Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Charlotte didn’t really absorb all the things Mr. Starling had to say after that. What he seemed to be saying was…he didn’t know what she was thinking about majoring in, but whatever it might be, she should consider working a few hours a week here in the Center for Neuroscience. Work in the laboratory with animals and with humans, using brain imaging, was the frontier. This sort of work, as he had mentioned in class, had already begun to re-create humankind’s—“the human beast’s, if you’d rather, Ms. Simmons”—conception of itself.

Yes! she said to everything and all of it—Yes! Yes! Yes! And Yes!

When she departed the Center for Neuroscience, it had become a sunny afternoon, and she flew like a swallow over the campus of Dupont University, with amazing speed and exhilarating swoops and dives, in Heaven, but with no destination. The flight itself…was the thing.

Charlotte, along with Mimi and Bettina, was standing in a long, loud, nervous line, made up mainly of Dupont students, on the sidewalk in front of the I.M. The sulfur streetlights turned their faces a chemical yellow and killed whatever color existed in their nostalgie de la boue gear. It didn’t do much for the I.M. itself, either. It made the red paint on the clapboard façade look like dried blood. The place could have used a nice big backlit electro-plastic sign as a distraction from its itchy appearance. Instead, in the interest of indicating that this establishment was for those in the know, there was only an ordinary address plaque over the entrance, reading “I.M. 2019”—2019 being the street number. In short, the I.M. was as fashionably seedy and worn-out as its young patrons’ clothes.

Fear and desire reigned here in the line: the desire to be where things are happening, on the one hand, and fear of what would happen if the gatekeepers caught you using a fake ID, which was illegal, on the other. At least three quarters of the line was underage. As usual, their nervousness took the form of the Fuck Patois, which they thought gave them a front of cool and confident twenty-one-year-old moxie.

SOME GUY: “…because she was wearing a miniskirt with nothing on underneath it and doing fucking keg-stands, that’s why.”

ANOTHER GUY: “The beaver smiles! That’s her best fucking feature. Don’t look at her face in the morning or you’ll get awfuck’s disease.”

SOME GIRL: “Oh shit, this ID says I’m thirty-fucking-one!”

GUY: “…won’t give me skull? Shit, she won’t give me her fucking digits.”

GIRL: “…yeah, and all he’ll fucking ever be is an ass-wipe.”

GUY: “…one dodgy fucking be-atch, if you ask me, yo.”

GUY: “…so why the fuck not?…”

GUY: “…don’t give a rat fuck, personally…”

GIRL: “…dis the fucker hard-core…”

GIRL: “The fuck she’s keeping it real!”

GIRL: “…can just go fuck himself…”

CHORUS: “I say fuck that!”

“I say fuck this!”

“I say fuck all.”

“Fuck off!”

“Oh, fuck.”

Momma. If Momma showed up right now and saw her, thought Charlotte, saw her in a line full of people talking Fuck Patois, about to sneak into a bar with a fake ID…Everybody does it, Momma…Everybody? The contempt Momma had for that creature of the herd, “everybody”! Everybody and their everybody-does-it violations of Christian teachings and the law! But Momma, I’m not going into the bar to enjoy it…An exploration is all it is…It was important that she see this legendary I.M. place for herself and find out what people got so excited about. Besides, it wasn’t her idea. It was Mimi’s. Mimi still played the role of the sophisticate among the three of them, but she was no longer patronizing. She no longer treated Charlotte as the clueless mountain girl. The status of Charlotte Simmons had risen another gradation after the two lacrosse players fought over her at the tailgate. Mimi had been more the benevolent mentor this time, as she told Charlotte and Bettina how they could fake their way into the bar. Mimi had had her own ID manufactured—she mysteriously declined to say how—and she could probably pass for twenty-one anyway. Once inside, she would find girls with real IDs, drivers’ licenses most likely, who looked more or less like Bettina and Charlotte. The pictures on drivers’ licenses were always distorted anyway. Then she would come back out and slip the bogus IDs to them. Yes, she said, since Charlotte wanted to know, fake IDs were technically illegal, but everybody uses them. If they went after everybody who used a fake ID, everybody at Dupont would have a record.

Everybody! A rush of guilt…Momma had not merely told her to obey every law, every rule, every regulation—she had conditioned her. Obedience in all things great and small was next to godliness. Sparta had three stoplights, all on Main. One Saturday when she was twelve, Charlotte was walking with Laurie, and Regina happened along. Without thinking twice about it, Regina crossed the street against the light. So Charlotte and Laurie did, too. Charlotte hated herself for days. She hadn’t had the courage to say, “You do what you want. I’m waiting for the light to change.”

By now Mimi, Bettina, and Charlotte were only nine or ten places back in line. Charlotte’s heart began banging away. She could see the gatekeepers, two men, standing out in front of the glass door. The one actually scrutinizing the IDs was short, wiry, swarthy, thirtyish, hawk faced, wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black pants. The other was a young giant—early twenties?—with closely cut, curly sandy-colored hair atop a great melon of a head supported by an even thicker neck…curiously tiny eyes and mouth. Charlotte knew that face…from where? The Saint Ray house! He had been the bouncer guarding the door to the stairway that led down to the so-called secret room! Now he was guarding the portal of the I.M., arms folded across his vast chest, expressionless as a mountain, towering over his little hawk-eyed colleague.

A piercing whine at the head of the line. “Whattaya mean? I’ve been in here a hundred times!”

It was a tall boy wearing a quilted vest and a T-shirt with the arms cut off—the better to reveal his Cybex-maxed upper arms. He thrust his head down belligerently toward the lithe hawk of a gatekeeper. The hawk’s mountain of a sidekick unfolded his arms—just that, unfolded them—and the protest was over. The tall guy with the Cybexed biceps left the line, he and two pals, muttering imprecations and threatening retribution.

So the guardians of the gate meant business! And the humiliated boy looked a lot older than Charlotte. A chill of fright and chagrin; she felt guilty, humiliated—revealed before all the world—and her time hadn’t even come yet.

But for the guilty, time speeds up. Now Mimi was before the hawk and the giant. Charlotte held her breath, hoping he would turn Mimi back, since that would bring their entire scheme to an end. But Mimi breezed on in, as she had predicted.

Charlotte and Bettina hung back to wait for her return. It seemed like no time before Mimi emerged, faking a jolly laugh as she slipped Bettina and Charlotte bootlegged IDs and hurried back in. Charlotte studied hers…a driver’s license, New York State, in the name of Carla Phillips, 500 West End Avenue, New York, New York, 10024. The picture didn’t look like Charlotte Simmons at all!…Well, maybe vaguely…Why don’t I just leave while there’s still time! I’m about to break the law! A grim Momma was eyeing her.

All too soon they were at the head of the line, approaching the hawk. Bettina went first. Charlotte’s face was already on fire. The man studied Bettina’s ID and then Bettina, the ID, and then Bettina again, oh so dubiously!—Charlotte’s heart was a panicked bird trapped in her rib cage—before waving Bettina through.