Angel

“You could be the star. You have the leading-man looks.”

“God, I don’t have leading-man looks.”

He couldn’t possibly believe he was ugly. “You do have a mirror in your house, right?” Paul asked.

“George Clooney has leading-man looks,” Ian said. “Me, I’m just….”

“What?”

“Well, ‘pretty’ is always the word that people use.”

Well, of course, Paul thought. It was the right word. The softness and the delicate vulnerability of Ian’s face ignited the same protective instincts he’d felt when attracted to a woman. But it was not the feminine aspects that excited Paul. Prettiness in a woman was perfectly ordinary, expected, and therefore not i

ntriguing. It was the combination of the delicate prettiness with a masculine energy—his angular shapes, the deep voice, his confident stance: yin and yang in one form. Masculine prettiness fascinated.

“That’s not bad, is it?” Paul asked.

“Not if you’re a little girl.”

“They probably mean it as a compliment.”

“It’s not very serious. Handsome is serious. Pretty means, ‘Well, he’s nice to look at, but I think I’ll have a conversation with someone else’.”

“They wouldn’t say that if they knew you.”

“The kids at school would laugh and say, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’”

“Kids always tease you about something. There are worse things you could have been picked on for than being too good-looking.”

“What did they tease you for?”

“Me? Everything. You wouldn’t know it now because I’m such a trendsetter, but I was a total nerd in school.”

“Were you the teacher’s pet?”

“No, just a nerd. I’d sit in the back of the room and sneak peeks at the Bible during class. That’s what kind of nerd I was.”

“That is pretty nerdy, Paul. But kind of cute. They were teasing me for being a fag.”

“Don’t use that word,” Paul said, sitting up. “I don’t like it.”

“It’s the truth.”

“But I don’t like that word. I don’t like it when black people call themselves ‘niggers’ either.”

“You like queer better?”

Paul shook his head. “Come on, they weren’t teasing you for that,” he said. “They couldn’t possibly have known that. You couldn’t have known that yet.”

“I knew.”

“Really? As a kid in school?”

“I think I always knew.”

“I’m sure the kids didn’t. That can’t be what they meant. You’re not feminine. You’re just….”

“Pretty?”