The Rules of Attraction

SEAN Today, I hang out, ride my motorcycle into town, walk around, buy a couple of tapes, then come back to Booth and watch Planet of the Apes on Getch’s VCR. I love the scene where an ape bullet has made Charlton Heston mute. He escapes and frantically runs around Ape City and as the net closes over his head he is raised triumphantly by The Gorillas and he finds his voice and screams, “Get your stinkin’ hands off me you damn dirty apes!” I’ve always liked that scene. It reminds me of nightmares I had in elementary school or something. Then, when I’m about to take a shower, I find the Duke of Disease (gross grad of 78 or 79) doing his friggin laundry in my bathroom. And he doesn’t even go to school here. Just visiting an old teacher. I have to run after the asshole with a can of Lysol. I get another note in my box after dinner tonight. They don’t say anything really except, like, “I love you” or “You’re Sexy,” stuff like that. I used to think they were jokes that Tony or Getch were putting in my box, but there’s been too many of them to take as a joke. Someone is seriously interested in me. My interest has definitely been aroused.

Then it’s back in Booth after dinner watching TV in Getch’s room and some tall greasy-haired hippie turned professional-college-student-type named Dan, who had been fucking Candice last term, is there talking to Tony. Anyway, it’s about eight-thirty and the room is cold and I feel feverish. Tony and this guy get into a heated argument about politics or something. It’s frightening. Tony, in a pre-drunken state, is pissed off that his point was lost, and Dan, smelling like some twenty-year-old unwashed rug, keeps referring to leftist writers and calling the N.Y.C. police force “Nazis.” I tell him that I was once beaten up by the city police. He smiles and says, “Here’s a case in point.” I was joking. I feel weird, my body aches. I watch people argue about Nazis. I enjoy it. Saturdays suck.

Now, I’m at the party and I can’t find Candice, so I hang around, by the keg, talk to the DJ. Go to the bathroom but some asshole has thrown up all over the floor and I’m about to leave when I bump into Paul Denton, who’s walking down the hallway, and I vaguely remember talking to him last night, and I nod to him as I’m walking away from the vomit-covered toilet, but he walks up to me and says, “Oh, I’m so sorry about tonight.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Did you stay?” he asks me.

“Stay? Yeah,” I say. Whatever. “I stayed.”

“God, I’m really sorry,” he says.

“Listen, it’s okay. It really is,” I tell him.

“I’ve got to make it up to you,” he’s telling me.

“Okay. Sure,” I say. “I’ve gotta take a leak, okay?”

“Oh sure. I’ll wait,” he smiles.

After pissing off the vomit from the toilet seat I head back down the hall and Denton’s still standing there with a fresh beer for me. I thank him, what else can I do, and we walk back to the living room where these asshole frat guys from Dartmouth have crashed the party. I have no idea how the fuck they got onto campus. Security must have let them in as a joke. So these stupid rich frat guys all dressed up in Brooks Brothers come up to me while I’m waiting for Denton to get another beer and one of them asks me, “What’s going on?”

“Not much,” I tell him. It’s the truth.

“Where’s that Dressed To Get Screwed party?” one of them asks.

“That’s not until later,” I tell him.

“Tonight?” the same one asks.

“Next term,” I lie.

“Oh shit man. We thought this was The Dressed To Get Screwed party,” they say, really disappointed.

“It looks like a Halloween party if you ask me,” one of them says.

“Freaks,” one of them says, looking around, shaking his head. “Freaks.”

“Sorry, guys,” I say.

Denton comes back with a beer and hands it to me and we all talk. They get really excited when the D.J. spins old Sam Cooke and one of them grabs a not-bad-looking Freshman and dances with her when “Twisting the Night Away” comes on. It makes me sick. The remaining Dartmouth jerks do a little frat handshake. They’re all wearing green for some reason. Denton’s looking at them closely and asks, “Aren’t you all a little far away?”

“It’s not that far a ride,” one of them says.

Then Denton asks, “Well, what’s it like on the outside?”

It’s pretty weak that Denton’s even acknowledging these jerks but I don’t say anything.

“It’s cool,” one of them says, eyeing some ugly girl. Our student body president.

“You guys are really in the middle of nowhere,” one of the more brilliant ones says.

Denton laughs and says, “Kind of.”

“Hanover’s a real sprawling metropolis,” I mutter loudly.

“I swear this looks like a fuckin’ Halloween party,” one of them says again and they’re pissing me off and okay, maybe it does look like one but it doesn’t give these assholes any right, so I have to tell them, “No, it’s not a Halloween party. It’s the Get Fucked party.”

“Oh yeah?” They all raise their eyes up and nudge each other. “We’re ready.”

“Yeah. Bend over and get fucked,” I find myself saying.

They look at me like I’m crazy and walk off telling me how “perverted” I am. I don’t even know why I bothered to say that. I look over at Denton and he’s laughing, but when he sees that I’m not, he stops. It gets late and Candice is nowhere to be found and the keg runs out. Denton says why don’t we go to his room since he has beer there. And I’m a little wasted so I say why not. I make sure I bring the pot I picked up earlier this afternoon when I was at Roxanne’s scoring for some Freshman girls in McCullough. We leave the party and head for Welling.