The Rules of Attraction

VICTOR I went to the REM concert with Denton in Hanover. Rupert had already kicked me out of his house. He said there was some sort of problem happening and that I had to leave. I didn’t have anything else to do so I went with Denton. The auditorium was big but there were no seats. Some lame band opened for them and I hung out in back, drinking beer I’d snuck in with Paul, watching the girls. Once they started playing I left Paul and made my way through the standing crowd up front and sat on one of the speakers with some other guy from Camden named Lars. We sat there staring out at the crowd, at all the young stoned proud sweaty Americans, looking up at the stage. Some were tripping and high, others had their eyes closed, moving their grotesque, well-fed bodies to the beat. This one girl who I had been watching most of the night stood squashed in the middle of the front row, and when she caught me looking at her, I gave her a smile. She made a gagging look and turned back to the band, swaying her head to the beat. And I got really disgusted and started thinking, what was this girl’s problem? Why couldn’t she have been nice and smiled back? Was she worrying about imminent war? Was she feeling real terror? Or inspiration? Or passion? That girl, like all the others, I had come to believe, was terminally numb. The Talking Heads record was scratched maybe or perhaps Dad hadn’t sent the check yet. That was all this girl was worried about. Her boyfriend was standing behind her, a total yuppie with Brylcreamed hair and a very thin tie on. Now what was that guy’s problem? Lost I.D., too many anchovies on his pizza, broken cigarette machine? And I kept looking back at that girl-had she forgotten to tape her soap this afternoon? Did she have a urinary tract infection? Why did she have to act so fucking cool? And that’s what it all came down to: cool. I wasn’t being cynical about that bitch and her asshole boyfriend. I really believed that the extent of their pitiful problems didn’t exceed too far from what I thought. They didn’t have to worry about keeping warm or being fed or bombs or lasers or gunfire. Maybe their lover left them, maybe that copy of “Speaking in Tongues” was really scratched — that was this term’s model and their problems. But then I came to understand sitting there, the box vibrating beneath me, the band blaring in my head that these problems and the pain they felt were genuine. I mean, this girl probably had a lot of money and so did her dumb-looking boyfriend. Other people might not sympathize with this couple’s problems and maybe they didn’t really matter in the larger realm of things — but they still mattered to Jeff and Susie; these problems hurt them, these things stung…. Now that’s what struck me as really pathetic. I forgot about her and the other geeks and did some more of the coke Lars was offering me….

Afterwards I wanted to go to The Carousel but Paul told me it had closed down over the weekend; that no one went there much anymore except a couple of Seniors and graduates who never left North Camden. We drove by it anyway. Not that there had been a lot of fun at that place, but it still meant something to me. And it was depressing to see it dark on a Thursday night, the doorway covered with black paint, the path leading to the door covered with thick unshoveled snow.