The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN Victor hasn’t called. I’ve changed my major. Poetry.

What do Franklin and I do? Well, we go to parties: Wet Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday, parties at The Graveyard, at End of the World, Friday night parties, pre-Saturday-night party parties, Sunday afternoon parties.

I try to quit smoking. Write letters to Victor in computer class that I never send. Franklin always seems to be broke. He wants to sell blood to get some cash, maybe buy some drugs maybe sell some drugs. I sell some clothes and old records in Commons one afternoon. We spend a lot of time in my room since I’ve got a double bed. I’ve stopped painting completely. Since Sara left (even though the abortion by her account wasn’t traumatic enough to excuse her absence) I watch her cat, Seymour. Franklin hates the cat. I do too, but tell him I like it. We hang out in the Sensory Deprivation Tank. Sometimes Judy and Freshman and me and Franklin go to the movies in town and no one cares. What is going on? I ask myself. We drink a lot of beer. The boy from L.A., still wearing shorts and sunglasses and nothing else, came on to me at one of the parties last week. I almost went home with him but Franklin intervened. Franklin is an idiot, really unintentionally hilarious. I have come to this conclusion, not by reading his writing, which is science fiction, which is “heavily influenced by astrology,” which is terrible, but by something I don’t understand. I tell him I like his stories, I tell him my sign and we discuss the importance of the stories but … I hate his goddamned incense and I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself, why I’m being such a masochist. Though of course it’s because of a certain handsome Horace Mann graduate who’s lost in Europe. I try to quit smoking.

(… no mail from Victor …)

But I like Franklin’s body and he’s good in bed and easy to have orgasms with. But it doesn’t feel good and when I try to fantasize about Victor, I can’t.

I go to computer class. I hate it but need the credit.

“Did I tell you I was strip-searched in Ireland?” Franklin will mention at lunch.

I will look straight ahead and avoid eye contact when he says things like that. I pretend I don’t hear him. He doesn’t shave sometimes and he gives me beard burns. I am not in love with him, I’ll chant under my breath at dinner, with him sitting across from me with other oily Lit majors all dressed in black and exhibiting a dry yet caustic wit and I’ll be blown away by how nondescript he is. But can you remember really what Victor looked like? No, you can’t, can you? It freaked him out badly that I put a note on my door that said “If my mother calls I’m not here. Try not to take a message either. Thanks.” I try to stop smoking. I forget to feed the cat.

“I want to trip with my father before he dies,” Franklin said at lunch this afternoon.

I didn’t say anything for a very long time and then he asked, “Are you high?” and I said “High” and lit another cigarette.