TANDY’s Reviews > Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl > Status Update

"He thought he'd heard that Candice was from the Bay Area originally (always notable for a queer), maybe Daly City, maybe had been kicked out by a homophobic Filipino family?"

"...the phone line physically connected them: from his hand, through the curly cord, to the plastic box, to the wall, to the ground outside, up those tall wooden posts, over the miles to Iowa, to South Johnson, up the side of the white shingled house and through Jane's apartment wall, down into Jane's hand and head. They were touching. He pressed the yellow receiver into his ear until it hurt."

so getting bitten by an eel turns you transgender... noting this

"Paul smarted at this unfairness of apartment hunting: you needed an apartment with a phone to get an apartment with a phone, like you needed a job to get a job, or money to get money. But worse–you needed a phone to get a job, so you actually needed an apartment to get a phone to get a job, so the apartment was first, but you needed a /job/ to get the apartment."

"He did not himself care to assimilate into the power structures of heteropatriarchal white Christian America, was bored and horrified by those who did."

"When he did sleep he dreamed of Diane, the worst dream—the dream where she still loved him—and when he woke he was alone again."

well damn

"Men and woman alike confounded Paul; they were so rule-bound. Straight people seemed confused by each other, so anxious to find camaraderie within their gender, so startled by differences between their bodies, always pinning explanations for the inevitable gulf between humans on chromosomes."

"'Woman Who Posed As A Man Is Found Slain With 2 Others,' the headline read."

[...]

"'/He was in here all the time with girls, and the girls were hanging all over him, Ms. Gresham said/. He sounds like a total player.'

'/She/,' said Zoe.

'Right,' said Paul. 'She.'"