The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN A lightbulb. I’m staring at the lightbulb above Sean’s head. We’re at Lila’s and Gina’s apartment in Fels. Two lesbians from the poetry workshop I recently joined. Actually, Gina in strict confidence told me that she’s on the Pill, “just in case.” Docs that mean she’s a lesbian technically? Lila, on the other hand, has confided in me that she’s worried Gina will leave her since it’s “in” to sleep with women this term. What do you say to someone? Well, what about next term? Actually, what about next term? You watch Sean too, you watch him roll a joint and he’s pretty good at it which makes me want to sleep with him less, but oh who cares, Jaime answered the phone, right? and it’s a Friday, and it was either him or that French guy. His hands are nice: clean and large and he handles the pot rather delicately, and I want him suddenly to touch my breasts. I don’t know why I think this but I do. Not exactly handsome, but he’s passable looking: light hair combed back, smallish features (maybe a little like a rat?), maybe too short, maybe too thin. No, not handsome, just vaguely Long Islandish. But a big improvement over that Kir-sipping Iranian editor you met at Vittorio’s last party who told you you were going to be the next Madonna. After I told him I was a poet, he said he meant Marianne Moore.

“So, who’s going to help us bomb the weight room?” Gina asks. Gina is part of Camden’s “old guard” and the arrival of the weight room and an aerobics instructor has made her livid (even though she wants to sleep with the aerobics instructor — who, in my opinion, doesn’t even have that nice a body). “Lila is devastated,” she tells me.

Lila nods and rests her head on the Kathy Acker book she’s been flipping through.

“B-U-M-M-E-R,” I spell out, sighing. Look at the Mapplethorpe photo of Susan Sontag pinned above the sink and snicker.

Sean laughs and looks up from the joints as if I said something brilliant and it’s not funny but because he laughs I laugh.

“Tim loves it,” he says.

“Let’s kill him and we’ll call it art,” Lila says. How does Lila know Tim, I wonder. Does Tim sleep with lesbians? I am drunk.

Still holding a glass of the pink punch it occurs to me that I am so drunk I cannot get up. I just tell Lila, “Don’t get depressed,” and then to Gina, “Do you have any coke?” too drunk to be ashamed.

“Depression becomes some,” Lila says.

“No,” Gina.

“You want some?” Sean asks.

“No.”

Depression becomes some?

Can’t argue with that so we light the first joint. Wish we had sex and it was over with so I could go back to my room with the down pillows and the comforter and pass out with some dignity. Lila gets up. Puts on a Kate Bush record and dances around the room.

“This place has really changed.” Someone hands me the joint. I take a long, hard hit and look around the apartment and agree with whoever said that. Stephanie Myers and Susan Goldman and Amanda Taylor lived here my Sophomore year. It is different.

“The Seventies never ended.” Sean the Philosopher Bateman this time. What a stupid thing to say, I’m thinking. What a strange and supremely stupid thing to say. He smiles at me and thinks it’s profound. I feel sick. I want them to turn the music down.

“I wonder if everyone goes through this much hell at college,” Lila ponders, dancing next to my chair, staring dreamily at me. Do I want to sleep with another girl? No.

“Don’t worry darling,” Gina says. “We’re not at Williams.”

Not at Williams. No, that’s for sure. Smoke more grass. For some reason he’s not looking at Gina. Lila sits down and sighs and resumes looking at the drawings in the Acker book. Go to Europe if you don’t like it, I’m thinking. Victor, I’m thinking.

“Louis Farrakhan was supposed to visit but the Freshmen and Sophomores on student council voted against it,” Sean says. “Can you believe that?” So he’s politically conscious too. Even worse. He smokes more of the pot than Gina and I combined, someone’s even brought out a bong. He holds it like Victor holds it. I look at him, nauseated, but it’s too smoky and Kate Bush is too screechy and he doesn’t notice. “They even want someone to redesign the school sign,” he adds.

“Why?” I find myself asking.

“Not Eighties enough,” Lila suggests.

“Probably want flashing neon,” Gina.

“Get Keith Haring or Kenny Scharf,” Lila grimaces.

“Or Schnabel,” Gina cringes.

“Too passé,” Lila mutters.

“Lots of broken plates and ‘suggestive’ smears,” did Sean say this?

“Or getting Fischel to do the pamphlet. Some of the chic jet-setting nihilistic Eurotrash who live off-campus, nude, standing around with dogs and fish. Welcome to Camden College-You’ll Never Be Bored.” Gina starts laughing.

“I’m gonna redesign it,” Lila says. “Win the money. Buy a gram.”

What money? I’m thinking. Have I missed something. Am I out of it?

The grass is good but I have to light a cigarette to stay awake and during a break on the record we can all hear someone from the party next door scream, “That’s phallic — yeah! yeah! yeah!” and we all look at each other, stoned, and crack up and I remember seeing Judy crying in a doorway upstairs at the party, in the bathroom, Franklin trying to comfort her, Franklin glaring at me as I left with Sean.

Now the inevitable.

We’re in his room and he plays me a song. On his guitar. He serenades me and it’s almost embarrassing enough to sober me up. “You’re Too Good to Be True” and I start crying only because I can’t help but think of Victor, and he stops halfway through and kisses me and we end up going to bed. And I’m thinking what if I went back to my room now, and what if there was a note on the door saying Victor called? What if there was just a note? Whether he called or not doesn’t matter. Just to see a note, just to see maybe a V, and fuck the rest of the letters. If there was just a sign. It could make me elated for one week, no, one day. I put my diaphragm in at Gina’s and Lila’s apartment so there’s no drunken forgetfulness on my part, no running to the bathroom in the middle of foreplay.

Sean fucks me. It’s not so bad. It’s over. I breathe easy.