The Rules of Attraction

“Eating.” I point at the plate. All the guys are looking at her. This is a highly uncomfortable situation.

“You going to the party tonight?” she asks.

“Yeah. I’m going to the party tonight. You going to the party tonight?” Meaningless.

“Yeah.” She seems nervous. The guys are intimidating her. She was actually okay last night, just too drunk. She’s probably good in bed. I look over at Tim, who’s checking her out. “Yeah, I am.”

“Well I guess I’ll see you there.” I look at Norris and roll my eyes up.

“Okay,” she says, lingering, looking around the room.

“Okay, see you there, bye,” I mutter. “God.”

“Okay, well,” she coughs. “See you.”

“Go away,” I say under my breath.

She goes to another table. The guys aren’t saying anything. I’m embarrassed because she’s not that great looking and they all know I screwed her last night and I get up to feed more coffee to my impending ulcer. Rock’n’roll.

“I need a double bed,” Tim says. “Anyone got a double bed?”

“Don’t smoke pot,” someone else says.

“Yabba Dabba Do,” Getch says.

The feeling is neither icy nor hot. Yet there is still no in-between. Just this bland pulse that fixates in my body at any given time of the day. I have decided to put notes in his box every day. I imagine him pinning these notes somewhere, perhaps pinned to a white wall in his room, a room I wish to live in. Are these devices sufficient? I ask myself, sickened, left punctured and cowering after I deliver these notes into his box, his pocketbed. My will is an ambulance on emergency call. But I often try to forget him (I have not met him, will not meet him until later, have not dared open my mouth to confront him, sometimes I want to scream, sometimes I think I am dying) and I try to forget this beating from my heart, but cannot and get sick. The space I follow is black and arid. My obsession (I do not know if it can even be considered that, that word does not seem quite right) though futile or ridiculous to you takes the mystery from nothing. It is simple. I watch him. He reveals himself in dark contours. Everything I believe in floats away when I witness him, say, eating, or crossing the boundaries of a crowded room. I feel a scourge. I have his name written on a sheet of pale blue paper that is tissue thin, fallen poplars I’ve drawn surround the letters. Everything reminds me of his being: there is a dog that lives across the hall from me. Its owner registered it as a cat (canines are forbidden at this place) and took a fuzzy photo of it and it is small and white-violet and has gremlin ears. I fed it Bon Bons once. I take that person’s actions as a hint and because of that I speak to no one. He is beautiful, though you might not think so. There is something circular about him, like moths fluttering in the clear Arizona night. And I know we will meet. It will come easy and soon. And my resentment—my terrified, futile resentment—will float away. I write another note after dinner. He must know it is me. I know his brand of cigarette. I saw him buy a Richard and Linda Thompson tape in town once. I was standing, looking through a bin I didn’t care about, and he didn’t notice me. I listened to them in high school. When Linda and Richard were still together. They broke up, like John and Exene, like Tina and Ike, Sid and Nancy, Christie and Ray. That will not happen to me. His name is a word on top of a page and it signifies a poem started, stated, started but unfinished since the typewriter will not type anymore. I kiss my hand and smell it and smell him, oh I pretend it is his scent. His. His. I don’t dare go to his house or pass his room. I will walk by him and not even look. I will pass him in the dining hall with a nonchalance that shocks even me.

PAUL I tried to talk to Mitchell at the party at End of the World tonight. He was standing by the keg filling a plastic cup. I already had a beer and was standing alone, where The Graveyard started. I poured the beer out and walked over to the keg. “Hi, Mitch,” I said. It was cold and my breath steamed. “What’s going on?”

“Hi, Paul. Nothing much.” He was filling two cups. Couldn’t the helpless bitch get her own f**king beer? “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing. Can we talk?” I took the tap from him.

He stood there holding the two beers.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked with that famous blank stare.

“Just about what’s going on,” I said, concentrating on the beer and foam coming out of the tap. A girl came by and waited. I gave her a look but she wasn’t looking at me, only at my hands, impatiently.