The Rules of Attraction

SEAN The girl’s name is Candice. I’m standing by the keg with Tony who’s giving Getch a long speech on the effects of drinking too much beer and I watch her and block Mitch Allen out of my line of vision. She’s dressed too nicely for a Friday night party and out here on Commons lawn she looks classy, really nice, maybe too conservative and uptight in that Jappy sort of way, but also in a good, sexy way, like you look at her and you know she’d be wild in bed or something. At any rate she looks too good for Mitch, who isn’t really all that handsome as far as I can tell. He always reminded me of a high school dork who was trying too hard. I wonder if she really likes fucking him. Then I think maybe they’re not even fucking. Maybe I can just go over there and start talking to her and maybe she’ll accept my offer and tell Mitch that she’ll see him later. And thinking about all this is killing me, almost. Down another beer and another Jap, Roxanne, comes over to the keg, and stands next to me. Then this girl is walking away from End of the World, following him. They can’t be leaving, I’m thinking, it’s too early. But they aren’t leaving, they’re just walking away from someone. Too early for what? I wonder to myself. They’ll just go back to his room eventually (she probably has a roommate) and she’ll let him fuck her. I’m so horny I’m not even excited, just weak. I look at Roxanne, who I owe lots of money to. She’s wearing too much jewelry and looking okay. I wonder if she’ll fuck me tonight. If there’s even a slight possibility. She’s smoking a joint and hands it to me. “What’s going on?” she asks.

“Drinking beer,” I explain.

“Is it good? Are you drinking a good beer?” she asks.

“Listen,” I tell her, getting to the point, “Do you want to go back to my room?”

She laughs, drinks her beer, bats her thickly mascaraed eyelashes and asks me why.

“Old times?” I shrug. I hand her back the joint.

“Old times?” She laughs even harder.

“What’s so funny? Jesus.”

“No, I don’t, Sean,” she says. “I have to pick up Rupert anyway.” She’s still smiling.

The bitch. There’s a bug, a moth in her beer. She doesn’t see it. I don’t say anything.

“Lend me a couple bucks,” I ask her.

“I don’t have my purse with me,” she says.

“Right,” I say.

“Oh, Sean. You’re still the same,” she says, not being mean, but it makes me want to hit her (no, fuck her, then hit her). “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

I want her to drink that bug. Where did Candice go, damnit? I look back at Roxanne, who’s still got that goddamned smile, thinking to herself, happy that I asked her, happier that she has the power to say no. I look at her and am genuinely repulsed.

“Do you have any morphine?” I ask her.

“Why?” she asks, spotting the bug, pouring the beer out onto the lawn.

“Take some. You look like you could use it,” I tell her, walking away.

“I have something for you to pick up, sweetheart,” is the last clear thing I hear.

My line was neither quick or effective and I cannot believe I actually saw that girl for a while. It was when she started dealing coke so she could lose weight. It had worked, sort of. I think she still has a fat ass, and can look dumpy, and has dried-out black hair and writes awful poetry and I’m pissed off that I let her get into that position of denying me. I go back to my room and slam the door a couple of times. Rommate’s gone, snap on the radio. I pace. “Wild Horses” comes on the local station. I flick the tuner. “Let It Be” is on the next station. On the next is “Ashes to Ashes,” then some Springsteen dirge, then Sting crooning “Every Breath You Take,” and then when I turn it back to the local station, asshole D.J. announces he’s going to play all four sides of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” I don’t know what comes over me but I pick the receiver up and hurl it against the closet door, but it doesn’t break and I’m grateful even if it is a cheap stereo. I kick it, then grab a box of tapes, unwind one I don’t like and smash it with my boot heel. Then I take a crate of singles I own and make sure I have them on tape before I snap them all into two, then, if possible, into four. I kick at the walls on roommate’s side and then break a doorknob on the closet door. Then I go back to the party.