The Rules of Attraction

I moan softly stepping away from the window.



I run back to Canfield and hurl Bertrand’s pumpkin at the wall beside her door, and smear the Peanut Butter Cups all over the door. Rip the pen that’s hanging off her door from the string it’s connected to and also a piece of paper and write “Fuck Off and Die” in big black letters. I place it next to the cracked pumpkin and the smashed, melted candy. I stalk away, down the stairs, out into the night.



Halfway across Commons lawn glaring at Windham House, the party now louder than before, seeming to mock me, I stop and decide to take the note off the pumpkin. I walk back to Canfield, up the stairs to her door and lift the note off the jack-o’-lantern and carry it back with me. I reach the front door of Canfield and then redecide to leave the note where it was. I walk back up the stairs and stick the note back on the pumpkin. I stare at it. Fuck off and die. I leave Canfield and walk back to my room.



I lie on my bed in the dark for close to an hour, drinking the last of Bertrand’s six-pack of Grolsch and listening to “Funeral for a Friend” and trying to play along with it on my guitar, thinking about Lauren. Something hits me. I walk over to my desk in the dark and pick up the tube of Fun Blood I bought in town earlier. I sit in the chair, drunk, turn the Tensor lamp on and read the instructions. Since I don’t have any scissors to cut the cap off with I bite it off instead, tasting a couple drops of the plastic-tasting liquid. I spit it out, wash the taste away with the warm Grolsch. Then I squeeze the tube, some of it onto my fingers. It looks very real and I hold my wrist out and squeeze a thick red line across it, the cool liquid slowly dripping off my wrist, onto the desk. I squeeze another line across the other wrist. “Funeral for a Friend” turns into “Love Lies Bleeding.” I lift my arms up, both dripping Fun Blood, Fun Blood running down to my armpits. I sit back in the chair and squeeze more Fun Blood across my arms. I get up, go to the closet, and look at myself in the mirror. I bend my head back and squeeze a thick line across my neck. I feel relieved. Fun Blood runs down my chest, staining my shirt. I draw a thick line across my forehead. I move away from the mirror and sit on the floor, next to one of the speakers, Fun Blood dripping from my forehead, past my nose down to my lips. I turn the volume up.



The door opens slowly and I can hear over the music, through the parachute, Lauren calling. “I knocked, Sean. Hello?” A hand parts the slit in the parachute.



“Sean?” she calls out. “I got your … message. You’re right. We have to talk.”



She steps through the parachute and looks over at my bed and then at me. I don’t move. She gasps. But I can’t help it and I start to crack up. I look over at her, slick with Fun Blood, drunk and smiling.



“You are so f**king sick,” she screams. “You’re so sick! I can’t deal with you.”



But then she turns around before she slips through the parachute, and comes back into my room. She’s changed her mind. She kneels in front of me. The music swelling to a crescendo as she wipes my face off delicately. She kisses me.



LAUREN Walk into The Pub. Stand near the cigarette machine. Out of order. Talking Heads are blasting out from the jukebox. Sean is standing near the bar wearing a police jacket and black T-shirt. Visiting punks are talking to him. Walk over and ask him, “Are you okay?” End up sitting with him, staring at the pinball machine, Royal Flush, while he sulks.



“I feel my life is going nowhere. I feel incredibly lonely,” he says.



“Do you want a Beck’s?” I ask him.



“Yeah. Dark,” he says.



I cannot deal with this person one more minute. Brush past Franklin, who’s leaning against the out-of-order cigarette machine. Smiles wanly. Push my way to the front of the bar and order two beers. Talk to that nice girl from Rockaway and her awful roommate. That weird group of Classics majors stand by, looking like undertakers. Typical night at The Pub. People dressed in underwear, Drama majors still with make-up on. Brazilian guy who can’t drink because he lost his I.D. Someone pinches my ass but don’t turn around to look.



Bring the beers back to the table. Sean has faint red stains on his face and I’m about to wet a napkin with Beck’s to rub them off. But he starts complaining and he looks at me hard when he asks, “Why don’t you like me?”



I get up, walk to the bathroom, wait in line, and when I come back he asks me again.



“I don’t know,” I sigh.



“I mean, what’s going on?” he asks.



Shrug and look around the room. He gets up to play pin-ball. “This wouldn’t happen in Europe,” someone in a surfer outfit—actually the boy from L.A.—says and of course Victor comes into mind and then oh shit, someone’s kneeling next to my chair telling me about the first times they tripped on MDA, showing me the bottle of Cuervos they smuggled into The Pub, and to my disappointment I’m interested. Sean sits back down and I just know we’re going to fight.