off moldering couches with a fanfare of dust and sunlight. Then the release stopped, as if it never was.

  “What are you doing?” Paul panted. “Don’t stop. Please.”

  The rock star’s face looked princely, beatific, hovering over Paul.

  “I’m not,” she said, and slid her hand into Paul, then sat up in a crawling sort of crouch over him. He wanted her to read his mind, touch his clit, not stop. This seemed very important so he said it again.

  “Don’t stop, okay?” Paul said. “Don’t stop.”

  * * *

  ×

  Paul walked up the slushy middle of Brown Street in the pastel morning, saw the colored Christmas lights still glowing in his second-floor window. He found Christopher in the kitchen eating oatmeal and reading what appeared to be a botany textbook.

  “What are you doing up?” Paul said.

  “I have class?” said Christopher. “In some cultures, people go to things called classes or jobs in the morning and sleep in the nighttime.”

  * * *

  ×

  Paul slunk into Logic with a large coffee and no textbook. Where was he supposed to get fifty-nine dollars? Other people had parents who bought them books.

  “Can I look on with you?” he whispered to the girl next to him.

  “Nice of you to join us,” the professor said. “Do you have something for me?”

  Oh right, thought Paul. The weekly problem sheet. That made three he owed. He really needed to pass this class. But he was there, right? Didn’t that count for something?

  He flipped open his marble composition book and entered the professor’s outfit (stained gray pants with an elastic waistband, yellow button-down, brown poly-blend V-neck sweater, shoes that could only be described as brogues) into his fashion log. English and film professors obviously ranked highest, broken down by period: Modernists, then film production professors, then feminist film theorists, and so on, with the occasional medievalist throwing off the curve. The outlier medievalists were usually Marxists, of course, and Marxists or queers in any period shot to the top. Paul didn’t trust anyone in the sciences—hard or soft—to dress themselves, and he had the data to make the argument. This was the gift of gen ed requirements, Paul thought: exposure to so many different aesthetics.

  After class Paul walked to the Linn Street Café for his afternoon shift. He arrived only five minutes early. In the kitchen, he tried out his new system for washing crème brûlée ramekins. Sugar crystallized around the rims, requiring long soaks—impossible during the dinner rush—and the chef forbade steel wool. Paul’s innovation was to apply the full industrial force of the spray hose to the rim, tipped at just the right angle, which resulted in clean ramekins, if a wet shirt. Whenever Amanda, the most junior server, brought in half-eaten appetizer plates, she and Paul snacked on bits of leftover smoked trout pâté. Eli, the line cook, made Paul the Moroccan lamb special for his staff meal. By the time Paul finished the last dish, mopped the kitchen floor with bleach water, and got tipped out by the waiters, he was full and dry.

  He changed into a clean tee shirt in the walk-in, carefully rolled the sleeves of his Viyella shadow-plaid above his biceps like the picture of Jean Genet on the cover of that new biography, and stuck a clean faded green bandana in the left pocket of his 501s. Tony Pinto had found that bandana outside the Anvil and given it to him, called him a hustler. Paul shrugged into his River Phoenix coat, dark blue corduroy with fleece lining, and walked out of the kitchen like he was walking into Studio 54.

  He leaned over the bar to request his shift drink. Angelic Hans poured hefty glasses of single malt Scotches, to see if they could tell the difference.

  “Part of the job,” Hans said.

  “You bet,” said Eli.

  “Absolutely,” said Paul.

  A visiting writer, famously Appalachian, sat alone at the end of the bar, smoking a Swisher Sweet.

  “You boys want to come to George’s with me after you close up?” he said.

  Paul nodded. He liked the writer’s books; they weren’t clever, but offered man realness, the authenticity of the sensitive country boy, a view inside the inscrutable straight-guy mind—unexpected, like a talking dog.

  “I just have to get rid of these people,” said Hans. “Give me a minute.”

  Hans raised the dining-room track lights almost imperceptibly, and the beige carpeting revealed its cheapness. Then he changed the tape behind the bar from Charlie Parker to the Hi-NRG remix of “Jolene.” Department heads and lawyers slurped down their ports and signaled for their checks.

  The visiting writer stubbed out his tiny cigar and shrugged on his jacket. Paul wondered idly if the writer was looking at him, if he thought Paul looked like someone from another decade, maybe the writer’s high-school years. Paul knew he had that effect on people. He’d heard the writer was married, with a difficult wife, maybe. She’d either left him or died; he’d heard something.

  Finally they were out the door into the manly night, crossing the street not fifty yards to George’s, which was like a cozy railroad car stocked with waifs and the heroin chic. Three or four of Paul’s crushes were tucked into booths, a vending machine of possible evenings. He slunk to the bar while he tried to figure his various odds:

  • The waifish taxi driver who was with his waifish brother and another guy: 20%

  • The Steve McQueen–looking poet who was alone but didn’t look up when Paul passed: 10%

  • The poet who was with her boyfriend but gave Paul the hot eye: 50%

  • The front booth, obscured by a cloud of intrigue, where a loud group of Paul’s regulars from the 620 had grabbed his ass when he walked in: 40%

  • The comp lit grad student who was leaning on the jukebox, obviously drunk: 65%

  Paul accepted another bourbon from the visiting writer, and considered him for inclusion on the list. Paul wanted to fuck someone tonight, after the business with the rock star, but could come around to the idea of sucking off an older writer with a beard, maybe in the bathroom?

  He stared at
the wall clock, briefly fixated by the original 1950s Hamm’s beer running waterfall—he never tired of the magic. It was only 1:30.

  “I’ve been awake for thirty-six hours,” he announced.

  “Showoff,” said Eli.

  “Okay, thirty-four and a half.”

  “I hear there’s an after-bar at the Blue House,” Hans said. Hans always liked to go to the gay parties, where older men stared at him, whispering “Pierre et Gilles” to each other.

  “Yeah, but it’s so far,” said Paul, the pleasure-seeker.

  “There’s something at that house next to the Foxhead,” said Eli, who always knew the cool straight parties.

  “Better,” said Paul. At least half the people in town he was interested in would probably be there and it was only three blocks away.

  “We should go to the Foxhead first,” said Hans. “See who’s there.”

  The visiting writer was now one of them.

  “Yeah, let’s go now,” he said.

  Paul pulled on his Prairie Seed knit cap and pogoed in place briefly, buoyed by the thought of leaving a room full of crushes in order to hunt in another room.

  Eli led their little pack past the dark windows of Paglia’s Pizza, past the frozen scraggle-grass of the empty lot, and up the two concrete steps of the Foxhead. Paul strode next to the visiting writer as if they were firefighters.

  “The Foxhead,” said Eli with a lion tamer’s flourish, and held the door open. Inside the bright island of glass and mahogany-stained wood were stands of MFA students playing pool or chalking their names on a list to play pool or admiring each other’s cashmere scarves.

  Paul knew most of the poets from bartending. Poets partied and fiction writers stayed home to work. Someone had told him that one drunken afternoon—a handsome young gray-haired poet who liked people to think he was gay. Paul walked to the bathroom as an excuse to say hi to everyone in the booths.

  When he got out he saw the visiting writer had been accosted by grad students. The taxi driver, minus the boy and the brother, had also appeared. A good sign. The taxi driver stood in front of the jukebox, swilling a gin-and-tonic through a straw and listening to a beefy blonde guy in a skintight pink tee shirt.

  A little before three, Hans gathered Paul and Eli and the visiting writer, true comrades all, into a preparatory huddle for their next move—the party next door. They buttoned up their coats and swallowed their drinks and crossed the street to buy sixes of Special Export at Dirty John’s and then crossed back. Offerings in hand, they lined up behind Eli, who opened the door to the dark house.

  “Are you sure there’s a party?” said the writer.

  “Yeah,” said Eli, brushing off his pants.

  The four of them walked down the dark quiet hallway. Eli opened the first door and they found a group of art students sitting on a bed, passing a ceramic pipe and listening ironically to Jethro Tull. Hans saw a girl he knew, and they lost Hans.

  Paul and Eli and the writer pushed on. In the kitchen Eli’s twin brother, David, balanced badly on a skateboard while the taxi driver’s brother mixed screwdrivers.

  Paul said his hellos and kept going with the bearded writer. Up the stairs, more rooms full of people whose faces he knew. They entered a bedroom with nothing but five framed paint-by-number horses and a bare futon.

  “We should hide our beer,” said Paul, as much to have a conspiracy as to hoard.

  “Yeah,” said the writer, and laughed a barking laugh. “The oven’s always the best place, but the closet will do.”

  Paul nodded. This man was no fool, and his twangy accent made Paul feel unreasonably happy. He took the temperature of the situation, considered cutting the space between himself and the writer, and thought of things he could say like, close the door so I can suck your dick. He rolled the words around in his mouth but couldn’t get them out.

  Then Maisie came in: Maisie, the drug-dealing girlfriend of the famously fucked-up son of the famous poet; Maisie with her dykey haircut and bad-girl jeans; Maisie who Paul had forgotten he wanted to hit on.

  “Hey,” said Paul, swiveling toward the glitter of the girl.

  The writer exhaled noticeably, which Paul tucked away for future reference or anecdote.

  Ray, Maisie’s boyfriend, walked in, his left arm in a cast. Paul offered two of his valuable beers to Maisie and Ray in preemptive placation for thinking thoughts about Maisie. The writer was now gone. Ray disappeared. The night was magic, Paul was magic; he saw secret doors everywhere.

  Maisie stood in the room and he picked up the message on the airwaves.

  “Hey,” he said out loud.

  “Hey,” she said.

  They drank from their beers at the same time.

  “Were you at George’s before?” she said. “I thought I saw you.”

  Paul had nothing to say to Maisie. He stared her down and she stopped talking, her cool-girl mouth slightly open.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” he said.

  They toured the party together like assassins, checking all the rooms for people they knew. By unspoken pact they pretended not to see their friends.

  “Who are all these people?” said Maisie, a haughty bored flapper.

  “Really,” said Paul.

  “Come with me to the bathroom,” said Maisie, like Paul was a girl.

  “Okay,” said Paul.

  They got new beers on the way and waited in the hallway, throwing bottle caps at each other. The music got louder and louder, weird French man-singing.

  “Is that Serge Gainsbourg?” said Maisie.

  “Yeah,” said Paul, who didn’t know.

  The writer visited them in line and offered sips from his flask.

  “He was like a wizard, giving us the magic potion,” said Paul when the writer disappeared again.

  “Yeah,” said Maisie. “What did it turn you into?”

  That is called voluptuous, thought Paul. He was glad to give the word some work. Maisie had light brown hair, which had been dyed blue, green, platinum, and several other colors over the months he’d been watching her. Strains of pink showed at the choppy edges. When he had first started noticing her waitressing at the ’Burg, he thought she was a few different girls until Jane set him straight. He came back to the hallway from his interesting mind.

  “It turned me into a dog,” he said, and he growled and bit her arm. He was glad to be a known homosexual—it allowed him a daring way with girls.

  The bathroom door opened and the taxi driver and his brother stumbled out. Heroin. Paul was pleased with his ability to parse visible highs. Heroin had begun taking Iowa City by storm again in ’92, he’d heard. Not that anyone had offered him any.

  Maisie stood in the dark bathroom doorway and pulled on Paul’s corduroy arm. Better to be in snug places. He closed the door behind him and Maisie pushed him back up against it, mouth on mouth. Paul handled her tits through her shirt, then underneath. He had his hand down her pants without thinking, fingers up inside her, and out, and up, until she came all over his fingers. He covered her yelps with his mouth and wet kissing.

  A peremptory rat-a-tat on the door startled them both.

  “Oh shit.”

  She’d started to unbutton his fly, he realized as he stood up. He’d cum in his gray cotton boxer briefs and now his dick was swishing around and his jeans were wet on the front from her too.

  “Shit,” Maisie said, her face flushed.

  She opened the door to a line down the hall and Paul tried to act like somebody who had been doing drugs.

  Ray was second in line.

  “Hey, Ray,” Paul said, thinking shit shit shit.

  Maisie kept walking, like she didn’t know Paul or Ray.

  The visiting writer was lurking by the stairs, maybe taking notes in his head.

  “Let’s go sm
oke,” said Paul.

  * * *

  ×

  Outside the town was quiet and white. Like the whole state, Paul thought. White as far as the eye can see, people and highways and pig houses and soy fields under murderous quilts of snow. Paul buttoned up his corduroy jacket and thought about hitchhiking, about truck drivers in rest-stop bathrooms. He stamped up and down on the porch.

  “Cold,” said the writer, shoulders near his ears.

  “You want to go see something?” said Paul. “You ever see the angel in the cemetery?”

  “Sure,” said the visiting writer. “Let’s go. My car’s behind George’s.”

  Paul looked for a pickup truck, probably a faded blue Chevy.

  Inside the visiting writer’s maroon hatchback it smelled like dog biscuits and orange soda. Paul pushed hamburger wrappers off the passenger seat.

  “The radio work?” he said, turning the dial. Jazz came out, and Paul left it. That’s just what professors listened to, he figured. Even visiting writers.

  “Here,” said the writer, fumbling for a tape in the glovebox, his forearm brushing Paul’s thigh. “My wife…She listened to all that.”

  He pushed a homemade tape in and the Stones came on.

  “Is she…are you…do you not like jazz?” said Paul.

  “Don’t talk for a minute,” said the writer. “I can’t see.”

  Paul held his breath until the cemetery, tracing letters on the passenger window as they rolled down the snowy night streets.

  The writer parked outside the cemetery gates.

  “Do you like the Smiths?” said Paul, and he stepped through the snow like a delicate horse.

  “Not really my thing,” said the visiting writer somewhat abruptly. “So where’s this angel?”

  They wound through the headstones in the snow until they found the monument, an angel looking down, wings folded in like a vampire’s cape.

  The writer crouched and dusted snow off the base.

  “Apparently it’s in Czech,” said Paul, shrugging. “A young Czech boy died, and his mother commissioned a bronze angel from the most famous sculptor in Czechoslovakia, but when the angel arrived the bronze had turned black because the angel was so sad that the boy had died.”