The Rules of Attraction Read online

  Someone comes in I don’t want to see so I start talking to this Freshman sort-of-yuppie guy. “Brewski for Youski?” he asks. I look over at Tony, wonder if he’s interested. He looks over at me, lifting the pitcher and raises his eyebrows from across the living room and I can’t tell if it’s an invitation to play Quarters or to get laid. But how do I get away from this guy? But there’s someone here I don’t want to see and if I go over there I’ll have to pass him. So I keep talking to this square. This guy who after every bit of innocuous info he hands me says in a tone that he thinks sounds subversively hip, “Hey, Laura,” and I keep telling him “Look my name’s not Laura, got it?” and he keeps calling me Laura, so finally I’m about to tell him off when suddenly I realize I don’t know his name. He tells me. It’s what? Steve? He, Steve, doesn’t like that I’m smoking. The typical drunk (not too drunk) nervous Freshman. Who is Steve looking at? Not the guy from L.A. but at Bernette who wouldn’t go to bed with this guy Steve Square Freshman anyway, but well, maybe she would. Can’t stop thinking about Victor. But Victor’s in Europe. Brewski for Youski? Jesus. The Freshman tells me I haven’t touched my beer. I touch it, running my fingers across the plastic rim of the cup. “Oh that’s not what I mean,” he says good-naturedly. “Drink it,” he urges. Stereotype with a Haircut. Why does he even care? Does he actually think I’ll go to bed with him? Why won’t that person leave? Is Tony even looking over here? Someone from the Quarters game yells for Sean Yes I Am a Scumbag Bateman. Judy pushes past me rolling her eyes up. I ask the guy Steve what’s going on. He wants to smoke some pot with me but if I don’t want pot he has some good speed. Help. I want to know why I sent Victor four postcards and haven’t gotten anything back. But I don’t want to think about it and very instantly I am leaving with the Freshman. Because … the beer has run out. He asks if we could go to my room. Roommate, I lie. We’re leaving now. And I had promised myself that I would be faithful to Victor and Victor had promised me that he, too, would be faithful. Since I was under, am under, the impression that we’re in love. But I had already sort of broken that vow in September, which was a complete and utter mistake and now what am I doing?

  In the hallway of Franklin House. Ripped poster of A Clockwork Orange on his door? No, the next room. The Ronnie Reagan calendar on the door. Is that a joke? In the Freshman’s room now. What’s his name? Sam? Steve? It’s so … neat! Tennis racket on the wall. Shelf full of Robert Ludlum books. Who is this guy? Probably drives a Jeep, wears penny loafers, his girlfriend in high school wore his letter sweater. He checks his hair out in the mirror and tells me his roommate’s in Vermont tonight. Why don’t I tell him that my boyfriend, the person I love, the person who loves me, the person I miss, the person who misses me, is in Europe and that I should not under any circumstances be doing this. He has a refrigerator and pulls out an ice-cold Beck’s. Slick. I take a sip. He takes a sip. He pulls off his L.L. Bean sweater and his T-shirt. His body’s okay. Nice legs. Probably plays tennis a lot. I almost knock over a stack of economics books that are on his desk. I didn’t even know they offer that here.

  “You don’t have any herpes or anything, do you?” he asks while we undress.

  I sigh and say, “No, I don’t.” Wish I was drunk.

  He tells me he heard that maybe I did.

  I don’t want to know who he heard that from. Wish I was very drunk.

  It feels good but I’m not turned on. I just think about Victor and lay there.

  Victor.

  VICTOR Took a charter flight on a DC-10 to London, landed at Gatwick, took a bus to the center, called a friend from school who was selling hash, but she wasn’t in. So I wandered around until it started to rain, then took a subway back to the friend’s house and hung out there for four or five days. Saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Ate a grapefruit next to the Thames River, which reminded me a lot of the cover of that Pink Floyd album. Wrote my mom a postcard I never sent. Looked for some heroin but couldn’t find any. Bought some speed from an Italian guy I bumped into at a record store in Liverpool. Smoked a lot of hash that had too much tobacco in it. Even though they all spoke the same language I did, they were all assholes. It rained a lot, it was expensive, so I split for Amsterdam. Someone playing saxophone at Central Station which was kind of pretty. Stayed with some friends in someone’s basement. Smoked a lot of hash in Amsterdam too, but lost most of my stash in some museum. The museums were cool, I guess. Lots of Van Goghs and the Vermeers were intense. Wandered around, bought a lot of pastries, a lot of red herring. The Dutch all know English so I didn’t have to speak any Dutch, which was a relief. Wanted to rent a car but couldn’t. The people I was staying with had bikes though, so I went biking one day and I saw a lot of cows and geese and canals. I pulled off to the side of the road, got stoned and fell asleep, woke up, wrote a little, took some acid, made a few drawings, and then it started raining, so I biked to Danoever, to a youth hostel where there were some cool German guys who spoke a little English, and then I went back to Amsterdam and spent the night with this really stupid German girl. Next day I took the train to Kroeller in Arnhem where there were tons of cool Van Goghs. Hung out in the sculpture garden and I tried to get high there but didn’t have any matches and couldn’t find one. Got a ride to Cologne and stayed at a youth hostel in Bonn which was the worst youth hostel where there were a lot of really screwed-up kids, and it was too far away from the main part of town so we couldn’t do anything. Had a beer then headed South through Munich, Austria, and Italy. Got a ride to Switzerland, said fuck it why not. Ended up spending the night at a bus stop. Wandered around Switzerland but the weather was bad and it was too expensive and I wasn’t into the situation so I took a train and then started hitching. The mountains were huge and really intense and the dams were surreal. Found a youth hostel and then headed south with a couple in their early thirties who had stayed at the hostel and they gave me a ride. I spent two days in Switzerland. Then I took a bus from Switzerland to Italy, then hitchhiked to get to this town where there was this girl from school who had graduated and who I was sort of in love with but I had lost her phone number and wasn’t even that sure if she was in Italy. So I wandered around and met this totally cool guy named Nicola who had greased-back hair and wore Wayfarer sunglasses and who loved Springsteen and kept asking me if I’d ever seen him in concert. It was then that I felt like an idiot for being an American but only for a little while since I finally got a ride from some French guy in a white Fiat who played Michael Jackson really loud and air-jammed. Then I was in some town called Brandis or Blandy or Brotto. Kids eating ice cream, all the movie theaters playing Bruce Lee movies, all the girls thought I was Rob Lowe or something. Still was looking for that girl, Jaime. Bumped into someone from Camden on the Italy Program and this person told me that Jaime was in New York not Italy. Florence was beautiful but too full of tourists. I was speeding heavily and I spent three days without sleep wandering around. Went to this tiny town, Siena. Smoked hash on the steps of this church, the Doumo. Met a cool German guy in this old castle. Then I went to Milano where I hung out with these guys in some house. Slept in a big double bed with one of them who kept playing The Smiths and wanting me to jerk him off which I really wasn’t into, but I had no place to go. Rome was big and hot and dirty. Saw a lot of art. Spent the night with some guy who took me out to dinner and I had a long shower at his house and I guess it was worth it. He took me to a bridge where, like, Hector fought off the Trojans or something. I was in Rome for three days. Then I went to Greece and it took me a day to get to where the ferry leaves. Ferry took me to Corfu. Rented a moped on Corfu. Lost the moped. Got on another ferry and headed for Patras and then Athens. Called a friend in New York who told me Jaime wasn’t in New York but in Berlin and she gave me the phone number and address. Then I went to the islands, went to Naxos, got into town really early. Used a bathroom and some guy wanted ten drachmas but I only had German deutsche mark on me and I didn’t have anything else, so I gave him my Swatc
h instead. Bought some bread, milk, and a map and I started walking. Saw a lot of donkeys. By nighttime I had walked halfway across town. Hit an archeological site and lost the trail I was following. I just got stoned and watched the sunset. It was nice, so I headed for the water and bumped into some guy who dropped out of Camden. Asked him where Jaime might be. He told me either Skidmore or Athens but not Berlin. Then I went to Crete, fucked some girl there. Then I went to San Torini, which was beautiful but too full of tourists. Took a bus to the South coast, went to Malta and it made me sick. Started hitchhiking. Then I went back to Crete and spent a day at this beach full of Germans and went swimming. Then I walked some more. That’s all I did in Crete, was walk. I didn’t know where I was. Everywhere was full of tourists. So I went to this nude beach. Hung out, got naked, ate yogurt and swam with these two Yugoslavian guys who complained about inflation and wanted to make me a Socialist. I bought a mask and snorkled and we caught octopus, live, and beat them to death on the beaches and ate them. I met some guy from Canada, who had stolen a car and done some time in prison, and we hung out and talked about the state of the world, drank beer, caught some more octopus, took acid. This went on for three days. My ass and dick got sunburned. One of the Yugoslavian guys taught me how to sing “Born in the U.S.A.” in Yugoslavian and we sang it together a lot. There was nothing else to do, since we had killed all the octopus, and I had learned how to sing every Springsteen song in Yugoslavian, so I said goodbye and left the nude beach. I hitchhiked some more, saw a hell of a lot of donkeys, found a Donald Duck comic in Greek lying in someone’s backyard. In Greece, while hitching, some truck carrying watermelons picked me up and this old geezer molested me, then I was attacked by dogs. I still didn’t know where Jaime was. Ended up in Berlin but that person gave me the wrong address. Stayed at another youth hostel. Liked the Bauhaus architecture which I hate in America but here looked good. Hitchhiked some more, went to a lot of bars, met a lot of punk rockers, played a lot of checkers, shot some pool, smoked hash. Couldn’t get a flight out of Berlin so I went back to Amsterdam and got mugged in the red light district by two small black guys.

  PAUL The last time I saw Mitchell before school started was in September. As usual, we were laying on my bed and it was early, perhaps twelve. I reached over him and lit a cigarette. The people next door were fighting. There was too much traffic on Jane Street, it was either that or something else that was making Mitchell so tense, clutching his wine glass. So much attention paid, so much detail studied, worked over so hard that he loses it all. What was I doing there, I kept wondering. My father worked with his father in Chicago and though their relationship depended more on what was happening over on Wall Street and what table the other could command at Le Français or The Ritz-Carlton, it still gave us the opportunity to meet each other. In New York we would meet at the apartment I lived in last summer. We could never meet at his place because of “roommate trouble,” he would gravely tell me. We would meet usually at night, usually after a movie or some bad off-off-off-Broadway play one of Mitchell’s endless supply of N.Y.U. Drama friends landed a part in, usually drunk or high, which seemed Mitchell’s constant state those last months, when I was breaking it off with someone else. Mitchell knew and didn’t care. Usually wild bouts of sex, clothed, early drink at Boy Bar, don’t ask.

  Up on 92nd we sat at a cafe and cursed a waitress. Then taking a cab downtown we got into an argument with our driver and he made us get out. Twenty-ninth Street, hassled by prostitutes, Mitchell kind of enjoying it, or maybe pretending to. He looked kind of desperate those months. I always thought it would pass, but I was getting to the point where I knew it never would. Just a big night on the West Side and he’ll be out of it. Then something ridiculous like eggs benedict at three in the morning at P.J. Clarke’s. … Three in the morning. P.J. Clarke’s. He complains the eggs are too runny. I pick at a cheeseburger I ordered but don’t want, not really. I’m amazed that there are three or four out-of-town businessmen still at the bar. Mitchell sort of finishes his eggs, then looks at me. I look at him, then light his cigarette. I touch his knee, thigh, with my hand. “Just don’t,” he says. I look away, embarrassed. Then he says softly, “Just not here.”

  “Let’s go back home,” I say.

  “Whose?” he says.

  “I don’t care. Let’s go to my place. Your place? I don’t know. I don’t feel like spending money on a cab.”

  It’s now getting depressing and late. Neither of us moves. I light another cigarette, then put it out. Mitchell keeps touching his chin lightly, like there’s something wrong with it. He runs his finger through the dimple.

  “Do you want to get stoned?” he asks.

  “Mitch,” I sigh.

  “Hmmm?” he asks, leaning forward.

  “It’s four in the morning,” I say.

  “Uh-huh,” he says, confused, still leaning.

  “We’re at P.J.’s,” I remind him.

  “That’s right,” he says.

  “You want to get … stoned?” I ask.

  “Well,” he stammers, “I guess.”

  “Why don’t we…” I stop, look over at the businessmen, and look away, but not at Mitchell.

  “Why don’t we…”

  He keeps staring, waiting. This is stupid.

  I don’t say anything.

  “Why don’t we … why don’t we what?” he asks, grinning, leaning closer, lips curling, whites of teeth, that ugly dimple.

  “There’s a rumor going around that you’re retarded,” I tell him.

  In a cab heading toward my apartment, late, almost five, and I can’t even remember what we did tonight. I pay the driver and give him too big a tip. Mitchell holds the elevator door open, impatient. We get to my apartment and he takes off his clothes and gets stoned in the bathroom and then we watch TV, some HBO, for a little while … and then we went to sleep as soon as the sun started rising, and I remembered a party we were at back in school when Mitchell drunk and angry tried to set fire to Booth House in the early morning…. We look straight at each other right now, both breathing evenly. It’s morning now and we’re not sleeping and everything is pure and bright and clear and I fall asleep…. When I woke up, later that afternoon, Mitchell was gone, left for New Hampshire. But the ashtray by the bed was full. It was empty before. Had he watched me sleep during that time? Had he?

  SEAN “It was the Kennedys, man…” Marc’s telling me while he’s shooting up in his room in Noyes. “The Kennedys, man, screwed it … up…. Actually it was J … F … K … John F. Kennedy did it…. He screwed it up … all up, you see….” He licks his lips now, continues, “There was this … our mothers were pregnant with us when we … I mean, he … was blown away in ’64 and that whole incident … screwedthings-up….” He stops, then goes on. “… in a really heavy duty way…” Special emphasis on “heavy” and “duty.” “And … in turn … you see, it jolted us in a really heavy duty way when we … were … in…” He stops again, looks at his arm and then at me. “Whatchmacallit…” Looks back at his arm and then at me, then at the arm again, concentrating as he pulls the needle out, then at me, still confused. “Their … um, primordial wombs, and, so, that is why we are … me, you, the narc across the hall, the sister in Booth, all the way we are…. Do you … understand? … Is this clear?” He squints up at me. “Jesus … think if you had a brother who was born in ’69 or something … They’d be … fucking bonkers….”

  He’s saying this all real slowly (a lot of it I can’t even listen to) as he puts the eyedropper next to his new computer that’s humming, his friend Resin, who’s visiting from Ann Arbor, leaning up against the table, sitting on the floor, humming with it. Marc sits back, smiling. I thought Kennedy bit it a couple of years earlier but wasn’t sure and I don’t correct him. I’m kind of wired but still could use some sleep, since it’s late, sometime around four, but I like the familiarity of Marc’s room, the details I’m used to, the ripped Bob Dylan poster for Don’t Look Back, the stills from E
asy Rider, “Born To Be Wild” always coming from the stereo (or Hendrix or Eric Burdon and The Animals or Iron Butterfly or Zep), the empty pizza boxes on the floor, the copy of an old Pablo Neruda book on top of the pizza boxes, the constant smell of incense, the yoga manuals, the band upstairs that’s always rehearsing old Spencer Davis songs all night (they suck). But Marc’s leaving soon, any day now, can’t stand the scene, Ann Arbor is where it’s at, Resin told him.

  After I fucked Didi I came back to my room, where Susan was, alone, crying. I guess the Frog was in New York. I couldn’t deal with her so I told her to get out, then I drove to the Burger King in town and ate it on the way to Roxanne’s and had to deal with her new boyfriend, this big mean townie pusher named Rupert. That whole scene was a total joke. She was so stoned she actually lent me forty bucks and told me that The Carousel (where Rupert also bartends) is closing down due to shitty business, and that depressed me. I picked up the stuff from Rupert, who was cleaning his gun case, so coked up he actually smiled and let me do a line, and brought it back to campus. The drive was a cold, long drag, my bike almost kicking out near the college gates, and barely making it through the two-mile stretch of College Drive. I was too stoned and the Burger King food was making me sick and those two miles past the gate on that road at 3AM in the morning was creepy. I smoked some more pot in Marc’s room and now he’s finishing up. It’s no big deal. I’ve seen it all before.