Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

by Andrea Lawlor

  While his coworkers trickled in and out, Paul fussed the racked postcards into alignment, marking off items for reorder according to his own missionary sense of what the gays actually needed (less Joan Crawford, more Divine; less Desert Hearts, more The Hunger; less “I Can’t Even Think Straight,” more “Kissing Doesn’t Kill”). Next he organized the rainbow rings jewelry, with a moral superiority he didn’t even try to quell. The bookstore sold way more crap than books; the crap subsidized the books, so Paul was okay with it (the crap was called “sidelines,” a detail Paul resented knowing), but still judged the crap-buyers. Buy a book, for the sake of all that is holy, he thought at them. Fussing was the equivalent of side work at the bar: chopping lemons, refilling maraschino cherry containers, marrying bottles of well liquor. When his coworker showed up, Paul moved into shelving (the equivalent of barbacking). He was a perpetual motion machine, stacking books alphabetically and with a carefully emptied mind scooting around, slipping books between books. Everything in its place. Before he tired of this task, Divya asked Paul to take over the register, which was the pouring drinks equivalent. Paul chatted up everyone, training his romantic attention fully on each postulant, whether money-giver or lingerer; he drew little maps for lost homosexual tourists, bantered winningly with the friends of the money-givers, admired new haircuts and jewelry made from cock rings, wondered aloud about the provenance of certain special tee shirts or belt buckles. Paul the temple prostitute took pleasure in satisfying others’ unspoken, even unknown, needs. He was a healer today. Most days. He was like Annie Sprinkle, he thought, a sex priestess.

  Everyone had a role. Malcolm, tall as a ladder, maintained the book orders; he was the slightly Machiavellian power behind the owners’ throne, and Paul found himself in an unplanned thrall, not in the least attracted but flirting regularly. Divya was worker-focused; she all but ignored customers, preferring to draw cartoons of the regulars and leave them taped up behind the counter. Sometimes she brought experimental baked goods: carrot cake laced with hemp oil, or pot turtles; she was sort of a hippie, a wake-and-bake mural painter with black hair to her ass and no evident politics. Paul hadn’t even been sure Divya was gay until her sweet-cheeked girlfriend had appeared at closing one night with an anniversary picnic in her bike basket. Bike picnics were so the Mission, he thought, envious.

  Handsome skateboarder Franky was the medium-sized muscle of the place, nicely but firmly kicking junkies out of the bathroom and always unloading the boxes on delivery days. Silver, pretty and skittish, held tight to the role of store DJ. Paul had expected great avant-gardism from Silver based on her half-shaved green hair and face piercings, but left to her own devices, Silver played ABBA Gold or the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert soundtrack on auto-repeat. Once Paul opened the wrong paycheck by accident and saw Silver’s legal name and since that moment had felt a tenderness toward both Silver and the neglectful store owners.

  Thom, whom Silver and Malcolm sighingly called Thom of Richmond, was the manliest bookstore clerk Paul had ever met. Thom also worked the early morning shift for UPS and one time, late to the bookstore, Thom had changed out of his damp brown uniform shirt behind the counter, revealing the textbook musculature-plus-paunch of a real working man. Paul and all the customers in a twenty-five-foot radius swooned from such heady authenticity. Sales were very good that afternoon.

  A few other people worked at the store, maybe one shift a week, and Paul didn’t know their faces, just their names from the time sheets: Marcel, Rusty, Gabriel, Toby. They acquired the status of Mystery Shoppers or indifferent gods: they could be casually surveilling Paul anywhere, in the store or walking down Valencia; he could have met any or all of them in one backroom or another. Paul thrilled at this vulnerability, the sheer sense of possibility in these unknown connections. He’d already been at the bookstore for a month. For a startling instant, like emerging from a swimming pool for air, Paul remembered college, Jane, seasons, time passing—then another lovely androgyne placed another hardback copy of Written on the Body on the counter and Paul returned to the smooth cozy green deep of San Francisco.

  * * *

  ×

  Paul walked up 14th Street toward Guerrero. The guy whose house he’d woken up at had told him the streets to get home and Paul repeated them in his mind. He had to go to work, but not for a couple of hours. His clothes stank with what he had done, his dismal life. He’d lost Jane’s Walkman somewhere between the Eagle and the first party, so he was all alone. He passed the crepe place, Ti Couz, and saw a patch of curly hair in the line. He knew that hair, that shape of head, like a childhood memory.

  He kept walking, worrying the image in his hungover brain. Zoe! As in Diane’s Zoe…Paul felt his heart banging in his chest. He stopped—he should talk to her, this was obviously a sign from the universe—and then he remembered what she’d see if he approached her. He knew of an only slightly skanky taqueria bathroom a half block away; he could Clark Kent it there. What if Zoe left? Maybe a doorway? Nothing private enough in this achey California daylight.

  Pancho Villa smelled enticingly of the roasted pork Paul had recently learned was called carnitas. The bathroom had an out-of-order sign, but the knob turned, so Paul sneaked in. He found his inner Polly, made her manifest for the first time since he’d come to San Francisco. He was dressed a little more butch than he usually dressed in Provincetown, but Zoe would probably approve of that. He tried not to run back; he jogged the block in spurts, then walked casually up to the café, rehearsing his backstory: just came to get some coffee, on the way home…from something fun? No. He wanted Diane to know the truth (his loyalty, pining, and loneliness) but not the details (his rainbow of boring, terrible, and semen-drenched assignations). He approached Zoe, telegraphing heartbreak in her direction. Zoe turned under the weight of Paul’s thoughts—who wouldn’t—and startled, then smiled, then looked like she had gas pains.

  “Polly!” Zoe sounded happy to see him.

  “Hey,” said Paul, affecting an initial stiffness he then allowed to melt into her hug. All responses appropriate so far, passing functions operational, correct behavior module activated.

  “It’s so good to see you!” Zoe said. She was standing with a crew of rowdy dykes, who cursorily checked Paul out then went on with their conversations. “How are you?”

  “Good,” said Paul. “No, I’m good, I’m—”

  “We all miss you, you know?”

  “Yeah, no, I miss you all too.” Paul’s voice cracked, unintentionally, on the all. “How’s—”

  He stopped talking, felt a sob on its way up, felt his face heat up.

  “Come on,” said Zoe kindly. She pulled him away from the line, into a space between parked cars. Her eyes looked sad or maybe compromised, and Paul’s stomach went sour.

  “I messed up,” Paul said.

  “Polly,” she said.

  “I should have been more—”

  He couldn’t say what really happened, of course; who even knew what Diane had told Zoe or anyone else for that matter.

  “I don’t think it was you,” said Zoe.

  Paul burst into tears, his arms stiffly at his sides.

  “Would you give Diane a message for me?” he said, when he could talk again.

  “Oh man, I don’t—”

  “No, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “She misses you, Polly. I shouldn’t say it, but—”

  Paul nodded. Zoe talked more. She was driving cross-country to Olympia to pick up the last of her things from storage before the P-town season started, and had stopped in San Francisco to meet some friends from Michigan on the way. They were leaving that afternoon.

  “Maybe don’t tell her you saw me,” said Paul impulsively.

  Zoe looked relieved.

  “Our secret,” she said, hugging him goodbye and going back to her friends. They looked over for a minute, then reinteg
rated Zoe into their cell.

  Paul gathered himself and walked up the block, sucking in the last of his sniffles as he crossed the street. He’d been doing fine, great even; then he’d been socked in the gut. And now look at this, coming down the sidewalk—two more lovebird dykes, shoving their happiness in everyone’s faces. Wait, was that…

  “Diane?” Paul heard his own voice, like an animal’s involuntary yelp. The two dykes stopped, disentangled, and turned into Diane and the pretty counter girl from Express, Elena. The single mother, Paul remembered. That’s what they used to call her, he and Diane; she was famous to them for being a hardcore vegan and having a toddler.

  “Polly,” said Diane, but Paul was still walking. He boarded the first bus that pulled up on 16th and Guerrero, didn’t check, and so rode the 22 all the way to Pacific Heights and would have to walk many blocks back down now but what did it matter. Single mother, he thought over and over as the bus bumped and rolled.

  Back at the house, nobody was home. Nobody was ever home, Paul thought. Someone, probably Ruffles, had left a pot of crusty lentils on the stovetop overnight but Paul wasn’t hungry anymore. Afternoon sunlight flooded the living room. Paul moved through the air and sun and into the cave of his room, where he lay on the futon on the floor and bit his nails down to the cuticles. How could he compete with a mother? She was fixed like a photograph, effortless and uncomplicated. He was helpless. Maybe he could physically bear a child, he thought. Maybe he could use his own sperm to fertilize his own eggs, who knew? But Paul didn’t want to be a mother. Not ever. Or a father, for that matter. Wasn’t the whole point that he didn’t have to do those normal things? Paul sucked the blood off his thumb and shook his hand to ameliorate the sting.

  * * *

  ×

  Over a month and Paul still couldn’t properly read the bus schedule. He walked to the next bar on his list, out of the Castro and all the way down Market in the drizzle, blocks and blocks of his own head and Incesticide because Kurt had just died, which Paul couldn’t even understand. When he’d heard, he’d wanted to call Diane but restrained himself with whiskey.

  The first three bars had been a bust, full of stupid fags so excited about their gym memberships and still squealing when Dee-Lite came on. Not a single hot guy. Maybe Paul was looking too tender. He’d fended off would-be daddies in their Dockers and braided belts, their pastel plaid short-sleeved shirts tucked in. None of them even offered to buy him a drink. Too much like actual daddies, if your dad liked Bette Midler and hydrangeas and tanning and was a little bit cheap.

  The strangers he’d like to know were probably at the Box tonight, which he was avoiding since running into Diane. He’d been avoiding his roommates, his roommates’ friends, the punk-rock queers he saw on Mission Street, avoiding the muscley bike messenger dykes and the twiggy tattooed fags and bi-curious boys who’d be with the dykes, as cover. He avoided everywhere he knew the cool kids were: the Bearded Lady, the Endup, Unleash the Queen. He avoided El Rio, Muff Dive, Club Jesus, Josie’s, even Café Beano; he ignored flyers advertising bands he’d like to see; he avoided Adobe, Reckless, Osento. Avoid, avoid, avoid. If he met people he’d like to meet, he’d be here, this would be real; he’d be as alone as he was.

  Paul had a written list of gay bars where the boys he liked wouldn’t be, culled from the Damron Guide at the bookstore—where he was working only one day a week, until they figured out the new schedule—and he was making his way down. If at any of these crappy bars there was anyone he could stand to look at, he’d let them do whatever. He walked and walked, from the Castro down to the other side of Market, down to the leather bars. He didn’t bother to make himself into a big hot cub or a dirty boy scout or a young dad type. Fuck it.

  He walked up to the Eagle like a wet mutt, dripping rain on the floor of the foyer. The bouncer gave Paul a pranking look—a you little fish let’s see how they bite you look—and let him in. The bar was maybe half-full, and Paul stood for fifteen minutes while the bartender poured beers for much manlier men and polished shot glasses. A frail old guy as out of place as Paul came up and stood next to him. Paul side-glanced the guy, noted chicken-skin poking out of his leather vest. But at least the old guy had appropriate clothing. Paul wasn’t even dressed right. His Levi’s were cords and he wore Diane’s old Revolution Girl Style Now! shirt, which had smelled of her when he put it on but now just looked campy. No wonder the daddies weren’t interested. They probably had petulant teenage daughters at home they were trying not to think about while they looked for boys half their age but legal. Their daughters’ boyfriends! How gross, thought Paul. He finally caught the bartender’s eye.

  “We don’t serve lite beer, miss,” the bartender said, in high dudgeon.

  “Do you have Jack Daniels?” said Paul. Of course they had Jack Daniels. He meant to say it toughly (“Jack, dude. Make it a double”), but was taken aback by this forgotten experience of chicken oppression and squeaked instead.

  The bartender rolled his eyes and poured Paul’s shot. He counted out singles and left the tip in quarters. He knew better but it was all he had. The jukebox was playing “Margaritaville.” These big tough leathermen needed to prove how much they didn’t care about music by playing terrible radio songs, trying to act how they thought construction workers would act: picking Jimmy Buffet songs on purpose, pissing in troughs, beating each other up and off, drinking shitty beer, and hazing losers like Paul. He sipped his shot. Once he finished it, he wouldn’t have anything to do with his hands. The shot had been a strategic mistake; he could have had two cans of PBR for the same price. He looked around for a smoker. If he bummed a smoke while he still had a drink, the legitimate overlap would buy him the time it took to finish the cigarette. He screwed up his courage and asked an approachable-seeming boy in a dog collar and jockstrap. The boy fished in the waistband of his jock for a soft pack of Marlboro Reds and carefully handed Paul one cigarette, then turned away.

  Paul turned back to the bar, retrieved a pack of matches from a bowl next to the condoms. His hands shook a little. He finished the rest of his shot quickly. In normal circumstances none of this would be hard—this was Paul’s métier, going into bars alone and making friends. True, he’d never entered a leather bar as himself before and he didn’t have the energy to leave, change clothes, change body, and return. If only he could remember himself, put himself back together…

  He had only one move left. Facing the bar for privacy, he focused on his cock, keeping it semi-soft and growing it down his leg. He’d have to go bigger than Jeff Stryker to get anyone here to look past his skinny chest, flabby torso, round face, too-soft eyes.

  He turned around to show off, to no avail. No one was looking at him. He felt like Andie at the beginning of Pretty in Pink. He could stroke his pants to gather attention, but the gesture seemed un-hot in tan corduroy. He spotted a pitcher of water and poured himself a plastic cup, then another. The bartender looked his way, mustache sneered up. Paul put out his cigarette, faking a punk disdain, and ambled awkwardly across the room, cock strapped by his pants to his mid-thigh. The bathroom—thank god—was what he’d expected: a giant trough along one whole wall and at least a dozen men standing around. He didn’t really even have to pee. He found a space, unzipped—the zipper itself a travesty, an insult to leathermen everywhere!—and fumbled out the penis like a garden hose or a stethoscope. His heart was pounding. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He pushed deep inside himself, tried to find the pee with hidden inside muscles. He kept his eyes down. He had to act like he didn’t know the penis was large, or his plan wouldn’t work. He found his piss-reservoir and began to drain it as slowly as possible while demonstrating a strong flow. Thank god he’d read all that John Preston and so knew how to act. How long could he keep peeing? He stopped and started again, cultivating the sound of his stream against the side of the aluminum trough. He kept his head down. Was anyone looking? He started again, stepping back fro
m the wall so more guys could see the length. He wasn’t used to aiming something this big, lost control briefly and splashed the floor. Now he heard something in his periphery, a something of not-talking, of crowding closer. A grizzled but fit old man with silver chest hair under a buttery-looking black vest, a young cub guy in a collar, and an old-timey clone in a flannel and 501s flanked him. Paul kept peeing and when he splashed the cub’s boots the next time he meant it. The cub was “hot” like a dancer on a Pride float, with a black chest harness and leather chaps, shaved head, trimmed beard, cherry lips. The older men stepped back to watch, like children at a zoo. What would the baby polar bear and the baby otter say to each other?

  “Um,” said Paul, turning to the cub.

  “Wow,” said the cub.

  “Holy—” said the older man.

  Paul shook the gigantic half-hard penis and put it back in his corduroys. He left the bathroom and returned to his place against the bar. After a few minutes, the bartender grudged a shot onto the bar.

  “From that dude,” he said, cocking his head at one of the old guys from the bathroom and shrugging, unimpressed.

  Paul slammed the shot glass into his mouth and gulped, retrieving some part of himself in the harsh sugar.

  Later, in the back of the bar, in the room behind the room, Paul thought about his own new room, with the last occupant’s futon, the kelly green sleeping bag he’d bought at Community Thrift, his collection of pocket trinkets arrayed on the windowsill, his no-lamp, no-lease, no-dresser, no-desk, no-chair cell, and how he’d already paid his $200 for the month and was free. He kept his eyes closed, let his body float. He was a stage diver, he was held aloft by invisible Belle et la Bête hands, he was a product to be constructed by this assembly line of deft fingers. He thought about the blue walls, he thought about the morning sunlight through the barred window, the lemon tree in the backyard, the taco cart on the corner, the honeysuckle alleys. He imagined pulling the sleeping bag up to his chest, how he’d add the day’s bus ticket to the careful pile under his stack of unreadable books, how he’d go sleep there later tonight or tomorrow, alone and cold, how he would probably sleep in his clothes, too cold to undress, how no one had heat in San Francisco, how bone-cold it was, how cold.