The Rules of Attraction (2 page)

So I end up going home with her—she’s dumpy but horny, from L.A., her father’s in the music industry but she doesn’t know who Lou Reed is. We go to her room. Her roommate’s home but asleep.

“Ignore her,” she says, turning on the light. “She’s insane. It’s okay.”

I’m taking off my clothes when the roommate wakes up and starts freaking out at the sight of me naked. I get under D’s blankets, but the roommate starts crying and gets out of bed and D keeps screaming at her, “You’re insane, go to sleep, you’re insane,” and roommate leaves, slamming the door, sobbing. We start making out but she forgets her diaphragm so she tries to put it in, squeezing the foam all over her hand but not getting any into it and she’s too drunk to know where to put it. I try to fuck her anyway but she keeps moaning “Peter, Peter” so I stop. I’m thinking
about throwing up but do some bonghits instead, then flee. Deal with it. Rock’n’roll.

PAUL
We were already smashed when we got to Thirsty Thursday and the night was still young and the light-haired Swedish girl from Connecticut, very tall and boyish, came on to me, and I let her. Drunk, but still knowing perfectly well what I was getting myself into, I let her. I had been trying to talk to Mitchell but he was much more interested in this supremely ugly slutty Sophomore named Candice. Candy, for short. I was semi-appalled but what could I do? I started talking to Katrina and she looked very charming in her black Salvation Army raincoat, and the sailor’s cap with the one tuft of blond hair peeking out, her eyes wide and blue even in the darkness of the living room at Windham House.

Anyway, we were drunk and Mitch was still talking to Candie and there was this girl at the party I really did not want to see and I was sufficiently drunk now to leave with Katrina. I suppose I could have stayed, waited it out with Mitch, or come on to that boy from L.A., who, despite being too sunburned, was well-muscled (red-muscled?) and seemed withdrawn enough to try anything. But he was still wearing his sunglasses and playing Quarters and anyway, rumor had it he was sleeping with Brigid McCauley
(a “total tuna” according to Vanden Smith), so when Katrina asked me, “What’s going on?” I lit a cigarette and said, “Let’s go.” We were even more drunk by now since we had downed a bottle of good red wine we had found in the kitchen, and when we came out into the crisp October air, it hit us both with a bit of a shock, but it didn’t sober us up and we both kept laughing. And then she kissed me and said, “Let’s go back to my room and take a shower.”

We were still walking across Commons lawn when she said this, her mittened hands in her black overcoat, laughing, twirling around, kicking up leaves, the music still coming from Windham House. I wanted to delay this moment, so I suggested that we look around for something to eat. We stopped walking and stood there, and though she sounded more than a little disappointed, she agreed, and we went from house to house, sneakily raiding the refrigerators, even though all we came up with was some frozen Pepperidge Farm Milanos, a half-empty bag of Bar-B-Que potato chips and a Heineken Dark.

Anyway, we ended up in her room, really drunk, making out. She stopped for a minute and made her way to the bathroom down the hall. I turned on a light and looked around the room, inspecting her roommate’s empty bed and the poster of a unicorn on the wall; copies of
Town and Country
and
The Weekly World News
(“I Had Bigfoot’s Baby,” “Scientists Say U.F.O.’s cause AIDS”) were scattered around a giant stuffed teddybear that sat in the corner and I was thinking to myself that this girl was
too
young. She came back in and lit a joint and turned off the light. On the verge of passing out she asked me, “We’re not going to have sex, are we?”

Paul Young was on her stereo and I was leaning over her, smiling and said, “No, I guess not.” I was thinking about the girl I left in September.

“Why not?” she asked, and she really didn’t look all that beautiful anymore, lying there in the semi-darkness of her room, the only real light the glow from the tip of the joint she held.

“I don’t know,” I said, and then mock seriously, “I’m involved,” even though I wasn’t, “And you are drunk,” though that really didn’t have anything to do with it either.

“I really like you,” she said before she passed out.

“I really like you,” I said, though I barely knew her.

I finished the joint and the Heineken. Then I put a blanket over her and stood there, hands in my overcoat pockets. I considered taking the blanket off. I took the blanket off. Then lifted her arm and looked at her breasts, touched them. Maybe I’ll ravish her, I pondered. But it was getting close to four and I had a class in six hours, though the prospect of going seemed fairly remote. On the way out I stole her copy of
One Hundred Years of Solitude
and turned her stereo off and left, pleased and maybe a little embarrassed. I was a Senior. She was a nice girl. She ended up telling everyone I couldn’t get it up, anyway.

LAUREN
Went to Thirsty Thursday at Windham. Thing I had sort of started I didn’t like and I was thinking about Victor and getting lonely. Judy came by the studio already drunk and tried to console me. We got high and I just got lonelier thinking about Victor. Then it’s late and we’re at the party and notalot is going on: keg in the corner, REM or I think it’s REM, beautiful, slow-witted Dance majors writhing about shamelessly. Judy says “Let’s
leave” and I agree. We don’t. We get some beer which is warm and flat but drink it. Judy goes off with some guy from Fels even though I know she has a crush on that guy from Los Angeles who’s playing Quarters with Tony, who I like and who I slept with my second term here, and that girl Bernette who I guess is seeing the guy from L.A. or maybe she’s seeing Tony, and there’s nothing going on and I think about leaving, but the idea of going back to the studio….

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 Swatch 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.