The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN Laying in bed. Franklin’s room. He’s asleep. Not a good idea. Judy could enter any second. I should leave before gay roommate comes back and I can’t stop thinking about you Victor. Dear, dear Victor, I’m in the arms of someone else tonight. I remember a night last term. It was a Wednesday and there you were sitting in your room, writing your silly paper for a silly class, and I was sorry about being the cause of a delay in your essay. Oh Victor, life is weird. I was typing in your room and I was misspelling so many words but I didn’t want to interrupt and annoy you with correcting things over each other. Oh my God. That sounds like a profundity to me! Life is like a typographical error: we’re constantly writing and rewriting things over each other. Are you the same here as when you’re in Europe? I wonder. Last summer you told me you would be. It would upset me terribly if you weren’t; if I was there with you and you were off on some other planet somewhere. That would not be good. You wanted to get pizza and not go to the Wet Wednesday party in Welling that night, because you wanted to catch “Dynasty” and the Letterman show. I remember that night very well. I kept staring at your Diva poster. I should have never gotten semi-drunk halfway. It was a bummer. I really liked the song that was playing. That was really wonderful that you were listening to that tape I made for you all on your own, of bands from Paris, but remembering that song depresses me, especially since there is a Frenchman somewhere in Booth who’s in love with me. Oh Victor, I miss you. That night last term when you didn’t want to go to the party and I did because there was a boy there I was in love with and still seeing and you said he was a fag so it didn’t count and you were half-right but I didn’t care. I smoked cigarettes instead.

“Do you have a match?” I asked you.

You shuffled through a very nice leather jacket. “Yeah.” Threw matches at me.

“Thanks,” I said and turned back to the typewriter to write a seemingly meaningless note to you. You. You, who was busy scribbling nonsequiturs to a black man that always wore sunglasses that reflect your eyes even if it was storming outside. What class was that? Electronic Jazz? Hmmmm, I thought, what are those papers on your desk, upside down? But being that I respected your privacy I didn’t touch them or ask about them. I’m sure you didn’t want me to know about their existence anyway. There was a roll of toilet paper on your desk, a Baggie full of excellent Hawaiian pot, and a copy of The Book of Rock Lists. I wondered what it all meant. I was running out of paper. Perhaps I should have asked if you were going to be done soon but I just stared at you instead.

“What do you want?” you asked as I stared at you, checking on your progress.

“Paper,” I said, not wanting to stop your train of thought.

“Here,” you tossed me a piece of composition paper.

“Are you almost finished?” I questioned.

“What time is it?” you asked, realizing that you told me you’d be done by ten.

“You have one minute left,” I told you.

“Shit,” you said.

So went our days, Victor. It always seemed that there was just one minute left, all the time…. That doesn’t make any sense, especially since we don’t often do, well, I guess that that might be wrong and, well….

(Oh Jesus, me and Franklin, what about Judy? This is not good.)

Well … perhaps I shouldn’t place value judgemints. Paul got very angry at me once because I couldn’t spell judgemint (see?) Shit. Juhgment. That’s wrong too. Actually, now I understand why he got angry. Jaime was reading the letter and I knew you were in love with her and not with me (though you would be by summer) and you could have cared less if I went out with the fag or not. Jaime asked who the letter was for. I told her it was for you. Jaime was a slut. That’s my opinion. She’s a … well, forget it. It isn’t worth it. I am very tired. That’s what I am. Tired of everything. Anyway, dear Victor this is enough. I’m going to stop thinking about you. I never signed that letter. I never even gave it to you. Don’t remember what it even said. I just hope you remember who I am. Don’t you forget about me….

How tense sounding, I think of myself. I look over at Franklin.

Immobile, unmoving, I spend the rest of the night with him, in bed.

But I do not go up to breakfast with him.