El

El, often misheard as "Al" by others, is a persona adopted by Ellie Gardner after a date came to a extremely frustrating end and she was ready to give up dating altogether.

In actuality, "El" is not a persona, but is instead the result of wearing a set of clothes given to her by Sedine Kilgarriff. The clothes consisted of rolled-up denim jeans, high-top shoes, a short black wig and a breast-flattening shirt. When worn together, many people saw Ellie as only a man, while others saw a woman in the process of transitioning to be a man. When speaking to her, people in the former group usually refer to her a "Al", while people in the latter group or those not trying to reveal she's a woman will call her "El".

Ellie herself is often unaware of the effect the clothing has on others, beyond that it allowed her to get closer to Hank Durum, who suffered from Venustraphobia (a fear of beautiful women, which she also was not aware of). She behaved as she always would, except for being emboldened from the encouragement she received from Hank about the athletic potential he saw in "Al".