"Ex," said miserable Paul. He put his headphones on but didn't press play. If he was Polly right now he'd probably cry. Polly was kind of a crier, something Diane had teased him about. Paul didn't cry. What else did Paul do or not do? He'd have to remember or find out. He could do anything now; he was Teen Runaway Paul. Was it cheating to stay in the hostel? Maybe he should sleep on the streets, hustle like a real teen runaway. Maybe he should make himself way younger, get taken in by Social Services and adopted by a wealthy but liberal older gay couple, start life over. He could ace high school now, get a scholarship to NYU for film...

The waiter leaned his spindly elbows on the counter in front of Paul.

This had me asking like, is Paul's entire life fake? Is he just grasping for authenticity through a veil of disaffected gen-x bullshit, rolling listlessly through life? Is Paul actually secretly Maria Griffiths????

At that point I was like, Oh Yeah. Even though Maria is this overtraumatised trans woman from New York who has the diy punk 90s thing as an artifact, a shell from her youth, and Paul is a genderfluid/flux/transfem egg?/it's complicated water spirit, drifting through life mostly having sex all the time... you can swap the keywords and they are the same person. Same modus operandi.

The difference, for me trying to get perspective, is that everything Maria does is motivated by the fact she is hopelessly traumatised and as a result, disconnected and kinda shitty. She fucks off to New Reno in reaction to her life imploding, because she was too bored and disconnected to do any upkeep on her relationship, you know.

Paul is just kind of like... does he enjoy drifting randomly from city to city, nightclub to nightclub, having tons of casual sex and altering his body to suit his taste? It seems like he should if he's doing it, but if not why does he even do it? He pumps the brakes on all that to be in sapphic monogamy with his new terf gf, but it's clear to them both that he gets drawn back to his usual ways, flirting with lesbian baristas and considering hooking up on the dl. His motives are an actual mystery to me, it's like this way is all he knows and he loves and hates it at once? I could not tell you what he wants, I guess, is what it comes down to when you cut through the miasma of 90s-ass references.

Also the book's insistence on using he/him pronouns for Paul is very funny.

I think what made The Masker so satisfying to read, aside from that I already understood everything in it before I started, is that it's so short and focused, it's almost a parable or something. A Novel like this usually involves a listless, lolloping, lackadaisical plot, and Paul is the most all-of-those, at like 700 pages. :::