The Rules of Attraction (3 page)

PAUL
The last time I saw Mitchell before school started was in September. As usual, we were laying on my bed and it was early, perhaps twelve. I reached over him and lit a cigarette. The people next door were fighting. There was too much traffic on Jane Street, it was either that or something else that was making Mitchell so tense, clutching his wine glass. So much attention paid, so much detail studied, worked over so hard that he loses it all. What was I doing there, I kept wondering. My father worked with his father in Chicago and though their relationship depended more on what was happening over on Wall Street and what table the other could command at Le Français or The Ritz-Carlton, it still gave us the opportunity to meet each other. In New York we would meet at the apartment I lived in last summer. We could never meet at his place because of “roommate trouble,” he would gravely tell me. We would meet usually at night, usually after a movie or some bad off-off-off-Broadway play one of Mitchell’s endless supply of N.Y.U. Drama friends landed a part in, usually drunk or high, which seemed Mitchell’s constant state those last months, when I was breaking it off with someone else. Mitchell knew and didn’t care. Usually wild bouts of sex, clothed, early drink at Boy Bar, don’t ask.

Up on 92nd we sat at a cafe and cursed a waitress. Then taking a cab downtown we got into an argument with our driver and he made us get out. Twenty-ninth Street, hassled by prostitutes, Mitchell kind of enjoying it, or maybe pretending to. He looked kind of desperate those months. I always thought it would pass, but I was getting to the point where I knew it never would. Just a big night on the West Side and he’ll be out of it. Then something ridiculous like eggs benedict at three in the morning at P.J. Clarke’s. … Three in the morning. P.J. Clarke’s. He complains the eggs are too runny. I pick at a cheeseburger I ordered but don’t want, not really. I’m amazed that there are three or four out-of-town businessmen still at the bar. Mitchell sort of finishes his eggs, then looks at me. I look at him, then light his cigarette. I touch his knee, thigh, with my hand.
“Just don’t,” he says. I look away, embarrassed. Then he says softly, “Just not here.”

“Let’s go back home,” I say.

“Whose?” he says.

“I don’t care. Let’s go to my place. Your place? I don’t know. I don’t feel like spending money on a cab.”

It’s now getting depressing and late. Neither of us moves. I light another cigarette, then put it out. Mitchell keeps touching his chin lightly, like there’s something wrong with it. He runs his finger through the dimple.

“Do you want to get stoned?” he asks.

“Mitch,” I sigh.

“Hmmm?” he asks, leaning forward.

“It’s four in the morning,” I say.

“Uh-huh,” he says, confused, still leaning.

“We’re at P.J.’s,” I remind him.

“That’s right,” he says.

“You want to get … stoned?” I ask.

“Well,” he stammers, “I guess.”

“Why don’t we…” I stop, look over at the businessmen, and look away, but not at Mitchell.

“Why don’t we…”

He keeps staring, waiting. This is stupid.

I don’t say anything.

“Why don’t we … why don’t we what?” he asks, grinning, leaning closer, lips curling, whites of teeth, that ugly dimple.

“There’s a rumor going around that you’re retarded,” I tell him.

In a cab heading toward my apartment, late, almost five, and I can’t even remember what we did tonight. I pay the driver and give him too big a tip. Mitchell holds the elevator door open, impatient. We get to my apartment and he takes off his clothes and gets stoned in the bathroom and then we watch TV, some HBO, for a little while … and then we went to sleep as soon as the sun started rising, and I remembered a party we were at back in school when Mitchell drunk and angry tried to set fire to Booth House
in the early morning…. We look straight at each other right now, both breathing evenly. It’s morning now and we’re not sleeping and everything is pure and bright and clear and I fall asleep…. When I woke up, later that afternoon, Mitchell was gone, left for New Hampshire. But the ashtray by the bed was full. It was empty before. Had he watched me sleep during that time? Had he?

SEAN
“It was the Kennedys, man…” Marc’s telling me while he’s shooting up in his room in Noyes. “The Kennedys, man, screwed it … up…. Actually it was J … F … K … John F. Kennedy did it…. He screwed it up … all up, you see….” He licks his lips now, continues, “There was this … our mothers were pregnant with us when we … I mean, he … was blown away in ’64 and that whole incident … screwedthings-up….” He stops, then goes on. “… in a really heavy duty way…” Special emphasis on “heavy” and “duty.” “And … in turn … you see, it jolted us in a really heavy duty way when we … were … in…” He stops again, looks at his arm and then at me. “Whatchmacallit…” Looks back at his arm and then at me, then at the arm again, concentrating as he pulls the needle out, then at me, still confused. “Their … um, primordial wombs, and, so, that is why we are … me, you, the narc across
the hall, the sister in Booth, all the way we are…. Do you … understand? … Is this clear?” He squints up at me. “Jesus … think if you had a brother who was born in ’69 or something … They’d be … fucking bonkers….”

He’s saying this all real slowly (a lot of it I can’t even listen to) as he puts the eyedropper next to his new computer that’s humming, his friend Resin, who’s visiting from Ann Arbor, leaning up against the table, sitting on the floor, humming with it. Marc sits back, smiling. I thought Kennedy bit it a couple of years earlier but wasn’t sure and I don’t correct him. I’m kind of wired but still could use some sleep, since it’s late, sometime around four, but I like the familiarity of Marc’s room, the details I’m used to, the ripped Bob Dylan poster for
Don’t Look Back,
the stills from
Easy Rider,
“Born To Be Wild” always coming from the stereo (or Hendrix or Eric Burdon and The Animals or Iron Butterfly or Zep), the empty pizza boxes on the floor, the copy of an old Pablo Neruda book on top of the pizza boxes, the constant smell of incense, the yoga manuals, the band upstairs that’s always rehearsing old Spencer Davis songs all night (they suck). But Marc’s leaving soon, any day now, can’t stand the scene, Ann Arbor is where it’s at, Resin told him.

After I fucked Didi I came back to my room, where Susan was, alone, crying. I guess the Frog was in New York. I couldn’t deal with her so I told her to get out, then I drove to the Burger King in town and ate it on the way to Roxanne’s and had to deal with her new boyfriend, this big mean townie pusher named Rupert. That whole scene was a total joke. She was so stoned she actually lent me forty bucks and told me that The Carousel (where Rupert also bartends) is closing down due to shitty business, and that depressed me. I picked up the stuff from Rupert, who was cleaning his gun case, so coked up he actually smiled and let me do a line, and brought it back to campus. The drive was a cold, long drag, my bike almost kicking out near the college gates, and barely making it through the two-mile
stretch of College Drive. I was too stoned and the Burger King food was making me sick and those two miles past the gate on that road at 3AM in the morning was creepy. I smoked some more pot in Marc’s room and now he’s finishing up. It’s no big deal. I’ve seen it all before.

Marc lights a menthol cigarette, and says, “I’m telling you, Sam, it was the Kennedys!” His arm’s bent up, resting on his shoulder, folded. He licks his lips. “This stuff…”

“I hear you brother,” I sigh, rubbing my eyes.

“This stuff is…”

“Is?”

“Is good.”

Marc was doing his thesis on The Grateful Dead. At first he had been trying to space the shots out so he wouldn’t get hooked, but it was sort of too late for that. I’d been scoring for him since September, and he had been slacking off on his payments. He had kept telling me that after “the Garcia interview” he would have some cash. But Garcia hadn’t been to New Hampshire in a long time and I was losing my patience.

“Marc, you owe me five hundred bucks,” I tell him. “I want it before you leave.”

“God, we use to have … wild times at this place….” (This is the part where I always start getting up.) “It’s so … different now…” (Blah Blah) “Those times are gone … those places are gone…” he says.

I stare at a piece of broken mirror next to the computer and the eyedropper and now Marc’s talking about chucking it all and heading for Europe. I look down at him, his breath reeks, he hasn’t showered in days, his hair is greasy and pulled back in a ponytail, stained dirty tie-dyed shirt. “… When I was in Europe, man…” He picks his nose.

“I gotta go to class tomorrow,” I tell him. “What about the cash?”

“Europe … What? Class? Who teaches that?” he asks.

“David Lee Roth. Listen, can I get the cash or what?”

“I dig it, I can dig it, sshhh, you’ll wake up Resin,” he whispers.

“I don’t care. Resin has a Porsche. Resin can pay me,” I tell him.

“Resin’s broke,” he says. “I’m good for it, I’m good for it.”

“Marc, you owe me five hundred bucks. Five hundred,” I tell the pathetic junkie.

“Resin thinks Indira Gandhi lives in Welling House,” Marc smiles. “Says he followed her from the dining hall to Welling.” He pauses. “Can you dig … that?”

He gets up, barely makes it to the bed and falls on it, rolling his sleeves down. He looks around the room, smoking the filter now. “Um,” he says, head rolling back.

“You’ve got money, come on,” I say. “Can’t you lend me a couple bucks?”

He looks around the room, flips open an empty pizza box, then squints at me. “No.”

“I’m a Financial Aid student man, I need some money,” I plead. “Just five bucks.”

He closes his eyes and laughs. “I’m good for it,” is all he says.

Resin wakes up and starts talking to the ashtray. Marc warns me that I’m fucking up his karma. I leave. Junkies are pathetic enough but rich junkies are even worse. Even worse than girls.

PAUL
My damn radio went off accidentally at seven o’clock this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I stumbled out of bed, immediately lit a cigarette and closed the windows since it was freezing in the room. Even though I could barely open my eyes (if I did I was positive my skull would split open) I could see that I was still wearing my tie, my underwear, and my socks. I couldn’t figure out why I was only wearing these three articles of clothing so I stood for a long time staring into the mirror trying to remember last night, but couldn’t. I stumbled into the bathroom and took a shower, grateful that there was some warm water left. I dressed hurriedly and braced myself for breakfast.

Actually it was quite nice out. It was that time of October just when the trees were about to lose their fall foliage and the morning was cold and crisp and the air smelled clean and the sun, obscured by graying clouds, wasn’t too high yet. I was still feeling awful though, and the five Anacin I popped weren’t anywhere near doing their job. Bleary-eyed, I almost put a twenty in the change machine. I passed the post office but there was nothing in my box since it was too early for mail. I got cigarettes and went up to the dining hall.

There was no one in line. That cute blond-haired Freshman boy was behind the counter not saying a word, only wearing the biggest pair of black sunglasses I’ve ever seen, serving the wettest looking scrambled eggs and these little brown toothpicks which I suspected were sausages. The thought of eating nauseated me to no end and I looked at the boy who just stood there, holding a spatula. My initial horniness gave way to irritation and I muttered, “You’re so pretentious,” cigarette still in mouth, and got a cup of coffee.

The main dining room was the only one open so I went in and sat down with Raymond, Donald, and Harry, this little Freshman who Donald and Raymond befriended, a cute boy who was concerned with typical Freshman questions, like Is there life after Wham!? They had been up all
night doing crystal meth, and they had invited me, but I had followed … Mitchell, who was sitting at another table across the dining hall, to that stupid party instead. I tried not to look over at him and that awful fucked-out slut he was sitting with, but I couldn’t help it and I cursed myself for not jerking off when I woke up this morning. The three fags were huddled around a sheet of paper composing a student blacklist and even though their mouths were moving a mile a minute, they noticed me, nodded, and I sat down.

“Students who go to London and come back with accents,” Raymond said, writing furiously.

“Can I bum a cig?” Donald asked me absently.

“Can you?” I asked back. The coffee tasted atrocious. Mitchell, that bastard.

“Oh, do be real, Paul,” he muttered as I handed him one.

“Why don’t you just
buy
some?” I asked as politely as someone who’s hungover and at breakfast possibly could.

“Anybody who rides a motorcycle, and all Deadheads,” Harry said.

“And anyone who comes to breakfast who hasn’t stayed up all night,” Donald shot a glance over at me.

I made a face at him and crossed my legs.

“Those two dykes who live in McCullough,” Raymond said, writing.

“How about
all
of McCullough?” suggested Donald.

“Even better.” Raymond scribbled something down.

“What about that slut with Mitchell?” I offered.

“Now, now, Paul. Calm down,” Raymond said, sarcastically.

Donald laughed and wrote her name down anyway.

“What about that mean fat trendy girl?” Harry asked.

“She lives in McCullough. She’s taken care of.”

I couldn’t stand this twisted faggy banter so early in the morning and I was going to get up and get more coffee but I was too tired to even do that and I sat back and didn’t look at Mitchell and soon all the voices became indistinguishable from one another, including mine.

“Anyone with beards or facial hair of any kind.”

“Oh that’s good.”

“How about that boy from L.A.?”

“But not really.”

“You’re right, but put him down anyway.”

“Anyone who goes for seconds at the salad bar.”