The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN Me and Judy. Stretching canvas. My studio. Judy just did her nails so she is not really, as one says, into it. So we stop. Another Friday night. She brought two Beck’s over and some pot. I like Judy. I do not like mother. Mother called earlier. After dinner. It depressed me so completely that I could only walk around in a stupor and smoke cigarettes until I came down to the studio. My mother had nothing to say to me. My mother had no pressing information to pass on to me. My mother was watching movies on the VCR. My mother is crazy. I asked her about the magazine (she runs it), about my sister at R.I.S.D., about finally (big mistake) my father. She said she didn’t hear me. I did not ask her again. Then she mentioned that Joana (father’s new girlfriend) is only twenty-five. And since I didn’t groan or throw up or try to kill myself, she said that if I approve of what he’s doing why don’t I just stay with him over Christmas. By that time the call had already degenerated so completely I told her that I had a class to go to at midnight and hung up and went to the studio and looked at all the shit, the completely shitty shit I’d been doing all term. I was supposed to be doing the posters for the Shepard play but the dyke who was directing it really bothers me, so maybe I’ll give her one of these unfinished pieces of shit. I cry out, “It’s all shit! Judy look at this. It’s shit!”

“No, it’s not.” But she’s not looking.

“You’re not looking. Oh god.” I open my second pack of the day and it’s not even eleven. Last thing I have to worry about is lung or breast cancer. Thank god I’m not on the Pill.

“I’m changing majors,” I say. Look at what I’ve done. Jackson Pollock freed the line, remember that, someone told me in Advanced Painting yesterday. How can I free this shit? I wonder. I stand back from the unfinished canvas. I realize that I would rather spend my money on drugs than on art supplies. “I’m changing my major. Are you listening?”

“Again?” Judy says, all concentration on rolling another joint. She laughs.

“Again? Did you have to say that?”

“Don’t make me laugh or else I can’t do this.”

“This is ridiculous,” I say.

“Let’s go to the party.” Whining. Judy whining.

“Why? We have everything we need here. Warm beer. Music And even better, no boys.”

I change the tape. We have been listening to Compilation Tape #2 we made Freshman year. Bad/Good memories come from it. Michael Jackson (“How many songs off ‘Thriller’ can you name?” Victor asked me once. I lied and said only two. After that he said he loved me … where was that? Wellfleet Drive-in, or were we walking down Commercial Street in Provincetown?), Prince (having sex in the campus van parked outside a Friday night party with good-looking Boy from Brown), Grandmaster Flash (we danced to “The Message” so many times and we never tired). Tape depresses me. Pull it out. Put something else, Reggae Tape #6, in.

“When is Victor coming back?” Judy asks.

I can hear music coming from Commons and End of the World and it sounds tempting. Maybe we should go. Go to party. There was always the book of sexual diseases with gruesome explicit photographs in them (some of the close-ups, pink, blue, purple, red blisters were beautiful in an abstract minimalist sort of way), which always works as a deterrent to a Friday night party. Victor would be a deterrent too. If he was here. We’d probably go to the party and have a good time. Flip through the book. Close-up of girl who was allergic to the plastic in her diaphragm. Yuck. Maybe we would have a good time. I picture poor handsome Victor in Rome or Paris, alone, hungry, somewhere, desperately trying to get in touch with me, maybe even screaming at some mean operator in broken Italian or Yiddish, near tears, trying to reach me. Gasp and lean up against the posts in the studio and then throw head back. Too dramatic.

“Who knows?” I hear myself saying. “What does this stuff remind you of?” I ask her, standing back. “Degas? Seurat? Renoir?”

She looks at the canvas and says, “Scooby Doo.”

Okay, it’s time for The Pub. Get a pitcher of Genny and if we haven’t forgotten to cash a check, maybe some wine coolers to get drunk/sick on, then a pizza or bagel? Judy knows it. I know it. When the going gets tough, the tough go drinking.

So we go to The Pub. Someone has written in black letters Sensory Deprivation Tank on the door and I don’t find it funny. Not many people are here because of the party. We get a pitcher and sit in the back. Listen to the jukebox. I think about Victor. A joint left unsmoked is in Judy’s bag. And we have the same conversation that we always have on partyless Friday nights in The Pub. Conversations that only recently, now that I’m a Senior, am I tiring of.

J: What’s the movie tonight?

Me: Apocalypse Now? or Dawn of the Dead, maybe. I think.

J: No. Not again, god.

Me: So, who are you in love with?

J: Franklin.

Me: I thought you said he was a geek, a bore. Why?

J: There’s no one else to like.

Me: You said he was a geek, though.

J: I really like his roommate.

Me: Who’s that?

J: Michael.

Me: Why don’t you go for Michael?

J: He’s maybe gay.

Me: How do you know?

J: I slept with him. He told me he likes boys. I don’t think it would work out. He wants to be a ballerina.

Me: If you can’t be with the one you love, honey …

J: Fuck their roommate instead.

Me: Are we going anywhere or not?

J: No, I don’t think so. Not tonight.

Me: What’s the movie tonight?