The Rules Of Attraction Part 12

'Why?' Paul asked, after a while.

'Because . . .' I stalled. Then said, 'We don't love each other anymore.'

Paul did not say anything.

'Your father and I have been living apart since you left for school,' I told him.

'Where does he live now?' he asked.

'In the city.'

'Oh,' Paul said.

'Are you upset?' I asked. I thought I was going to cry but it pa.s.sed.

Paul took another sip and uncrossed his legs. 'Upset?' he asked. 'No. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later.' He smiled as if he remembered something private and humorous and it made me sad, and all I could say was, 'We're signing the papers next Wednesday afternoon.' And then I wondered why I told him this, why I gave him this detail, this piece of information. I wondered where Paul was going to be next Wednesday afternoon. With that friend, Michael, at lunch? And I wanted badly to know what he did at school - if he was popular, if he went to parties, who he slept with even. I wondered if he was still seeing that girl from Cairo, was it? Or Connecticut? He had mentioned something about her at the beginning of the year. I was sorry I brought him to Boston for the 1 77.

weekend and made him sit through that dinner. And I could have told him this in the hotel room. Being in the bar did not matter.

'What do you think?' I asked my son.

'Does it matter?' he said.

'No,' I said. 'Not really.'

'Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?'

'Yes.' I finished the champagne. There was nothing left to do.

'Is there anything else?' he asked.

'Anything else?' I asked.

'Yeah,' he said.

'I suppose not.'

'Okay.' He put the cigarette out and did not light another one.

STUART I don't know what gets into me but I go to The Dressed To Get Screwed party in only my underwear, thinking my body looks okay, thinking I want to get Paul Denton's attention. So I do some c.o.ke with Jenkins and get completely f.u.c.ked-up drinking that sickly sweet, sticky alcohol punch and when Billy Idol comes on I just go crazy and do this great number. The whole party loves it and they're all in a circle and I'm in the middle twirling and gyrating and jumping around, hoping he was watching me. I looked for him afterwards, turned on, dizzy and a little sick from dancing so hard, drunk, stoned, Dance majors coming on to me, and feeling pretty good. But, of t course, I couldn't find him. He wasn't anywhere. He probably thought it was too uncool to come to these things L anyway. But who doesn't go to The Dressed To Get Screwed party, besides that weird Cla.s.sics group (and they're probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers and performing pagan rituals). I ended up going home alone. Not really, I fooled around with Dennis a little while, but I fell asleep like I usually do on Friday nights: unscrewed.

////It's party time and she is ready. The party is swirling and miraculous-seeming and she has dressed so carefully that she 173.

179.

tries to avoid the living room and dance floor because if she gets messed up she thinks she will never see you, or you will never see her. This is why she is very careful as she roams the party looking for you. She enters the living room of this house, this tomb of destruction, songs she loves being danced out by sweat-drenched captives of the room's embrace. She is shocked not happy to see how many have decided to come wrapped in white sheets. Should she have? It is so very dark that she can only make out the paleness of unclothed bodies, a camera, a video crew in one comer capturing this night's images, other images, less graphic, flickering above them on the upperwalls, below the ceiling, a skinny boybody dancing enthusiastically in a circle made of those same sweat-drenched captives, near-naked people seem everywhere but it is not, strangely enough, or maybe it is strangely enough, erotic, and she walks by them, through the living tomb and into an area where pink beverage is being scooped from a cylindrical gray bin by a girl so fleshy that it makes her t.i.tter and she still doesn't see you. She searches hallways and bathrooms, finds couples f.u.c.king under the October moon on the lawn, upstair bathrooms, upstair bedrooms, roams the hallway, even the kitchen for G.o.d's sake, but she does not see you until she is back under the killing blue lights of the living room now illuminated. As fate has it you are dancing, swaying, with a beautiful girl she does recognize, but she does not think that you like her, but the music is too loud to feel anything really except - that you will give yourself to her. She stands next to a black box bigger than herself where music pours from, holding a pink drink and she loves the way your head is thrown back, moving, trying to keep the beat (you are not a good dancer) and the song ends, a new 180.

one overlaps it and it makes no sense at all. She follows you out of the room, you look back at the girl and decide to take her arm and the blue light makes your white sheets glow beneath the jacket you are taking off and she follows you to the light at the door and says . . . 'h.e.l.lo' ... and never has a second hurt and ruptured, blistered so harshly because the musics too loud and you can't hear, don't even notice, and you take her hand instead and you are both leaving. You smiled, she thinks, at her. But by then she was hiding in the comer of the room, standing on the rolled-up carpet, the room a black-blue ma.s.s moving to the songs, her love still silent and undeclared and it was time to make a decision. What can she do? Can she go to you and tell you things without you thinking of her as a crazy love maniac? No. Maybe it's not even that, but it is over. And she will not be with you. It's simple. But your smile actually echoes still, and it is too late. She stands in the comer, waiting, listening to the music, music that tells her nothing, doesn't even offer a clue as to what to do, just playing loudly, the same, excruciating, dumb beat that traps her, doesn't move her, and on the way out of this place, alone, she b.u.mps into someone who has shaved their head and he sticks his tongue out at her, wagging it, yelling orgyinboothorgyinbooth but she doesn't listen, her face, still hot but numb with rejection, down, staring at the floor - it's over. It is time. Baldboy laughs at her. She walks away, by End of the World, looks down at the lights of the town. There won't be any more notes. It's last call.//// 181.

LAUREN A lightbulb. I'm staring at the lightbulb above Sean's head. We're at Lila's and Gina's apartment in Pels. 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.' Does 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I don't know why I think this but I do. Not exactly handsome, but he's pa.s.sable 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.

182.

'B-U-M-M-E-R,' I spell out, sighing. Look at the Maplethorpe 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 gla.s.s 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 c.o.ke?' too drunk too 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 s.e.x and it was over with so I could go back to my room with the down pillows and the comforter and pa.s.s 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 Soph.o.m.ore year. It is different.

'The Seventies never ended.' Sean the Philosopher Bateman this time. What a stupid thing to say, I'm thinking.

183.

What a strange and supremely stupid thing to say. smiles at me and thinks it's profound. I feel sick. I them to turn the music down.

'I wonder if everyone goes through this much h.e.l.l a 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 gra.s.s. 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 Soph.o.m.ores 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 flas.h.i.+ng neon,' Gina.

'Get Keith Haring or Kenny Scharf,' Lila grimaces.

'Or Schnabel,' Gina cringes.

'Too pa.s.se,' 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, ,Ae standing around with dogs and fish. Welcome to ramden 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 gra.s.s is good but I have to light a cigarette to stay I 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 embarra.s.sing f enough to sober me up. Tou'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 f.u.c.k the rest of the letters. If there was just a sign. It could make me elated for one week, no, one day. 1 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 f.u.c.ks me. It's not so bad. It's over. I breathe easy.

184.

185.

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 gra.s.s we smoked at the d.y.k.es' w 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 grateful that. . .

... he had to kiss her quickly on the lips and ... he 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 c.o.ked-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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small but full, yet the nipples weren't hard, not even after he touched 186.

them, then kissed and licked them. He helped her remove the panties, saw how small her c.u.n.t was too, the pubic hair light and spa.r.s.e 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 making 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 f.u.c.k her, and before he came, it hit him: he can't remember the last time he had s.e.x 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 187.

sits down on one of the beds and all he says is, 'Lost my sungla.s.ses.'

I keep watching Huey Lewis, who can't find his way out of the party. He's holding hands with some blond bubble-head 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 c.o.ke?' Richard asks.

A surge of irritation makes me grip the Heineken bottle tighter. I don't say anything.

'There's a lot of c.o.ke 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.

188.

'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, 'f.u.c.k 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 ca.s.sette 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-f.u.c.king 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.

189.

'No, I don't. I only remember h.e.l.lish 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.