The Rules of Attraction

I’m lying, in warm water, in a bathtub, in Sawtell. I’m doing this because I know I’ll never have Him. I drag the razor firmly across the hot skin underwater and the flesh peels back quickly, blood jetting out, literally jetting out, from the bottom of my arm. I drag it cross the other wrist jaggedly, up and down, and the water turns pink. When I lift my arm up, above water, blood gushes powerfully high and I have to place my wrist back under so I’m not splattered with it. I sit up, only slash at one ankle because the weakness drenches me and I lay back, the water turning impossibly red and then I start to dream, and I keep dreaming and it’s then that I’m not sure if this is really the thing to do. I can hear music coming from another house someplace and maybe I try to sing along with it, but, as usual, I find myself trying to get to the ending before it actually happens. Maybe I should have tried another route. The one that little man at the gas station in Phoenix advised, or shall I say, urged me on to or oww—Guess what? No time. God jesus christ our my nothing savior



LAUREN And it’s quiet now, and over. I’m standing by Sean’s window. It’s almost morning, but still dark. It’s weird and maybe it’s my imagination but I’m positive I can hear the aria from La Wally coming from somewhere, not across the lawn since the party is over, but it might be somewhere in this house perhaps. I have my toga wrapped around me and occasionally I’ll look over and watch him sleep in the glow of his blue digital alarm clock light. I’m not tired anymore. I smoke a cigarette. A silhouette moves in another window, in another house across from this one. Somewhere a bottle breaks. The aria continues, building, followed by shouts and a window shattering, faintly. Then it’s quiet again. But it’s soon broken by laughter next door, friends of Sean’s doing drugs. I’m surprisingly calm, peaceful in the strange limbo between sobriety and sheer blottoness. There’s a mist covering the campus tonight lit by a high, full moon. The silhouette is still standing by the window. Another one joins in. The first one leaves. Then I see Paul’s room, that is, if he’s still living in Leigh. The room is dark and I wonder who he’s with tonight. I touch my breast, then ashamed, burning, move my hand away. Wonder what went wrong with that one. What happened the last time we were together? I can’t even remember. Last term, sometime. But no… that night in September. Beginning of this term. Last term you knew it was over though. He left for three days with Mitchell to Mitchell’s parents’ place on Cape Cod, but he told you it was to see his parents in New York—but then, who told you that? It was Roxanne, because hadn’t she been seeing Mitchell? Maybe it was someone else’s lie. But I was still dying with longing for his happy return; what an ass**le he was. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he was tender, maybe you were greedy. I put the cigarette out on the edge of the window-sill and look back at Sean who has now rolled over, who’s dreaming. He’s put the covers over his head.



PAUL My lack of trust in him amazes me but I can’t help it: I don’t like Sean. There’s no one else on the bus when we pull out of Boston, and not too many people get on at the various stops along the way. Just me and an old couple up front for most of the way there. I idly wonder what Mom will say about this abrupt departure. Will she pop a Seconal? Will she cry? Stay? Flirt with bellhops? Richard will probably be relieved, though he’ll still look for a date on Saturday night, and Mrs. Jared won’t care-why do I even care what she thinks? I try to sleep as the bus lumbers on some nameless route (7? 9? 89? 119?) toward Camden. And it stops raining somewhere near Lawrence, and the sun comes up, full and rising, at Bellows.



I can’t sleep.



I will rush straight to Sean’s room and what will I find? Him in bed with a girl I have never noticed or talked to but who I will instantly recognize, or maybe he’ll be tired but wake up smiling and we’ll look and touch and shake hands and while shaking hands he’ll pull me down onto his bed and after that we’ll drive to that French cafe on the edge of town—no way, Sean would never eat there. He’s probably never been to a nice restaurant; just a life of Quarter Pounders, Tastee Freezes, Friendlys. Do they even have Friendlys in the South? No Walkman, no cigarettes, no magazines on a bus can be unbearable. I’m going crazy, still horny from the okay sex from last night, and I try to masturbate in the bus bathroom but when I realize what I’m doing, the sloshing of the refuse below me as I sit on the toilet, hand wrapped around my dick, and start laughing, it’s high-pitched, maniacal, scary.



Some people get on at Newport. Some people get off at Wolcott, and some more get on at Winchester. Hungry, exhausted, my breath repulsive, I finally get off at the station in Camden and take a cab back to campus and by the time I get there, it’s almost twelve. I must be dreaming this.