Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

by Andrea Lawlor

  The twins fell asleep, dreaming of hot cookies as they lay nestled against each other on a mossy bed under a large oak. When Paul awoke, he was cold. He could not see or feel Polly. He heard a loud animal moan in the distance and he hid behind the tree, crying out, “I am an orphan!”

  “I am here, brother,” said Polly. “Don’t cry. I only had to pee.”

  In the morning, the children were very hungry.

  “Let us leave these woods,” said Polly. “We will call our grandmother, and she will give us something good to eat.”

  They walked out of the clearing, pushing away the brush until Polly discovered the red Forest Service blazes painted on the trees they passed. She led Paul back to the parking lot of the state forest, where they called their grandmother from the forest ranger’s office. The phone rang and rang.

  “We can just walk,” said Paul to the forest ranger.

  “He means our parents are meeting us at the end of the parking lot,” Polly told the forest ranger, who did not feel it was right to let unaccompanied children walk along the highway.

  “Well okay then,” said the forest ranger, and returned to his paperwork.

  Polly and Paul walked down the side of the highway toward the village where their grandmother lived. They walked and walked, holding hands. Dozens of great violent metal beasts whirred by them without stopping, until one, a van, slowed down.

  A long-haired bearded man in a cowboy hat rolled down the passenger window and leaned out.

  “Do you children need a ride?” he asked.

  “No,” said Polly. “We are just picking wildflowers. We do not need a ride.”

  “All right then,” said the long-haired bearded man, and drove off.

  The children walked and walked. After some time, a pickup truck pulled over.

  An old man rolled down his window. The children could see a slavering dog in the passenger seat.

  “Where are you children going?” the old man asked gruffly.

  “We are not going anywhere,” said Polly. “We live just on the other side of these woods.” She pointed to the strip of trees next to the highway.

  “All right then,” said the old man, and drove off.

  The children walked and walked. After another length of time, a red convertible pulled over.

  A young woman in very large sunglasses leaned out the window.

  “Wouldn’t you children prefer to ride?” she asked. “I am driving into the next village, where I am planning to get a milkshake. You will have to share a seat.”

  “Finally,” muttered Polly so only Paul could hear.

  She stopped walking and turned to the young woman.

  “Yes,” said Polly. “Thank you. We would love to ride with you in your car.”

  The children sat together in the front seat of the red convertible. Paul was by the door and held on to the armrest as they sped down the highway. When they arrived in the next village, where their grandmother lived, the young woman asked if they would like a milkshake before they went home.

  “Yes, please,” said Polly. “We have not had anything to eat today.”

  “You poor children,” said the young woman. “First we will stop at a diner I know of and we will eat hamburgers. After that, we will get milkshakes, and then I will drive you where you wish to go.”

  “Thank you,” said Polly, and touched Paul with her right elbow.

  “Thank you,” said Paul.

  At the diner, the children ate hamburgers and french fries. The young woman showed them how to dip their french fries in mayonnaise, which they had never seen done before but which Paul thought sophisticated.

  The young woman told them she was driving across the country.

  “I am driving to a place very far away, where only women and children live,” she said. “A magic land. I have provisions and room enough for one of you, if one of you would like to come with me.”

  “Yes,” said Polly. “I will come with you. Paul will only grow up to become a man, and he will have to leave then. I will come with you and never leave.”

  The woman agreed with Polly’s reasoning. Paul wanted to go as well but could not find an argument as fine as his sister’s, so he nodded.

  “Perhaps it would be best if we left immediately,” said Polly. “Paul can call Grandmother from the payphone.”

  “Okay,” said Paul.

  “Brother,” said Polly, and she placed her left hand formally on Paul’s shoulder. He felt a strange current flow through his body. “You will be son and daughter to our parents now.”

  “Okay,” said Paul. “That makes sense.”

  He handed Polly the pocketknife and compass their mother had given to him.

  “Farewell, sister,” he said, and watched them drive off.

  * * *

  ×

  Chicago was only four hours away by Greyhound and Paul didn’t know anyone there, reason enough to make the trip, plus he missed starless nights lit by neon, the smell of sidewalks, rooms full of strangers.

  A flâneur, he walked from the bus station to Boystown, miles up North Halsted, looking for the gays. After an hour or so, the low-slung warehouses and scrubby lots dissolved into juice bars and vintage clothing franchises, and Paul knew he was close. Chicago was a gray ocean, all concrete and big sky. He began to spot dance clubs, and piano bars, and stopped at a café with a rainbow bumper sticker in its window to change himself into something more comfortable. He’d dressed for the bus—501s and a faded black tee shirt—and in the bathroom of the café he built himself up into a taller, more muscled, and slightly hairier version of himself. He concentrated on his thighs and biceps and chest until his clothes were tight. He was headed to a bar called the Eagle, which he’d circled in the guidebook tucked in his backpack. He realized now he could hardly take a backpack into a leather bar, so he rifled through the contents and extracted only the paperback copy of Discipline and Punish he was reading for school. He could fit it in his pocket, and any guy who saw it would assume it was porn. He neatly tucked his pack under a couch, in hopes that it would appear in the café’s lost and found the next day. If not, he could live with the loss. On the sidewalk Paul felt light and tight, ready to see what leather guys did with other leather guys.

  At the bar, they didn’t even card him, he looked so right. Paul pushed past black rubber curtains, into the techno throb of the nearly empty very dark room. He walked up to the bar and ordered a can of Bud, feeling athletic in his new muscles. He wondered if he was stronger now, or if he just looked stronger, like a gym bunny. He hunched his shoulders—was that a deltoid?—in an attempt to flex his pecs. He’d have to work on that. He drank his beer to the industrial beat hammering inside him. A few older leather men gave him the once-over, but Paul ignored them. He wanted to find a hot young top who could show him how to be. He finished his beer, enjoying the slight tingle in his fingers. He’d wait.

  The bar began to fill up with the after-work crowd, men who’d gone home from their brokerage jobs in the Loop, changed into Garanimals-style Hellfire jackets and chaps, and come out to watch next year’s International Mr. Leather contestants open bottles of beer. Paul was the youngest patron in the bar by fifteen years. The music sucked. No one was being flogged and as far as he could see there wasn’t even a back room. He’d somehow thought a leather bar in Chicago would be populated exclusively by young Henry Rollins–looking firemen and stevedores who’d immediately invite him to the dungeon. He chugged the rest of his beer and crushed the can in one hand. Super-strength? he wondered. Then again, he’d never tried to crush a beer can before.

  “Not bad, little dude,” said the barman.

  Paul figured the barman used “little” to mean “younger” and also “medium-sized.” He considered the barman, who sported a Marlon-Brando-in-The-Wild-Ones hat, a leather vest with no shirt, and leather
chaps over a yellowed jock strap.

  “ ’Nother Bud,” said Paul, toughly. He laid a five on the bar. The barman pushed it back at him, and Paul knew the score. He nodded a tough nod in recognition of their shared ability to communicate without anything as sissy as words. The barman nodded back, in an actual direction now: behind himself and to the left. Paul noticed a darkness he hadn’t seen before, behind heavy black rubber strips, like a carwash, tinged with dim red light. A hidey-hole. He left his new beer untouched and strode into the back.

  The room was small, had benches growing out of the walls, everything covered in more dark rubber. Easy cleanup, thought Paul admiringly. The barman was seamless too, his skin and the mesh of his jock and the leather of his clothes all one thing. He grabbed Paul and threw him up against a wall, and Paul stayed there, deciding, his cheekbone pressing up to the leather, which smelled like dildos and head cleaner. He huffed the wall while the barman handled his ass like an aggressive masseuse. He was getting hard and he could feel the barman’s cock and he wanted to fight! He pushed himself off the wall and, turning around, pushed the barman down onto a bench. Paul fished a rubber out of a metal can nailed to the wall. He concentrated on staying hard and not thinking about any of the things he could be thinking about. He rested his knee on the barman’s ass, bare in its chaps, while he suited up his enormous new cock in one of the XL rubbers the bar had so kindly provided its all-incredibly-hung studs. The barman struggled and Paul lost control and then they were both standing, Paul with a breeze under his balls. Somebody—all these people—had come in; there were men watching, men twice his age, big men, men who wore the hides of entire cows on their massive bodies. The barman had his own hard dick out, was rubbing their dicks together. Paul avoided the eyes of the men. The barman shoved Paul back up against the wall, and he pushed Paul’s pants down and Paul was holding the wall when he felt his ass cheeks pried apart and something, a finger, shoved inside. He let his jeans fall to his boots and arched back, let the barman’s rubbered cock plunge into him. He clenched his jaw and his sphincter clenched, and he knew he could make himself bigger to accommodate but he didn’t. He wanted this feeling of being rent. He huffed and puffed against the wall and the barman slid out of him so slowly Paul thought his guts might come out too and then in again and he did this twice more and Paul dripped a load of sperm into the rubber he was still wearing. The barman grunted, slid out, unstuck his sweaty chest from Paul, and went back to work. Paul stayed there against the wall, half-naked in the now-cold air. His head was ringing; he was having a hard time keeping his muscles in place. He rolled off the rubber, pulled up his pants, and walked straight out of the bar.

  And into the feral night of Boystown, where beefy accountants and tender satyrs mingled on the sidewalks, on their way to the next wild time. Paul joined the wanderers’ parade, alone and not-alone in the street-lit night, strains of deep house beckoning from doors. He felt his ass as if for the first time, getting fucked the answer to make it new. Paul thought about his asshole opening up into a cathedral and the smell of the wall and this feeling of being a federation of so many cosmic particles suspended in skin.

  He walked up to one of the doors leaking music, a place called Foxy, paid his five dollars, and stood at the edge of the dance floor, thrumming with bass and watching the dancers. It was all red and velvet inside, a red velvet cubbyhole, and the music was the music of the past and Paul imagined all the gays on the Fire Island of yesteryear dancing their Andrew Holleran dances without nostalgia or this subterranean crust of fear. The DJ played “Good Life” and a slow remix of “Elevator Up and Down” and “(You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real” even though or maybe because Paris Is Burning had just played. Paul watched a beautiful boy dance with another beautiful boy or maybe girl, and felt happy to be back with people his age, instead of all the old bikermen. The kids had sneaked out! Looking like lions and birds and very young priestesses, maybe vestal virgins. And there were girls here too, dancing with each other in awkward sexiness. Paul thought about how girls used to be the good dancers, but now boys were, and how it must be weird for them but maybe nice to not be the ones everyone looks at. He thought he caught the eye of one of the girls on the dance floor, but she looked through him at another girl. Girls want to be with the girls, he thought. Girls are getting into abstract analysis. His assfuckee adrenaline drifted away with each throb from the giant carpeted speakers, and he realized from the looseness of his clothes that he’d let his body melt back to normal.

  The DJ turned Sylvester into “Got to Be Real” and Paul let himself be swept onto the floor with the ecstatic crush of revelers. He danced with his eyes closed and when he opened them he caught someone staring at him—a black-haired youth, elven in thrift-store denim bell-bottoms and a green lace-up tee shirt. The youth gamboled next to Paul, then behind him, then next to him again, like a dare. This boy was slight, even slighter than Paul, and very fine-looking with those dark eyes, those heavy lashes. Paul had to make an effort not to stare. The remix was extremely extended and Paul dripped sweat. One song became the next, never beginning or ending, and when the youth walked off the dance floor, Paul dangled there alone for a few beats, but he’d lost his rhythm. He knew he’d look desperate if he followed, but he couldn’t help himself.

  All the bars were dispensing weary drunken kids onto the sidewalk. The youth, alone, nicked down an alley, just in Paul’s gaze. Paul trailed, houndishly. At the end of the alley, the kid turned right, and Paul kept pace. They were still in Boystown but heading east, for blocks and blocks until Paul’s booted feet ached. The youth whistled now, a tune sad at times, then jaunty. Paul didn’t recognize it.

  About a half-block from the corner of West Hawthorne and Lake Shore Drive, Paul stopped and stood cartoonishly behind a tree. What was he even doing? He was developing a side stitch. He should go back to the clubs and find someone to take him home, so he’d have a place to sleep for the next few hours. He could see the youth at the end of the block, and he felt again the strange compulsion to follow. But he didn’t want to scare the kid off. He paused for a moment to give himself the appearance of a girl, tomboyish in his jeans but not butch, not threatening. Then he sprinted down the block.

  At the corner Paul saw the youth, loping along as if to give Paul time to catch up. He watched the kid dash across the pre-dawn quiet of the first four lanes of Lake Shore Drive. Paul followed, breathing hard. The youth jumped the median into the second lap of the highway and strolled across three lanes.

  Paul, trapped in the first grassy median, waited for cars to pass and caught his breath. His quarry jogged across the last four lanes, toward the grass and trees of the harbor park. Paul sprinted. He could hear the youth’s whistled song, like a breadcrumb trail. He reached the park and closed in. He was close now, twenty paces behind.

  The youth turned back to raise an eyebrow at Paul. Paul recognized, with a start, that the youth was now, without question, a girl. As surely as he had changed, so had the youth.

  He stopped running, stood in the bright moonlight and panted.

  “Hey,” he said, in his own girlish voice. “Hey, wait.”

  The youth regarded Paul with some curiosity, then sprinted into the trees.

  “Really?” Paul said. “Just like that?”

  He stood for a few minutes, squinting at the trees, then turned back in the direction of the bus station. As he walked, he tried to whistle what he could remember of the youth’s funny little tune.

  * * *

  ×

  A few hours later, Paul took the first bus back to Iowa City, scoring the three-seater by the bathroom so he could sleep. When he got to town, he walked home to shower off any regrets and/or fecal matter, and to dress for work in his lucky sailor outfit—peacoat, watchcap, tight blue-and-white-striped girl’s shirt, and slightly scratchy high-waist wool bells. He liked to look good when he picked up a fill-in shift at the vintage shop.

 
Bright Iowa sun beating down on his eyelids, Paul walked his special route back downtown, through the causeway then across Iowa Ave to South Linn, to meet Christopher at the Cottage before he got off work. He entered the café, where he knew Christopher would not be, to show off his outfit to anyone interesting who might be about.

  “Hey,” said the Abe Lincoln–faced boy behind the counter, drawing out the “hey” in the timeless manner of gay gentlemen everywhere. “Christopher’s in the back.”

  Paul couldn’t remember the boy’s name, but he thought it possible they had once made out in the hallway of one of the family housing projects across the river. Perhaps that boy who’d so artlessly pinched his nipples? Paul smiled benevolently. Bygones, he thought. No one else cute in the place, just frumpy adults discussing frumpy adult matters.

  Paul ducked back out and walked around to the parking lot behind the bakery. The back door was propped open, so he poked his head inside.

  “Well, hello, little faggot,” said Christopher, a red bandana kerchiefed over his brown curls. “Are you hungry after your big night?”

  “Yeah,” said Paul. “I could eat.”

  “How about some hot cross buns?” Christopher turned around and spanked his own butt.

  “Good lord,” said Paul, accepting a bowl of bread pudding. “That is why you don’t have a boyfriend. Can we get coffee too?”

  After the bread pudding, Paul and Christopher took their free coffees and walked next door to the Record Collector to see if anything new had come in. They climbed up the gray carpeted stairs and opened the smoky glass door. Christopher headed for the Mary Chapin Carpenter section and Paul went straight for the used cassettes by the door. He fondled his options: Nine Inch Nails, Wire, Dinosaur Jr., Patti Smith.

  “Who in this world would sell Radio Ethiopia?” he muttered. He remembered again that he didn’t have any money. He really should get this, though. He was only going to buy it new sometime, and then he’d be losing money. It was financially smart to buy it. He put back the other tapes. The clerk watched him pointedly, which annoyed Paul, who hadn’t been planning to steal anything.