The Rules of Attraction

  “You two know each other?” he asked.

  “Yeah, hi,” she smiled and he held her beer while she lit a cigarette.

  “Hi,” I smiled, genial as ever. Then threw her a severe look when she wasn’t looking, hoping that Mitchell would catch it, but he didn’t.

  The three of us stood there at End of the World, past that came the slope that headed down toward the valley, and then the middle of Camden. It wasn’t steep but if I was to push her, accidentally say, inconspicuously, over the knee-high stone protector, it would cause more than slight damage. The Pretenders turned into Simple Minds and I was grateful because I could not have stood there if there had been no music. Parties are, in their own right, perfect grounds for confrontation, but not this one. I had lost this one. I had probably lost it a long time ago, maybe even that last night in New York. Someone had strung dim yellow lights up and they illuminated Mitchell’s face, making it seem pasty, and washed-out. He was gone. The scene of us standing there was too real and too pointless. I wandered away.

  SEAN The girl’s name is Candice. I’m standing by the keg with Tony who’s giving Getch a long speech on the effects of drinking too much beer and I watch her and block Mitch Allen out of my line of vision. She’s dressed too nicely for a Friday night party and out here on Commons lawn she looks classy, really nice, maybe too conservative and uptight in that Jappy sort of way, but also in a good, sexy way, like you look at her and you know she’d be wild in bed or something. At any rate she looks too good for Mitch, who isn’t really all that handsome as far as I can tell. He always reminded me of a high school dork who was trying too hard. I wonder if she really likes fucking him. Then I think maybe they’re not even fucking. Maybe I can just go over there and start talking to her and maybe she’ll accept my offer and tell Mitch that she’ll see him later. And thinking about all this is killing me, almost. Down another beer and another Jap, Roxanne, comes over to the keg, and stands next to me. Then this girl is walking away from End of the World, following him. They can’t be leaving, I’m thinking, it’s too early. But they aren’t leaving, they’re just walking away from someone. Too early for what? I wonder to myself. They’ll just go back to his room eventually (she probably has a roommate) and she’ll let him fuck her. I’m so horny I’m not even excited, just weak. I look at Roxanne, who I owe lots of money to. She’s wearing too much jewelry and looking okay. I wonder if she’ll fuck me tonight. If there’s even a slight possibility. She’s smoking a joint and hands it to me. “What’s going on?” she asks.

  “Drinking beer,” I explain.

  “Is it good? Are you drinking a good beer?” she asks.

  “Listen,” I tell her, getting to the point, “Do you want to go back to my room?”

  She laughs, drinks her beer, bats her thickly mascaraed eyelashes and asks me why.

  “Old times?” I shrug. I hand her back the joint.

  “Old times?” She laughs even harder.

  “What’s so funny? Jesus.”

  “No, I don’t, Sean,” she says. “I have to pick up Rupert anyway.” She’s still smiling.

  The bitch. There’s a bug, a moth in her beer. She doesn’t see it. I don’t say anything.

  “Lend me a couple bucks,” I ask her.

  “I don’t have my purse with me,” she says.

  “Right,” I say.

  “Oh, Sean. You’re still the same,” she says, not being mean, but it makes me want to hit her (no, fuck her, then hit her). “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  I want her to drink that bug. Where did Candice go, damnit? I look back at Roxanne, who’s still got that goddamned smile, thinking to herself, happy that I asked her, happier that she has the power to say no. I look at her and am genuinely repulsed.

  “Do you have any morphine?” I ask her.

  “Why?” she asks, spotting the bug, pouring the beer out onto the lawn.

  “Take some. You look like you could use it,” I tell her, walking away.

  “I have something for you to pick up, sweetheart,” is the last clear thing I hear.

  My line was neither quick or effective and I cannot believe I actually saw that girl for a while. It was when she started dealing coke so she could lose weight. It had worked, sort of. I think she still has a fat ass, and can look dumpy, and has dried-out black hair and writes awful poetry and I’m pissed off that I let her get into that position of denying me. I go back to my room and slam the door a couple of times. Rommate’s gone, snap on the radio. I pace. “Wild Horses” comes on the local station. I flick the tuner. “Let It Be” is on the next station. On the next is “Ashes to Ashes,” then some Springsteen dirge, then Sting crooning “Every Breath You Take,” and then when I turn it back to the local station, asshole D.J. announces he’s going to play all four sides of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” I don’t know what comes over me but I pick the receiver up and hurl it against the closet door, but it doesn’t break and I’m grateful even if it is a cheap stereo. I kick it, then grab a box of tapes, unwind one I don’t like and smash it with my boot heel. Then I take a crate of singles I own and make sure I have them on tape before I snap them all into two, then, if possible, into four. I kick at the walls on roommate’s side and then break a doorknob on the closet door. Then I go back to the party.

  LAUREN Me and Judy. Stretching canvas. My studio. Judy just did her nails so she is not really, as one says, into it. So we stop. Another Friday night. She brought two Beck’s over and some pot. I like Judy. I do not like mother. Mother called earlier. After dinner. It depressed me so completely that I could only walk around in a stupor and smoke cigarettes until I came down to the studio. My mother had nothing to say to me. My mother had no pressing information to pass on to me. My mother was watching movies on the VCR. My mother is crazy. I asked her about the magazine (she runs it), about my sister at R.I.S.D., about finally (big mistake) my father. She said she didn’t hear me. I did not ask her again. Then she mentioned that Joana (father’s new girlfriend) is only twenty-five. And since I didn’t groan or throw up or try to kill myself, she said that if I approve of what he’s doing why don’t I just stay with him over Christmas. By that time the call had already degenerated so completely I told her that I had a class to go to at midnight and hung up and went to the studio and looked at all the shit, the completely shitty shit I’d been doing all term. I was supposed to be doing the posters for the Shepard play but the dyke who was directing it really bothers me, so maybe I’ll give her one of these unfinished pieces of shit. I cry out, “It’s all shit! Judy look at this. It’s shit!”

  “No, it’s not.” But she’s not looking.

  “You’re not looking. Oh god.” I open my second pack of the day and it’s not even eleven. Last thing I have to worry about is lung or breast cancer. Thank god I’m not on the Pill.

  “I’m changing majors,” I say. Look at what I’ve done. Jackson Pollock freed the line, remember that, someone told me in Advanced Painting yesterday. How can I free this shit? I wonder. I stand back from the unfinished canvas. I realize that I would rather spend my money on drugs than on art supplies. “I’m changing my major. Are you listening?”

  “Again?” Judy says, all concentration on rolling another joint. She laughs.

  “Again? Did you have to say that?”

  “Don’t make me laugh or else I can’t do this.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I say.

  “Let’s go to the party.” Whining. Judy whining.

  “Why? We have everything we need here. Warm beer. Music And even better, no boys.”

  I change the tape. We have been listening to Compilation Tape #2 we made Freshman year. Bad/Good memories come from it. Michael Jackson (“How many songs off ‘Thriller’ can you name?” Victor asked me once. I lied and said only two. After that he said he loved me … where was that? Wellfleet Drive-in, or were we walking down Commercial Street in Provincetown?), Prince (having sex in the campus van parked outside a Friday night party with good-looking Boy f
rom Brown), Grandmaster Flash (we danced to “The Message” so many times and we never tired). Tape depresses me. Pull it out. Put something else, Reggae Tape #6, in.

  “When is Victor coming back?” Judy asks.

  I can hear music coming from Commons and End of the World and it sounds tempting. Maybe we should go. Go to party. There was always the book of sexual diseases with gruesome explicit photographs in them (some of the close-ups, pink, blue, purple, red blisters were beautiful in an abstract minimalist sort of way), which always works as a deterrent to a Friday night party. Victor would be a deterrent too. If he was here. We’d probably go to the party and have a good time. Flip through the book. Close-up of girl who was allergic to the plastic in her diaphragm. Yuck. Maybe we would have a good time. I picture poor handsome Victor in Rome or Paris, alone, hungry, somewhere, desperately trying to get in touch with me, maybe even screaming at some mean operator in broken Italian or Yiddish, near tears, trying to reach me. Gasp and lean up against the posts in the studio and then throw head back. Too dramatic.

  “Who knows?” I hear myself saying. “What does this stuff remind you of?” I ask her, standing back. “Degas? Seurat? Renoir?”

  She looks at the canvas and says, “Scooby Doo.”

  Okay, it’s time for The Pub. Get a pitcher of Genny and if we haven’t forgotten to cash a check, maybe some wine coolers to get drunk/sick on, then a pizza or bagel? Judy knows it. I know it. When the going gets tough, the tough go drinking.

  So we go to The Pub. Someone has written in black letters Sensory Deprivation Tank on the door and I don’t find it funny. Not many people are here because of the party. We get a pitcher and sit in the back. Listen to the jukebox. I think about Victor. A joint left unsmoked is in Judy’s bag. And we have the same conversation that we always have on partyless Friday nights in The Pub. Conversations that only recently, now that I’m a Senior, am I tiring of.

  J: What’s the movie tonight?

  Me: Apocalypse Now? or Dawn of the Dead, maybe. I think.

  J: No. Not again, god.

  Me: So, who are you in love with?

  J: Franklin.

  Me: I thought you said he was a geek, a bore. Why?

  J: There’s no one else to like.

  Me: You said he was a geek, though.

  J: I really like his roommate.

  Me: Who’s that?

  J: Michael.

  Me: Why don’t you go for Michael?

  J: He’s maybe gay.

  Me: How do you know?

  J: I slept with him. He told me he likes boys. I don’t think it would work out. He wants to be a ballerina.

  Me: If you can’t be with the one you love, honey …

  J: Fuck their roommate instead.

  Me: Are we going anywhere or not?

  J: No, I don’t think so. Not tonight.

  Me: What’s the movie tonight?

  PAUL I first met Sean when I was standing by the keg, watching Mitchell and Candice leave. They walked past me and Mitchell smiled good-night and waved halfheartedly. As did Candice, which I could take as either a kind, pity gesture or as a victorious, gleeful salute. (Victorious? Why? Mitchell would never tell her about me.) I watched them walk away and started to refill my cup. I looked over and remember seeing Dennis Jenkins, this scrawny, ugly dramafag staring at me. (Dennis Jenkins was one of many reasons why I despised being a Drama major). I sighed and told myself that if I went to bed with him tonight I would kill myself in the morning. I finished filling the cup, which was mostly foam since the keg was running out, and when I looked up Sean Bateman was standing there, waiting. I had known Sean like everyone knows everyone else at this place, meaning we had probably never spoken to each other but knew of each other’s cliques, and we had mutual acquaintances. He was handsome in a vague, straight way, always spilling beer and playing video games or pinball in The Pub, and I wasn’t much interested, at first.

  “Hi, Sean,” I said. If I hadn’t been more than slightly drunk I probably would have said nothing; nodded and walked away. I was fairly sure he was majoring in Mechanics.

  “Hi, Paul,” he smiled, staring off.

  He seemed nervous and I followed his gaze to the darkness of the college, back to the houses on campus. I don’t remember, or know, why he was staring off like that. Maybe he was just nervous and too shy to talk to me. Behind him people were leaving End of the World and heading either back home or to The Graveyard.

  “Do you know that girl with Mitchell?” he asked, which I took as a lame conversation starter.

  “You mean Candice,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Her name is Candice.”

  “Yeah. That’s right,” he said.

  “I was in a class with her but I failed it,” I said, getting wistful.

  “I was in that class too. So did I,” he said, surprised.

  In that instant, looking back, mutual rapport was established.

  “I didn’t ever see you in there,” I said, suspiciously.

  “That’s why I failed it,” he admitted; a sheepish smile.

  “Oh,” I said, nodding.

  “I can’t believe you failed it,” he said.

  I hadn’t failed it. I had actually gotten an incomplete, which I finished over the summer. In fact it was an incredibly easy, undemanding class (Ethnic Chamber Drama) and I was shocked anyone could fail it, whether you showed up or not. But Sean seemed impressed by this and I kept it up.

  “Yeah, I failed two others,” I said, trying to gauge his reaction.

  “You did?” His mouth, the lips were full and red, sexy, maybe sensitive but not really, fell open.

  “Yeah.” I nodded.

  “Boy, I’d never think that you’d fail anything,” he said, making it sound like a compliment.

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. The first outright flirting of the conversation. It comes easily at Friday night parties.

  “My type of guy,” he laughed, self-deprecatingly. Then he remembered that he came for the beer, or had he? He reached for the tap, but it was all gone.

  I stood there, looking him over. He was wearing jeans and boots and a white T-shirt and a fairly tacky leather jacket with fur trim: the casual American boy look. And I was thinking it would be quite a coup to get this person into bed. Then I sighed and realized I was being so stoopid. The party was ending and I was getting depressed and the keg was sputtering, so I cleared my throat and said, “Well, see you around.”

  And then he said the strangest thing. The thing that started it all off. I wasn’t that drunk to misunderstand and I was taken aback at such a bold proposition. I didn’t ask him to repeat his invitation. I simply rephrased what he had asked me: You wanna get a quesadilla?

  “You want to go and get a quesadilla?” I asked. “You want to go out to dinner tomorrow night? Mexican? Casa Miguel?”

  And he was so shy, he looked down and said, “Yeah, I guess.” He looked bewildered almost. He was hurt. I was touched. The Supremes were singing, “When the Love Light Starts Shining Through His Eyes.” And even though it seemed like he wanted to go now, we arranged to meet tomorrow night at Casa Miguel in North Camden at seven.

  SEAN The party is starting to end and I’ve had my eye on Candice the whole goddamn time. But the moment comes and she leaves with Mitch and I’m not as upset or surprised as I expected. I am also considerably loaded and that helps. The last people are hanging out, and the last people hanging out at these parties waiting to find someone to go home with always depress me. It reminds me of kids being picked last for teams in high school. It’s weak. Really improves one’s sense of self-worth. But I don’t give a fuck in the end. I walk over to the keg and Paul Denton’s standing by it and somehow the keg has run out and Tony’s selling bottled beer for two bucks apiece over in his room and I don’t want to spend the money and I’m not in any mood to snake it from the guy and I suspect that Denton’s got some bucks so I ask him if he wants to go with me and get a case of beer and the guy is so drunk he asks me if I want to have
dinner with him tomorrow and I guess I’m drunk too and I say sure even though I don’t know why the fuck I’m saying that, confused as hell. I walk away and end up going to bed with Deidre again which is sort of … I don’t know what it sort of is.

  LAUREN Wake up. Saturday morning. Tutorial on the postmodern condition. Believe it or not. At ten. In Dickinson. It’s October already and we’ve only had one session. I doubt there’s anyone else in the class. I was the only one at the first meeting a month ago and Conroy was so drunk that he lost the rollsheet. Go up to brunch. Pass Commons lawn. People who’ve probably been up all night are clearing the debris away. Maybe they are still partying, still having a good time. Eternal End of the World Keg Party? The kegs are being rolled away. Sound equipment packed up. Lights being taken down. Should have gone. Maybe. Maybe not. Stop by Commons. Coffee. No mail from Victor. Walk up to Dickinson. And … guess what. Conroy’s asleep on the couch in his office. Office reeks of marijuana. Marijuana pipe on desk next to bottle of Scotch. Sit at the desk, not surprised, unfazed and smoke a cigarette, watch Conroy sleep. Getting up? No, he’s not. Put the cigarette out. Leave. Victor recommended this course to me.

  SEAN I get up early, for a Saturday, sometime after breakfast. I take a shower and kind of remember about this tutorial I happen to be up in time for. I smoke a couple of cigarettes, watch the Frog sleep, pace. I can’t believe I have a roommate whose name is Bertrand. I go up to Tishman because there’s nothing else to do. Saturdays suck anyway and I’ve never been to this class so it can’t be all that boring. I get to Tishman but it’s the wrong building. Then I remember that it might be in Dickinson but I go to the wrong room but then I find the right room even if it looks like the wrong room. It’s the teacher’s office and there is no one here. I’m not that late either, and I wonder if maybe they’ve changed rooms. If they have, then I’m dropping this class, I’m not going to put up with that kind of bullshit. The office smells like pot though, so I stick around in case someone comes back with more. I sit at the desk, look for signs of what this class is all about. But I can’t find any. So I go back to my room. The Frog is gone. Maybe I’ll check out the AA meeting in Bingham, but it’s not there and after hanging out in the living room, waiting, smoking, pacing, I go back to my room. Maybe I’ll take a ride, go to Manchester. Saturdays suck.