The Rules of Attraction

SEAN I trudge and Lauren walks up the hill toward Vittorio’s house. It’s not too cold even if it’s late October, but I told her to wear a sweater just in case it got cold when we walked home. I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans when I told her this and she asked me, when we were in her room getting dressed, why she had to wear a sweater if I got to wear a short-sleeve shirt and therefore be more comfortable. I couldn’t tell her the truth: that I didn’t like the idea of Vittorio staring at her tits. So I went back to my room and put on an old black jacket and changed my tennis shoes to penny loafers, as an added touch to please her.

The jacket is wrapped around my waist now, the sleeves knocking against my thighs as we make our way to the top of the hill. I start walking slower, hoping that maybe I can talk her out of Vittorio’s party, hoping that she’ll change her mind and walk back to campus with me. The only reason I’m doing this is because I know it means a lot to her (though I cannot understand why) and that this is Vittorio’s last get-together before he leaves for Italy on Sunday, before he’s replaced by some drunk who was fired from the Lit staff at Harvard (I found this out from Norris who knows all the teacher gossip). I step in front of the gate that leads up to the door of Vittorio’s house. She keeps walking, then stops, sighs, doesn’t turn around.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.

“We already talked about this,” she says.

“I think I’ve changed my mind.”

“We’re here. We’re going in. I’m going in.”

I follow her to the door. “If he makes one move towards you I’ll beat the shit out of him.” I unwrap the jacket from my waist and put it on.

“You’ll what?” she asks, ringing the bell.

“I don’t know.” I smooth the jacket out. I brought coke in case I can’t deal with it, but I haven’t told her this. I wonder if any girls will be here.

“You’re jealous of my poetry teacher,” she says. “I can’t believe it.”

“I can’t believe he practically rapes you at these goddamned things,” I whisper loudly at her. “And you love it,” I add.

“My God, Sean, he’s almost seventy,” she says. “Besides you’ve never been to one of these things so how in the hell would you know?”

“So what? I don’t care how old he is, he still does it. You’ve told me.” I can hear footsteps, Vittorio’s, shuffling toward the door.

“He’s taught me a lot and I owe it to him to come.” She looks at my watch, lifting then dropping my wrist. “We’re late. Anyway he’s leaving and you won’t have to put up with this anymore.”

This is the end of the relationship. I knew it was coming to an end. She was starting to bore me already. And maybe this party is a good excuse to end it, to lay blame somewhere. I don’t care. Rock’n’roll. I look at her one last time, in the seconds before the door opens, and desperately try to remember why we even got together in the first place.

The door opens and Vittorio, wearing baggy cords and an old L.L. Bean sweater, his thin gray hair longish, un-brushed, raises his arms up in greeting and says, “Lauren, Lauren … oh what a lovely, lovely surprise….” His soft voice now high and emotional. This is Vittorio? The guy who makes the passes at Lauren? I’m thinking. He hugs her as she walks in and she looks over at me and rolls her eyes up over Vittorio’s aged, stooped shoulder. I register it but it doesn’t make a difference. Why doesn’t she just fuck him? I’m thinking.

“… lovely, lovely surprise….”

“I thought we were invited,” I say, annoyed.

“Oh you were, you were,” Vittorio says, looking at Lauren as if she had spoken. “But it’s such a lovely … lovely surprise….”

“Vittorio, you remember Sean,” she says. “You were in one of Vittorio’s classes, weren’t you?” she asks me.

I have never met the guy in my life, only heard about his lecherous activities from Lauren who spoke about them plainly and easily, as if it were a joke. When she spoke to me about his behavior it was hard to tell whether she was bragging or trying purposefully to turn me off. Whatever.

“Yeah,” I say. “Hi.”

“Yes, yes … Sean,” he says, still gazing at Lauren.

“Well…” I say.

He’s breathing hard and I can smell the alcohol on the geezer’s breath.

“Yes,” he says, absent-mindedly as he ushers Lauren into the living room, forgetting to close the front door behind him. I close the door. I follow.

There are only six other people at the so-called party. (I don’t understand why Lauren doesn’t realize that six people do not constitute a “party,” but more like a fucking “gathering”) And they’re all sitting around a table in the living room. Some young pale guy with a shaved head wearing John Lennon glasses and a Mobil gas station uniform, smoking Export A’s, sitting in an armchair, eyes us contemptuously as we walk in. This couple from San Francisco, Trav and his hot wife Mona, who are living near the college while Trav finishes his novel, and Mona takes a poetry tutorial with Vittorio, are sitting on two chairs next to the couch, where two creepy female editors from the literary magazine Vittorio edits, along with Marie, a plump, silent woman in her mid-forties, who has the Italian widow look and who, I guess takes care of Vittorio’s needs, sit.

Lauren knows one of the editors, who has just published a poem of hers in that magazine’s last issue. I had thought the same of that poem as I had of all the rest. None of them made any sense to me. All this stuff about depressed girls sitting around in empty rooms, thinking of past boyfriends, or masturbating, or smoking cigarettes on foam-drenched sheets, complaining about menstrual cramps. It seemed to me that Lauren was just writing one endless poem and I told her honestly one night after we’d had sex in her room, that none — no, not none; hadn’t said that — that a lot of it didn’t make sense to me. She had only said, “Doesn’t make sense,” and laid back on the pillow we were sharing and when I tried to kiss her, later that night, her mouth and embrace seemed cold, indifferent, frigid.

“This is quite a promising young poet … um, yes…” Vittorio says of Lauren, resting his meaty, hairy paw on her shoulder.

Vittorio then turns to the bald guy in the armchair and says of the pretentious geek, “And this is Stump, another … yes, very promising poet….”

“We know each other,” Lauren smiles flirtatiously. “You did your thesis with Glickman last term, right? On…” She’s forgotten. Must have made a big impression.

“Yeah,” Stump says. “Hunter S. Thompson.”

“Right,” she says. “This is Sean Bateman.”

“Hi, Stump?” I offer my hand.

“Yeah. Used to be Carcass but changed it.” He salutes instead of taking my hand.

“You … look familiar,” I say, taking a seat.

“Wine? Uh, vodka? Gin?” Vittorio asks, sitting in the chair next to Lauren’s, gesturing at the table we’re all “gathered” around. “You like gin, don’t you … Lauren.”

How the fuck does he know?

“Yeah, gin,” Lauren says. “Do you have any tonic?”

“Oh, of course, of course … I’ll make it,” Vittorio says in his soft, almost faggoty voice, reaching over Lauren’s knees to get to the ice bucket.

“I’ll just have one of those beers,” I say, but when Vittorio makes no move to get one I reach over and take one of the Beck’s.

It’s quiet. Everyone waits for Vittorio to make Lauren’s drink. I sit there, looking at Vittorio’s shaking hands, alarmed at how much gin he’s pouring into Lauren’s glass. When he turns around to hand the glass to her, he seems shocked, taken aback, and as she takes the drink from him he says, “Oh look … look at the sunlight, the sunlight … through your golden … golden hair….” His voice is trembling now. “The sunlight…” he murmurs. “Look how it glows … glows in the sunlight…”

Jesus Christ, this is really making me sick. She is making me sick. I grip the beer firmly, tear at the damp label. Then I look at Lauren.

The sun is still up and streaming through the large stained glass window and it does make Lauren’s hair glow and she looks very beautiful to me right now. Everyone’s giggling and Vittorio leans over and starts smelling her hair. “Ah, sweet as nectar … nectar,” he says.

I am going to scream. I am going to scream. No I’m not.

“Sweet as nectar…” Vittorio mumbles again, and then pulls away, letting strands of her hair fall back into place.

“Oh, Vittorio,” Lauren says. “Please, stop.”

She loves it, I’m thinking. She fucking loves it.

“Nectar…” Vittorio says once more.

One of the editors, after a long silence, speaks up and says, “Mona was just telling us about some of the projects she was working on.”

Mona is wearing a white see-through blouse and tight faded jeans and cowboy boots, looking pretty sexy, curly blond hair piled up on her head, and a deeply tan face. Rumor has it that she hangs around Dewey offering Sophomore guys pot then screwing them. I try to make eye contact. She takes a big sip of her white wine spritzer before she says anything. “Well, basically, I’m freelancing now. Just finished an interview with two of the V.J.s from MTV.”

“Hah!” Stump exclaims. “MTV! V.J.s! How completely scintillating!”

“Actually it was quite…” Mona tilts her head. “Refreshing.”

“Refreshing,” Trav nods.

“In what way?” Stump wants to know.

“In the way that she really captured the sense of this monolithic corporate superstructure that’s bludgeoning and infecting the quote-unquote innocents of America by mind-fucking them with these … these essentially sexist, fascistic, blatantly bourgeois video films. Video killed the radio star, that type of stuff,” Trav says.

No one says anything for a long time until Mona speaks again.

“Actually, it’s not that … aggressive.” She takes a sip of her drink and tilts her head, looking over at Trav. “That’s more of what your book is about, Trav.”

“Oh yes, Travis,” one of the editors says, adjusting her glasses. “Tell us about the book.”

“He’s been working on it for a long time,” Mona chirps.

“Did you quit the job at Rizzoli’s?” the other editor asks.

“Uh-huh. Yep,” Trav nods. “Gotta get this book done. We left L.A., what?” He turns to Mona, who I think is flirting with me. “Nine months ago? We were in New York for two and now we’re here. But I gotta get this book done.”

“We know someone at St. Martin’s who’s really interested,” Mona says. “But Trav has got to finish it.”

“Yeah babe,” Trav says. “I do.”

“How long have you been working on it?” Stump asks.

“Not that long,” Trav says.

“Thirteen years?” Mona asks. “Not that long?”

“Well, time is subjective,” Trav says.

“What is time?” one of the editors asks. “I mean, really?”

I’m looking at Vittorio who’s sipping a glass of red wine and staring at Lauren. Lauren takes a pack of Camels from her purse and Vittorio lights the cigarette for her. I finish the Beck’s quickly and keep staring at Lauren. When she looks over at me, I look away.

Trav’s saying, “But don’t you think rock’n’roll killed off poetry?”

Lauren and Stump and Mona all laugh and I look over at Lauren and she rolls her eyes up. She looks at me and smiles, and I’m pitifully relieved. But I don’t, can’t, smile back with her sitting next to Vittorio, so I watch her inhale deeply on the cigarette Vittorio lit.

“Of course,” Stump practically shouts. “I learned more from Black Flag than I ever did from Stevens or cummings or Yeats or even Lowell, but my God, holy shit, Black Flag is poetry man.”

“Black Flag … Black Flag … who is this Black Flag?” Vittorio asks, eyes half-closed.

“I’ll tell you later, Vittorio,” Stump says, amused.

Trav takes in what Stump said and nods as he lights a cigarette.

Stump offers me an Export A. I shake my head and tell him, “I don’t smoke.”

Stump says, “Neither do I,” and lights one.

“Stump is … um, working on a very interesting … series of poems about…” Vittorio stops. “Oh, how can … how can I say this … um, oh my….”

“Bestiality?” Stump suggests.

I pull out a pack of Parliaments and light one.

“Well my … my, yes … I, suppose, that is it….” Vittorio mumbles, embarrassed.

“Yeah, I’ve been working on this concept that when Man fucks animals, He’s fucking Nature, since He’s become so computerized and all.” Stump stops and takes a swallow from a silver flask he brings out of his pocket and says, “I’m working on the dog section now where this guy ties a dog up and is having intercourse with it because He thinks dog is God. D-O-G … G-O-D. God spelled backwards. Get it? See?”

Everyone is nodding but me. I search the table for another beer. I grab a Beck’s and open it quickly, taking a long, deep swallow. I look at Marie, who, like me, has been silent for the duration of this nightmarish event.

“That’s weird that you mention that,” Lauren says. “I saw two dogs making love in front of my dorm this morning. It was really strange, but it was, admittedly, poetic in terms of erotic imagery.”

I finally have to say something. “Lauren, dogs don’t make love,” I tell her. “They fuck.”

“Well they certainly have no qualms about oral sex,” Mona laughs.

“Dogs don’t make love?” Stump asks me, incredulous. “I’d think about that if I were you.”

“Um, no … no … I do believe that dogs make love … um, yes they make love in the … in the sunlight,” Vittorio says wistfully. “In the golden, golden … sunlight, they make love.”

I excuse myself and get up, go through the kitchen, thinking it leads to the bathroom, then up the stairs and through Vittorio’s room to his bathroom. I wash my hands and look at my reflection in the mirror and tell myself that I’ll go back and tell Lauren that I don’t feel well and that we’d better go back to campus. What will she say? She’ll probably tell me that we’d only gotten here and that if I want to leave I can, and she’ll meet me back on campus. Did I actually say something about dogs fucking? Forget the coke, I decide, and open Vittorio’s medicine cabinet, more out of boredom than curiosity. Sea Breeze, Vitalis, Topol toothpolish, Ben-Gay, Pepto Bismol, tube of Preparation H, prescription of Librium. How hip. I take the bottle out of the cabinet and open it, pouring the green and black capsules into my hand and then popping one to calm myself, washing it down with a handful of water from the sink. Then I wipe my mouth and hands on a towel hanging over the shower stall and go back down to the living room, already cursing myself for leaving Lauren unattended with Vittorio for so long.

They are all talking about a book I haven’t read. I sit back down on the chair next to Lauren and hear one of the editors say, “Seminal … seminal,” and another one say, “Yes, a landmark.” I open another beer and look back at Lauren who gives me this questioning, pleading look. I tip the bottle back and look over at Mona and her see-through blouse.

“The way she represented like the total earth mother figure was amazing, not to say audacious,” Mona says, nodding her head vigorously.

“But it wasn’t just the way she represented her,” Stump says. “It was the Joycean implications that blew me away.”

“So Joyce, so Joyce,” Mona agrees.

“Should I read this book?” I ask Lauren, hoping she’ll turn and face me; turn away from Vittorio.

“You wouldn’t like it,” she says, not looking at me.

“Why not?” I ask.

“It ‘doesn’t make sense.’” She sips her drink.

“Not only Joyce, but it reminded me a bit of Acker’s work,” Trav is saying. “Has anyone read by the way, Crad Kilodney’s Lightning Struck My Dick? It’s amazing, amazing.” He shakes his head.

“What does that mean?” I ask her.

“Figure it out,” she whispers.

I sit back, stifle a yawn, drink more of the beer.

Trav turns to Vittorio. “But Vittorio, let me ask you, don’t you think that the admittedly Bohemian punk outlaw scribblings of these wasted post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post- … hell, post-everything minstrels, is the product of a literary establishment bombasting a lost generation with worthless propaganda exploiting greed, blase sexual attitudes and mind-corrupting, numbing jejunosity and that’s why works like Just Another Asshole, a searing, searing collection of quote-unquote underground writing, become potent fixtures on the minds of this clan of maladjusted, nihilistic, malcontent, self-serving … well, hell, miscarriages, or do you think it’s all…” And now Trav stops, searches for the right word. “… bogus?”

“Oh Tra-av,” Mona says.

“Um … bogus?” Vittorio mumbles. “What is this bogus … you speak of? I have … not read the book … um…” He turns to Lauren. “Bogus? … mmm, did you like the book?”

“Oh yeah,” Lauren nods. “It was really good.”

“I … I have not read this … this book,” Vittorio says shyly, looking down at his drink.

I look over at Vittorio and suddenly sympathize with the man. I want to tell him that I haven’t read the book either, and I can see that Lauren feels the same way too, because she turns to him and says, “Oh Vittorio, I wish you would stay.”

Vittorio blushes and says, “I have to, go back … to my family.”

“What about Marie?” she asks, tender, hand on his wrist.

I look over at Marie, who is talking to Trav about the book.

“Oh,” Vittorio says, looking over at her, then abruptly looking back at Lauren, “I will miss her very much … very much.”

I want to say the same thing to Lauren, but yawn instead and drink more of the Beck’s feeling drowsy, and a little high. It’s over, definitely. I’m about to tell her but Stump jumps up and puts on a Circle Jerks tape which no one can listen to, and Mona and Trav want to listen to Los Lobos, so everyone compromises and we listen to Yaz. Stump starts to dance in the now darkened room with Mona and Trav and the two editors try to dance to the music also. Stump even urges Marie to come join them but she just smiles and says that she is very tired.

Vittorio’s laughing about the music and making everyone fresh drinks. Marie lights candles. Vittorio leans over and whispers something in Lauren’s ear. Lauren keeps looking over at me. I’m now drinking whiskey from Stump’s flask and on the verge of falling asleep. I can’t hear what the two of them are talking about and I’m grateful. I keep washing the taste of the cheap whiskey from my mouth with the rest of a warm Beck’s. Later everyone makes a toast, wishing Vittorio good luck on his trip, even Marie, who looks sad as she raises her glass and mouths, “Mi amore,” to Vittorio, married, father, Vittorio. This is the last thing I remember clearly.

I pass out.

I wake up and find myself sweating on Vittorio’s bed, I get up and look at my watch and see that it’s close to midnight. I stand up carefully, then stagger down the stairs and into the living room. Everyone’s gone except for Lauren and Vittorio who have now moved to the couch talking, candles on the table in front of them still burning. How many beers had I drunk? How much whiskey? Soft Italian Muzak comes from the stereo now. Had I actually tried to dance? Had I actually finished the whiskey from Stump’s flask? I can’t remember.

“Just get up?” she asks.

“What’s going on?” I say, steadying myself as I sit down.

“Drinking,” she says, holding up a glass of — what in the hell is it? Port? “Want one?”

I can tell that she’s drunk because of the rigid way she’s sitting on the couch, trying to maintain what’s left of her composure. She sloppily lights a cigarette, and Vittorio pours himself what little red wine is left in the bottle. How long have they been sitting on the couch like that? I look at my watch.

“No,” I say. I pour myself a glass of tonic water with shaking hands and sip it. “How did I get in Vittorio’s room?”

“You were really drunk,” she says. “Feeling better?”

“No. I don’t.” I rub my forehead. “I was really drunk?”

“Yeah. We decided to let you rest awhile before we left.”

We? What does “We” mean? Who’s “We”? I look around the room and then back at her and notice that her shoes are off. “What are your shoes doing off?”

“What?” she asks. Who me? Little Miss Innocent.

“Your shoes. Why — are — they — off,” I ask, spacing each word out.

“I was dancing,” she says.

“Great.” An image of her slow dancing with Vittorio, his stubby fingers caressing her back, her ass, Lauren sighing, “Oh please,” in that soft way Lauren always sighs. “Oh please Vittorio.” This all flashes through my mind and my headache worsens. I look at her. I don’t know her. She’s nothing.

“You … you have wonderful … wonderful feet,” Vittorio murmurs drunkenly, leaning over her.

“Vittorio,” she says, warning.

“No … no, let me look.” He lifts one of her legs up.

“Vittorio,” she says, what seems to me coyly.

Vittorio leans down and kisses her foot.

I stand up. “Okay. We’re going.”

“You want to?” She looks up while Vittorio begins to fondle her ankle, his hand moving up her goddamn knee.

“Yes. Now,” I demand.

“Vittorio, we’ve got to go,” she says, trying to stand up.

“Oh no, no, no … no, no, no … don’t, don’t go,” Vittorio says, alarmed.

“We have to, Vittorio,” she says, finishing her drink.

“No! No!” Vittorio cries out, trying to reach for her hand.

“Jesus, Lauren, come on!” I tell her.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she says, shrugging helplessly.

She walks over to the chair I was sitting in and starts to put on her shoes.

“I don’t want you to … to go,” Vittorio calls, from the couch, eyes closed.

“Vittorio, we have to. It’s late,” she says soothingly.

“Put them on outside,” I tell her. “Let’s go.”

“Oh Sean,” she says. “Shut up.”

“Where’s Marie?” I ask. “Don’t tell me to shut up.”

“She drove Mona and Trav back to their place.” She reaches for her purse on the table.

Vittorio starts to get up from the couch but he can’t balance himself and he falls over against the table, crashing onto the floor, starting to moan.

“Oh my God,” Lauren says, rushing over to him.

“I don’t want to go to Italy,” he bellows. She kneels beside him and tries to push him up against the couch. “I don’t want to go,” he says again.

“Lauren, let’s get the hell out of here,” I yell.

“Don’t you have any compassion?” she yells back.

“Lauren, the man is a drunk,” I shout. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Don’t go Lauren … don’t go,” Vittorio groans, eyes shut.

“I’m here Vittorio, I’m here,” she says. “Sean, get a washcloth.”

“Absolutely not,” I shout at her.

“Lauren,” Vittorio repeats, still moaning, crouched up like a small child. “Where’s Lauren? Lauren?”

“Lauren,” I say, standing there, above them, completely offended by the scene.

“I’m here,” she says, “I’m here Vittorio. Don’t worry.” She runs her hand along his brow, then looks at me. “If you won’t get a washcloth and if you’re not going to help me, you can leave now and wait outside if you want to. I’m staying.”

It’s over. I tell her that I’m leaving, but it doesn’t matter. I walk to the front door and wait to see if she’ll come. I stand there for three minutes and only hear whispering from the living room. Then I walk outside, down the path and out the gate. It’s cold now, and I put the jacket I had taken off back on. I sit on the curb across the street from the house. The lights in Vittorio’s room go on, then after a minute, go off. I wait on the curb, not knowing what to do, staring at the house, for a long time.

I go back to campus, find Judy in The Pub, and we smoke some pot and then go back to my room, where there’s a threatening note on my door from Rupert (“UOWEME”). I crumple it up, and hand it to Judy. Judy asks me who it’s from. I tell her Frank. She gets sad and starts crying and tells me that Franklin’s over with, that she never liked him, that they should have never gotten together. After she feels better, she starts coming on to me.

“What am I going to tell Lauren?” I ask, watching her undress after we’ve made out.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“That I fucked you?” I suggest.

“No. No,” she says, though I bet she likes the idea.