"Well I suppose everybody needs to have a hobby." Lucile's teaspoon clinks against the side of her cup as she stirs the drink. "It's not that weird."
"You don't think so?" Elouan sips his tea. Bitter drinks don't do much for him, even this sweeter mint tea feels a little gross on his tongue, but he enjoys something about performing this ritual with his colleague. The very concept of a cafe is still something of a novelty to him: a place to eat food that doesn't really fill you up, and have bitter drinks that don't quench your thirst, but the atmosphere in this one is soothing to him. So maybe that's the point.
It's an aging building, certainly a few decades old, maybe a century, and sitting on the edge between the old town and the more recently industrialised end of the riverside where Elouan works. If the worn red brickwork wasn't enough to give it away, then the brass pipes sprawling along the outside and piercing into the walls betray architecture designed before anyone had even considered you could pump water into a building. In that way it reminds Elouan of home, though few of the spaces where he grew up were this clean or well maintained. There's no dirt on the ground or drafts in the air. Dark viney plants hang either side of intricately metal-reinforced windows, outside of which rest wrought iron tables and chairs that might have been quite nice to sit at were it not so cold and wet this time of year.
A pair of well-off looking girls in school clothes chatter about some book one of them is holding, a couple who can't be much older than Elouan share a bit of cake, and a middle aged man with long dark hair neglects his drink as he stares wistfully out of the window at nothing in particular.
"They do that a lot in theatre don't they?" Lucile interrupts their silence. "Having the men dress as women I mean."
"I guess?" Elouan knows what she means, but he has uniformly seen it used as a joke; shorthand to communicate to an audience that the character is hopelessly undesirable. "That feels different though, they're not trying to look good."
It always struck him as rather mean spirited and uncomfortable; A 'pretty man' is an oxymoron, which is of course the joke behind this sort of performed crossdressing, a joke at the expense of any man who would believe himself to be an object of affection. He's not sure what's meant to be funny about it. "Marcel's not doing it as a joke."
"I think it's quite sweet, most men only seem to put the bare minimum into their appearances, it's very charmless. He sounds cute."
"Maybe. He'd be cute if he was a girl." Elouan tries not to agree with her outright, keenly aware of what the optics of that would be. "Besides, when you talk about men putting effort into their appearance I feel like you're thinking about dresses and makeup."
"You know, Basile dressed like that a couple of times when he was a kid. Obviously he doesn't now, but I think getting to experiment like that is part of why he presents himself very well now." She shrugs. "Maybe Marcel will be like that once he grows out of it."
"Basile? You mean your husband?"
"No, silly, my fiance. Give it a few months." Elouan didn't hear about this man for a while after he met Lucile, but as she's grown more trusting of him she's increasingly bringing him up at every opportunity. It's sweet, he thinks, for a woman to be so openly enthusiastic about a man and not just begrudgingly tolerating him.
"What makes him different then? From other men I mean."
"Oh, simple." She starts counting on her fingers, "he wears clothes that fit properly, he's very clean and uses nice soaps, and he's not scared of putting on a little makeup. If every man did all those things then I bet you'd hear a lot fewer of them complaining about not finding a partner. I wonder why they don't."
"I think they're probably scared, all those things are what people think girls do."
"Probably," she shrugs, "men are terrified of looking like girls."
"Ah, no, I think it's something else, I think they're scared of failing." Elouan explains in a quiet tone, as if this is something he's not supposed to be saying. "If a boy actually tries to look like a girl, he's going to fail. If he puts on a dress and makeup he won't look like a girl, he'll just look like a boy with a dress and makeup. That's why whenever they do that for theater or whatever they're trying to look bad."
Lucile thinks it through in her head. "So if they dress up with the intention to look like a man in a dress, they won't feel like they've failed?"
"Yeah!" He nods and smiles, she gets it. "They don't get upset because they don't look like a girl because they're trying to fail."
"That might be true, but you're assuming that most boys would get sad about not looking like girls."
"I think it makes sense. Every boy goes through a period of wishing he were a girl."
At that Lucile shoots him a really weird look that he can't quite pinpoint the meaning behind. "You know I'm not actually sure if that's true." She says. "Though, could that be why Marcel is doing it?"
Of course. Marcel. That was what he had been asking her about in the first place.
"Well yeah I guess." Elouan mumbles. "But surely if he wanted to be a girl then dressing up would just remind him that he looks like a boy. So he'd avoid it."
"But you thought he was a girl for weeks?"
"Oh, yeah. I'm not sure then."
"You should drink your tea." Lucile points at his cup. "It'll be getting cold."
Usually Elouan wouldn't visit the bathhouse two days in a row, but he feels somewhat anxious about maintaining his best appearance for the lesson tomorrow, enough for him to deviate from his usual schedule. Steam pours out of the door and windows of the building, dispersing fine mist into the cold Autumn air outside.
It's not that he was never nude around men growing up, it seems to be an inevitable part of bathing, but he'd never been exposed around this many strangers before he moved to the city. There felt like a sort of mutual understanding seeing more or less the same group of bodies year after year, it felt awkward but you got used to it. Now every body he sees is a new one, and every set of eyes around his nude form is a new one. It's impossible to feel comfortable or private.
He shuts off his tap and hangs his towel on top of the wooden panel that half-obscures the bath, then dips a toe into water. It's warm, hot even. Elouan has always preferred his water to be scorchingly hot, right on the border of what he can handle. Since moving here he's gotten to enjoy the sensation a lot more often.
Lowering the rest of his body in, he sighs as the temperature seeps through each layer of skin, fat, and muscle. Bodies have been on his mind, perhaps one in particular. Elements of Myra's form have been etched into his memory through the repeated study and reproduction that drawing demands. Hers, or his, seems to Elouan to be a lot prettier than his own. This body is weak and frail, his unimpressive muscles cling limply to his too-visible bones. Hers is gently toned with a healthy layer of fat; she looks both stronger and softer than him at the same time. It's the sort of body he imagines would be comfortable to hold, or be held by. Far better than his bony frame.
At first he thought he was just attracted to her, but knowing she's a boy has opened another door. An element of jealousy has dug itself in and refuses to leave.
Discretely, he peers out from behind the wooden panel, clinging to the sides of the metal tub as he leans forward. The men here are ugly, the same as always. Each body that passes his glance is too flat, rough skinned, and coated in thick messy hair. Maybe Lucile is right, maybe if they tried a little - took care of their bodies, groomed a little, at least held themselves a little better - then perhaps some of them could have the smallest measure of beauty.
Elouan doesn't find himself pretty, not in the least, but he's aware that most men look worse. The prospect of aging into a body like these ones fills him with a sense of dread that feels like lead in his stomach. He closes his eyes and lowers himself back into the water.