Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Vance assumed his official presidential pose. “I’ve just had a conversation with a distinguished gentleman from the Hyatt Ambassador Hotel whom I reminded of the words of Saint Raymond himself, which, translated from the Latin, mean, ‘Fucking put it on the bill.’”

Laughter, applause, whistles. Julian started yelling, “Saint Ray! Saint Ray! Saint Ray!” hoping to get a chant going. A couple of guys joined in, but it fizzled.

Vance remained standing. “Gentlemen…let me recall our all-too-eloquent toast to the ladies, which I would gladly repeat…if modesty and the impatience of Saint Ray’s resident crystacidal maniac, I.P., did not prevent me.”

Gales of laughter, clapping, whistling, unintelligible shouts. By this stage of the evening, the brothers were drunk enough to believe that Vance’s verbose buffoonery actually gave the brotherhood an aura of elegance. I.P. was in Seventh Heaven. He kept beaming at Gloria and then around the room and back at Gloria, honestly believing that Vance was paying him a great compliment as a rake among rakes of coolness and social wattage.

“But now,” Vance continued, “it is time for me to propose a toast to you.” He paused. The ensuing silence, in a roomful of drunks in an advanced stage of wreckage, was a tribute to the periphrastic performance he was putting on. Charlotte wondered if anybody in the room other than herself knew the adjective “periphrastic.” She doubted it. A smile of superiority stole over her face. And the coolest guy in all of Dupont, who has fallen in love with me, is massaging my back, and everyone in this room can see that.

“Ladies,” Vance was saying, “you happen to be in a roomful of men who this year have turned Saint Ray into a brotherhood as awesome and…and…and tight”—“tight” came off a bit lamely, since “awesome” meant the same thing, but everybody was still with him—“as Cy’s Lamborghini.” He smiled approvingly at Cyrus Brooks, whose daddy had given him the most expensive sports roadster in the world, a Lamborghini Leopardo, then added, “Or at least after Tully’s has repaired it for the we’re-not-fucking-countingth time, and before Cy takes it out again and eats the transmission because he’s still wondering what the fuck this manual shift shit is.”

Laughter, catcalls at Cy’s expense. Vance continued smiling at the young Lamborghini owner. “No, I mean it, you guys have been fucking amazing. This is my fourth year as a Saint Ray, and this frat gets more solid by the year. The house of the Lip-locked Saint”—burst of laughter—the guys found that extremely funny-elegant—“has never been so completely one for all and all for one before. It’s been the biggest honor of my life, being president of Saint Ray, and I want to thank you, and I want you to know I love you guys—hey, wait a minute, ‘All for one and all on one’…that’s the fucking Hell’s Angels’ motto!”

Vance had just barely pulled himself out of the pool of bathos as he was going under for the third time.

“Come to think of it, we’ve got a Hell’s Angel. We’ve got a guy who makes national political big shots piss in their pants.” He was looking at Hoyt. Charlotte had to twist her neck and look up to see Hoyt’s expression. He had a small and rather cold smile on his face. He stopped massaging her back.

Vance lifted a champagne glass halfway up and declaimed, “Gentlemen, to you, the brothers of Saint Ray.” He raised the glass up high, then extended it toward his brethren and panned about to all six tables. “You’ve made me proud, you’ve made yourselves and every single one of us proud, you’ve…uh…you’ve”—uh-oh, he was running into tricolon trouble again—“you’re…the shit! To…us!”—whereupon he tilted his head back and propelled the whole glassful down his gullet.

More pandemonium. The Saint Rays rose to their feet again. On top of the shouts, cries, and clapping came ooo-ahs and ferocious foot-stomping, which would have rocked the floor had they been in a building fifty years older. The floor here in the atrium court was a synthetic country tile set in concrete.

The guys had totally forgotten their “revered ladies,” so enchanted were they by the notion they were the best there ever was. The ladies, for their part—Charlotte could see Crissy and Nicole and, right here, Gloria slumped back in their chairs, gloriously bored and casting knowing glances at one another, trapped, as they were, in this hot tub of sentimentality. But Hoyt, still on his feet, clapping, looked down at Charlotte and gave her a big wink—and the loving smile! She felt like leaping up and giving him a kiss on the mouth right in the middle of this supreme moment of male bonding.

They began to take their seats again, all but I.P. He stood by his chair, lurching slightly as if from a psychomotor malfunction, the glass of red wine in his hand sloshing about so perilously it was hard to keep your eyes off it. He was eagerly trying to get Vance’s attention. Somebody else at another table was tapping his glass, primed to make a toast. I.P. began lurching and shouting, “Vance! Yo! Hey, Vance!”

Vance ignored him at first, but then gave in, saying, “Okay, I.P. Mr. I.P. has the floor.”

I.P. hoisted his sloshing glass up almost to lip level and said in a bellowing voice, “I just want to say—I just want to say…”

He appeared to blank out. He was still holding the glass aloft, but his eyes seemed to be fixed on…nothing…somewhere in the middle distance.

Julian began applauding. “Well said, Ipper! Next!”

I.P. wasn’t having it. Still louder he shouted, “I just wanna say…I just wanna say…”

“Then just fucking say it!” yelled Julian. “You—” He didn’t complete his characterization.

Laughter and whistles.

“I JUST WANNA SAY…this place is the fucking greatest place, the fucking best house on campus, and I just wanna thank all you guys for such a fuckin’ amazing time this year, and that fuckin’ goes for you, too, Vance—you’re the fuckin’ greatest…uh…” I.P. blanked out again. He couldn’t seem to remember Vance’s title at Saint Ray.

“Bullshitter?” suggested Boo-man.

Laughter, applause, catcalls.

I.P. had his mouth open, ready to say more, but an unbelievably loud whistle came from a table beyond Vance’s.

“Yo! Hey, yo!” It was Harrison, who was on his feet, pumping his fist straight up and down. He was so drunk and was punching the air so hard that he seemed about to dislocate his shoulder.

Laughter…which Harrison interpreted as encouragement. He beamed a smile and declaimed, “I just wanna say one thing, but like…that’s the most important thing, and I just wanna say, this frat gets the hottest fucking chicks on campus!”

Convulsive laughter, sarcastic whoops and howls. “Good job, Harrison!”…“Real smooth, baby!”…“It’s Don Juan!”…“From now on you gotta play with a helmet, dawg!”—insinuating that Harrison suffered too many head injuries playing lacrosse—and the guys began looking around at the girls to see how they took that one. Crissy, sitting next to Vance, was doubled over and laughing so hard she finally held her own head, her palms over her temple.

Harrison, taking it all at face value, assuming they were laughing with him, grinned foolishly and tried to lean on the shoulder of his date—who was seated—to steady himself, but he overshot his target and fell into the edge of the table. When he righted himself, he continued to smile foolishly and aimlessly at everyone, then sat down on his chair with a thud.

More toasts…each more incoherently reaching for superlatives than the one before. The event was rapidly falling to pieces. Charlotte drank some more wine.

Dinner was over, and the D.J. got the music going in the dance section out in the atrium itself. The guys stood around the edges telling each other outrageously funny but mainly loud things. It was that time of the evening…