The Rules of Attraction

PAUL While in town one afternoon early in November I happened to pass by the pizza place on Main Street and, through the flurries of snow and the pane of glass and the red neon pizza sign, saw Mitchell sitting by himself in a booth, a half-finished pizza (plain cheese; that was how Mitchell always ordered them; bland) on the table in front of him. I went in. He was tearing open packets of Sweet’n’Low, pouring them out and dividing the powder into long lines that resembled cocaine. I assumed he was alone.

“Are you lost or something?” he asked and lit a cigarette.

“Can I have one?” I asked.

He gave me one but didn’t light it.

“How was the party last night?” he asked.

I stood there. How was the party? House crammed with drunk sweaty horny bodies dancing to old songs aimlessly wandering around blindly fucking each other? Who cares? I was entrusted by Hanna to watch her seventeen-year-old brother, who was visiting from Bensonhurst to see if he wanted to go to Camden. I was attracted to the guy but he was so straight (he would inquire about certain ugly girls, all of whom I told him had herpes) that I pushed whatever kinky thoughts I had out of my mind. He talked about the basketball team he was on and chewed tobacco and had no idea that his sister was Queen Lesbian of McCullough. We went back to my room to have a final beer. I went into the bathroom and washed my face, and when I came back he had taken off his sweatshirt, had poured what was left of my Absolut out and was using the empty bottle as a spittoon, asking if I had any Twisted Sister records. Needless to say, he had a great body and he drunkenly initiated a rather hectic bout of fucking. In between moaning “Fuck me, fuck me,” he’d alternately whisper, “Don’t tell my sister, don’t tell my sister.” I obliged on both accounts. How was the party? “Okay.”

Mitchell had taken his American Express card out and slapped it on the table next to the two lines of Sweet’n’Low and he looked at me with such vehemence that I felt like a blip, a fart, in the course of his life. He tells me that this lawyer who he’d been seeing last summer in New York (before me, before us), a real jerk who liked to light everyone’s cigarettes and who winked all the time, just got back from Nicaragua and told him it was “dynamite” so Mitchell might be heading down there for Christmas. He said this to irritate me, but I didn’t wince. He knew that was a real conversation stopper.

I didn’t wince even when Katrina, that blond Freshman girl who told everyone I couldn’t get it up, sat down in the booth, slipping in next to him.

“You know each other?” Mitchell asked.

“No,” she said smiling, introducing herself.