The Rules of attraction

author of less than zero

Fall 1985

Sean. Someone walks into The Pub, looks for someone, can't find him and leaves. It isn't Lauren Hynde, the completely beautiful girl who has been leaving sexy notes in my box for the past five weeks, the only reason I'm in The Pub tonight, waiting for a confrontation. I'm sitting at a table with four or five or six people, kind of listening to some lame conversation. They're all talking about what's going on at the sculpture studio, about sculpture teachers and sculpture parties, about Tony's latest sculpture, even though they have no idea what it says. Tony told me it was supposed to be a steel vagina, but none of these idiots can figure it out.

"It's so disturbing, so lyrical," this girl with a serious problem says.

"Very potent. Undefinable," her friend, some dyke from Duke who's visiting, who looks like she's had way too much MDA, agrees.

"It's Nimoy. Pure Nimoy," Getch says.

My attention drifts. Somebody else walks in. Somebody who, if I remember correctly, gave me a totally unprovoked kiss on the lips at the last Friday-night party. Peter Gabriel plays on the jukebox.

"But it's Arbus with none of the conviction," one of the girls says, and she's serious.

"But the revisionist theory on her seems completely unmotivated," someone else gleefully replies.

There's a pause; then someone asks, "OK, what about Weegee? What do you think about Weegee?"

Vaguely horny, I order another pitcher of Genesee and a pack of barbecued potato chips, which give me indigestion. Peter Gabriel turns into more Peter Gabriel. The girl who kissed me on the lips last Friday leaves after buying a pack of cigarettes, and in some warped way I'm disappointed. She's not that pretty (slightly Asian, dance major?), but I would probably fuck her anyway. I think about it for a little while. Back to the conversation.

"Spielberg has gone too far on this one," the angry mulatto intellectual with the neobeatnik casual-but-hip look, plus beret, who has joined the table hisses.

Where has he gone? Does he just hang out in a Canfield apartment and drink like a maniac and split on parents' weekend and have a whole bunch of friends visiting him from boarding school? What the fuck does he do with his life? Little freshman girls confiding in him and long walks around the dorms after dinner?

"Simply too far," Denton agrees. He's serious, not joking.

"Simply too far," I say, nodding.

The table behind ours, juniors arguing about Vietnam; some guy says, scratching his head, joking but not really, "Damn, when was that?" and someone else saying, "Oh, man, who gives a shit?" and then there's this fat, earnest-looking girl who's on the verge of tears, and she bellows, "I do!" Social-science-major breakdown. I turn back to our table with the Art Fucks, because they seem so less boring.

The dyke from Duke asks, "But don't you think his whole secular humanism stems from the warped pop culture of the Sixties and not from a rigorous modernist vantage point?"

I turn back to the other table, but they've dispersed. She asks the question again, rephrasing it for the intense mulatto. Who in the hell is she asking? Me? Denton? Who? Denton just keeps nodding his head, like she's saying something incredibly deep.

Who is this girl? Why is she alive? Wonder if I should leave right now, get up and say, "Good night, fuck-ups, it's been a sheer sensation and I hope I never see any of you again." But if I do that, they'll end up talking about me, and that seems worse; and I'm seriously drunk and the only pretty girl (I've forgotten her name) at the table gets up and leaves. Hard to keep my eyes open. One of the other girls says, whispers loudly, "She fucked--are you ready?" The table leans inward, even me. "Lauren."

The table gasps collectively. Who's Lauren? French guy who lives in the library? It can't be my Lauren, it can't be that one. There's no way she's a lesbian-- but maybe she's been putting the notes in the wrong box. Maybe she's meant to put them in Jane Gorfinkle's box, the box above mine? Even if she is, it turns me on a little. I don't want to ask which Lauren she means, even though I want to know. I look over at the bar, try to get my mind off it, but there are at least four girls I have slept with standing there, smoking cigarettes, scanning the room, none of them looking at me, businesslike, impersonal, sipping beers--

Oh, what the fuck. I finally snap and get out of there, leave, simple as that. I'm out the door, past the guy who checks I.D.s; Fels is close by; I have some friends who live there, don't I? But thinking about sitting around and rapping about MTV or getting involved in a séance bores the fuck out of me, so I just walk around the dorm awhile, knock on a few doors and split. Sawtell is next. Nah--but that girl who kissed me ... I think she lives in Noyes, a single, room nine. I knock on her door.

•

Lauren. Victor hasn't called, hasn't written, hasn't even sent a postcard from Europe, and because of this, I've changed my major. It's now poetry.

Judy's not upset that I'm with Franklin now, since she's with Steve the Freshman and Franklin doesn't care that I used to be with Steve the Freshman and Steve the Freshman doesn't care that I'm with Franklin or that Judy used to be with Franklin.

What do Franklin and I do? We go to parties: Wet Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday, parties at the graveyard, at End of the World, Friday-night parties, pre-Saturday-night-party parties, Sunday-afternoon parties, post-Sunday-dinner parties.

I try to quit smoking. Write letters to Victor in computer class that I never send. Franklin always seems to be broke. He wants to sell blood to get some cash, maybe buy some drugs, maybe sell some drugs. I sell some clothes and old records in Commons one afternoon. We spend a lot of time in my room, since I've got a double bed. I've stopped painting completely. Since Sara left (even though the abortion, by her account, wasn't traumatic enough to excuse her absence), I watch her cat, Seymour. Franklin hates the cat and I do, too, but tell him I like it.We hang out in the sensory-deprivation tank. Sometimes Judy and Franklin and Freshman and me go to the movies in town and no one cares. I mean, what is going on? I ask myself. We drink a lot of beer. Franklin is an idiot, really unintentionally hilarious. I came to this conclusion hot by reading his writing, which is science fiction, which is "heavily influenced by astrology ... man," which is terrible, but by something I don't understand. I tell him I like his stories, I tell him my sign and we discuss the importance of the Stones, but I hate his goddamned incense and I don't know why I'm doing this to myself, why I'm being such a masochist. Though, of course, it's because of a certain handsome Horace Mann graduate who's lost in Europe. I try to quit smoking.

(No mail from Victor....)

But I like Franklin's body and he's good in bed and easy to have orgasms with, but it doesn't feel good, and when I try to fantasize about Victor, I can't.

I go to computer class. I hate it but need the credit.

"Did I tell you I was strip-searched in Ireland?" Franklin will mention at lunch.

I look straight ahead and avoid eye contact when he says things like that. I pretend I don't hear him. He doesn't shave sometimes, and beard burns are painful. I am not in love with him, I'll chant under my breath at dinner, with him sitting across from me with other oily lit majors, all dressed in black and exhibiting a dry yet caustic wit, and I'll be blown away by how nondescript he is. But can you remember really what Victor looked like? No, you can't, can you? It freaked Franklin out badly that I put a note on my door that read, If my Mother calls, i'm not here. Try not to Take a Message, Either. Thanks. I try to stop smoking. I often forget to feed the cat.

"I want to trip with my father before he dies," Franklin said at lunch this afternoon.

I didn't say anything for a very long time. He asked, "Are you high?" and I said, "High," and lit another cigarette.

•

Sean. I get another note in my box today from Lauren Hynde. It says, I will meet you Tonite--Once The Sun Sets. E-V-O-L will no Longer be Spelled this way. I can't wait until the party, until "the sun sets," so I try to talk to Lauren at lunch. She's standing by the desserts, smoking a cigarette with Judy Holleran (who I fooled around with last term and who I occasionally score for. Total fuck-up. Been in psychological counseling forever). I come up behind them slowly; Lauren's telling Judy how she lost her I.D. I reach out to gently squeeze her neck, but Frog Roommate, who I haven't seen in days, excuses himself and reaches for a croissant or (continued from page 158) Rules of Attraction (continued from page 96) something and lingers. He notices me and says, "Ça va?" I say, "Ça va." Lauren says "Hi" to him and blushes and looks at Judy and Judy smiles, too. Frog splits.

"What's going on?" I ask Judy, picking up a plate of melon.

"Hi, Sean. Nothing," she says.

Lauren's looking over the cookies, playing hard to get. It's such an obvious act I'm embarrassed, and I probably redden noticeably.

"Going to the Dressed to Get Screwed party?" I ask, then add, "Tonight? Once the sun sets."

"Totally psyched," Judy says, sarcastic as hell.

Lauren laughs like she agrees. I bet, I'm thinking. But I'm struck by how great-looking this girl is, and standing here, even if it's only for something like a millisecond, I overload on how great-looking Lauren is. I'm amazed at how her legs and thighs, the breasts, braless beneath a We are the World T-shirt, affect me. She looks over at me in what seems like slow motion and I can't meet her blue-eyed gaze back. Because she's too gorgeous. Her perfect full lips still locked in on this sexy, uncaring smile. Her hand, small and clean, scratches at her perfect small nose, while the other hand runs through her short hair and then back over her neck. She's constructed perfectly. She smiles when she notices me staring and I smile back. I'm thinking, I want to know this girl.

"I think it's supposed to be a toga party, too," I say.

"Toga? Jesus, what does this place think it is?" she says. "Williams?"

"Where's the party?" Judy asks.

"Wooley," I tell her. She can't even fucking look at me.

"I thought we already had one," she says, inspecting a cookie. Her fingers are long and delicate and the nails have clear polish on them. I try to smell her.

"We did," I say.

"A toga party?" she says. "You've got to be kidding. Who's on Rec Committee, anyway?"

"I am," I say, looking directly at her.

Judy pockets an oatmeal cookie and takes a drag off Lauren's cigarette.

"Well, Getch and Tony are gonna steal some sheets. There's a keg. I don't know," I say, laughing a little. "It's not really a toga party."

"Well, it sounds really happening," she says.

"I'm going into town with Beanhead; wanna come?" she asks Judy, taking a cookie.

"Can't. Plath paper," Judy says.

"Don't do it," Lauren says.

"It was due two terms ago," Judy says.

"I see," Lauren says, leaving abruptly. Embarrassed, maybe a little flustered by my presence. She doesn't say anything, not even "Bye" to Judy.

Tonight, I'm thinking. I go back to the table.

"The weight room opened today," Tony says.

"Rock 'n' roll," I say.

•

Lauren. I'm dreaming about Victor. It's a Camden relocation dream. People from school are milling about a salad bar on a beach, the sea sometimes white, sometimes red, sometimes black. Judy is standing next to me. When I ask her where Victor is, she says, "Dead." And I wake up. For a long, painful moment, between the point at which I have the nightmare and the moment at which, hopefully, it is forgotten, I lie there, thinking about Victor.

I look around the room. Franklin is gone. The things around me depress me, seem to define my pitiful existence, everything is so boring: my typewriter--no cartridges; my easel--no canvas; my bookshelf--no books; a check from Dad; an airline ticket to St.-Tropez someone crammed into my box; a note about parents' weekend being canceled; the new poems I'm writing (about? Guess) crumpled by the bed; the new story Franklin has left for me to proofread called Saturn Has Eyes; the half-empty bottle of red wine Franklin bought--Jordan, too sweet-- last night; the ashtrays; the cigarettes in the ashtrays; the Who tape unwound--it all depresses me immensely. I attempt to return to the nightmare. I can't. Look over at the wine bottles standing on the floor, the empty pack of Gauloises (Franklin smokes them; how pretentious). I can't decide whether to reach for the wine or turn on the radio or smoke a cigarette. Thoroughly confused, I stumble into the hallway--reggae, Bob Marley music coming thump, thump from the living room downstairs. I realize it's 4:30 in the afternoon.

I'm leaving Franklin. I told him last night before we went to bed.

"You must be kidding," he said.

"I'm not," I said.

"Are you high?" he asked.

"Beside the point," I said, then we had sex.

•

Sean. The next day I spent looking around for Lauren. She wasn't at lunch or in Commons and I didn't see her at dinner, either. I looked for her after Getch and Tony and Tim and I fixed up Wooley for the Dressed to Get Screwed party. I looked for her after I put my toga on. Toga looked uncool, but since Rec Committee insisted, I put a leather jacket on over it, so everything looks hip. I even looked for her room, walking around campus in the dark, trying to remember which house she lived in. But it was too cold to keep looking, so I stopped and watched TV in Commons and drank some beer instead. I didn't know what I was going to say to her once I found her, it was just that I wanted to see her. And thinking about her like that, searching all over the place for her, I went back to my room and jerked off, thinking about her. It was something completely spontaneous, something I couldn't help doing, like walking past a beautiful girl on the street and not being able to suppress a whistle, someone who gets you that excited and horny. All this was on my mind, my toga raised above me, touching myself feverishly in the darkness. Questions raced through my mind: What does she like? Does she go wild during sex? Does she mind a guy coming in her mouth? Does she freak out about oral sex? Veto anal sex? Then there was this abrupt thought: If she does mind swallowing, then forget it. Ditto if she can't come easily or if she decides not to have an orgasm, because then what's the point? If you can't make a girl come easily, then why bother? That always seemed to me to be like writing questions in a letter.

•

Lauren. Judy's room. Judy and I decide to wear togas to the Dressed to Get Screwed party. Not because we want to all that much but just because we look better in togas. At least, I look better in the toga than in the dress I was going to wear. Judy looks good in anything. Besides, I don't want to go back to my room to get the dress, since Franklin might be there, though he also might not, since I told him I thought The Fate of the Earth was the most boring book he's made me read yet (worse than Floating Dragon) and he had this violent seizure (capital S; he shook, he turned red) and stormed out. Plus, I don't want to see if my mother called back. She had called earlier today and demanded to know why I haven't called her in over three weeks. I told her I forgot my calling-card number, which is partly true. But now I'm in a good mood, anyway; Vittorio, my new poetry teacher, says I show a lot of promise, and because of that I've been working on some more poems, some of them pretty good. Plus, Judy and I might buy some ecstasy tonight and that seems like a decent idea and it's a Friday and we're in front of her mirror trying make-up on and Revolution is on the radio and I feel OK.

Judy says that someone put a cigarette out in her box today.

"It's probably the Freshman. Sam," I say.

"His name's Steve," she says. "He doesn't smoke. None of the freshmen do."

I stand up, inspect the toga. "How do I look? Do I look like an idiot?"

Judy checks her lips, then her chin. "No."

"Fat?"

"Nope." She moves away from the desk and over to the bed, where she finishes rolling a joint, singing along with Revolution. She tells me that she went off the pill on Monday and that she's already lost weight, and I guess she looks thinner. Health Services supplied the diaphragm.

"Health Services is disgusting," Judy says. "That doctor is so horny that when I went in for an earache, he gave me a Pap test."

"Are we buying the ecstasy or not?" I ask.

"Only if he takes American Express," she says. "I forgot to cash a check today."

"He probably does," I murmur.

I look good, standing in front of the mirror, and it makes me sad that I'm surprised by this; that I haven't really gotten excited or dressed up to go out to a party since Victor left, and when was that? Early September? Party at the Surf Club? And I don't know why, but Revolution on the radio reminds me of him and I still have mental pictures of him, standing around somewhere in Europe, and these images resurface at the strangest times: a book of matches from Morgans in New York that I found beneath my bed last Sunday, a jeans commercial on TV, flipping through GQ bored in Franklin's room, and once it was even a certain soup served at lunch.

Judy's ready to light the first joint, but she can't find any matches, so I go next door to the boy from L.A.'s room. Someone's written Rest in peace Called on his door. I can hear The Eagles playing inside, but no one answers the door when I knock. I find some matches from Maxim's in the soap dish in the bathroom and bring them back to Judy. Revolution ends and a new Thompson Twins song comes on. We smoke the pot, get moderately high, make bloodys, and I'm thinking, Maybe I should sleep with that French guy, like Judy keeps saying. But there are other options, I keep telling myself. Like what? Well, the orgy in Booth tonight? I don't know. But I'm high and feeling good as we leave Judy's place, and even from upstairs in her hallway, we can hear music tempting us from across Commons, accompanied by shrieks and muffled shouts in the night, which only really add to the nervous expectations a Friday-night party brings, and then Judy has to ruin it as we're walking out of the house, the night autumn cold, both of us shivering in our togas, heading toward the music-- Gimme Some Loviri--at Wooley.

"Have you heard from Victor?" she asks.

I hated saying it but did anyway, and even laughed. "Who?"

•

Sean. Lauren Hynde was standing with friends on the stairs. She was holding a cup of pink-yellow grain-alcohol punch that was being served from a trash can by this fat girl who was almost naked. Lauren was wearing a toga 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 of her skin. And she was talking to these undistinguished--OK, ugly--lesbian German majors and the whole dyke question re-entered my brain. Standing with Tony, who was wearing Jockey shorts and had a mattress strapped to his back, watching her back, her legs, her hair, and he was talking about his vagina sculpture and he's radically stoned and he had no idea I was looking up at her--but she knew it and wouldn't look back, even though I was standing at the bottom of the staircase, directly below her. Centerfolds from magazines were glued to the walls everywhere and there was a movie being projected onto 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. Getch passed out and I was going to make my move, but one of the girls I scored for earlier, who's kind of cute, short spiked hair, lots of kohl, holding her pet snake, Eno, leaning against a lava lamp, calls me over, and I think maybe she's going to give me some of the coke I got for her earlier, but all she wants to know is if I could get any more. I tell her no and keep staring at Lauren.

•

Lauren. It's stupid, but I called Victor from the Dressed to Get Screwed party. I had one number left that he said he might be at in New York and, like an idiot, I stood in the phone booth downstairs in Wooley, crying, waiting, wearing that awful-looking toga, watching the party start, waiting for Victor to answer. I had to call twice, since I really had forgotten my calling-card number, and when I finally got it right and the phone started ringing, fuzzy and faraway, my hands were so wet from nerves that I had to cradle the phone in my neck. I started shaking, my heart beating like crazy, waiting for Victor's happy, surprised voice, A sound I hadn't heard in over eight weeks.

When I gave the operator the final number of the calling card and during the silence that followed, I knew it was over. I knew it standing in that phone booth, waiting for Victor to answer at this strange, hostile number. How long had I been deluding myself so completely? I wondered as the first, then second ring came over the line. I felt ashamed of myself and I needed a cigarette and the phone kept ringing and someone answered the phone and it was Jaime and I hung up and went back to the party determined to get some fun out of this night.

•

Sean. I hung around by the keg, talking to the d.j., went to the bathroom, but some asshole had thrown up all over the floor and I go back to the living room, unable to find Lauren, and I was about to go upstairs when I'm accosted by these frat guys from Dartmouth who are all dressed up in Brooks Brothers suits and who come up to me, one of them asking, "What's going on?"

"Not much," I tell him. It's the truth.

"Where's the Dressed to Get Screwed party?" one of them asks.

"That's not until later," I tell him. Security must have let them in as a joke.

"Tonight?" the same one asks.

"Next term," I lie.

"Oh, shit, man. We thought this was the Dressed to Get Screwed party," they say, really disappointed.

"It looks like a Halloween party, if you ask me," one of them says.

"Freaks," another one says, looking around, shaking his head. "Freaks."

"Sorry, guys," I say.

They get really excited when the d.j. spins old Sam Cooke and one of them grabs a not-bad-looking freshman girl and dances with her when Twistin the Night Away comes on. It makes me sick. The remaining Dartmouth jerks do a little frat handshake. They're all wearing green ties, for some reason. What are they doing here? Don't Dartmouth girls put out?

"I swear this looks like a fucking Halloween party," one of them says again, and they're pissing me off and, OK, maybe it does look like one, but it definitely does not give these assholes any right, so I have to tell them, shouting over the music, "It's not a Halloween party. It's the Get Fucked party."

"Oh, yeah?" They all raise their eyebrows and nudge one another. "What's that?"

"You really want to know?" I ask.

"Man," two of them say. "We are ready."

"Well," I say.

They lean in closer, straining to hear. "Uh-huh...."

"Bend over and you'll probably get fucked," I find myself saying.

They look at me like I'm crazy, a real lunatic, and walk off telling me how I can't talk to them like that. I don't care, don't know why I even bothered to say that. I resume the search for Lauren.

I find her in an upstairs bathroom washing her face, talking to Getch, who's on ecstasy, leaning against the sink, and I think she's on it, too, and Getch introduces us but, says Lauren, we already know each other and I add, "Sort of." I get her some more punch, even though it was nerve-racking leaving her in the bathroom with Getch (but maybe Getch is gay), and I come back and Getch is gone and she's staring at herself in the mirror and I look, too, until she turns around and smiles at me. We talk and I tell her I liked her paintings I saw in Gallery 1 last term (I was guessing) and she said, "That's nice." I really hadn't seen the paintings, but I wanted badly to get laid tonight--so what?--and then I followed her to the living room and she wanted to dance, but I didn't want to, so I watch her dance to some song called Love of the Common People, but then I get nervous that some jerk could start to dance with her if I don't step in, so when Love Will Tear Us Apart came on, I moved in, but it wasn't the Joy Division version and it was all popped up and ruined, but I dance anyway, since we were flirting like mad and she was so insanely beautiful that I couldn't understand why we hadn't been to bed before. I was getting too excited to stay at the party but can't think of a way to slip out. Then, with perfect timing, some drama fag starts going crazy and did this wild solo dance in his underwear when Dancing with Myself came on and that was when I grabbed her arm and ran, heading out the door, onto the cool dark lawn, leaving the party behind.

•

Lauren. A light bulb. I'm staring at a light bulb above Sean's head. We're at Lila and Gina's apartment in Fels. Two lesbians from the poetry workshop I recently joined. Actually, Gina, in strict confidence, told me that she's on the pill "just in case." Does that mean she's a lesbian technically? Lila, on the other hand, has confided in me that she's worried Gina will leave her, since it's "in" to sleep with women this term. What do you say to someone? "Well, what about next term?" Actually, what about next term? You watch Sean, too; you watch him roll a joint and he's pretty good at it, which makes me want to sleep with him less, but, oh, who cares, Jaime's probably with Victor right now and it's a Friday and it was either him or that French guy. His hands are nice, clean and large, and he handles the pot rather delicately and I want him suddenly to touch my breasts. I don't know why I think this, but I do. Not exactly handsome, but he's passable-looking; light hair combed back, smallish features (maybe a little like a rat?), maybe too short, too thin; no, not handsome, just vaguely Long Islandish. But a big improvement over the kir-sipping Iranian editor you met at Vittorio's party last night who told you you were going to be the next Madonna and after you told him you were a poetry major, he said he meant Marianne Moore.

"So, who's going to help us bomb the weight room?" Gina asks.

Gina is part of Camden's old guard, and the arrival of the weight room and an aerobics instructor has made her livid, even though she wants to sleep with the aerobics instructor, who in my opinion doesn't even have that nice a body.

"Lila is devastated," she adds.

Lila nods and rests her head on the Kathy Acker books she's been flipping through.

"Bummer," I sigh. I'm staring at the Mapplethorpe portrait of Susan Sontag pinned above the sink.

Sean laughs and looks up from the joints, surprised, as if I said something brilliant, and it's not funny, but because he laughs, I laugh. Still holding a cup of the punch, I realize that I am so drunk I cannot get up. I just tell Lila, "Don't get depressed," and then, to Gina, "Do you have any coke?" Too drunk to be ashamed.

"Depression becomes some," Lila says.

"No," Gina says.

"You want some?" Sean asks.

"No."

"Depression becomes some?" Can't argue with that, so we light the first joint. Wish we had sex and it was over with so I could go back to my room and the down pillows and the comforter and pass out with dignity. Lila gets up, puts on a Kate Bush tape and starts dancing.

"This place has really changed." Someone hands me the joint. I take a long, hard hit and look around the apartment, nodding, agreeing with whoever said that. Stephanie Myers and Susan Goldman and Amanda Taylor lived in here my sophomore year. It is different.

"The Seventies never ended." Sean "The Philosopher" Bateman. What a stupid thing to say, I'm thinking. What a strange and supremely stupid thing to say; I'm not going to say a word. He smiles at me and thinks it's profound. I feel sick. I want them to turn the music down.

"I wonder if everyone goes through this much at college," Lila ponders, dancing next to my chair, staring dreamily my way. Do I want to sleep with another girl? No.

"Don't worry, darling," Gina says, taking the joint from Sean. "We're not at Williams."

Not at Williams. No, that's for sure. Smoke more grass. He's not looking at Gina, for some reason. Lila doesn't smoke pot. She sits back down and sighs and resumes looking at the drawings in the Acker books. Go to Europe if you like it, I'm thinking. Victor, I'm thinking.

"Louis Farrakhan was supposed to visit, but the freshmen and sophomores on student council voted against it," Sean says. "Can you believe that?" So, he's politically conscious, too? Even worse. He smokes more pot than Gina and I combined. Someone brings out a bong. He holds it like Victor holds it. I stare at him, disgusted, dumfounded, but it's too smoky and Kate Bush is too screechy and he doesn't notice my expression. "They even want someone to redesign the school sign," he adds.

"Why?" I find myself asking.

"Not Eighties enough," Lila suggests.

"Probably want flashing neon," Gina says.

"Get Keith Haring or Kenny Scharf," Lila grimaces.

"Or Schnabel," Gina cringes.

"Too passe," Lila mutters.

"Lots of broken plates and 'suggestive' smears." Did Sean say this?

"Or getting Fischl to do the pamphlet. Some of the chic, jet-setting, nihilistic Eurotrash who live off campus, nude, standing around with dogs and fish.Welcome To Camden College: You'll Never Be Bored." Gina starts laughing.

"I'm gonna redesign it," Lila says. "Win the money. Buy a gram."

What money? I'm thinking. Have I missed something? Am I out of it? The grass is good and sweet, but I have to light a cigarette to stay awake, and during a break on the record, we can all hear someone from the party next door scream, "That's phallic, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" and we all look at one another stoned and kind of crack up and I remember seeing Judy crying in a doorway upstairs at the party, in the bathroom, Franklin trying to comfort her, Franklin glaring at me as I left with Sean. Now the inevitable. We're in his room and he plays me a song. On his guitar. He serenades me, and it's almost embarrassing enough to sober me up. Can't Take My Eyes Off You, and I start crying only because I can't help but think of Victor and he stops halfway through and kisses me and we end up going to bed. And I'm thinking, What if I went back to my room now and what if there was a note on the door saying Victor called? What if there was just a note? Whether he called or not doesn't matter, just to see a note, just to see maybe a V, screw the rest of the letters. If there was just some sort of identifiable sign. It could make me happy--no, elated--for a day. I put my diaphragm in at Gina and Lila's apartment, so there's no drunken forgetfulness on my part, no running to the bathroom in the middle of foreplay. Sean fucks me. It's not so bad. It's over. I breathe easy.

•

Sean. When we walked slowly back to my bedroom, she followed me like she had fantasized this would happen; she was eager, too stunned to speak, both of us silent as we walked past the party, which was still going on, across the Commons and upstairs to Booth. I was excited, too, and I couldn't stop shaking and I dropped the key when I tried to unlock the door. She sat on the bed and leaned against the wall, her eyes closed, breathing deeply. I plugged in the Fender and played her a song I'd written myself and then segued into Can't Take My Eyes Off You and I played it quietly and sang the lyrics softly and she was so moved that she cried and I had to stop playing and knelt before the bed and touched her neck, but she couldn't look at me. Maybe it was the grass we smoked at the dykes' who want to blow up the weight room's place, or maybe it was the ecstasy I was pretty sure she was on, or maybe it was that she loved me. When I tilted her face up, her eyes were so grateful that....

He had to kiss her quickly on the lips and he got hard almost immediately after she started kissing back, still crying, her face slick, and he started to pull her toga off, but there was an interruption that he was oddly grateful for. Tim came in without knocking and asked if he had any razor blades and he gave him one and Tim didn't apologize for interrupting, since he was so coked out, and he made sure the door was locked after he left. But he was still strangely not excited. He turned the amp off and got on the bed.

She had already started taking her toga off, and except for her panties, she had nothing on beneath it. She had the body of a much younger girl. Her breasts were small but full, yet her nipples weren't hard, not even after he touched them, then kissed and licked them. He helped her remove her panties, saw how small her cunt was, too, the pubic hair light and sparse; yet when he squeezed it, hard, then soft, slid a finger in, he didn't feel anything. She wasn't getting wet, even though she was making soft little moans. He was semistiff but still not excited. Something was missing; there was a problem somewhere, a mistake. He did not know what. Confused, he began fucking her; and before he came, a weak orgasm, it hit him. He can't remember the last time he had sex sober.

•

Lauren. I'm standing by Sean's window. It's almost morning but still dark. Weird, maybe my imagination, but I'm positive I can hear the aria from La Watty coming from somewhere--not across the lawn, since the party is over, but 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, 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 this 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 it. The first one leaves. Then I see Paul's room; that is, if he still lives in Leigh. The room is dark. I wonder who he's with tonight. I touch my breast, then, ashamed, burning, move my hand away. What went wrong with that one? What happened the last time we were together? Cannot remember. Last term, sometime. But no, that night in September, beginning of this term. Last term you knew it was over, though, because he left for three days with Mitchell to go 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. But, Christ, what an asshole 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 over at Sean, who has now rolled over, who's dreaming; he's pulled the covers over his head.