Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

The rest of the trip fell into a regular pattern. The frat boys and the sorority girls sang songs—all of them seemed to know all the words to everything—they shared gossip—the two bitches were superb at filleting people’s reputations while seeming to be merely adding little details—they turned whatever they could into sexual innuendo—they indulged their predilection for Shit Patois. Charlotte had been aware of Fuck Patois from the day she arrived at Dupont, but it was not until spending hour after hour after hour cooped up in this SUV that she realized how cool it apparently was to use shit in every way possible: to mean possessions (“Where’s your shit?”), lies or misleading explanations (“Are you shitting me?” “We need a shit detector”), drunk (“shit-faced”), trouble (“in deep shit”), ineptitude (“couldn’t play point guard for shit”), care about (“give a shit”), rude, thoughtless, disloyal (“really shitty thing to do”), not kidding (“no shit?”), obnoxiously unpleasant (“he’s a real shit”), mindless conversation (“talking shit,” “shooting the shit”), confusing story (“or some such shit”), drugs (“you bring the shit?”), to egest (“take a shit”), to fart in such a way that it becomes partly egestion (“shart”), a trivial matter (“a piece a shit”), unpleasantly surprised (“he about shit a brick”), ignorance (“he don’t know shit”), pompous man (“the big shit,” “that shitcake”), hopeless situation (“up Shit Creek”), disappointment (“oh, shit!”), startling (“holy shit!”), unacceptable, inedible (“shit on a shingle”), strategy (“oh, that shit again”), feces, literally (“shit”), slum (“some shithook neighborhood”), meaningless (“that don’t mean shit”), et cetera (“and massages and shit”), self-important (“he thinks he’s some shit”), predictably (“sure as shit”), very (“mean as shit”), verbal abuse (“gave me shit”), violence (“before the shit came down” or “hit the fan,” “don’t start no shit,” “won’t be no shit”). Still, they didn’t neglect Fuck Patois, and they talked some more about how many shots they had at the after-party after the party at the Deke House (Delta Kappa Epsilon), and they philosophized about how you shouldn’t party much past four a.m. because you risked getting the dread afternoon hangover. Hoyt was as absorbed in all this as the rest of them. He’d be looking straight ahead to keep his eyes on the road, but Charlotte could practically see his brain rotating 180 degrees so he could be in back with them. Periodically he would turn toward her and put his right hand on her left forearm and smile and look oh so deeply into her eyes, as if there were something…profound…going on between them. All of this took ten seconds at most. She tried to work it out in her mind that this was his way of saying that no matter whatever else might be claiming his attention, he was always thinking of her. Sometimes he would lean toward her and sing a line or two of a song in her ear, a song he and the other four were having such a merry time singing, which she obviously didn’t know. A couple of times he put his arm around her and leaned over so far that their heads touched, and a couple of times he placed his hand gently on the midpoint of her inner left thigh. Ordinarily she would have pushed it away, since Vance, Julian, and the two Douche girls might be able to see it, but Hoyt’s affection was the only thing that included her in the trip at all, any chance of social redemption for her Sparta rat-tat-tat at Crissy. That gaffe hung in the foul air of the Suburban like an odor. Hoyt’s attentions were like maintenance. He had to feed the pet periodically to keep it calm until they got to Washington.

She ransacked her brain for conversational gambits…and invariably wished she hadn’t tried. Vance happened to mention that it was no use trying to talk to the president of the Deke House unless you brought along your shit detector. So Charlotte piped up, “They actually have such a thing in neuroscience now. You attach—I think it’s about a dozen—electrodes to somebody’s scalp? And you start asking questions? And a certain part of the person’s brain lights up on this screen they have if they’re not telling the truth. It has nothing to do with emotions and nervousness and all that, the way an ordinary lie detector does. It’s called a PET reporter gene slash reporter probe—”

By the time she got that far, she could read the numb, torpid expression on everybody’s face, and her voice trailed off feebly: “I know that’s kind of a long name, PET…reporter…gene…” She tried to smile to indicate that she realized it all sounded kind of…nerdy…and that that was what made it funny…

Vance’s response to this conversational nugget was a single “Hmmmh,” whereupon he turned to Julian and said, “So yesterday I ask this big shitbird, I ask him—”

Once more Charlotte crashed and burned.

They came around a big bend…and there it was…the Potomac…and on the other side, Washington…The nation’s capital!—and she, Charlotte Simmons, from Alleghany County, North Carolina, was arriving as one of the hundred best high school students in the nation, a Presidential Scholar—to be honored, to meet the President, to have made public what she already knew inside: Charlotte Simmons, emerging from the hollows on the other side of the mountain, was destined for great things. The nation’s capital! She made Miss Pennington drive her around the circle past the Lincoln Memorial four, maybe five times so she could get a look at Daniel Chester French’s statue of Lincoln, which stirred her as he looked down from way up there in his majestic chair in a way that not all the photographs or films in the world could have prepared her for. And now she approached that same great city in a barren gray gloaming, with a frat boy named Hoyt Thorpe at the wheel and four sarcastic, foulmouthed strangers who had no interest whatsoever in her presence—in fact resented it and made fun of it—and what was it that stirred her now? At best, anxiety; at worst, dread.

Traffic on the bridge was heavy, and when they were about two hundred yards from the Lincoln Memorial, a galaxy of red taillights lit up in front of them, and traffic came to a dead halt. Charlotte felt an overwhelming urge to get out of the car—to just open the door without a word, get out, give them all a little wave good-bye, and disappear. She had—what?—thirty seconds? twenty seconds? before the traffic started moving again. But she had only twenty dollars. How could she possibly get back? Never mind that! There’s the Lincoln Memorial! You know that grand figure! It is wonder, ambition, honesty, purity of purpose made manifest in marble! Go! Literally sit at his feet! The rest will take care of itself! Yes…but how could she just come trooping back to Little Yard and announce that she had aborted her big triumph…

I am Charlotte Simmons, she who is willing to face risks…and take risks! For I am not like the others…

Too late. The traffic started moving again. The Vietnam Memorial—couldn’t see it from here; too dark out, in any case. The Washington Monument—a vague silhouette in the distance…not stirring…dim, dying, shaming…Did any of this mean any thing to anyone else in this car? They were on Connecticut Avenue, crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, meaning the White House was only a couple of hundred yards…that way. She had been there! She had shaken hands with the President of our nation! Charlotte Simmons! A Presidential Scholar! Miss Pennington, one of her inevitably all-wrong print dresses covering her stout form, honored as her mentor! All that—just seven months ago! What is tonight—

Now the lights of commerce on lower Connecticut Avenue were the firmament. They came to Dupont Circle—what grim irony…Dupont Circle—and took Massachusetts Avenue to the northwest—and Charlotte could see it in her mind’s eye—and there it was—the British embassy!—such a grand Georgian palace!—the Scholars had been given a special tour—the amazing breakfront with a palm motif from the palace at Brighton Beach—a world was opening up! The memory tempted her, but somehow she knew it would end up like the PET reporter gene/reporter probe, so she said nothing, and if anybody else knew that they were passing one of the great architectural gems of our nation’s capital—or even thought of this city as “our” anything other than the location of our hotel—they certainly contained their excitement successfully.