“Not Eighties enough,” Lila suggests.
“Probably want flashing neon,” Gina.
“Get Keith Haring or Kenny Scharf,” Lila grimaces.
“Or Schnabel,” Gina cringes.
“Too passé,” Lila mutters.
“Lots of broken plates and ‘suggestive’ smears,” did Sean say this?
“Or getting Fischel 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 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 each other, stoned, and 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. “You’re Too Good to Be True” 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, and fuck the rest of the letters. If there was just a sign. It could make me elated for one week, no, one day. I put my diaphragm in at Gina’s 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 We walked slowly back to my bedroom (she followed me like she knew this would happen, too eager, too stunned to speak) past the party which was still going on, across the Commons, and upstairs to Booth. I was so excited 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. I plugged in the Fender and played her a song I’d written myself and then segued into “You’re Too Good to Be True” and I played it quietly and sang the lyrics slowly and softly and she was so moved that she started to cry and I stopped 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, or maybe it was the Ecstasy I’m pretty sure she was on; 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 a razor blade 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 back to her, and turned off the amp, then 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 the nipples weren’t hard, not even after he touched them, then kissed and licked them. He helped her remove the 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 semi-stiff, but still not excited. Something was missing…. There was a problem somewhere, a mistake. He didn’t know what. Confused, he started to fuck her, and before he came, it hit him: he can’t remember the last time he had sex sober….
PAUL I sit alone in my room, in a chair, in front of the TV, drinking beer I ordered up from room service, watching Friday night videos. Video of Huey Lewis and the News comes on. Huey Lewis walks into a party looking confused. Huey Lewis reminds me of Sean. Huey Lewis also reminds me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Sean doesn’t remind me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Richard opens the door, still in the tuxedo he was wearing at dinner and he sits down on one of the beds and all he says is, “Lost my sunglasses.”
I keep watching Huey Lewis, who can’t find his way out of the party. He’s holding hands with some blond bubblehead and they can’t find their way out. They keep opening doors and none of them contain an exit. One contains a train hurtling at them, another has a vampire hidden behind it, but none offer a way out. How symbolic.
“Do you have any coke?” Richard asks:
A surge of irritation makes me grip the Heineken bottle tighter. I don’t say anything.
“There’s a lot of coke at Sarah Lawrence,” he says.
The video ends and another one comes on, but it’s not a video, it’s a commercial for soap and I look over at him.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“With me?” he asks.
“I guess,” I say. “Who else, idiot?”
“I don’t know,” Richard says. “I went out.”
“You went out,” I repeat.
“To a bar,” he sighs.
“Get lucky?” I ask.
“Would I be here with you if I had?” he says.
His crude attempt at the cutdown, if it was a cutdown, irritates me more than if he had come up with a real … what? scorcher?
“Are you drunk?” I ask, vaguely hoping that he is.
“I wish,” he moans.
“Do you?” I ask.
“Yes. I do,” he moans again, laying back on the bed.
“Quite a little scene you made at dinner,” I mention.
We watch another video or maybe it’s another commercial, I can’t tell, and then he says, “Fuck off. I don’t care.” After a moment’s thoughtful silence, he then asks, “Are they both asleep?” looking over at the wall that separates the rooms from each other.
“Yes.” I nod.
“I went to a movie,” he admits.
“I don’t care,” I say.
“It sucked,” he says.
He gets up and walks over to the cassette player and puts a tape in; hard punk music blasts out of the box and I jump up, completely startled and he makes a face and turns the volume down, then he starts to giggle mischievously and sits in the chair next to mine.
“What are you watching?” he asks. He’s holding the bottle of J.D. which somehow has magically reappeared and offers it to me as he unscrews the top. I shake my head and push it away. “Videos,” I say.
He looks at me, then gets up and stares out the window; he’s got that restless pre-fucking state about him; expectant nervous energy. “I came back because it started to rain.” I can hear him lighting a cigarette, start to smell the smoke. I close my eyes and lean against the chair, and remember a rainy afternoon sitting in Commons with Sean, both of us hungover, sharing a plate of French fries we got at the snack bar since we missed lunch. We were always missing lunch. It was always raining.
“Do you remember those weekends at Saugatuck and Mackinac Island?” he asks.
“No, I don’t. I only remember hellish weekends at Lake Winnebago. In fact I’ve never been to Mackinaw Island,” I say calmly.
“Mackinac,” he says.
“Naw,” I say.
“You’re being difficult, Paul,” he says sweetly.