LAUREN A lightbulb. I’m staring at the lightbulb above Sean’s head. We’re at Lila’s and Gina’s apartment in Fels. Two lesbians from the poetry workshop I recently joined. Actually, Gina in strict confidence told me that she’s on the Pill, “just in case.” Docs that mean she’s a lesbian technically? Lila, on the other hand, has confided in me that she’s worried Gina will leave her since it’s “in” to sleep with women this term. What do you say to someone? Well, what about next term? Actually, what about next term? You watch Sean too, you watch him roll a joint and he’s pretty good at it which makes me want to sleep with him less, but oh who cares, Jaime answered the phone, right? and it’s a Friday, and it was either him or that French guy. His hands are nice: clean and large and he handles the pot rather delicately, and I want him suddenly to touch my breasts. I don’t know why I think this but I do. Not exactly handsome, but he’s passable looking: light hair combed back, smallish features (maybe a little like a rat?), maybe too short, maybe too thin. No, not handsome, just vaguely Long Islandish. But a big improvement over that Kir-sipping Iranian editor you met at Vittorio’s last party who told you you were going to be the next Madonna. After I told him I was a poet, he said he meant Marianne Moore.
“So, who’s going to help us bomb the weight room?” Gina asks. Gina is part of Camden’s “old guard” and the arrival of the weight room and an aerobics instructor has made her livid (even though she wants to sleep with the aerobics instructor—who, in my opinion, doesn’t even have that nice a body). “Lila is devastated,” she tells me.
Lila nods and rests her head on the Kathy Acker book she’s been flipping through.
“B-U-M-M-E-R,” I spell out, sighing. Look at the Mapplethorpe photo of Susan Sontag pinned above the sink and snicker.
Sean laughs and looks up from the joints as if I said something brilliant and it’s not funny but because he laughs I laugh.
“Tim loves it,” he says.
“Let’s kill him and we’ll call it art,” Lila says. How does Lila know Tim, I wonder. Does Tim sleep with lesbians? I am drunk.
Still holding a glass of the pink punch it occurs to me that I am so drunk I cannot get up. I just tell Lila, “Don’t get depressed,” and then to Gina, “Do you have any coke?” too drunk to be ashamed.
“Depression becomes some,” Lila says.
“No,” Gina.
“You want some?” Sean asks.
“No.”
Depression becomes some?
Can’t argue with that so we light the first joint. Wish we had sex and it was over with so I could go back to my room with the down pillows and the comforter and pass out with some dignity. Lila gets up. Puts on a Kate Bush record and dances around the room.
“This place has really changed.” Someone hands me the joint. I take a long, hard hit and look around the apartment and agree with whoever said that. Stephanie Myers and Susan Goldman and Amanda Taylor lived here my Sophomore year. It is different.
“The Seventies never ended.” Sean the Philosopher Bateman this time. What a stupid thing to say, I’m thinking. What a strange and supremely stupid thing to say. He smiles at me and thinks it’s profound. I feel sick. I want them to turn the music down.
“I wonder if everyone goes through this much hell at college,” Lila ponders, dancing next to my chair, staring dreamily at me. Do I want to sleep with another girl? No.
“Don’t worry darling,” Gina says. “We’re not at Williams.”
Not at Williams. No, that’s for sure. Smoke more grass. For some reason he’s not looking at Gina. Lila sits down and sighs and resumes looking at the drawings in the Acker book. Go to Europe if you don’t like it, I’m thinking. Victor, I’m thinking.
“Louis Farrakhan was supposed to visit but the Freshmen and Sophomores on student council voted against it,” Sean says. “Can you believe that?” So he’s politically conscious too. Even worse. He smokes more of the pot than Gina and I combined, someone’s even brought out a bong. He holds it like Victor holds it. I look at him, nauseated, but it’s too smoky and Kate Bush is too screechy and he doesn’t notice. “They even want someone to redesign the school sign,” he adds.
“Why?” I find myself asking.
“Not Eighties enough,” Lila suggests.
“Probably want flashing neon,” Gina.
“Get Keith Haring or Kenny Scharf,” Lila grimaces.
“Or Schnabel,” Gina cringes.
“Too passé,” Lila mutters.
“Lots of broken plates and ‘suggestive’ smears,” did Sean say this?
“Or getting Fischel to do the pamphlet. Some of the chic jet-setting nihilistic Eurotrash who live off-campus, nude, standing around with dogs and fish. Welcome to Camden College-You’ll Never Be Bored.” Gina starts laughing.
“I’m gonna redesign it,” Lila says. “Win the money. Buy a gram.”
What money? I’m thinking. Have I missed something. Am I out of it?
The grass is good but I have to light a cigarette to stay awake and during a break on the record we can all hear someone from the party next door scream, “That’s phallic—yeah! yeah! yeah!” and we all look at each other, stoned, and crack up and I remember seeing Judy crying in a doorway upstairs at the party, in the bathroom, Franklin trying to comfort her, Franklin glaring at me as I left with Sean.
Now the inevitable.
We’re in his room and he plays me a song. On his guitar. He serenades me and it’s almost embarrassing enough to sober me up. “You’re Too Good to Be True” and I start crying only because I can’t help but think of Victor, and he stops halfway through and kisses me and we end up going to bed. And I’m thinking what if I went back to my room now, and what if there was a note on the door saying Victor called? What if there was just a note? Whether he called or not doesn’t matter. Just to see a note, just to see maybe a V, and fuck the rest of the letters. If there was just a sign. It could make me elated for one week, no, one day. I put my diaphragm in at Gina’s and Lila’s apartment so there’s no drunken forgetfulness on my part, no running to the bathroom in the middle of foreplay.
Sean fucks me. It’s not so bad. It’s over. I breathe easy.
SEAN We walked slowly back to my bedroom (she followed me like she knew this would happen, too eager, too stunned to speak) past the party which was still going on, across the Commons, and upstairs to Booth. I was so excited I couldn’t stop shaking and I dropped the key when I tried to unlock the door. She sat on the bed and leaned against the wall, her eyes closed. I plugged in the Fender and played her a song I’d written myself and then segued into “You’re Too Good to Be True” and I played it quietly and sang the lyrics slowly and softly and she was so moved that she started to cry and I stopped playing and knelt before the bed and touched her neck, but she couldn’t look at me; maybe it was the grass we smoked at the dykes’ who want to blow up the weight room, or maybe it was the Ecstasy I’m pretty sure she was on; maybe it was that she loved me. When I tilted her face up, her eyes were so grateful that …
… he had to kiss her quickly on the lips and … he got hard almost immediately after she started kissing back, still crying, her face slick, and he started to pull her toga off but there was an interruption that he was oddly grateful for. Tim came in without knocking and asked if he had a razor blade and he gave him one and Tim didn’t apologize for interrupting since he was so coked-out and he made sure the door was locked after he left. But he was still strangely not excited. He turned back to her, and turned off the amp, then got on the bed.
She had already started taking her toga off and except for her panties she had nothing on beneath it. She had the body of a much younger girl. Her breasts were small but full, yet the nipples weren’t hard, not even after he touched them, then kissed and licked them. He helped her remove the panties, saw how small her cunt was too, the pubic hair light and sparse yet when he squeezed it, hard then soft, slid a finger in, he didn’t feel anything. She wasn’t getting wet even though she was ma
king soft little moans. He was semi-stiff, but still not excited. Something was missing…. There was a problem somewhere, a mistake. He didn’t know what. Confused, he started to fuck her, and before he came, it hit him: he can’t remember the last time he had sex sober….
PAUL I sit alone in my room, in a chair, in front of the TV, drinking beer I ordered up from room service, watching Friday night videos. Video of Huey Lewis and the News comes on. Huey Lewis walks into a party looking confused. Huey Lewis reminds me of Sean. Huey Lewis also reminds me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Sean doesn’t remind me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Richard opens the door, still in the tuxedo he was wearing at dinner and he sits down on one of the beds and all he says is, “Lost my sunglasses.”
I keep watching Huey Lewis, who can’t find his way out of the party. He’s holding hands with some blond bubblehead and they can’t find their way out. They keep opening doors and none of them contain an exit. One contains a train hurtling at them, another has a vampire hidden behind it, but none offer a way out. How symbolic.
“Do you have any coke?” Richard asks:
A surge of irritation makes me grip the Heineken bottle tighter. I don’t say anything.
“There’s a lot of coke at Sarah Lawrence,” he says.
The video ends and another one comes on, but it’s not a video, it’s a commercial for soap and I look over at him.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“With me?” he asks.
“I guess,” I say. “Who else, idiot?”
“I don’t know,” Richard says. “I went out.”
“You went out,” I repeat.
“To a bar,” he sighs.
“Get lucky?” I ask.
“Would I be here with you if I had?” he says.
His crude attempt at the cutdown, if it was a cutdown, irritates me more than if he had come up with a real … what? scorcher?
“Are you drunk?” I ask, vaguely hoping that he is.
“I wish,” he moans.
“Do you?” I ask.
“Yes. I do,” he moans again, laying back on the bed.
“Quite a little scene you made at dinner,” I mention.
We watch another video or maybe it’s another commercial, I can’t tell, and then he says, “Fuck off. I don’t care.” After a moment’s thoughtful silence, he then asks, “Are they both asleep?” looking over at the wall that separates the rooms from each other.
“Yes.” I nod.
“I went to a movie,” he admits.
“I don’t care,” I say.
“It sucked,” he says.
He gets up and walks over to the cassette player and puts a tape in; hard punk music blasts out of the box and I jump up, completely startled and he makes a face and turns the volume down, then he starts to giggle mischievously and sits in the chair next to mine.
“What are you watching?” he asks. He’s holding the bottle of J.D. which somehow has magically reappeared and offers it to me as he unscrews the top. I shake my head and push it away. “Videos,” I say.
He looks at me, then gets up and stares out the window; he’s got that restless pre-fucking state about him; expectant nervous energy. “I came back because it started to rain.” I can hear him lighting a cigarette, start to smell the smoke. I close my eyes and lean against the chair, and remember a rainy afternoon sitting in Commons with Sean, both of us hungover, sharing a plate of French fries we got at the snack bar since we missed lunch. We were always missing lunch. It was always raining.
“Do you remember those weekends at Saugatuck and Mackinac Island?” he asks.
“No, I don’t. I only remember hellish weekends at Lake Winnebago. In fact I’ve never been to Mackinaw Island,” I say calmly.
“Mackinac,” he says.
“Naw,” I say.
“You’re being difficult, Paul,” he says sweetly.
“Shoot me.”
“Well, anyway, do you remember the Thomases would always come too?” he asks. “Remember Brad Thomas? Good-looking but a mega geek?”
“Mega geek?” I ask. “Brad? Brad from Latin?”
“No, Brad from Fenwick,” he says.
“I don’t remember Brad Thomas,” I say, even though I went to Fenwick with Brad and Richard. I had a crush on Brad in fact. Or was that Bill?
“Remember that Fourth of July when my father got you and Kirk and me so drunk on the boat and my mother had a fit? We were listening to the Top 100 countdown on the radio and someone fell off, right?” he says. “Remember that?”
“Fourth of July? On a boat?” I ask. I suddenly wonder where my father is tonight, and I’m mildly surprised that it doesn’t depress me because I sort of do remember my father’s boat, and I remember wanting badly to see Brad naked, but I can’t remember if anyone fell off a boat, and I’m too tired to even make a move toward Richard so I slump back in the chair and tell him, “I do remember. Get on with it. What’s the point?”
“I miss those days,” Richard says simply.
“You’re a jerk,” I say.
“What happened?” he asks, turning away from the window.
Well, let’s see, your father left your mother for another woman and Mr. Thomas if I remember correctly died of a heart attack playing polo and you became a drug addict and went to college and I became one too for a little while and went to Camden where I wasn’t a drug addict anymore in comparison and I mean what do you want to hear, Richard? Since I have to say something I just say, “You’re a jerk,” again, instead.
“I guess we grew up,” he says sadly.
“Grew up,” I say. “Profound.”
He sits back next to me in the other chair. “I hate college.”
“Isn’t it a little too late to complain?” I ask.
He ignores me. “I hate it.”
“Well, the first couple of years are bad,” I say.
“How about the rest?” He looks over at me, seriously awaiting my answer.
“You get used to it,” I say, after a while.
We stare at the TV. More commercials that look like videos. More videos.
“I want to fuck Billy Idol,” he says absently.
“Yeah?” I yawn.
“I want to fuck you too,” he says in the same absent voice.
“Guess I’m in good company.” His comments make me want to take a swig from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I do. It tastes good. I hand him back the bottle.
“Stop flirting,” he says, laughing. “You’re a bad flirt.”
“No, I’m not,” I say, offended that he thinks I’m coming on to him.
He grabs my wrist playfully and says “You always were.”
“Richard, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, pulling my wrist away from his hold, looking at him quizzically, then turning back to the TV.
Another video changes into a commercial and then a loud clap of thunder quiets us.
“It’s really raining hard,” he says.
“Yes, it’s raining hard,” I say.
“Are you seeing anyone there?” he asks. “I mean, at school.”
“Some Sophomore from the South who rides a motorcycle. I can’t explain it,” I say and then realize that it’s a pretty accurate description of Sean and it makes him look a lot less glamorous than he once seemed. Because, what else is there to say about him? There’s a minute here where I cannot remember his name, can’t even picture features, a face, any sort of shape. “What about you?” I choke, dreading the answer.
“What about me?” he asks. What a finely honed sense of humor.
“Have you ‘met’ anyone?” I rephrase the question.
“‘Met’ anyone?” he asks coyly.
“Who are you fucking? Is that better? I mean, I don’t really want to know. I’m just making conversation.”
“Oh God,” he sighs. “Some guy from Brown. He studies Semiotics. I think it’s the study of laundry or
something. Anyway, he’s on the crew team. I see him weekends, you know.”