The Rules of Attraction

“What has happened to you?” Mrs. Jared asks for the fourth time.



“What do you mean, what has happened to me? What do you think?” Richard asks, followed by a gruff snort of contempt.



“I can see what that school has done to you,” she says.



Great, I’m thinking. It’s taken her three years to find this out? Actually Richard was always a rude jerk. I don’t understand what the big surprise is now. I look down at my lap as the foot disappears. I finish my drink and suck on an ice cube, leaving the cigarette burning, unsmoked in the ashtray.



“That’s really too bad, huh?” Richard sneers.



“Obviously I can see we should never have sent you there,” Mrs. Jared says, and as much of an ass**le as Richard’s being, she’s still a bitch.



“Obviously,” Richard says, mimicking her.



“Do you want to leave the table?” she asks him.



“Why?” Richard asks, his voice rising, getting more defensive.



“Will you please leave the table,” she says.



“No,” Richard says, getting hysterical. “I will not leave the table.”



“I am asking you to leave the table now,” Mrs. Jared says, her voice getting quieter but more intense.



My mother watches this exchange in silent horror.



“No no no,” Richard says, shaking his head. “I will not leave the table.”



“Leave the table.” Mrs. Jared is turning crimson with fury.



“Fuck you!” Richard screams.



The pianist stops playing and whatever quiet din of conversation there was in the dining room is killed. Richard pauses, then takes a last drag from his Marlboro, finishes his Kir, and gets up, bows and walks slowly out of the dining room, one of his feet shoeless. The maitre d’ and the head waiter rush over to our table and ask if anything is wrong; if perhaps we want the check.



“Everything is fine now,” Mrs. Jared says and actually musters a faint smile. “I’m really terribly sorry.”



“Are you sure?” The maitre d’ looks me over suspiciously as if I were Richard’s twin.



“Positive,” Mrs. Jared says. “My son is not feeling well. He has a lot of pressures … you know, with … with mid-terms coming up.”



Mid-terms at Sarah Lawrence? I look over at my mother, who’s staring off into space.



The waiter and the maitre d’ look at each other for a moment as if they’re not quite sure how to proceed, and when they look back at Mrs. Jared she says, “I would like another vodka Collins. Eve, would you like anything?”



“Yes,” my mother says, stunned, shaking her head slowly, still horrified by Richard’s exit. I wonder if I’ll sleep with him tonight. “I mean … no,” she says. “Well … yes.” My mother is still confused and looks at me—for what? Help?



“Get her another one.” I shrug.



The maitre d’ nods and walks away, conferring with the waiter. The pianist resumes playing, slowly, unsure. Some of the people who were staring finally look away. I notice when I look down at my lap that I have almost succeeded in ripping my napkin in two.



After a while my mother says, “I think I want the next car to be blue. A dark blue.”



No one says anything until the drinks arrive.



“What do you think, Paul?” she asks.



I close my eyes and say, “Blue.”



SEAN Lauren Hynde was standing with friends on the stairs. She was holding a cup of grain alcohol punch that was being served from a trashcan by this fat girl who was almost naked. Lauren was wearing a toga also (probably because I had mentioned it this afternoon) and it was cut low and her shoulders were brown and smooth and I got a rush, it knocked me out, from seeing that much skin. Suddenly, I wondered if she was a dyke. Standing there with Tony, watching her, her back, her legs, her face, hair, she was talking to some girls—ugly, undistinguished compared to her. Tony kept talking to me about his new sculpture and had no idea I was staring at this girl. He was only wearing underwear and had a mattress strapped to his back. I kept looking up at her and she knew it—she wouldn’t look back, even though I was standing at the bottom of the staircase, directly below her. Centerfolds from  p**n o magazines were glued to the walls everywhere and there was a movie being projected on the ceiling in the living room above the dance floor, but the girls in it were fat and too pale and it wasn’t sexy or anything.



We ended up meeting in the bathroom. Getch was there leaning against the sink, on Ecstasy, and I think she was on it too, and Getch introduced us but we said we already knew each other, but only “sort of” she added. I got her some more punch even though I hated leaving her in the bathroom alone with Getch (but maybe Getch was g*y, I was thinking) and I came back and Getch was gone and she was looking at herself in the mirror and I looked too, until she turned around and smiled at me. We talked and I told her I liked her paintings I saw in Gallery 1 last term (I was guessing) and she said “That’s nice,” (even though I really hadn’t seen the paintings, but what the hell—I wanted to get laid) and then we went to the living room and she wanted to dance, but I couldn’t dance very well, so I watched her dance to some song called “Love of the Common People” but then I got nervous that some jerk would start to dance with her if I didn’t step in, so when “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division came on, I moved in. But it wasn’t the Joy Division version, it was someone else and it was popped-up and ruined, but I danced to it anyway since we were flirting like mad and she was so insanely beautiful that I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t f**ked her before. I was getting too excited to stay at the party, and couldn’t think of a way to slip out. But with perfect timing some dramafag started to go crazy and did this wild solo dance in his underwear when “Dancing with Myself” came on, dominating the entire dance floor. I watched Lauren watch him—she was clapping and drunk and sweating and I gave her a cigarette when Tim and Tony told me they pissed in a Heineken bottle and wanted to give it to Deidre to drink since she was so drunk. I gave them the brush-off after they waved the bottle in front of my face. I couldn’t tell if Lauren had heard them since she was still watching the scrawny little geek jump all over the room, lip-synching—the whole party on the sides screaming and clapping and dancing, someone even threw him a banana and that was when I grabbed her arm and ran, heading out the door, onto the cool dark lawn, leaving the party behind.