The Rules of Attraction

PAUL We were already smashed when we got to Thirsty Thursday and the night was still young and the light-haired Swedish girl from Connecticut, very tall and boyish, came on to me, and I let her. Drunk, but still knowing perfectly well what I was getting myself into, I let her. I had been trying to talk to Mitchell but he was much more interested in this supremely ugly slutty Sophomore named Candice. Candy, for short. I was semi-appalled but what could I do? I started talking to Katrina and she looked very charming in her black Salvation Army raincoat, and the sailor’s cap with the one tuft of blond hair peeking out, her eyes wide and blue even in the darkness of the living room at Windham House.

Anyway, we were drunk and Mitch was still talking to Candie and there was this girl at the party I really did not want to see and I was sufficiently drunk now to leave with Katrina. I suppose I could have stayed, waited it out with Mitch, or come on to that boy from L.A., who, despite being too sunburned, was well-muscled (red-muscled?) and seemed withdrawn enough to try anything. But he was still wearing his sunglasses and playing Quarters and anyway, rumor had it he was sleeping with Brigid McCauley (a “total tuna” according to Vanden Smith), so when Katrina asked me, “What’s going on?” I lit a cigarette and said, “Let’s go.” We were even more drunk by now since we had downed a bottle of good red wine we had found in the kitchen, and when we came out into the crisp October air, it hit us both with a bit of a shock, but it didn’t sober us up and we both kept laughing. And then she kissed me and said, “Let’s go back to my room and take a shower.”

We were still walking across Commons lawn when she said this, her mittened hands in her black overcoat, laughing, twirling around, kicking up leaves, the music still coming from Windham House. I wanted to delay this moment, so I suggested that we look around for something to eat. We stopped walking and stood there, and though she sounded more than a little disappointed, she agreed, and we went from house to house, sneakily raiding the refrigerators, even though all we came up with was some frozen Pepperidge Farm Milanos, a half-empty bag of Bar-B-Que potato chips and a Heineken Dark.

Anyway, we ended up in her room, really drunk, making out. She stopped for a minute and made her way to the bathroom down the hall. I turned on a light and looked around the room, inspecting her roommate’s empty bed and the poster of a unicorn on the wall; copies of Town and Country and The Weekly World News (“I Had Bigfoot’s Baby,” “Scientists Say U.F.O.’s cause AIDS”) were scattered around a giant stuffed teddybear that sat in the corner and I was thinking to myself that this girl was too young. She came back in and lit a joint and turned off the light. On the verge of passing out she asked me, “We’re not going to have sex, are we?”

Paul Young was on her stereo and I was leaning over her, smiling and said, “No, I guess not.” I was thinking about the girl I left in September.

“Why not?” she asked, and she really didn’t look all that beautiful anymore, lying there in the semi-darkness of her room, the only real light the glow from the tip of the joint she held.

“I don’t know,” I said, and then mock seriously, “I’m involved,” even though I wasn’t, “And you are drunk,” though that really didn’t have anything to do with it either.

“I really like you,” she said before she passed out.

“I really like you,” I said, though I barely knew her.

I finished the joint and the Heineken. Then I put a blanket over her and stood there, hands in my overcoat pockets. I considered taking the blanket off. I took the blanket off. Then lifted her arm and looked at her breasts, touched them. Maybe I’ll ravish her, I pondered. But it was getting close to four and I had a class in six hours, though the prospect of going seemed fairly remote. On the way out I stole her copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude and turned her stereo off and left, pleased and maybe a little embarrassed. I was a Senior. She was a nice girl. She ended up telling everyone I couldn’t get it up, anyway.