The Rules of Attraction (Page 36)

The girl looks back at the guy in bed. “Does Susan live around here, Loren?”

The guy sucks in on the bong. “No,” he says, offering it to me. “Leigh 9.”

I leave, fast. I walk out, fast. I’m outside, it’s cold. What am I going to do? I think. What is this night unless I do something? Is this just going to be nothing? Like every other f**king night? Something goes through my head. I decide to go to Leigh 9, where Susan lives. I knock on the door. I can’t hear much but Springsteen’s “Nebraska” album. Great music to f**k by, I’m thinking. It takes a while but Susan opens the door, finally an answer.

“What’s going on, Susan? Hi. Sorry to be bothering you at this hour.”

She looks at me strangely, then smiles and says, “No problem, come in.”

I walk in, hands in my jacket pockets. There are two Xeroxed maps of Vermont … actually it’s New Hampshire, or maybe Maryland, up on the wall, above the computer and the bottle of Stoli. I’m too drunk to do this I realize as I stagger in, take a deep breath. Susan closes the door and says, “Glad you stopped by” and locks the door and her locking the door just depresses me; it makes me realize that she wants to f**k too and that that’s what’s expected of me and it’s my own fault and it’s really Lauren Hynde I want and I think I’m going to pass out and she looks really desperate, really young.

“Where have you been?” she asks.

“Movie. Wild Italian movie. But it’s all in Italian so you can’t watch it stoned,” I say, trying to be rude, turn her off. “Subtitles, you know.”

“Yeah,” she smiles kindly, still in love with me.

“What I mean, like, um, why are those maps, um … Yeah, like what are those maps doing up there?” I ask. What a dwid.

“Maryland’s cool,” Susan says.

“I want to go to bed with you, Susan,” I say.

“What?” She pretends she didn’t hear me.

“You didn’t hear me?”

“Yeah. I did,” she says. “You didn’t feel that way the other night.”

“So, how do you feel about it?” I ask, letting that comment fly right over my head.

“I think it’s kind of ridiculous,” she says.

“How? I mean, why do you think so?”

“Because I have a boyfriend,” she says. “Remember?”

Actually, I don’t, but I blurt out, “That doesn’t matter. You don’t have to not screw because of that.”

“Really?” she asks skeptically, but smiling. “Explain.”

“Well, you see, it’s like this.” I sit on the bed. “It’s like this…”

“You’re drunk,” Susan says. God, the name Susan is so ugly. It reminds me of the word sinus. She’s daring me. I can almost smell how wet she is. She wants it.

“Where have you been all my life?” I ask.

“Did you know I was born in a Holiday Inn,” I think she says.

I stare at her, really confused, really f**ked-up. She’s next to me on the bed now. I keep staring.

I finally say, “Just get naked and lay or stand, I don’t care, on the bed and, like, it doesn’t matter if you were born in a Holiday Inn. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Perfectly,” she says. “Are you still an Art major by any chance?”

“What?” I ask. My eyes are tearing. She’s dimming the lights and it’s all really happening, boyfriend or no boyfriend. I’m drunk but I’m not drunk enough to say no. In the bathroom in Commons today someone had written “Robert McGlinn has no penis and no testicles” about fifteen times above the toilet.

She turns to me, her flesh glowing green because of the lighted words from the computer screen, and says nothing. I lay back and she starts sucking my dick and trying to stick a finger up my ass. It feels good and she’s really into it and I’m thinking what do you talk about in situations like this? Are you Catholic? Did you ever like the Beatles? Or was it Aerosmith you asked girls? High school girls you met who wore black armbands the day Steven Tyler got married. High school sucked. She’s sucking still, her lips moist but hard. I reach under her shirt, massage her tits. She has a little stubble under her arm and it doesn’t really turn me off. It doesn’t turn me on all that much either, but it doesn’t turn me off.

“Wait … wait…” I try to pull my underwear off all the way, then the jeans, but I’m on the bed and she’s sucking me and trying to push my legs farther apart and even though I’m sort of grossed-out by the whole thing, it feels too good to complain. She lifts her head up. “Diseases?” she asks. “Nope,” I say though I should just say yeah crabs and end this. She lays across me and we start kissing, deep, intensely. I lift her shirt up over her head, line of green saliva attached to our lips as she brings her head up. I touch the side of her face, then unbutton my shirt, kick my pants off. “Wait, turn the light off,” I tell her.