The Rules Of Attraction Part 5

Since his roommate Bertrand ('a stuck-up Frog,' he'd say) was either shopping in New York on weekends or over at his girlfriend's place off-campus, we had the room to ourselves, which was good and bad. Good, since it was in a house where there was usually a party, any party, on any night of the week and so it was nice to get drunk in Booth, in the living room, or if it wasn't snowing or raining or cold, out by the front porch, then walk up the stairs to that room at the end of the hall. It was also bad because he was afraid people would hear us so he would get paranoid and have to drink a lot more before even any sort of foreplay could be initiated.

After s.e.x (during s.e.x he was crazed, an untamed animal, it was almost scary) we would both be starving and then we'd drive on his motorcycle to Price Chopper. He always had an extra helmet. I'd put my arms around his firm slim waist and he'd race down College Drive toward the market. Once there he would play a few games of Joust at the video machines near the front door and I'd buy the sliced cheese, the bad salami he liked a lot, the rye bread for him, the whole grain wheat for me, and, if it was before two, the inevitable six-pack of Genny or Bud. I liked Beck's but he said it was too expensive and he didn't have enough money. Most of the time he liked to shoplift. He loved to do it so much that I would have to calm him down. We'd only do it in the middle of the night when no one was there, just one checkout line open and the nights.h.i.+ft boys unpacking canned goods in back, with Rush coming from the speakers that during the day carried Muzak. I'd be wearing my long Loden wool coat I got at the Salvation Army in town and he'd be wearing his leather jacket with the tacky fur trim that had a surprising amount of pocket room and we'd pa.s.s through the checkout line without any ha.s.sling, my coat and his jacket weighed down with cigarettes, bottles of wine, Ha'agen Dazs ice cream, shampoo, and he would stop, just to be daring, and buy one piece of Bazooka gum. One night I saw an old lady who was too thin and who barely had any hair left and she was sorting out coupons and I almost didn't want to steal the Swiss Chocolate Almond Ha'agen Dazs and the Ben & Jerry's Health Bar Crunch but Sean wanted it so badly that I couldn't say no, 97.since he stood there, defiant, s.e.xy in tight jeans, his jaw set his hair s.h.i.+ny but matted with sweat due to our lovemaking and casually tousled. How could I say no?

He didn't tell me a lot about himself but I wasn't particularly interested in his background anyway. We'd either get drunk at The Pub on campus (sometimes we'd go there after dinner and stay until we closed the place) or we'd drive to The Carousel on Route 9 and sit and drink alone at the bar and those were the only times he'd say anything. He told me all about growing up in the South and that his parents were farmers and that he had no brothers, a couple of sisters and that he was on financial aid and that he was majoring in Literature, which was strange since there were no books in his room. It was also strange that he was from the South since he didn't have a trace of an accent. But these weren't the things I liked about him. His body wasn't as nice as Mitch.e.l.l's, which had been systematically worked out, and last summer, in New York, he had gone to a tanning salon so his skin color was a combination of pink and brown, except for the shocking whiteness where his underwear had blocked out the ultraviolet rays. Sean's body was different. It was in good, solid condition (probably from working on the farm as a boy) with barely any hair (a little on his chest) and hung well (well hung? I never knew how to use that expression anyway). He had brownish wavy hair he parted to one side that could of used some mousse but I didn't press it.

I liked him for his motorcycle too. Even though I had grown up in Chicago I had never ridden one before and the first time I had been on one with him I laughed my head off, dizzy with excitement, the danger of it amusing 98.me. 1 liked the way we fit on it, sometimes my hands on I his thighs, often below, and he wouldn't say anything, just I drive faster. He drove like a madman anyway, through lights, through stop signs, going around corners in the rain I at what seemed like eighty miles an hour. I didn't care. I would just hold on tighter. And after that, riding drunk on the way back to campus from drinking at The Carousel in the windy New England night, he would pull up to the Security gate and wait for the guards to let us in. He would act as sober as possible, which really didn't matter since he knew all the Security guards anyway (I've found that people on financial aid usually do). We would go to his room or my room if the Frog was in, he'd fall on my bed, kicking off his boots and telling me I can do anything I want. He didn't care.

STUART What would he do if I came over one night with a bottle of wine or some pot and said, 'Lets have an affair?' I have moved to Welling House, across from Denton's room.

99.Dennis was the one who really pushed the move on me since he couldn't stand the awful Freshman yuppie roommate I had been stuck with, even though I was a Senior since I had forgotten to tell them I was coming back last term. Luckily I was first on the waiting list for a single, so when Sara Dean left because of her 'urinary tract infection' or 'mono' (depending on who you ask, since everybody in the world knew she had an abortion and freaked) I moved in immediately. Unfortunately, so did Dennis, who lived off-campus but who was too much of an alcoholic to walk (driving was out of the question) home after parties and long nights at The Pub, so I'd let him sleep in my room where we'd have long fights about why I wouldn't sleep with him. He would get back at me by showing up to the room, on Sunday nights with a case of Dewar's and a group of his fellow actors, and they'd spend long hours rehearsing Beckett (always in white face) or Pinter (for some strange reason, that too, in white face) and they'd get loaded and all pa.s.s out, which meant I had to move downstairs to the living room, or wander the hallways, which was all right with me since I was always hoping to run into Paul Denton.

The first time I met Paul was in an acting cla.s.s and we had to do an improv scene together and I was so bowled over by how handsome he was that I botched the scene up and I think he could tell. I was so embarra.s.sed that I dropped the cla.s.s and made sure to keep out of his way. He'll probably loathe the fact that I moved in across from him and ignore me, but at least we'll get to share the same bathroom.

100.SEAN Sitting in cla.s.s, staring at the desk, someone's carved 'Whatever Happened To Hippie Love?' I guess the first girl I kind of liked at Camden was this hippie I met my Freshman year. She was really stupid but so gorgeous and so insatiable in bed that I couldn't help myself. I had met her once, before I f.u.c.ked her, at a party off-campus my first term. The hippie had offered me some pot and I was drunk so I smoked it. I was so drunk in fact and the pot was so bad that I threw up in the backyard and pa.s.sed out in some girl's car who had brought me. I was embarra.s.sed but not really, even though the girl who drove was p.i.s.sed off since I lost it again all over the backseat of her Alfa Romeo on the way back to campus, and was jealous since she could tell that the hippie and I had been making eyes at each other all night, and had seen the hippie even kiss me before I left to throw up in back.

I really got to meet her the following term when another person I knew when I first came to Camden (and who had been a hippie but quit) introduced us at a party at my urging. I cringed, mortified, when to my shock I realized I had been in the hippie's Intro to Poetry Workshop my first term and this girl on the first day of cla.s.s, so high her head looked like it was on springs, like some doped-up jack-in-the-box, raised her hand and said slowly, 'This cla.s.s is a total mindf.u.c.k.' I dropped the cla.s.s, disconcerted, but still wanting to f.u.c.k the hippie.

This was the Eighties, I kept thinking. How could there be any hippies left? I knew no hippies when I was growing up in New York. But here was a hippie, from a small town in Pennsylvania, no less. A hippie who was not too tall, who had long blond hair, features sharp, not soft like one 101.

would expect a hippie's features to resemble, yet distant, too. And the skin smooth as brown marble and as clean. She always seemed clean; in fact she seemed abnormally healthy. A hippie who would say things like, 'None of your beeswax,' or commenting on food, 'This is really mellow chili.' A hippie who would bring her own chopsticks to every meal. A hippie who had a cat named Tahini.

JIMI LIVES was painted in big purple letters on her door. She was constantly stoned. Her favorite question was 'Are you high?' She wore tie-dyed s.h.i.+rts. She had beautiful smallish firm t.i.ts. She wore bell-bottoms and tried to learn how to play the sitar but she was always too stoned. She tried to dress me up one night: bell-bottoms, tie-dyed s.h.i.+rt, headband. Didn't work. It was extremely embarra.s.sing. She said 'beautiful' constantly. She didn't have any goals. I read the poetry she'd write and lied that I liked it. She had a BMW 2002. She carried a bong in a tie-dyed satchel that she had made herself.

Like all rich hippies (for this hippie was extremely wealthy; her father owned VISA or something) she spent a lot of time following The Dead around. She'd simply split school for a week with other rich hippies and they'd follow them around New England, stoned out of their minds, reserving rooms and suites at Holiday Inns and Howard Johnsons and Ramada Inns, making sure to always have enough Blue Dragon or MDA or MDMA or Ecstasy. She'd come back from these excursions ecstatic, claiming that she was indeed one of Jerry's long lost children; that her mother had made some sort of mistake before she married the VISA guy, that she truly was one of 'Jerry's kids.' I guess she was one of Jerry's kids, though I wasn't sure which kind.

102.

There were problems.

The hippie kept telling me I was too stiff, too uptight. And because of this the hippie and I broke up before the end of term. (I don't know if that's the real reason, but looking back it seems weird that we even bothered since the s.e.x was so good.) It came to an end one night when I told her, 'I think this is not working.' She was stoned. I left her at the party after we made out in her room upstairs at Dewey House. I went home with her best friend She never knew or realized it.

The hippie was always tripping, which bothered me too. The hippie was always trying to get me to trip with her. I remembered the one time I did trip with her I saw the devil: it was my mother. I was also sort of amazed that she even liked me in the first place. I would ask her if she'd ever read much Hemingway. (I don't know why I asked her about him since I never had read that much.) She would tell me about Allen Ginsberg and Gertrude Stein and Joan Baez. I asked her if she had read Howl (which I had only heard about through some crazy cla.s.s called Poetry and the Fifties, which I failed) and she said, 'No. Sounds harsh.'

The last time I saw the hippie I was reading an article on the postmodern condition (this was when I was a Lit major, before I became a Ceramics major, before I became a Social Science major) for some cla.s.s I failed in some stupid magazine called The New Left, and she was sitting on the floor of the smoking section, stoned, looking at the pictures in the novelization of the movie Hair with some other girl. She looked up at me and giggled then slowly waved. 'Beautiful,' she said, turning a page, smiling.

103.

Yeah. Beautiful,' I said.

'I can dig it,' the hippie told me after I read some of her haiku and told her I didn't get it. The hippie told me to read The Tale of Genji (all of her friends had read it) but You have to read it stoned,' she warned. The hippie also had been to Europe. France was 'cool' and India was 'groovy' but Italy wasn't cool. I didn't ask why Italy wasn't, but I was intrigued why India was 'groovy.'

'The people are beautiful,' she said.

'Physically?' I asked.

'Yeah.'

'Spiritually?' I asked.

'Uh-huh.'

'How spiritually?'

'They were groovy.'

I started liking the word 'groovy' and the word 'wow.' Wow. Spoken low, with no exclamation, eyes half-closed, f.u.c.king, how the hippie said it.

The hippie cried when Reagan won (the only other time I'd seen her cry was when the school dropped the yoga cla.s.ses and replaced them with aerobics), even though I had explained patiently, carefully, what the outcome of the election was going to be, weeks in advance. We were on my bed and we were listening to a Bob Dylan record I had bought in town a week earlier, and she just said, sadly, 'f.u.c.k me,' and I f.u.c.ked the hippie.

One day I asked the hippie why she liked me since I was so different from her. She was eating pita bread and bean sprouts and writing on a napkin with a purple pen, a request for the comment board in the dining hall: More Tofu Please. She said, 'Because you're beautiful.'

I got fed up with the hippie and pointed to a fat girl across the room who had written something nasty about me on the laundry room wall; who had come up to me at a Friday night party and said, 'You'd be gorgeous if you were five inches taller.'

'Is she beautiful?' I asked.

She looked up, bean sprout stuck on lower lip, squinted and said, Yeah.'

'That b.i.t.c.h over there?' I asked, pointing, appalled. 'Oh her. I thought you meant that sister over there,' she said.

I looked around. 'Sister? What sister? No, her,' exasperated, I pointed at the girl; mean-looking, fat, black sungla.s.ses, a b.i.t.c.h.

'Her?' the hippie asked.

'Yeah. Her.'

'She's beautiful too,' she said, drawing a daisy next to the message on the napkin.

'What about him?' I pointed to a guy who it was rumored had actually caused his girlfriend to kill herself and everyone knew. There was no way in h.e.l.l the hippie could think that he, this f.u.c.king monster, was beautiful.

'Him? He's beautiful.'

'Him? Beautiful? He killed his f.u.c.king girlfriend. Ran her over,' I said.

'No way,' the hippie grinned.

Yes! It's true. Ran her straight over with a car,' I said, excited.

She just shook her lovely, empty head. 'Oh man.' 'Can't you make distinctions?' I asked her. 'I mean, our s.e.x is great, but how can everything, everyone be 104.

105.

beautiful? Don't you understand that that means no one is beautiful?'

'Listen, man,' the hippie said. 'What are you getting at?'

She looked at me, not grinning. The hippie could be sharp. What was I getting at?

I didn't know. All I know was that the s.e.x was terrific.

And that the hippie was cute. She loved sweet pickles. She liked the name Willie. She even liked Apocalypse Now. She was not a vegetarian. These were all on the plus side. But, once I introduced her to my friends, at the time, and they were all stuck-up a.s.shole Lit majors and they made fun of her and she understood what was going on and her eyes, usually blue, too blue, vacant, were sad. And I protected her. I took her away from them. ('Spell Pynchon,' they asked her, cracking up.) And she introduced me to her friends. And we ended up sitting on some j.a.panese pillows in her room and we all smoked some pot and this little hippie girl with a wreath on her head, looked at me as I held her and said, 'The world blows my mind.' And you know what?

I f.u.c.ked her anyway.

PAUL He liked me. He would sing 'Can't Take My Eyes Off of You' by Frankie Valli. It was on the jukebox at The Carousel in North Camden and he would ask me to play it a lot. The townies would watch us suspiciously, Sean shooting pool, drinking beer, me shuffling over to the jukebox, slipping quarters in it, punching F17, the first strains coming on, shuffling back to where Sean sat, now by the bar, motorcycle helmets propped up by our drinks, and he'd lip-synch it. He even found the single and put it on a tape he made for me when I was in bed with a hangover. It was in a bag he brought over that included orange juice, beer and French fries and a Quarter Pounder from McDonald's, still warm.

When he didn't want to go to cla.s.s and when he didn't want me to go either and he found it too boring to simply not go and sit around, I'd follow him to the infirmary and once there he would have fake attacks; fairly well-planned and -acted fits and imaginary seizures. He would then receive medicine and the two of us would leave (I'd complain that my migraines were acting up), excused from cla.s.ses for the day, and we'd go into town to an arcade called The Dream Machine and play this totally a.n.a.l retentive video game he loved to play called Bentley Bear or Crystal Bear or something like that. Afterwards we'd walk through town together. I'd look around for a double bed and he'd look for cough syrup with codeine in it so he could get high (this was after he smoked all the pot; what a hick, I know, I know). He'd find the cough syrup and actually get stoned on it ('I am hallucinating,' he'd announce) and we'd drive back to campus on his bike as it got dark in the late afternoon. By then, cla.s.ses had already 106.

107.

ended. And back in his room, which was usually a mess (at least his side), I'd sit around and play tapes and watch him stumble around and spin, high. He was always so animated around me, but so reserved and serious in front of other people. In bed, too, he'd alternate between being melodramatically loud and then a parody of the strong silent type: either grunting softly or emitting a weird quiet laughter, then it was suddenly loud rhythmic 'yeah's' or yelling m.u.f.fled obscenities, on top of me, me on top of him, both of us hungover, the stale smell of beer and cigarettes everywhere, the empty cups with the quarters stuck on the bottom of them scattered around the floor and the always-present odor of pot, hanging thick in mid-air, reminded me of Mitch.e.l.l strangely enough, but he was already fading away, and it was hard to remember what he even looked like.

Sean liked to say 'Rock'n'roll' a lot. For example I would say, 'Well, that was a pretty good movie' and he'd say 'Rock'n'roll.' Or I'd ask, 'What do you think of Fa.s.sbinder's early work?' and he would reply 'Rock'n'roll.' He also liked the term, 'Deal with it.' For example, I'd say, 'But I want you to,' and he'd say, 'Deal with it.' Or, 'But why do you have to get stoned before we do it?' and he'd say, 'Deal with it,' without even looking at me. He also liked his coffee really f.a.ggy - tons of cream, lots of sugar. I'd have to drag him to the movies they showed that term and he'd have to get stoned first. He liked Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, The Harder They Come, and Apocalypse Now. I liked Rebel Without a Cause, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Seventh Seal. ('Oh s.h.i.+t, subt.i.tles,' he moaned.) We both didn't like Everything You Always Wanted to Know About s.e.x.

108.

Of course I started finding the notes someone was leaving in his box. Pathetic, girlish yearnings. Whoever it was, offering 'herself to 'him.' And though I wasn't sure if he was actually responding to this nitwit I still would take them out of his box and either throw them away or keep them and study them and then put them back. I would watch the girls who'd flirt with us in The Pub and I'd watch the ones who would sit next to him, asking for a light even though they had matches in their pockets. And, of course, there would be a lot of girls around since he was so good-looking. And though I hated them, I also realized that I had the power in this game since I was also good-looking and had some semblance of a personality, something Sean lacked utterly. I could make them laugh. I could lie and agree with their stupid observations about life, and they'd lose immediate interest in him. Sean would sit there, shallow as a travel agent's secretary, that one strip of eyebrow furrowed and confused. But it was a hollow victory and I'd look at the girls and wonder who was leaving the notes. Didn't that person realize we were f.u.c.king each other? Didn't that mean anything to anyone anymore? Obviously not. I thought it was this one girl. I thought I saw her put something in his box. I knew who she was. I found out where her box was and when no one was looking put a couple of cigarettes out in it. My warning. He never mentioned it. But then I realized that maybe it wasn't a girl leaving the notes. Maybe it was Jerry.

109.

LAUREN Conroy, who I b.u.mp into at the American Cartoon Exhibit in Gallery 1, asks why I wasn't at the tutorial last Sat.u.r.day. No use arguing. 'I was in New York,' I tell him. He doesn't care. I'm with Franklin now. Judy doesn't care. She's seeing the Freshman, Steve. Steve doesn't care. She f.u.c.ked him the night she went to Williamstown. I don't care. It's all so boring. Conroy who doesn't care tells me to tell the other person in cla.s.s to come on Sat.u.r.day. It's some Senior guy. So after I leave a reminder in this guy's box, Franklin and I go to The Pi and get a little drunk and Franklin tells me what the symbolism in Cujo means and then we go to my room. I have received no mail from Victor. The idea crosses mind that Victor might just be dead. Conversation I overheard at lunch the other day.

Boy: I think we should stop this.

Girl: Stop what? This?

Boy: Maybe.

Girl: Stop it? Yeah.

Boy: Maybe. I don't know.

Girl: Was it because of Europe?

Boy: No. I just don't know why.

Girl: You should stop smoking.

Boy: Why don't you stop . . . stop . . .

Girl: You're right. It's not working.

Boy: I don't know. You're really ... You are pretty.

Girl: You are too.

Boy: The meek shall inherit the earth.

Girl: The meek don't want it.

Boy: I like the new Eurythmics song.

Girl: It's the drugs, isn't it?

Boy: Do you want to go back to my room?

Girl: What Eurythmics song?

Boy: Was it because of who I slept with?

Girl: No. Yes. No.

Boy: The meek don't want it? What?

I have not painted in over a week. I am going to change my major unless Victor calls.

PAUL My mother called from Chicago and told me that her Cadillac had been stolen while it was in the parking lot of Neiman Marcus. She mentioned that she was flying to Boston on Friday, which was the next day, and would be there for the weekend. She also mentioned that she wanted me to be there with her.

'Wait. That's tomorrow. I have cla.s.ses all day,' I lied.

'Darling, you can miss one cla.s.s to meet your mother and the Jareds.'

'The Jareds are coming?'

110.

111.

'Didn't I tell you? Mrs. Jared is coming and so is Richard. He's taking the weekend off from Sarah Lawrence,' she said.

'Richard?' Hmmm, that ought to be interesting, I was thinking, but tomorrow was The Dressed To Get Screwed party and there was no way I was going to leave Sean here unguarded. You have got to be kidding,' I told her. 'Is this a joke?'

I was leaning against a wall in the phone booth of Welling. I had been in town all day, most of it spent in an arcade with Sean who was trying to get the high score on Joust and was failing miserably. We smoked pot and had three beers each at lunch and I was tired. There was a cartoon someone had drawn next to the phone: in a cage was a hot dog that had sad eyes and a mean, pursed mouth and spindly arms grabbing at the bars. The hot dog was asking 'Where's me muddah?' and beneath that someone had written: 'A term for the wurst.'

'Now, can you take the bus down Friday into Boston, or the train?' she asked, knowing d.a.m.n well that Friday meant tomorrow. 'How much does that cost? From Camden to Boston?'

'I have money. That's not a problem. But this weekend?' I asked.

'Darling,' she managed to sound serious, even longdistance, 'I want to talk.'

'What about Dad?'

There was a pause, then, 'What about him?'

'Is he coming too?' I asked, then added, 'I haven't spoken to him in a month.'

'Do you want him to come?' she asked.

112.