The Rules of Attraction

“Aren’t you a Senior?” she asks me.



“No,” I tell her. “Freshman.”



“Really?” All of a sudden she starts coughing, then sips her Scotch, actually downs it, and says, her voice raspedout, “I thought you were older.”



“A Freshman,” I tell her, drain my cup. “Peter. Peter the Freshman.”



Mitchell whispers something in her ear. She laughs, and turns away. He keeps whispering. She doesn’t move. That’s it. She wants to leave with him.



“Like, I could’ve sworn your name was Brian,” Deedum says.



I consider the options. I can leave right now, go back to my room, play the guitar, go to sleep. Or, I could play Quarters with Tony and Brigid and that dumb guy from L.A. Or, I can take this girl off-campus to The Carousel for a drink, leave her there. Or, I can take her back to my room, hope the Frog is gone, get stoned and f**k her. But I don’t really want to do that. I’m not into her all that much, but the hot-looking Freshman has already left with Mitchell and I don’t have any classes tomorrow and it’s late and it looks like the keg’s running out. And she looks at me and asks, “What’s going on?” and I’m thinking Why Not?



So I end up going home with her—she’s dumpy but horny, from L.A., her father’s in the music industry but she doesn’t know who Lou Reed is. We go to her room. Her roommate’s home but asleep.



“Ignore her,” she says, turning on the light. “She’s insane. It’s okay.”



I’m taking off my clothes when the roommate wakes up and starts freaking out at the sight of me naked. I get under D’s blankets, but the roommate starts crying and gets out of bed and D keeps screaming at her, “You’re insane, go to sleep, you’re insane,” and roommate leaves, slamming the door, sobbing. We start making out but she forgets her diaphragm so she tries to put it in, squeezing the foam all over her hand but not getting any into it and she’s too drunk to know where to put it. I try to f**k her anyway but she keeps moaning “Peter, Peter” so I stop. I’m thinking about throwing up but do some bonghits instead, then flee. Deal with it. Rock’n’roll.



PAUL We were already smashed when we got to Thirsty Thursday and the night was still young and the light-haired Swedish girl from Connecticut, very tall and boyish, came on to me, and I let her. Drunk, but still knowing perfectly well what I was getting myself into, I let her. I had been trying to talk to Mitchell but he was much more interested in this supremely ugly slutty Sophomore named Candice. Candy, for short. I was semi-appalled but what could I do? I started talking to Katrina and she looked very charming in her black Salvation Army raincoat, and the sailor’s cap with the one tuft of blond hair peeking out, her eyes wide and blue even in the darkness of the living room at Windham House.



Anyway, we were drunk and Mitch was still talking to Candie and there was this girl at the party I really did not want to see and I was sufficiently drunk now to leave with Katrina. I suppose I could have stayed, waited it out with Mitch, or come on to that boy from L.A., who, despite being too sunburned, was well-muscled (red-muscled?) and seemed withdrawn enough to try anything. But he was still wearing his sunglasses and playing Quarters and anyway, rumor had it he was sleeping with Brigid McCauley (a “total tuna” according to Vanden Smith), so when Katrina asked me, “What’s going on?” I lit a cigarette and said, “Let’s go.” We were even more drunk by now since we had downed a bottle of good red wine we had found in the kitchen, and when we came out into the crisp October air, it hit us both with a bit of a shock, but it didn’t sober us up and we both kept laughing. And then she kissed me and said, “Let’s go back to my room and take a shower.”



We were still walking across Commons lawn when she said this, her mittened hands in her black overcoat, laughing, twirling around, kicking up leaves, the music still coming from Windham House. I wanted to delay this moment, so I suggested that we look around for something to eat. We stopped walking and stood there, and though she sounded more than a little disappointed, she agreed, and we went from house to house, sneakily raiding the refrigerators, even though all we came up with was some frozen Pepperidge Farm Milanos, a half-empty bag of Bar-B-Que potato chips and a Heineken Dark.



Anyway, we ended up in her room, really drunk, making out. She stopped for a minute and made her way to the bathroom down the hall. I turned on a light and looked around the room, inspecting her roommate’s empty bed and the poster of a unicorn on the wall; copies of Town and Country and The Weekly World News (“I Had Bigfoot’s Baby,” “Scientists Say U.F.O.’s cause AIDS”) were scattered around a giant stuffed teddybear that sat in the corner and I was thinking to myself that this girl was too young. She came back in and lit a joint and turned off the light. On the verge of passing out she asked me, “We’re not going to have sex, are we?”