The Rules of Attraction

by Bret Easton Ellis

  … then the tall blue-eyed Freshman, who doesn’t even have a hint of interest in you, will ask for a cigarette and you’ll be blown away. But the Freshmen, represented here by Steve, look so stupid, so desperate to please, trying so hard, nothing on their minds but partying, dressed like ads for Esprit sportswear. Fact remains however: they are better-looking than the Seniors.

  “How was the party?” Harry asks.

  “My brother’s bar mitzvah was more fun, maybe,” Raymond says, glancing over at Steve, whose eyes look permanently half-closed, a dumb grin locked on his face, nodding to no one.

  “They were actually playing Springsteen,” Steve says.

  “Jesus, I know,” Raymond agrees. “Springsteen, for Christ’s sake. Who was D.J.?”

  “But you like Springsteen, Raymond,” you say, ignoring the green Jell-O, lighting a cigarette, your four hundredth of the day.

  “No, I don’t,” Raymond says blushing, looking nervously at Steve.

  “You do?” Steve asks him.

  “No, I don’t,” Raymond says. “I don’t know where Paul got that idea.”

  “See, Raymond has this theory that Springsteen likes getting, to put it mildly, boo-fooed,” you say, leaning in, talking directly to Steve. “Springsteen, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Listen to ‘Backstreets.’ Gay song definitely,” Donald says, nodding.

  “I never said that,” Raymond laughs uncomfortably. “Paul’s got me mixed up with someone.”

  “What was the adjective you used to describe the cover of the ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ album?” you ask. “Delicious?”

  But Steve’s not listening anymore. He’s not interested in what passes for conversation at the table. He’s talking to the Brazilian boy. He’s asking him if he can get him some Ecstasy for tonight. The Brazilian boy says, “Saps your spinal fluid, dude.”

  “Paul, why don’t you just mind your own business,” Raymond says with a resentful glare. “… And get me some Sprite.”

  “You had this list, Raymond,” you say, causing more trouble. “Who else was on it? It was quite a list: Shakespeare, Sam Shepard, Rob Lowe, Ronald Reagan, his son—”

  “Well, his son,” Donald says.

  “But isn’t this the century no one cared?” Harry asks.

  “About what?” you all ask back.

  “Huh?” Steve asks after the Brazilian leaves.

  But you stop listening because we all have lapses of taste; we’ve all slept with people we shouldn’t have slept with. What about that tall, lanky guy with the Asian girlfriend who you thought had herpes but didn’t and the two of you made a vow to never tell anyone about your two nights together. He’s across the room right now, sitting with that same little Oriental girl. They’re fighting. She gets up. He gives her the finger to her back, the wimp. Now Raymond’s talking about how great Steve’s “dabbles in video” are.

  “Your stuff is great. Is that class any good?” he’s asking. Now, you know Raymond loathes anything that has to do with videos and that even if this guy did something amazing, which is doubtful, Raymond would still loathe it.

  “I learned a lot from that class,” Steve says.

  “Like what?” you whisper to Donald, “The alphabet?”

  Raymond hears and glares.

  Steve just says, “Wha?”

  Harry asks, “Was there a nuclear war somewhere over the weekend?” You turn away and look out over the room. Then one final look at Steve sitting next to Raymond, both of them now laughing about something. Steve doesn’t realize what’s happening. Raymond still holds his stare at the three of us, and his hand shakes for a second when he brings his glass to his mouth and gives Steve a quick glance which Steve catches. The quick glance gives it all away. But what could it possibly mean to the blond boy from Long Island? Nothing. It meant only “quick glance” and nothing past that. It meant a shaking hand lighting another cigarette. After Sean left, songs I normally wouldn’t have liked started having painful significance to me.

  PATRICK The limousine should have picked him up any time between ten-thirty and ten-forty-five. He should get to the airport in Keene by at least ten to twelve, where the Lear will fly him into Kennedy, where his arrival time should be one-thirty or one-forty-five. He should have been at the hospital thirty minutes ago but, knowing Sean, he probably went to The Carlyle first to get drunk or smoke marijuana or whatever the hell it is he does. But since he’s always been so mindless about responsibility and about keeping people waiting I’m really not at all surprised. I wait in the lobby of the hospital checking my watch, making phone calls to Evelyn, who will not come to the hospital, waiting for the limousine to get him here. When it appears that he’s decided not to show, I take the elevator back to the fifth floor and wait, pacing, while my father’s aides sit by the door of his room conferring with one another, occasionally looking over at me nervously. One, earlier in the evening, congratulated me, with what I took to be heavy sarcasm, on the tan I had acquired last week in the Bahamas with Evelyn. He passes again, heading for the restroom. He smiles. I ignore him completely. I don’t like either one of these men and they will both be fired as soon as my father dies.

  Sean walks down the darkened corridor towards me. He looks at me with pleasurable dislike and I back away, repelled. He motions silently with his arm if he can go into the room. I shrug and dismiss him.

  He comes out of the room moments later and not with the white mask of shock I’d thought he’d be wearing, but with a simple and expressionless look on his face. No smile, no sadness. The eyes, bloodshot and half-closed, still manage to exude hatefulness and a weakness of character that I find abhorrent. But he’s my brother, and at first I let it pass. He heads toward the restroom.

  I ask him, “Hey, where are you going?”

  “The john,” he calls back.

  The night nurse at her desk looks up from the chart she’s been going over, to quiet us, but when she sees me gesture at her, she relents.

  “Meet me in the cafeteria,” I tell him, before the door to the restroom shuts. What he does in there is so pitifully obvious to me (cocaine? is he into crack?) that I’m ashamed at his lack of concern and at his capacity to tick me off.

  He sits across from me in the darkened cafeteria, smoking cigarettes.

  “Don’t they feed you up there?” I ask.

  He doesn’t look at me. “Technically, yes.”

  He plays with a swizzle stick. I drink the rest of my Evian water. He puts the cigarette out and lights another.

  “Well … are we having fun?” he asks. “What’s going on? Why am I here?”

  “He’s almost dead,” I tell him, hoping a shred of reality will break through to that wasted mindless head bobbing in front of me.

  “No,” he says startled, and I’m unprepared for a millisecond at this show of emotion, but then he says, “What an astute observation,” and I’m embarrassed at my surprise.

  “Where have you been?” I demand.

  “Around,” he says. “I’ve been around.”

  “Where have you been?” I ask again. “Specifics.”

  “I came,” he says. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Have you visited Mom lately?” he asks.

  “That’s not what we’re talking about,” I say, not letting that one throw me off.

  “Stop asking me questions,” he says, laughing.

  “Stop deliberately misunderstanding me,” I say, not laughing.

  “Deal with it,” he says.

  “No, Sean.” I point at him, serious, no joke. “You deal with it.”

  One of my father’s aides walks into the empty cafeteria and whispers something into my ear. I nod, still staring at Sean. The aide leaves.

  “Who was that?” he asks. “C.I.A.?”

  “What are you on now?” I ask. “Coke? Ludes?”

  He looks up again with the same mocking contempt and laughs, “Coke? Ludes?”

  “I put seven tho
u in your account. Where is it?” I ask.

  A nurse passes by and he eyes her before answering. “It’s there. It’s still there.”

  Nothing is said for three minutes. I keep looking at my watch, wondering what Evelyn is doing right now. She said sleeping, but I could hear faint music in the background. I called Robert. There was no answer. When I called Evelyn back her machine was on. Sean’s face looks the same. I try to remember when he started hating me, when I reciprocated the feeling. He plays with the swizzle stick some more. My stomach growls. He has nothing to say to me and I, in the end, have really nothing to talk about with him.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” He almost looks surprised.

  “I mean, are you going to get a job?”

  “Not at Dad’s place,” he says.

  “Well, where then?” I ask him. It’s a fair question.

  “What do you think?” he asks. “Suggestions?”

  “I’m asking you,” I tell him.

  “Because?…” He lifts his hands up, leaves them suspended there for a moment.

  “Because you’re not going to last another term at that place,” I let him know.

  “Well, what do you want? A lawyer? A priest? A neurosurgeon?” he asks. “What you do?”

  “How about the son your father wanted?” I ask.

  “You think that thing in there even cares?” he asks back, laughing, pointing a thumb back at the corridor, sniffing hard.

  “He would be pleased to know that you’re taking, let’s call it, a leave of absence’ from that place,” I say. I consider other options, harsher tactics. “You know he was always upset about all the football scholarships you threw away,” I say.

  He stares at me sternly, unforgiving. “Right.”

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “Where are you going to go?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Utah,” he shouts. “I’m going to Utah! Utah or Europe.” He stands up, pushes himself away from the table. “I’m not answering any more of your frigging questions.”

  “Sit down, Sean,” I say.

  “You make me sick,” he says.

  “You’re not getting out of this,” I tell him. “Now sit down.”

  He ignores me and walks down the corridor, past his father’s room, past other rooms.

  “I’m taking the limo back to Dad’s place,” he says, jabbing at the button for the elevator. There’s a sudden ping and the doors slide open. He steps in without looking back.

  I pick up the swizzle stick he was bending. I get up from the cafeteria and walk down the hallway, past the aides who don’t even bother to look up at me. At the pay phone in the hall I call Evelyn. She tells me to call her back later, mentions that it’s the middle of the night. She hangs up and I stay there holding the phone, afraid to hang it up. The two men sitting by the door now interested, now watching.

  PAUL At The Carousel I’ve started a conversation with a townie who, for a townie, is actually pretty good-looking. He works for Holmes Moving Storage in town and thinks that Fassbinder is a beer from France. In other words, he’s perfect. But Victor Johnson, who I’ve never much liked and who’s back in town for some reason, in the same condition—alcoholic—as he left, and he keeps pestering me about where everyone is, and I have to keep pushing him away. He eventually stands by the video machines in back with that obnoxious poet who used to be cute before he shaved his head, making faces at me. I ask the townie what he’s going to do after he quits Holmes (“labor problems,” he confides).

  “Go to L.A.,” he says.

  “Really?” I light his cigarette and order another Seabreeze. “Double,” I mouth to the bartender. I also buy the townie another shot of J.D. and a Rolling Rock. He actually calls me “Sir” as in “Thank you, sir.”

  Lizzie, some awful girl from the Drama Division, comes over right when I’m telling the townie how great L.A. is (I’ve never been) and says, “Hi, Paul.”

  “Hi, Elizabeth,” I say, noticing how the dumb townie looks Liz over; relieved when he turns back to his drink. Liz has been trying to get me into bed for a long time. If it happens it’s not going to be tonight. She directed the Shepard play this term and she’s not exactly ugly; in fact she’s fairly pretty for the fag-hag she is but still no thank you. Besides I’ve made it my prerogative to never sleep with Drama majors.

  “You want to meet my friend Gerald?” she asks.

  “What does that mean?” I say.

  “We have some Ecstasy,” she says.

  “Is that supposed to entice me?” I look back at the townie and then tell Liz, “Later.”

  “Okay,” she squeals and skips off.

  I look back at the townie, at his expression—there isn’t one—at the greasy T-shirt, and the ripped jeans, the long uncombed hair and the beautiful face, the strong tight body and the roman nose, unsure. Then I turn away and put on my sunglasses, scope the room; it’s late and snowing out, and there’s no one else available. When I look back at the townie he gives me what I think is a shrug. But am I imagining something, did I make the shrug up? Was I taking each drunken gesture and molding it into what I wanted? Just because the guy is wearing an Ohio T-shirt doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s from Ohio State.

  Yet, I make the decision to go home with the townie. I excuse myself and go to the restroom first. Someone’s written “Pink Floyd Rules” on the wall and I write underneath it. “Oh come on, grow up.” When I come out, waiting in line are Lizzie and Gerald, an actor who I’ve met a couple of times before. We were in a Strindberg play together two terms ago. Gerald: okay-looking, blond curly hair, a little too thin, nice suit.

  “I see you’ve got a devastating townie over there,” Gerald says. “Wanna share him with us?”

  “Gerald,” I say, looking him over; he waits expectantly. “No.”

  “Do you know him?” he asks.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know,” I mumble, craning my neck to make sure the townie’s still where I left him. “Do you?”

  “No,” Gerald says, “I know his girlfriend though,” and now he smiles.

  There’s a long silence. Someone cuts in front of us and closes the door of the bathroom. New song on the jukebox. A toilet flushes. I stare at Gerald and then back at the townie. I lean up against the wall and mutter “Shit.” A girl townie has already taken my stool at the bar. So I join Gerald and the delightful Lizzie for drinks at their booth. Gerald winks at me when the townie leaves with the girl who sat next to him.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Gerald wants to go to the weight room,” Lizzie says. “But just to watch, of course.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “What’s ‘racecar’ backward, Paul?” Gerald asks.

  I stare at the floor as I try to figure it out. “Rakacar? Raka—I don’t know. I give up.”

  “It’s ‘racecar,’” Lizzie squeals, excited.

  “How clever,” I murmur.

  Gerald winks at me again.

  SEAN After dinner at Jams, me and Robert go to Trader Vic’s. I’m wearing a paisley smoking jacket and a bowtie I found in my father’s closet at The Carlyle. Robert, who has just gotten back from Monte Carlo, is wearing a blue Fifties sports jacket and a green cummerbund given to him by his near-perfect girlfriend, Holly. He’s also wearing a bowtie he bought today when we went shopping but I don’t remember where it was he bought it. It could have been Paul Stewart or Brooks Brothers or Barney’s or Charivari or Armani—somewhere. Holly’s not back in town yet and we’re both horny and on the prowl. I fucked Holly once, while she was seeing Robert. I don’t think he knows. That, and both of us fucking Cornelia, are really the only things Robert and I have in common.

  I went by the house in Larchmont late last night. It was for sale. Harold still lives in back. My MG was still mercifully kept in one
of the garages, but my room upstairs was empty, and most of the furniture from the house had been removed and taken someplace I forgot to ask about. The house itself was locked up and I had to break in through one of the French windows in back. The house still seems enormous, even larger to me now than when I was growing up in it. But there hadn’t been much time spent in the house. School was at Andover, holidays were usually spent elsewhere. The house brought back few, almost no memories to me, the ones I had weirdly enough included Patrick. Playing in the snow with him on the front lawn, which seemed to stretch out for miles. Getting high and playing Ping-Pong with him in the rec room. There was the pool no one was allowed to swim in, and the rules about no noise. That was all I could dredge up, since that place was a transient’s home for me. I found the keys to the MG in a panel in one of the garages, and I started the car hoping Harold wouldn’t hear me. But he was standing there at the end of the drive, in the middle of a cold, snowy November night, and he opened the gate for me, dutiful to the end. I put a finger to my lips—sshhh—as I drove past him.

  Robert and I are sharing a scorpion bowl and smoking Camels. We’ve been staring at a table in back with four girls sitting at it—all very hot, all very blond.