The Rules of Attraction

PAUL I pretend to look at old notes from last week’s Student Council meeting, which are crumpled and muddied on the floor in the backseat of Lizzie’s car. Gerald’s sitting next to me, trying to give me a hand-job, both of us crammed in the back. Somehow Sean got dragged into the huge Buick, and he’s up front with about five other people, eleven of us piled into the car altogether. Everyone is drunk, no one knows where we’re going, vague idea about a road trip. Gerald keeps rubbing my thighs. It’s freezing. We are lost.

The last time I saw Sean he had stopped by my room sometime in mid-November. I was sitting at my desk doing nothing and I heard a knock on the door. “Come in,” I said. There was a silence followed by another knock, this one louder. “Come in,” I stood up. The door opened. He walked in. I sat back down. I sat there looking at him and then I got up very slowly.

“Hi, Sean,” I said.

“Hi, Dent,” he said.

Dent? Had he ever called me that? I wondered about his as we drove into town, had dinner, came back to campus. He parked in front of Booth. We went upstairs to his room. His room looked bigger and emptier than I remembered it. The narrow bed on the floor, the desk, a chair, a chest of drawers, a broken stereo, no posters, no photos, a lot of records leaning against a wall in the corner. And I woke up the next morning laying on the small mattress. He was already up, sitting in his armchair, staring out the window at the morning’s snowfall. He needed a shave, his hair was sticking up. I dressed quietly. It was hot in the room. He wasn’t saying anything. He just sat in the chair and smoked Parliaments. I went up behind the chair to tell him I was leaving. I stood so close that I could have touched the side of his face, his neck, but I didn’t do this. I just left. Then I stood in the hallway and heard him lock the door….

Gerald realizes I’m not interested but keeps trying. I look out the window of the car, at the snow, wondering how I got forced into this. I don’t know half the people in the car: heroin addicts, a Freshman, a couple who lives off-campus, someone who works behind the snack bar, Lizzie, Gerald, Sean and me, and this Korean guy.

I have my eye on the Korean boy, some Asian Art major punk I think I made out with last term who only paints self-portraits of his penis. He’s sitting on my other side, tripping and he keeps repeating the word “wow.” Lizzie keeps driving and circling Main Street, then she’s on the highway leaving Camden, looking for a place that’s open where we can get beer. A joint is passed around, then another. We get lost again. The Smiths are singing and someone says “Turn that gay angst music off.” The Replacements replace them singing “Unsatisfied.” No one has I.D. is the consensus so we can’t get beer since Camden kids are almost always asked. We almost get stopped by the police. Lizzie almost drives us into a lake. The Korean boy keeps screaming, “Let’s call this art,” and I keep whispering to him in his calmer moments, “Come to my room.” But by the time we get back to campus and I wait in my room for him, Gerald comes by instead and takes his clothes off which means, I guess, for me to take mine off too.

While in bed, later, we hear someone knocking on the door.

Gerald goes, “Sssshhhh.”

I get up and pull my jeans on and a sweater. I open the door. It’s Sean, not the Korean. He’s holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a box with The Smiths playing. “Can I come in?” he whispers.

“Wait.” It’s dark behind me. He can’t see anything. “I’ll come out,” I say.

I close the door and put my boots on, grabbing my coat, any coat, from the darkness of the closet. Gerald asks, “Who in the hell is it?”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I tell him.

He says, “You better.”

Sean and I end up walking through the woods near campus. It’s snowing lightly and not too cold, the moon is high and full and makes the ground glow white. The Smiths are singing “Reel Around the Fountain.” He hands me the bottle. I tell him, “I find myself talking to you when you’re not around. Just talking. Carrying on conversations.” I really don’t, but it just seems like the thing to say and he’s really so much better-looking than Gerald.

“I wish you wouldn’t tell me shit like that,” he says. “It’s creepy. It weirds me out.”

Later, we make love in the snow. Afterwards I tell him I have tickets for the REM concert in Hanover next week. He covers his face with his hands.

“Listen,” he says, getting up. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I say. “Things like this happen.”

“I don’t want to go with you.”

“I don’t want things to turn out this way,” I warn him.

“I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“Yeah? Well, is there…” I stop. “Can you do anything about it?”

He pauses, then, “No, I guess I can’t. Not anymore.”

I tell him, “But I want to know you. I want to know who you are.”

He flinches and turns to me and says, raising his voice at first and then letting it drop softer, “No one will ever know anyone. We just have to deal with each other. You’re not ever gonna know me.”

“What in the hell does that mean?” I ask.

“It just means you’re not ever gonna know me,” he says. “Figure it out. Deal with it.”

It’s quiet, it stops snowing. From where we lay we can see the campus, lit, postcard-perfect, through the trees. The tape clicks off, and then automatically turns itself over. He finishes the Jack Daniel’s and walks away. I walk back to my room, alone. Gerald has left, leaving me a long note, describing how much of an asshole I am. But it doesn’t matter because there was something fun about tonight, in the snow, drunk, not with the Korean guy.