The Rules of Attraction (Page 35)

“It’s so disturbing, lyrical,” this girl with a serious problem says.

“Very potent. Undefinable,” her friend, some dyke from Duke who’s visiting, who looks like she’s had way too much MDA, agrees.

“It’s Nimoy. Pure Nimoy,” Getch says.

My attention drifts. Somebody else walks in, somebody who if I remember correctly gave me a totally unprovoked kiss on the lips at the last Friday night party. Peter Gabriel still plays on the jukebox.

“But it’s Diane Arbus with none of the conviction,” one of the girls says and she’s serious.

Denton gives me a steely look from across the table. He probably agreed with that.

“But the revisionist theory on her seems completely unmotivated,” someone else gleefully replies. There’s a pause, then someone asks, “What about Wee Gee. What do you think about Wee Gee, for Christ sakes?”

Vaguely horny I order another pitcher and a pack of Bar-B-Que potato chips, which give me indigestion. Peter Gabriel turns into more Peter Gabriel. The girl who kissed me on the lips last Friday leaves after buying a pack of cigarettes and in some warped way I’m disappointed. She’s not that pretty (slightly Asian, Dance major?) but I’d probably f**k her anyway. Back to the conversation.

“Spielberg has gone too far on this one,” the angry mulatto intellectual with the neo-Beatnik casual but hip look plus beret who has joined the table hisses.

Where has he gone? Does he just hang out in the Canfield apartment and drink like a maniac and split on parents weekend and have a whole bunch of friends visiting him every term from boarding school? What the f**k does he do with his life? Little Freshman girls confiding in him and long walks around the dorms after dinner?

“Simply too far,” Denton agrees. He’s serious, not joking.

“Simply too far,” I say, nodding.

The table behind ours, Juniors arguing about Vietnam, some guy scratching his head, joking but not really, says, “Shit, when was that?” someone else saying, “Who gives a shit?” and this fat, earnest-looking girl who’s on the verge of tears, bellows, “I do!” Social-Science-Major-Breakdown. I turn back to our table, with the Art Fucks because they seem less boring.

The dyke from Duke asks, “But don’t you think his whole secular humanism stems from the warped pop culture of the Sixties and not from a rigorous, modernist vantage point?” I turn back to the other table but they’ve dispersed. She asks the question again, rephrasing it for the intense mulatto. Who in the hell is she asking? Who? Me? Denton just keeps nodding his head like she’s saying something incredibly deep.

Who is this girl? Why is she alive? Wonder if I should leave right now. Get up and say, “Goodnight f**k-ups, it’s been a sheer sensation and I hope I never see any of you again,” and leave? But if I do that they’ll end up talking about me and that seems worse and I’m seriously drunk. Hard to keep my eyes open. The only pretty girl at our table gets up, smiles and leaves. Someone says, whispers loudly, “She f**ked … are you ready?” The table leans inward, even me. “Lauren!”

The table gasps collectively. Who’s Laurent? That French guy who lives in Sawtell? Or is it the alcoholic girl from Wisconsin who works in the library? It can’t be my Lauren? It can’t be that one. There’s no way she’s a lesbian. Even if she is, it turns me on a little. But … maybe she’s been putting the notes in the wrong box. Maybe she meant to put them in Jane Gorfinkle’s box, the box above mine? I don’t want to ask which Lauren they mean even though I want to know. I look over at the bar, try to get my mind off it, but there are at least four girls I have slept with standing there. None of them are looking over at me. Businesslike and impersonal they sip beers, smoke cigarettes

oh, what the f**k. I finally snap, get out of there, leave. As simple as that. I’m out the door. Fels is close by. I have some friends who live there, don’t I? But thinking about it bores the f**k out of me so I just walk around the dorm for a while and then split. Sawtell is next? Nah. But that girl, that girl who kissed me … I think she lives in Noyes, a single, room 9. I go to her door and knock.

I think I hear some laughter, then a high-pitched voice. Whose? I feel like a fool but I’m a drunk, so it’s cool. The door opens and it’s the girl who left the table, not the girl who kissed me, and she’s wearing a robe and behind her I can see some hairy, pale guy in bed, lighting up a big purple bong on a futon. Jesus, this really sucks, I’m thinking.

“Um, doesn’t Susan live here?” I ask, turning red, trying to keep it cool.