How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He had his notions of what a "real" boy should look like, and this kid somehow offended them. He was too pretty, too delicate and fair-skinned; each of his features was shaped with a sensitive accuracy, and a girlish tenderness softened his eyes, which were brown and very large. (1.1.5)
Sam Radclif is showing us that he's aware, self-conscious of the fact that he is imposing his own ideas onto other people, but he also doesn't really care. He even puts the word "real" in quotation marks, as though it were a doubtful choice of vocabulary. And it is—there is no one "real" way to be a boy.
Quote #2
There were two things about this letter that bothered him; first of all, the handwriting: penned in ink the rusty color of dried blood, it was a maze of curlicues and dainty i's dotted with daintier o's. What the hell kind of man would write like that? (1.1.26)
Radclif is suspicious that the man who wrote the letter to Joel's aunt is not manly enough. But what's really interesting is that this gender suspicion also links up to a true deception: Joel's father, we'll find out later, didn't write the letter at all; Randolph did. And Randolph is, as we know, not confined to the manly-man gender expression.
Quote #3
Well, it wasn't no revelation to me cause I always knew she was a freak, no ma'am, never saw that Idabel Thompkins in a dress yet. (1.1.67)
The barber's wife, who doesn't appear in the novel, we just get fragments of her conversation, is a hateful woman with a really judgmental assessment of Idabel. Calling the girl a "freak" is downright mean, but her evidence for Idabel's freakiness boils down to one thing: she doesn't wear dresses. Gender-specific clothing is a stand-in for all sorts of societal norms regarding how each gender should behave.
Quote #4
"[…] March now… and don't come back till you put on some decent female clothes." (1.1.97)
Idabel persists in her gender-defying wardrobe choices, even though it has some real, serious consequences for her. Miss Roberta refuses to serve her until she puts on a skirt. By shunning Idabel the community hopes to show that gender bending is not okay.
Quote #5
"I'm Miss Florabel Thompkins," she announced, after she'd hopped agilely up beside him, and pulled her dress-hem below her knees. (1.1.117)
Idabel's twin sister, Florabel, is the other side of the gender-norm coin. Her mannerisms (hopping agilely, pulling her dress down) show that Idabel isn't the only one "acting" like a certain gender. Everyone learns how to perform or express themselves according to what society expects.
Quote #6
Anyway, her sister was a tomboy, and he'd had a special hatred of tomboys ever since the days of Eileen Otis. This Eileen Otis was a beefy little roughneck who had lived on the same block in New Orleans, and she used to have a habit of waylaying him, stripping off his pants, and tossing them high into a tree. (1.1.122)
Joel's assessment of Idabel is that she's a "tomboy," a girl who acts like a boy. And for him, a tomboy is an awful thing. But what's interesting is that Eileen Otis, the mean girl from his past, is called a tomboy. If she had been a boy, though, we suspect she just would have been called a bully, not the gender-specific term.
Quote #7
On these dangerous evening patrols, Joel had witnessed many peculiar spectacles, […] most puzzling of all, two grown men standing in an ugly little room kissing each other. (1.2.124)
Because homosexual relationships were socially unacceptable throughout the United States in the early 20th century, gay men like the ones Joel saw had to take their relationships to private, safe spaces. This meant that kids like Joel would find two men kissing to be "puzzling"—it wasn't something they had seen in the mainstream culture.
Quote #8
As he puckered his lips to blow a smoke ring, the pattern of his talcumed face was suddenly complete: it seemed composed now of nothing but circles: though not fat, it was round as a coin, smooth and hairless; two discs of rough pink colored his cheeks, and his nose had a broken look, as if once punched by a strong angry fist; curly, very blond, his fine hair fell in childish yellow ringlets across his forehead, and his wide-set, womanly eyes were like sky-blue marbles. (1.4.20)
After discussing the queer lady in the window, we get this detailed description of Randolph's appearance that hits hard on his feminine attributes: powdered face, hairless, pink cheeks, childish ringlets, womanly eyes. The only detail that doesn't fit is his broken nose; perhaps he received it because his effeminate style was unacceptable to a violent person.
Quote #9
Over his pyjamas he wore a seersucker kimono with butterfly sleeves, and his plumpish feet were encased in a pair of tooled-leather sandals: his exposed toenails had a manicured gloss. Up close, he had a delicate lemon scent, and his hairless face looked not much older than Joel's. (1.4.59)
Here's some more description of Randolph's look, this time his attire. A kimono is a housecoat, but the butterfly sleeves do make it pretty dramatic and feminine. His manicured toenails and even the hairlessness of his face all show that his womanly features are deliberately cultivated, not just natural.
Quote #10
Holding hands with Randolph was obscurely disagreeable, and Joel's fingers tensed with an impulse to dig his nails into the hot dry palm; also, Randolph wore a ring which pressed painfully between Joel's knuckles. This was a lady's ring, a smoky rainbow opal clasped by sharp silver prongs. (1.4.62)
The physical pain that Joel feels when he holds Randolph's hand is, in this case, directly caused by Randolph's penchant for using women's accessories. We're not sure if a men's ring would have hurt Joel as badly, or if it's the unusual sight of a woman's ring on a man's hand that made him so uncomfortable.