The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN It’s stupid but I called Victor. From The Dressed To Get Screwed party. I had one number left that he said he might be at in New York, and like an idiot I stood in the phone booth downstairs in Wooley, crying, wearing that awful-looking toga, and watching the party start, waiting for Victor to answer. I had to call twice because I really had forgotten my Calling Card number and when I finally got it right and the phone started ringing fuzzy and far away, I broke into a sweat. I started shaking, my heart beating like crazy, waiting for Victor’s happy, surprised voice. A sound I hadn’t heard in over eight weeks. Then I realized that I shouldn’t be nervous and that this was just a really sad scene. I hadn’t planned on calling this number. I had gone to the phone booth not with the intention of calling Victor, but because Reggie Sedgewick had come up to me, completely naked, and asked, “I want you to…”

He looked ugly and pathetic and was staring at the porno movie that was being shown on the ceiling and I was looking for the bar, and said, “Yes?”

And he said, “I want you to … suck my cock.”

And I looked down at it and then back at his face and said, “You’ve got to be out of your mind.”

And he said, “No baby. I want you to suck my cock, really.”

And I thought of Victor and started for the phone booth. “Suck your own,” I said, near tears, walking blindly for the door.

“You think I’d be asking you if I could?” he called out, pointing at it, drunk out of his mind or, even worse, maybe sober.

I got so depressed I just yelled “Fuck off!” and almost slammed the door of the phone booth and made the call, only slightly mortified that I knew the number from memory. When I gave the operator the final number of the Calling Card, and during the silence that followed, I knew it was over. I knew it standing in that phone booth waiting for Victor to answer at this strange, hostile number. I knew it was over even before I met Sean Bateman later that night. How long had I been deluding myself so completely, I wondered as the first ring came over the line. I felt ashamed of myself and I needed a cigarette and the phone kept ringing and Reggie Sedgewick started knocking on the door blubbering an apology and someone answered the phone and it was Jaime and I hung up and went back to the party, pushing Reggie out of the way. I was determined to get some fun out of this night.

So I got drunk, then met Sean, then watched Stuart Jackson dance to an old Billy Idol song, then got high in Gina’s apartment. In that order.