The Rules of Attraction

PAUL I sit alone in my room, in a chair, in front of the TV, drinking beer I ordered up from room service, watching Friday night videos. Video of Huey Lewis and the News comes on. Huey Lewis walks into a party looking confused. Huey Lewis reminds me of Sean. Huey Lewis also reminds me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Sean doesn’t remind me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Richard opens the door, still in the tuxedo he was wearing at dinner and he sits down on one of the beds and all he says is, “Lost my sunglasses.”

I keep watching Huey Lewis, who can’t find his way out of the party. He’s holding hands with some blond bubblehead and they can’t find their way out. They keep opening doors and none of them contain an exit. One contains a train hurtling at them, another has a vampire hidden behind it, but none offer a way out. How symbolic.

“Do you have any coke?” Richard asks:

A surge of irritation makes me grip the Heineken bottle tighter. I don’t say anything.

“There’s a lot of coke at Sarah Lawrence,” he says.

The video ends and another one comes on, but it’s not a video, it’s a commercial for soap and I look over at him.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“With me?” he asks.

“I guess,” I say. “Who else, idiot?”

“I don’t know,” Richard says. “I went out.”

“You went out,” I repeat.

“To a bar,” he sighs.

“Get lucky?” I ask.

“Would I be here with you if I had?” he says.

His crude attempt at the cutdown, if it was a cutdown, irritates me more than if he had come up with a real … what? scorcher?

“Are you drunk?” I ask, vaguely hoping that he is.

“I wish,” he moans.

“Do you?” I ask.

“Yes. I do,” he moans again, laying back on the bed.

“Quite a little scene you made at dinner,” I mention.

We watch another video or maybe it’s another commercial, I can’t tell, and then he says, “Fuck off. I don’t care.” After a moment’s thoughtful silence, he then asks, “Are they both asleep?” looking over at the wall that separates the rooms from each other.

“Yes.” I nod.

“I went to a movie,” he admits.

“I don’t care,” I say.

“It sucked,” he says.

He gets up and walks over to the cassette player and puts a tape in; hard punk music blasts out of the box and I jump up, completely startled and he makes a face and turns the volume down, then he starts to giggle mischievously and sits in the chair next to mine.

“What are you watching?” he asks. He’s holding the bottle of J.D. which somehow has magically reappeared and offers it to me as he unscrews the top. I shake my head and push it away. “Videos,” I say.

He looks at me, then gets up and stares out the window; he’s got that restless pre-fucking state about him; expectant nervous energy. “I came back because it started to rain.” I can hear him lighting a cigarette, start to smell the smoke. I close my eyes and lean against the chair, and remember a rainy afternoon sitting in Commons with Sean, both of us hungover, sharing a plate of French fries we got at the snack bar since we missed lunch. We were always missing lunch. It was always raining.

“Do you remember those weekends at Saugatuck and Mackinac Island?” he asks.

“No, I don’t. I only remember hellish weekends at Lake Winnebago. In fact I’ve never been to Mackinaw Island,” I say calmly.

“Mackinac,” he says.

“Naw,” I say.

“You’re being difficult, Paul,” he says sweetly.

“Shoot me.”

“Well, anyway, do you remember the Thomases would always come too?” he asks. “Remember Brad Thomas? Good-looking but a mega geek?”

“Mega geek?” I ask. “Brad? Brad from Latin?”

“No, Brad from Fenwick,” he says.

“I don’t remember Brad Thomas,” I say, even though I went to Fenwick with Brad and Richard. I had a crush on Brad in fact. Or was that Bill?

“Remember that Fourth of July when my father got you and Kirk and me so drunk on the boat and my mother had a fit? We were listening to the Top 100 countdown on the radio and someone fell off, right?” he says. “Remember that?”

“Fourth of July? On a boat?” I ask. I suddenly wonder where my father is tonight, and I’m mildly surprised that it doesn’t depress me because I sort of do remember my father’s boat, and I remember wanting badly to see Brad naked, but I can’t remember if anyone fell off a boat, and I’m too tired to even make a move toward Richard so I slump back in the chair and tell him, “I do remember. Get on with it. What’s the point?”

“I miss those days,” Richard says simply.

“You’re a jerk,” I say.

“What happened?” he asks, turning away from the window.

Well, let’s see, your father left your mother for another woman and Mr. Thomas if I remember correctly died of a heart attack playing polo and you became a drug addict and went to college and I became one too for a little while and went to Camden where I wasn’t a drug addict anymore in comparison and I mean what do you want to hear, Richard? Since I have to say something I just say, “You’re a jerk,” again, instead.

“I guess we grew up,” he says sadly.

“Grew up,” I say. “Profound.”

He sits back next to me in the other chair. “I hate college.”

“Isn’t it a little too late to complain?” I ask.

He ignores me. “I hate it.”

“Well, the first couple of years are bad,” I say.

“How about the rest?” He looks over at me, seriously awaiting my answer.

“You get used to it,” I say, after a while.

We stare at the TV. More commercials that look like videos. More videos.

“I want to fuck Billy Idol,” he says absently.

“Yeah?” I yawn.

“I want to fuck you too,” he says in the same absent voice.

“Guess I’m in good company.” His comments make me want to take a swig from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I do. It tastes good. I hand him back the bottle.

“Stop flirting,” he says, laughing. “You’re a bad flirt.”

“No, I’m not,” I say, offended that he thinks I’m coming on to him.

He grabs my wrist playfully and says “You always were.”

“Richard, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, pulling my wrist away from his hold, looking at him quizzically, then turning back to the TV.

Another video changes into a commercial and then a loud clap of thunder quiets us.

“It’s really raining hard,” he says.

“Yes, it’s raining hard,” I say.

“Are you seeing anyone there?” he asks. “I mean, at school.”

“Some Sophomore from the South who rides a motorcycle. I can’t explain it,” I say and then realize that it’s a pretty accurate description of Sean and it makes him look a lot less glamorous than he once seemed. Because, what else is there to say about him? There’s a minute here where I cannot remember his name, can’t even picture features, a face, any sort of shape. “What about you?” I choke, dreading the answer.

“What about me?” he asks. What a finely honed sense of humor.

“Have you ‘met’ anyone?” I rephrase the question.

“‘Met’ anyone?” he asks coyly.

“Who are you fucking? Is that better? I mean, I don’t really want to know. I’m just making conversation.”

“Oh God,” he sighs. “Some guy from Brown. He studies Semiotics. I think it’s the study of laundry or something. Anyway, he’s on the crew team. I see him weekends, you know.”

“Who else?” I ask. “How about at school?”

“Oh this guy from California, from Encino, named Jaime. Transfer from U.C.L.A. Blond, Jewish. He’s on the crew team also.”

“That is such a lie,” I have to blurt out.

“What?” He gets embarrassed, looks shocked. “What do you mean?”

“You always say you’re seeing someone on the ‘crew’ team. And you never are. What is a ‘crew’ team?” I ask and I notice that we have been whispering the entire conversation. “There’s not a crew team at Sarah Lawrence, you nitwit. You think you’re going to get away with lying to me?”

“Oh shut up, you’re completely crazy,” he says, disgusted with me, waving me away.

We watch some more TV and listen to the music coming from the cassette player at the same time and finish off the J.D. After we’ve smoked all the cigarettes in the room, he finally asks, “How is yours going?”

I say, “It’s not.”

He leans over and looks out the window. Richard has a really nice body.

I pick up the bottle and cough as I swallow the last drops.

Richard says, “You know it’s bad when you can see the rain at night.”

We’re quiet for a minute and he looks at me and I start to laugh at him.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, smiling.

“‘You know it’s bad when you can see the rain at night?’ What is that? A fucking Bonnie Tyler song?”

The liquor has made me feel good and he leans up close, laughing also, and I can smell the warm scotch on his breath and he kisses me too hard at first and I push him back a little and I can feel the line where stubble and lip meet and I think I hear a door open and close somewhere and I don’t care whether it’s Mrs. Jared or my mother, drunk, in lieu of divorce, asleep by Seconal, in a nightgown from Marshall Fields, and though I don’t want to, we undress each other and I go to bed with Richard. Afterwards, early in the morning, pre-dawn, without saying goodbye to anyone, I pack quietly and walk to the bus station in the rain and take the first bus back to Camden.