The Rules of Attraction

...and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin's room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or Junior and usually somestimes at her boyfriend's place off-campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N.Y.U., a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed to Get Screwed par

[voiceover] I watched him with growing intensity as he refilled the pipe in the dark and smokey din of the room. He delicately fingered what looked like dried moss to me, and it struck me then that I liked Sean because he looked, well, slutty. A boy who'd been around. A boy who couldn't remember if he was Catholic or not.

[voiceover] Three months later, the handsome dunce was having an affair with a friend of mine. Within a year he was a full-blown queen and telling people I couldn't get it up. Luck has nothing to do with anything.

A great numb feeling washes over me as I let go of the past and look forward to the future. Pretend to be a vampire. I don't really need to pretend, because it's who I am, an emotional vampire. I've just come to expect it. Vampires are real. That I was born this way. That I feed off of other people's real emotions. Search for this night's prey. Who will it be?

[voiceover, after getting high] I need to get some more pot. I'm running out. Then I need to get laid. Where the fuck was Lauren tonight? That Lara girl was kind of hot. I could bang her and feel good about it. But I'd rather have Lauren. I wonder why? It would just ruin my illusion of her purity. Whoa, is that really what I want?

[pause] I need to get laid. [sniffs] Then I need to get more pot. I wonder if Lauren goes wild during sex. I wonder if she comes easily. Or at all. I won't go to a bed with a girl who doesn't. If I can't make a girl come, then why bother? It's like asking questions in a letter. Hm, I'm hungry.

Since when does fucking somebody else mean that I'm not faithful to you? I only had sex with her because I'm in love with you.

[reading a love letter, voice-over] Got you. You're mine now. For the rest of the day, week, month, year, life. Have you guessed who I am? Sometimes I think you have. Sometimes when you're standing in a crowd I feel those sultry, dark eyes of yours stop on me. Are you too afraid to come up to me and let me know how you feel? I want to moan and writhe with you and I want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "I love you I love you I love you" while stripping. I want you so bad it stings. I want to kill the ugly girls that you're always with. Do you really like those boring, naive, coy, calculating girls or is it just for sex? The seeds of love have taken hold, and if we won't burn together, I'll burn alone.

[last line] I didn't know where I was going, some place unoccupied I hoped, at first I thought there were things about her I would never forget, But in the end all I could think about was-...

I no longer know who I am and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger.

I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in The Informers. And I was totally caught off-guard by the amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited.

I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly: I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But I don’t really mind if they do.

It might be my favorite book of mine. It was a very exciting time in my life. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for.