Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

The waiter, the little Caribbean army colonel, was at her shoulder again with her drink. She tasted it. It was awful!—so awful it made her laugh.

“Hoyt!” Her eyes were tearing, but she was laughing and holding the drink up before him. “What did you tell that man? This is sooooo strong! I don’t think this drink like…like ever knew an orange from…like…an orangutan!”

She found that a very funny remark—then realized she was shrieking, her words laced with laughter in a way that had seemed like so…overdoing it when other girls did it. But it probably didn’t matter, because it was so noisy here.

The conversation was roaring, and the boys were bawling out drunken cries. Charlotte looked up at Hoyt—who still had his arm around her waist—to get his reaction, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept beaming down at her in such a loving way. She beamed up at him. She did let her eyes dart past his right ear just once. She wanted to see Crissy and Nicole watching the two of them. Barely six feet away, Heady, in his solemn tuxedo, threw his head back, thrust his arms to the heavens as if supplicating God’s mercy, and cried out, “Oh, yessss! Woohoooooo!”—which Charlotte realized was the cry of a television animated cartoon character, Homer Simpson, when he opened a can of beer, tilted his head back, and took his first gulp. Only then did she notice the can of beer Heady held in one of his heavenward hands. Hoyt poured his…his…Dared she even let the word “love” into her mind as Hoyt looked at her that way? But the two Douche sisters were talking to Boo-man and his date and laughing…as if they were having a wonderful time.

Now Julian was coming toward them, and the cute brunette he had hit on was right by his side. Wait a minute…if Charlotte’s eyes weren’t deceiving her…Julian had his left hand down against his left thigh, and the brunette had her right hand down against her right thigh, and the two thighs were pressed practically flat against one another, and sandwiched in between the thighs, where they no doubt thought no one could see it, they had their fingers intertwined and—and what on earth were they doing? And they thought no one could see them doing it! It was so-o-o-o funny! She looked up at Hoyt to tell him—he would get such a laugh out of it—but he had been distracted by Vance. Uh-oh…Julian had spotted Nicole, who was no more than ten or twelve feet away, and his face became long, solemn, and guilty, and he disengaged fingers with the brunette and moved about a foot away from her, as if he were the most innocent boy in the world and on top of that a shade sad, and Charlotte had never seen anything so funny, and what was it Julian had kept saying to Hoyt—“You dawg, you”? Julian was now heading straight for Hoyt, with the girl tagging along a discreet half step behind, also with a who me? deadpan look on her face.

Now they were barely three steps away, and Charlotte, on impulse, rushed toward Julian, grinning—she couldn’t help it—and heard herself saying, “Why, Julian, you old playa , you, where have you been?” Bee-ehn—but she was laughing so hard she didn’t worry about a little hickism sneaking in, and she gave him a little touch on the posterior of his upper right arm, and two things happened. He gave her an astonished “Who me? What are you talking about?” expression, and simultaneously something swelled up under the hand she had on the back of his arm. She was mystified for a couple of heartbeats, and then she figured out what it was: his triceps muscle. Charlotte laughed and laughed. She removed her hand from his arm and held up a forefinger and wagged it and said, “Julian, you’re so vaaaiin!”

Julian looked at her as if he couldn’t understand what had come over her, and she laughed some more. For an instant she entertained the thought that maybe he really was mystified by this new “front-busting.” That was one of Julian’s favorite words, front-busting. It flew through her mind herky-jerky as a dove, and that only made her laugh some more. So-o-o-o vaaaaiiin! She began laughing so hard she had to lean over and put her hands on her knees and ride it out.

Hoyt came over and said, “Hey, wuz up, babe?”

“Wellll,” said Charlotte with a big sigh before catching her breath, “Julian’s so-o-oh vaaaain!” The very word vain threw her into another doubled-over paroxysm of laughter.

Hoyt said, “If you say so, babe,” and put his arm around her and pulled her tight against his side.

Charlotte decided that the new Charlotte Simmons was a big hit.

Presently, after much imploring by the little Caribbean army colonels, the roaring crowd headed for the part of their section that was beneath the lobby floor. There dinner awaited.

There were six round tables with about ten chairs at each one. One table was in the center, and the other five were clustered about it in more or less a circle, but you would have thought there were twice that many if you judged by the noise. As long as they were out in the open court, some of the racket dissipated in the thirty stories of empty air above it. In here, however, there was a ceiling, and even though it must have been twelve feet high, the Saint Rays were by now so drunk—and excited—they had reached that stage at which everything sounded funnier if shouted or cried out or yodeled with a manly, sex-obsessed red laugh, and the shouts, cries, and yodels hit the ceiling and bounced back until all was uproar. They sure looked better, the guys did, in their tuxedos and clean white shirts and all—even I.P., who had a date. She had beautiful dark hair. Charlotte couldn’t see her face from here. The black tux made his hips look not so gigantic. He made many jesting gestures for his date’s benefit, one of them being a funny snakelike thing he could make his huge, grown-together eyebrows do. Charlotte suddenly felt sentimental about I.P. He took such abuse from his fraternity brothers, it was nice to see him really happy, with a pretty girl at his side. Charlotte was happy herself and had enough goodwill to go around.

Once the boys took their seats and went to work on the lobster or some appetizer, the noise level dropped ever so slightly, just enough for Hoyt, sitting next to her, to shout across the table and introduce her to everyone. Out of the corner of her eye she saw I.P. come to a chair a few seats beyond Hoyt. She was disappointed to realize that aside from Hoyt, she didn’t know a soul—because she was feeling social, more so than at any time in her life. She recognized a couple of the guys, whom she always saw playing quarters or Beirut in the entry gallery outside the library at the Saint Ray house. One was sitting right next to her, a lanky guy with thatchy hair, like a thatched roof, good-looking in a bit of a gawky way, and she could even hear in her mind’s ear the peculiar way he groaned over disappointments at those stupid beer games and his ironic cheers and the clapping he did when someone on his team “scored” by arcing a Ping-Pong ball into a cup of beer, but she didn’t know him and didn’t even catch his name.

The last person Hoyt introduced her to was I.P.’s date, who was sitting on Hoyt’s other side. “Charlotte?—this is Gloria.”

This Gloria turned her head toward Charlotte, and—ohmygod, it was her, the girl she had caught Julian holding hands with. She didn’t seem to recognize Charlotte, but Charlotte sure recognized her. She stared at her as if saying hello, but actually trying to find some fatal flaw. She tried and tried and finally had to face facts. Yeah, her mouth was a little wide—but her upper lip had a curve like a bow, as in a bow and arrow, and her bottom lip was full. Her face had the sort of dark-lady cast that promises forbidden love. Her eyes were so over–made up they looked like a pair of black craters with big gleaming white orbs at the bottom, but Charlotte had to face facts: it was a look guys probably went crazy over. Her hair was a lush, silky, shimmering black, and the little black dress—“little” didn’t begin to describe it. It plunged so low in the front that when the girl was leaning over the way she was at this moment…