Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

by Andrea Lawlor

Whereas Diane was all resistance. What they did with their bodies was just one part of it, for Diane. Diane’s mind was elsewhere a frustrating fifty-one percent of the time, by Paul’s reckoning, and she wanted him in the elsewhere with her. She wanted more from Paul, more seriousness of purpose. She would respect his process if he were an artist, he thought, but what did he do besides “make commentary” and dress himself variously? His life was superficial, surfaces to be polished and re-seen. He’d painstakingly assemble an outfit that told a story (willful debutante experimenting with heroin, say, or cowgirl gone to town on a Saturday night, or revolutionary princess) and then he’d take it for a walk, possibly rework elements of the outfit on the fly if one of the thrift shops was open, catalog responses both verbal and otherwise.