Character Analysis
Randolph is a really difficult figure to pin down, in almost every way. He, like Idabel, seems to float between genders. He can be terribly unfeeling and mean but also quite sensitive and kind. Sometimes Randolph seems to be in charge of everything at Skully's Landing, but at others he seems entirely powerless. He's a liminal figure, meaning he's always at the borders or thresholds, never all the way in one category or another.
He Does Enjoy Being A Girl
In a town full of peculiar characters Randolph doesn't stand out all that much, but there are some descriptions of his body that really differ from the expectations people in Noon City might have for men, especially if they're as hard as they are on Idabel for dressing like a boy. Just watch him smoke a cigarette:
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)
Randolph wears makeup (powdered face, colored cheeks) and the adjectives (childish, womanly) reflect a feminine aesthetic.
Randolph also takes a lot of interest in the "queer lady" that Joel sees in the upstairs window at the beginning of the novel. He wants to know if she was "fat, tall, lean?" (1.4.1) and later, when he is wearing his kimono, Joel gets dizzy and sees double:
[…] twin kimonoed figures with curly yellow hair glided back and forth across the lopsided floor. "I saw that Lady, and she was real, wasn't she?" but this was not the question he'd intended. (1.4.87)
Joel sees double all right. He sees Randolph's double life, as a transvestite (or possibly as a closeted transgender person).
Randolph has already told Joel that he knows the lady "fairly well, and to me she is a ghost" (1.4.88), while Amy seems suspicious when Joel first mentions her, asking Randolph, "have you been…" she paused, her eyes sliding sideways to confront the smooth, amused peach-face" (1.4.8).
The Lady, at the end of the novel, appears again, from Randolph's bedroom. All signs point to the Lady being Randolph. That might explain why he hides out at Skully's Landing… at the end of the earth he has the freedom to dress in the way that makes him feel right, and gorgeous.