The Rules of Attraction

  And I cannot keep my shade open because I have heard the story of why Indians could not settle on the land the campus was built on because the four winds met there on Commons lawn, and some of the Indians went totally insane and had to be killed, their bodies offered to the gods and then buried on Commons. And some say on warm fall nights after midnight, they rise, their faces twisted, bloody, peering in windows, scowling, looking for new offerings, their tomahawks poised.

  And in a bathroom, written above the toilet, someone has written “Ronald McGlinn has a small penis and no testicles” over and over. Someone from L.A. sent me a videotape, unmarked, and I am afraid to play it but probably will. I have lost my I.D. three times this term. I tell the person I see in psychological counseling that I feel the apocalypse is near. She asks me how my flute tutorial is progressing. I do not tell her I dropped it and started taking an advanced video course instead.

  Someone asks me: “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “What is going on?”

  Sensory Deprivation Tank.

  Rest in Peace.

  People are afraid to merge on campus after midnight.

  Indians in a video, flashing on, off, on.

  Ronald McGlinn has a small penis …

  And no testicles. Dude. “What’s going on?”

  “… I’d be safe and warm if I was back in L.A….”

  I miss the beach.

  PAUL “It’s over, isn’t it?” I ask this, sitting in someone’s car Sean borrowed in the parking lot of McDonald’s.

  It’s too cold to come on the bike, he said when I came over to his room. (His room was a mess. The bed was unmade, bracelets lay scattered on the table, the mirror had been taken down from the wall and placed on a chair, folded papers scattered on top of it, thin veneer of white dust covering it.) He said, and I was listening carefully, You can’t use the bathroom.

  But I don’t want to use the bathroom.

  Vomit all over, he said.

  I don’t want to use the bathroom, I said calmly.

  He shrugged. He said no to dinner.

  I said, You don’t like me. You’re seeing someone else.

  And he said, That’s not true.

  And I said, Swear it.

  And he said, I do.

  I said, I don’t believe you.

  He said, You can’t use the bathroom.

  Finally, I talked him into McDonald’s and sitting here in the car, he spits out the window, finishes part of his Big Mac, throws the rest out and lights up a Parliament. He tries to start the car but it’s freezing even though it’s only October and the borrowed car (whose? is it Jerry’s?) won’t start.

  “Well?” I ask. I can’t eat. I can’t even light a cigarette.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Goddamnit,” he shouts, hitting the steering wheel. “Why won’t this fucker start?”

  “I guess it’s not your fault you don’t feel the same way I do,” I tell him.

  “Yeah. Not my fault,” he says, still trying to start the car.

  “But it’s not going to change the way I feel,” I tell him.

  “It should.” He mutters this, staring out the windshield. Cars drive by, drivers sticking their heads out of rolled-down windows, shouting orders, picking them up, moving on, replaced by more cars, more orders. I touch his leg and say, “But it doesn’t.”

  “Well, it’s hard for me too,” he says, pushing my hand away.

  “I know,” I say. How could I fall for such a moron? I thought, looking over his body, then his face, trying to avert my eyes from his crotch.

  “Whose fault is this?” he shouts. Nervously he tries to start the car again. “It’s yours. You ruined our friendship with sex,” he says, disgusted.

  He gets out of the car, slams the door and walks around it a couple of times. The smell of the food I ordered, in my lap, getting cold, uneaten, makes me slightly sick, but I can’t move, can’t throw it out. Now I’m standing in the parking lot. It gets suddenly very cold. Neither of us can stay still very long. He reaches up and turns the collar of his leather jacket up. I reach out and touch his cheek, brushing something off. He pulls his face away and doesn’t smile. I look away, puzzled. A car honks somewhere.

  “I don’t like this arrangement,” I say.

  Back in the car he says, without looking at me, “Then leave.”

  Moral of the story?

  SEAN I would smell the pillows after she’d leave. She didn’t like to sleep in my bed; she said it was too small and that sleeping together didn’t really matter in the end. I agreed. When she was gone and after smelling the pillows, then my arms, my hands, my fingers, I’d think about us fucking, and I’d jerk off, coming once more, thinking about us, fantasizing and reshaping the sex, making it seem more intense and wild than it might have actually been. And in bed with her I could barely contain myself. I would fuck her quickly the first time so I could get off, then spend hours eating her, licking, constantly sucking her cunt; my tongue would ache, become swollen from rubbing my mouth, digging my chin into her, my mouth getting so dry I couldn’t even swallow, and I’d lift my head up and actually gasp for breath.

  It would take very little, just about nothing, to get turned on by her. I’d see her bending over in just her panties, picking up something that she had dropped off the floor, or watch her get dressed, pulling on a T-shirt or sweater, leaning out my window, smoking. Even the small act, the motion of lighting a cigarette and I’d have to fight the urge to grab her, to tear those panties off, to lick and smell and tongue her. Sometimes the desire would be so strong, that all I could do was lay in bed, unmoving, thinking about her body, thinking about a certain look she gave me and I’d get hard instantly.

  She spoke rarely to me, and never mentioned anything about the sex—probably because she was so satisfied, and I didn’t say much back. So there were few drawbacks to our relationship, fewer disagreements. For instance I didn’t have to tell her what I thought about her poetry, which sucked even though a couple of her poems had been chosen for publication in the school’s literary rag and for a poetry journal her teacher edited. If it ever did come up I would simply tell her I liked it and comment on the imagery. But what was poetry, or anything else for that matter, when compared to those breasts, and that ass, that insatiable center between those long legs wrapped around my hips, that beautiful face crying out with pleasure?

  LAUREN Still no mail from Victor. Not a postcard. Not a phone call. Not a letter. No message. The bastard can rot in hell for all I care.

  “The school is really going downhill,” Judy tells me, explaining that I should be grateful to be a Senior so I won’t have to come back next year. And I guess I have to agree with her. The Freshman band is called The Parents—that’s enough to send out some message to people’s feelers that something wrong is going down. October seems to last forever because of Judy’s assessment. Graduation seems impossibly far off.

  Gina did win the prize for changing the school sign and with the prize money we bought some XTC, which I had never done before, not even with Victor, and it was pretty incredible. I don’t think Sean liked it though. He just got very sweaty and kept grinding his teeth, swaying back and forth, and later that night he was even hornier than usual, which was no fun at all. I start drinking a lot of beer because that and play video games is essentially all the boy wants to do. But he gets better-looking as time goes on and though the sex is only okay and even if he’s not so great in bed, at least he’s imaginative. Yet he doesn’t turn me on. No real orgasms. (Well, maybe a couple.) Just because he’s so damned insistent. (Contrary to popular belief, being eaten out for two hours straight is not my idea of a good time.) He also seems suspicious. I have the feeling that he’s the mastermind of the Young Conservatives Party that had that big dance in Greenwall last Saturday. Other than being on Rec Committee I have no idea what he does here, and in the end, like Judy says, I really don’t want to know. Just want December to arrive, just want to get out of this place.
Because I don’t know how much longer I can keep drinking beer and watching him get the high score on Pole Position which he is superb at.

  I asked him about this one night and he just grumbled some monosyllabic answer. But what else is one to do at college except drink beer or slash your wrists? I thought to myself as he got up, stalked over to the video machine, slipped in another quarter. I stopped complaining.

  Girl who killed herself got the flyer the rest of us all got in her box, telling her that she was indeed dead and that there would be a memorial service for her in Tishman. I mentioned this one night when Sean and I were at The Pub having pre-party beers, and he looked at me and snorted, “Irony. Oh boy,” but he might as well have just snorted, “So?”

  The poetry comes along. I haven’t stopped smoking. Judy tells me that Roxanne told her that Sean deals drugs. I tell her, “At least he doesn’t breakdance.”

  SEAN I trudge and Lauren walks up the hill toward Vittorio’s house. It’s not too cold even if it’s late October, but I told her to wear a sweater just in case it got cold when we walked home. I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans when I told her this and she asked me, when we were in her room getting dressed, why she had to wear a sweater if I got to wear a short-sleeve shirt and therefore be more comfortable. I couldn’t tell her the truth: that I didn’t like the idea of Vittorio staring at her tits. So I went back to my room and put on an old black jacket and changed my tennis shoes to penny loafers, as an added touch to please her.

  The jacket is wrapped around my waist now, the sleeves knocking against my thighs as we make our way to the top of the hill. I start walking slower, hoping that maybe I can talk her out of Vittorio’s party, hoping that she’ll change her mind and walk back to campus with me. The only reason I’m doing this is because I know it means a lot to her (though I cannot understand why) and that this is Vittorio’s last get-together before he leaves for Italy on Sunday, before he’s replaced by some drunk who was fired from the Lit staff at Harvard (I found this out from Norris who knows all the teacher gossip). I step in front of the gate that leads up to the door of Vittorio’s house. She keeps walking, then stops, sighs, doesn’t turn around.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.

  “We already talked about this,” she says.

  “I think I’ve changed my mind.”

  “We’re here. We’re going in. I’m going in.”

  I follow her to the door. “If he makes one move towards you I’ll beat the shit out of him.” I unwrap the jacket from my waist and put it on.

  “You’ll what?” she asks, ringing the bell.

  “I don’t know.” I smooth the jacket out. I brought coke in case I can’t deal with it, but I haven’t told her this. I wonder if any girls will be here.

  “You’re jealous of my poetry teacher,” she says. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I can’t believe he practically rapes you at these goddamned things,” I whisper loudly at her. “And you love it,” I add.

  “My God, Sean, he’s almost seventy,” she says. “Besides you’ve never been to one of these things so how in the hell would you know?”

  “So what? I don’t care how old he is, he still does it. You’ve told me.” I can hear footsteps, Vittorio’s, shuffling toward the door.

  “He’s taught me a lot and I owe it to him to come.” She looks at my watch, lifting then dropping my wrist. “We’re late. Anyway he’s leaving and you won’t have to put up with this anymore.”

  This is the end of the relationship. I knew it was coming to an end. She was starting to bore me already. And maybe this party is a good excuse to end it, to lay blame somewhere. I don’t care. Rock’n’roll. I look at her one last time, in the seconds before the door opens, and desperately try to remember why we even got together in the first place.

  The door opens and Vittorio, wearing baggy cords and an old L.L. Bean sweater, his thin gray hair longish, un-brushed, raises his arms up in greeting and says, “Lauren, Lauren … oh what a lovely, lovely surprise….” His soft voice now high and emotional. This is Vittorio? The guy who makes the passes at Lauren? I’m thinking. He hugs her as she walks in and she looks over at me and rolls her eyes up over Vittorio’s aged, stooped shoulder. I register it but it doesn’t make a difference. Why doesn’t she just fuck him? I’m thinking.

  “… lovely, lovely surprise….”

  “I thought we were invited,” I say, annoyed.

  “Oh you were, you were,” Vittorio says, looking at Lauren as if she had spoken. “But it’s such a lovely … lovely surprise….”

  “Vittorio, you remember Sean,” she says. “You were in one of Vittorio’s classes, weren’t you?” she asks me.

  I have never met the guy in my life, only heard about his lecherous activities from Lauren who spoke about them plainly and easily, as if it were a joke. When she spoke to me about his behavior it was hard to tell whether she was bragging or trying purposefully to turn me off. Whatever.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Hi.”

  “Yes, yes … Sean,” he says, still gazing at Lauren.

  “Well…” I say.

  He’s breathing hard and I can smell the alcohol on the geezer’s breath.

  “Yes,” he says, absent-mindedly as he ushers Lauren into the living room, forgetting to close the front door behind him. I close the door. I follow.

  There are only six other people at the so-called party. (I don’t understand why Lauren doesn’t realize that six people do not constitute a “party,” but more like a fucking “gathering”) And they’re all sitting around a table in the living room. Some young pale guy with a shaved head wearing John Lennon glasses and a Mobil gas station uniform, smoking Export A’s, sitting in an armchair, eyes us contemptuously as we walk in. This couple from San Francisco, Trav and his hot wife Mona, who are living near the college while Trav finishes his novel, and Mona takes a poetry tutorial with Vittorio, are sitting on two chairs next to the couch, where two creepy female editors from the literary magazine Vittorio edits, along with Marie, a plump, silent woman in her mid-forties, who has the Italian widow look and who, I guess takes care of Vittorio’s needs, sit.

  Lauren knows one of the editors, who has just published a poem of hers in that magazine’s last issue. I had thought the same of that poem as I had of all the rest. None of them made any sense to me. All this stuff about depressed girls sitting around in empty rooms, thinking of past boyfriends, or masturbating, or smoking cigarettes on foam-drenched sheets, complaining about menstrual cramps. It seemed to me that Lauren was just writing one endless poem and I told her honestly one night after we’d had sex in her room, that none—no, not none; hadn’t said that—that a lot of it didn’t make sense to me. She had only said, “Doesn’t make sense,” and laid back on the pillow we were sharing and when I tried to kiss her, later that night, her mouth and embrace seemed cold, indifferent, frigid.

  “This is quite a promising young poet … um, yes…” Vittorio says of Lauren, resting his meaty, hairy paw on her shoulder.

  Vittorio then turns to the bald guy in the armchair and says of the pretentious geek, “And this is Stump, another … yes, very promising poet….”

  “We know each other,” Lauren smiles flirtatiously. “You did your thesis with Glickman last term, right? On…” She’s forgotten. Must have made a big impression.

  “Yeah,” Stump says. “Hunter S. Thompson.”

  “Right,” she says. “This is Sean Bateman.”

  “Hi, Stump?” I offer my hand.

  “Yeah. Used to be Carcass but changed it.” He salutes instead of taking my hand.

  “You … look familiar,” I say, taking a seat.

  “Wine? Uh, vodka? Gin?” Vittorio asks, sitting in the chair next to Lauren’s, gesturing at the table we’re all “gathered” around. “You like gin, don’t you … Lauren.”

  How the fuck does he know?

  “Yeah, gin,” Lauren says. “Do you have any tonic?”

  “Oh, of course, o
f course … I’ll make it,” Vittorio says in his soft, almost faggoty voice, reaching over Lauren’s knees to get to the ice bucket.

  “I’ll just have one of those beers,” I say, but when Vittorio makes no move to get one I reach over and take one of the Beck’s.

  It’s quiet. Everyone waits for Vittorio to make Lauren’s drink. I sit there, looking at Vittorio’s shaking hands, alarmed at how much gin he’s pouring into Lauren’s glass. When he turns around to hand the glass to her, he seems shocked, taken aback, and as she takes the drink from him he says, “Oh look … look at the sunlight, the sunlight … through your golden … golden hair….” His voice is trembling now. “The sunlight…” he murmurs. “Look how it glows … glows in the sunlight…”

  Jesus Christ, this is really making me sick. She is making me sick. I grip the beer firmly, tear at the damp label. Then I look at Lauren.

  The sun is still up and streaming through the large stained glass window and it does make Lauren’s hair glow and she looks very beautiful to me right now. Everyone’s giggling and Vittorio leans over and starts smelling her hair. “Ah, sweet as nectar … nectar,” he says.

  I am going to scream. I am going to scream. No I’m not.

  “Sweet as nectar…” Vittorio mumbles again, and then pulls away, letting strands of her hair fall back into place.