The Rules of Attraction Page 16

  “Who else?” I ask. “How about at school?”

  “Oh this guy from California, from Encino, named Jaime. Transfer from U.C.L.A. Blond, Jewish. He’s on the crew team also.”

  “That is such a lie,” I have to blurt out.

  “What?” He gets embarrassed, looks shocked. “What do you mean?”

  “You always say you’re seeing someone on the ‘crew’ team. And you never are. What is a ‘crew’ team?” I ask and I notice that we have been whispering the entire conversation. “There’s not a crew team at Sarah Lawrence, you nitwit. You think you’re going to get away with lying to me?”

  “Oh shut up, you’re completely crazy,” he says, disgusted with me, waving me away.

  We watch some more TV and listen to the music coming from the cassette player at the same time and finish off the J.D. After we’ve smoked all the cigarettes in the room, he finally asks, “How is yours going?”

  I say, “It’s not.”

  He leans over and looks out the window. Richard has a really nice body.

  I pick up the bottle and cough as I swallow the last drops.

  Richard says, “You know it’s bad when you can see the rain at night.”

  We’re quiet for a minute and he looks at me and I start to laugh at him.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks, smiling.

  “‘You know it’s bad when you can see the rain at night?’ What is that? A fucking Bonnie Tyler song?”

  The liquor has made me feel good and he leans up close, laughing also, and I can smell the warm scotch on his breath and he kisses me too hard at first and I push him back a little and I can feel the line where stubble and lip meet and I think I hear a door open and close somewhere and I don’t care whether it’s Mrs. Jared or my mother, drunk, in lieu of divorce, asleep by Seconal, in a nightgown from Marshall Fields, and though I don’t want to, we undress each other and I go to bed with Richard. Afterwards, early in the morning, pre-dawn, without saying goodbye to anyone, I pack quietly and walk to the bus station in the rain and take the first bus back to Camden.

  I’m lying, in warm water, in a bathtub, in Sawtell. I’m doing this because I know I’ll never have Him. I drag the razor firmly across the hot skin underwater and the flesh peels back quickly, blood jetting out, literally jetting out, from the bottom of my arm. I drag it cross the other wrist jaggedly, up and down, and the water turns pink. When I lift my arm up, above water, blood gushes powerfully high and I have to place my wrist back under so I’m not splattered with it. I sit up, only slash at one ankle because the weakness drenches me and I lay back, the water turning impossibly red and then I start to dream, and I keep dreaming and it’s then that I’m not sure if this is really the thing to do. I can hear music coming from another house someplace and maybe I try to sing along with it, but, as usual, I find myself trying to get to the ending before it actually happens. Maybe I should have tried another route. The one that little man at the gas station in Phoenix advised, or shall I say, urged me on to or oww—Guess what? No time. God jesus christ our my nothing savior

  LAUREN And it’s quiet now, and over. I’m standing by Sean’s window. It’s almost morning, but still dark. It’s weird and maybe it’s my imagination but I’m positive I can hear the aria from La Wally coming from somewhere, not across the lawn since the party is over, but it might be somewhere in this house perhaps. I have my toga wrapped around me and occasionally I’ll look over and watch him sleep in the glow of his blue digital alarm clock light. I’m not tired anymore. I smoke a cigarette. A silhouette moves in another window, in another house across from this one. Somewhere a bottle breaks. The aria continues, building, followed by shouts and a window shattering, faintly. Then it’s quiet again. But it’s soon broken by laughter next door, friends of Sean’s doing drugs. I’m surprisingly calm, peaceful in the strange limbo between sobriety and sheer blottoness. There’s a mist covering the campus tonight lit by a high, full moon. The silhouette is still standing by the window. Another one joins in. The first one leaves. Then I see Paul’s room, that is, if he’s still living in Leigh. The room is dark and I wonder who he’s with tonight. I touch my breast, then ashamed, burning, move my hand away. Wonder what went wrong with that one. What happened the last time we were together? I can’t even remember. Last term, sometime. But no… that night in September. Beginning of this term. Last term you knew it was over though. He left for three days with Mitchell to Mitchell’s parents’ place on Cape Cod, but he told you it was to see his parents in New York—but then, who told you that? It was Roxanne, because hadn’t she been seeing Mitchell? Maybe it was someone else’s lie. But I was still dying with longing for his happy return; what an asshole he was. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he was tender, maybe you were greedy. I put the cigarette out on the edge of the window-sill and look back at Sean who has now rolled over, who’s dreaming. He’s put the covers over his head.

  PAUL My lack of trust in him amazes me but I can’t help it: I don’t like Sean. There’s no one else on the bus when we pull out of Boston, and not too many people get on at the various stops along the way. Just me and an old couple up front for most of the way there. I idly wonder what Mom will say about this abrupt departure. Will she pop a Seconal? Will she cry? Stay? Flirt with bellhops? Richard will probably be relieved, though he’ll still look for a date on Saturday night, and Mrs. Jared won’t care-why do I even care what she thinks? I try to sleep as the bus lumbers on some nameless route (7? 9? 89? 119?) toward Camden. And it stops raining somewhere near Lawrence, and the sun comes up, full and rising, at Bellows.

  I can’t sleep.

  I will rush straight to Sean’s room and what will I find? Him in bed with a girl I have never noticed or talked to but who I will instantly recognize, or maybe he’ll be tired but wake up smiling and we’ll look and touch and shake hands and while shaking hands he’ll pull me down onto his bed and after that we’ll drive to that French cafe on the edge of town—no way, Sean would never eat there. He’s probably never been to a nice restaurant; just a life of Quarter Pounders, Tastee Freezes, Friendlys. Do they even have Friendlys in the South? No Walkman, no cigarettes, no magazines on a bus can be unbearable. I’m going crazy, still horny from the okay sex from last night, and I try to masturbate in the bus bathroom but when I realize what I’m doing, the sloshing of the refuse below me as I sit on the toilet, hand wrapped around my dick, and start laughing, it’s high-pitched, maniacal, scary.

  Some people get on at Newport. Some people get off at Wolcott, and some more get on at Winchester. Hungry, exhausted, my breath repulsive, I finally get off at the station in Camden and take a cab back to campus and by the time I get there, it’s almost twelve. I must be dreaming this.

  ROXANNE I found the girl when I woke up the next morning …

  I had spent the night with Tim, Rupert had gone to the Booth orgy … I spent the night with Norris. I was still drunk and trippy from the XTC and when I went to the bathroom …

  … I wanted to take a shower so I …

  When I opened the stall door I had to pull back the …

  The girl was (it’s hard to describe) very blue …

  No water should ever look that red because it was so dark …

  … Of course I started to freak out and started screaming and pulling …

  I don’t remember pulling the fire alarms off in some of the houses though I guess …

  Tim told me that’s how Security got there after …

  … I started running around.

  I didn’t stop freaking out until Rupert gave me more Xanax….

  … Norris slept through the entire thing …

  PAUL Then I find myself wandering down College Drive, approaching Wooley House, where The Dressed To Get Screwed party was. The campus is dead, unawake, even though it’s almost noon, which means they will have all missed brunch, and I smile with satisfaction at the knowledge of this luxury withheld from them. Almost all the windows have been smashed at Wooley, ripped sheets lay rolled up in
balls all over the green lawn outside the broken French windows of the living room, or hang from trees like big deflated ghost balloons. Flies buzz around three sticky trashcans that are lying on their sides in the cool autumn sun, drying. There are three people asleep, or dead, two of them sitting up, in the living room, one of them naked, face-down. Vomit, beer, wine, cigarette smoke, punch, marijuana, even the smell of sex, semen, sweat, women, permeate the room, hang in the air like haze. I don’t even know what I’m doing here since Sean’s room, the house he lives in, is directly across Commons lawn (scared, aren’t you?) from Wooley. I’m still carrying my bag, careful not to drop it on the floor, which makes cracking noises every time I take a step. Beer and punch, or maybe it’s vomit, is everywhere, in pools, thrown in streaks on the walls from which big chunks of plaster are missing. A broken film projector, half of it crushed, is in the corner, unwound reels surrounding it. Cigarette butts cover the floor like big flattened white bugs. In the hallway are two people, dead, sleeping, on top of each other. The house itself is incredibly silent, even for a Saturday morning.

  But then the screaming starts, a girl’s screaming, and the fire alarms in Stokes and Windham go off, and I move outside, stepping over the couple stuck together, feet crunching broken glass, walking over numerous plastic cups, the girl’s screams coming closer. It’s that bitchy lesbian who lives off-campus with Rupert Guest (who, I hate to admit, is really cute) and she’s out of her mind, yelling “oh fuck” over and over. People start to stick their heads out of open windows that look onto Commons lawn, awakened by her screams. She disappears into another house, and then the fire alarm in Booth goes off. I look over at the house, at the crazy screaming girl, half-tripping, half-running out of the house, her destination unsure, really just running in circles. In the top corner of the house, Sean’s window opens and staring out his window, the window she’s pulled open, a flash of breast showing—it’s none other than Lauren. Then Sean’s head peeks out. He looks around, shading his eyes with his hand, shirtless. He spots me and waves, yells out, “Hi, Dent!” and I stand there too dazed to laugh, to not wave.

  So I head back to my room, various fire alarms still blaring, past couples who fucked each other last night standing in hungover amazement at the gibbering girl screaming and pulling at her face, only dressed in blue boy’s boxers and a Pee Wee Herman T-shirt. And it’s back to my room—a note on my door saying my mother called, another flyer from the Young Republicans Committee. I sit there staring at my bed, wondering was it I who made it before I left? I’m a little amazed, but not nearly as shocked as I should be, or probably should be. Lauren. So.

  SEAN On Saturday we hung out, went to Manchester. Me, Lauren, Judy, and some guy Judy was sleeping with named Frank, whose Saab we drove to Manchester in. We hit the record store, walked around, bought ice cream for the girls, talked about purchasing some Ecstasy since some guy who was visiting that weekend from Canada had brought some to campus. We stopped at a liquor store and bought a couple six-packs of beer and a bottle of wine to drink later in case we didn’t find a party to go to or missed the movies. We ate dinner at this Italian place that was pretty good and Frank paid with his American Express card. Frank seemed cool and I was warming up to him, even if after I asked him what he wanted to do, he told me with total sincerity, “Rock critic.” Had she slept with him? I had heard rumors, meaningless gossip that she had, but you can’t believe half the bullshit you hear anyway so I forgot about it. When I thought that maybe she had slept with him, those were the times I thought less of the guy, and stuff he said, like wanting to go on the Paris Program next term since he couldn’t “handle America,” made him seem like a geek, like someone she could never like, let alone sleep with.

  We were in the Italian restaurant when Frank said that, and Lauren stifled a giggle and drank from her glass of red wine quickly. I reached beneath the table and squeezed her thigh, that beautiful, long, smooth leg, that fleshy yet tight (I want to say silky but not really) thigh. Looking at her, I was so crazy about this girl and so relieved I had a decent-looking perhaps permanent girlfriend that it hit me, in that Italian restaurant in Manchester, and on the ride back to Camden—getting a hard-on just from thinking about the way she kissed me last night—that I had something like four papers due from last term that I wasn’t ever going to start, and it wouldn’t matter since I was with Lauren. It didn’t even bother me too much that she was a Poetry major since girls who are Poetry majors are usually impossible to deal with. She asked me what my major was and I said “Computers” (which might end up being true) just to impress her, and I guess it did because she smiled, raised those deep blue long-lashed eyes up, and said, “Really?” that secret yet noticeable dirty smile curling her lips.

  Since we couldn’t find any parties in Manchester we drove back to campus and hung out in her room. I had my pipe with me and some good pot and we got high. I was going to bring out some coke I had scored earlier but was afraid they’d all get pissed-off and think that maybe I was really a Pre-med major. We laid half-on, half-off the big double mattress that took up a great deal of floor space in her room in Canfield, talking about people we didn’t like, classes we didn’t go to, how lame the Freshmen were, why the flag was half-mast. Lauren said some girl offed herself last night. Frank and I laughed and said it was probably because she didn’t get screwed. Judy and Lauren got pissed off (but not really, the pot had calmed us down, had buried any tension there might have been) and said it was probably because she had. The radio played Talking Heads, REM, New Order, old Iggy Pop. I moved closer to her. She began lighting candles.

  I knew she loved me, and not only because of the notes, which I refused to bring up (why embarrass her?), but because when she looked at me, I could see, for the first time, just sense, that she was the only person I’d ever met who wasn’t looking through me. She was really the first person who looked and stopped. It was a hard thing to explain to myself, to deal with, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the most important aspect. Her beauty was. It was an all-American beauty, the sort of beauty that can only be found in American girls, with the blond hair, and the breasts that only American girls have. That beautifully proportioned body, thin but not anorexic, her skin, WASP creamy, and delicately pure, in total contrast to her expressions, which always seemed slightly dirty as if she was a bad girl, and this excited me even more. I didn’t care about her background which was strictly Upper East Side Park Avenue bullshit, but she wasn’t bitchy and paranoid and defensive about it in that way girls from Park Avenue inevitably are, because all I wanted to do was look at her face, which seemed miraculously, perfectly put together, and at her body, which was constructed just as beautifully if not better.

  And I told her all this, that night, when the four of us lay on her mattress in the dark, the candles burning out one by one, listening to classic songs on the radio, stoned, Judy and Frank drunk, passed-out, wasted, and I couldn’t wait; couldn’t wait to go back to my room, and I moved on top of her quickly, quietly and she put her legs around mine and squeezed. She wept gratefully that night, chewing my lips, her hands slipping under my jeans, then moving up my back, pushing me into her deeper, the two of us moving slowly even when we were coming together; still silent she buried her face in my neck; we were panting loudly; I was still hard. I didn’t pull out but whispered something to her ear, some of her hair matted against my face, which was hot and sweating. She whispered something back, and it was then that I knew she loved me. That was also when Judy spoke up in the darkness and said, “I hope you two enjoyed that as much as we did,” and then I heard Frank laugh, and we cracked up also, too tired to be embarrassed, me still in her not wanting to get out, her arms still draped around my back.

  Sunday, after a long lunch at The Brasserie on the edge of town, we spent the rest of the day in bed together.

  CLAY People are afraid to walk across campus after midnight. Someone on acid whispers this to me, in my ear, one Sunday dawn after I have been up on crystal meth most
of the week, crying, and I know it is true. This person is in my computer class (which is now my major) and I see him in the weight room and sometimes I see him at the municipal pool on Main Street, in town. A place I spend what some people think is an inordinate amount of time. (They also have a good tanning salon next door.) I keep my Walkman on a lot this term, listening to groups that have broken up: The Eagles, The Doors, The Go-Go’s, The Plimsouls, because I do not want to hear about the mutilated girl they found cut up in North Ashton (literally torn in half) by something the townspeople call The Ashton Ripper, or about the girl in Swan House who slit her throat in that house’s downstairs bathtub and who bled to death on the night of The Dressed To Get Screwed party, or hear the voices of the town’s incest victims wandering dumbly through the Price Chopper, a place I like to hang out in, a place that reminds me of California, a place that reminds me of the frozen food section of Gelson’s, a place that reminds me of home.

  I go to an Elvis Costello concert in New York but get lost on the way back to Camden. I cannot get cable to hook up MTV in my dorm room so I buy a VCR and get videos in a cheap video rental store in town. I buy a Porsche, second-hand, in New York before the term starts so I have a car to do these things. People are also afraid to eat sushi in New Hampshire.

  Other things: Someone writes Sensory Deprivation Tank on the door that leads to The Pub. Rip actually calls me from L.A. a couple of times. Someone writes his name in red magic marker on my door. I am unsure if it’s really him since in a tape Blair sent me she was positive that he had been murdered. She also told me that she had seen Jim Morrison at the Häagen Dazs in Westwood. I see this girl, Vanden, for a while, who paints my futon frame black and who stopped seeing me because she said she saw “a spider the size of Norman Mailer” in my bathroom. I didn’t ask her who Norman Mailer was, and I didn’t ask her to come back. Then I hang out with this Brazilian guy but mainly just to acquire Ecstasy. Then it was this Dance major from Connecticut who thought she was a witch. We held a séance around a beer keg and tried to summon the spirit of a Senior who had transferred to Bard. Then the Ouija board was pulled out and we asked it if we could find any cocaine. It answered OWTQ. We spent an hour figuring out what it meant. She left me for a Lit major named Justin. I sleep with some rich boys, with some richer girls, a couple from Northern California, a French teacher, a girl from Vassar who knows one of my sisters, some girl who wouldn’t stop drinking Nyquil …