Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

by Andrea Lawlor

Like a shark, Paul had to keep moving. He slept only when necessary. He had business with the world, codes to crack, so many questions. Tonight, for example, Paul needed to know what fucking was like for girls.

has never given anyone the pleasure of knowing they were hunted by him. Paul is the game; Paul hunts only hunters. He hunts to be hunted.

In Paul’s ranking of all possible daytime cruising locations, gay non-sex-shop bookstores ranked at the top: congregants within were most likely to be both out and literate, qualities Paul valued.

All night he hovered just above sleep: missing flights, retaking the SATs, boarding express trains going in the wrong direction.

Cool was relational and conceptual; cool took work, cool was a meritocracy which, with all its flaws, he still preferred to the aristocracy of genetics.