Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

He rolled off her! He sat beside her but not looking at her, his back arched, his hands reaching down to his feet—he was taking his shoes off! And now he was leaning back and unzipping his pants and leaning forward slipping them over his hips and abandoning them on the floor—and was this the point at which she should say something, just so he would be straight about the limits? Yes, it probably was, and so she started to say—but the smile!—he was straight above her now, supporting his weight with his arms, the heels of his hands pressing down on the bed on either side of her shoulders—smiling his smile of…love!—and she had her lips parted, about to say—but how could she say it at precisely this moment when his smile—and only his plaid boxer shorts remained—not that she could see—but the contour of it forcing the plaid way out—no mistaking it—and she became very conscious of her bare breasts, which she couldn’t very well clap her hands over and be Miss Modesty all of a sudden—since that would be so little-girlish. He was bringing that smile down closer and closer to her face. She thought he was going to kiss her on the mouth, but instead he kissed her neck, nuzzling away with his lips. Ohmygod! She went from being dizzy to being deliriously dizzy. His smile! His kissing her neck! She couldn’t very well—although she should—not at this moment, however—not even as he lowered his mouth and began kissing her upper chest and then stuck out his tongue and then massaged her skin with his lips. And now he was on her right breast—right on it!—doing the same things with his tongue and his lips—and then the left breast—the same thing—was this what men did? And then he moved lower, down the midline on her upper abdomen, down to her belly button, which he stuck his tongue into briefly—was this something that men did?—and down, down—until there was no more when and if about it. Now she had to speak up. Suppose he went—but surely men didn’t do that—and he didn’t. Instead his tongue veered off to the side and worked its way down the gulley from her ilial crest down to where her panties began. He put a forefinger under the elastic at the top on this side and slowly ran it across her lower belly just above the level of the mons veneris to that side, where he used the forefinger to pull the panties down over her hips and low upon her buttocks, and then he put his other forefinger under the elastic and slowly slid it back toward this side, but the latitude was much lower now, and his finger slid slowly through the hair on her mons veneris and not a shiver but a tremor ran through her—a muscle in her lower abdomen actually convulsed—and inside her—and ohmygod she felt so wet—and he pulled the panties down below the buttocks on this side—she was just flowing out—she didn’t even know that existed!—as he pulled the panties down over her thighs and knees and then all the way off her, and now she was stark-naked, and he was still kissing her lower abdomen where it was so soft and unprotected and then swirling his big old tongue around—

Hooking up. So now she’d really done it, hooked up. This maybe qualified as heavy hooking up—although not really heavy, since they were still on first base, or maybe on the way to second, even though it was heavy, it was just an experience, an experiment, and Laurie’s words sailed, verbatim, through her brain: “College is the only time in your life when you can really experiment,” even though Laurie had gone all the way…So congested down there…so sensitive…so many warm secretions—seemed like pints—now!—she couldn’t wait any longer!—she was too vulnerable—certainly he knew…but now it was time to make sure he knew the limits. She lifted her head so that she could look at him. She was staring right at the top of his head and could see his thick, thatchy hair bobbing ever so slightly as he kissed and licked and licked and kissed—only now he was running his tongue over her skin in sort of spirals that were looping lower and lower on her abdomen until—had his tongue just brushed the top of the hair on her mons?—now!—act! She summoned up her will and tried to give his head a jolt with the heels of both her hands, but lying flat like this on a soft bed, she couldn’t get the leverage she wanted and it certainly was a mild jolt, if it was a jolt at all, and he acted as if she were signaling him to slide his head down a few inches farther and his mouth and his tongue—ohmygod!

“Hoyt!” She said it sharply.

He immediately stopped and rose up, supporting himself on the bed with the full length of his arms, and he looked down at her with his most wonderful look of love, only the nervous version, which was all right because he did know the limits and he was stopping voluntarily. In fact, he slid back down the bed and completely off it. She let out her breath. But what?—he was unsnapping his shorts at the waist—

“Hoyt?”

“Yeah?”

Obviously his mind was not on what she was saying, because he was looking down and stepping out of one leg of the shorts and then the other, and—ohmygod! In her whole life she had never actually seen such a thing in such a state—although she could tell—dear Brian!—she had only seen her little brothers’ when they were smaller and her father’s once when he stepped about a foot out of the outdoor shower looking for a towel—but…that…ball-peen hammer…it looked like a heavy ball-peen hammer!…a ball-peen hammer with a translucent sheath over it, and now his knees were on the bed and he was crawling toward her on all fours—

“Hoyt!”

“Whuh.”

It wasn’t even a question! It was a grunt half turned into a word. Words didn’t register with him any longer.

On all fours—and he kept crawling. Did he actually expect her to sleep with him? Sleep with was the actual phrase that blipped through her brain, and in the next instant the absurdity hit her. Sleep with? Ball-peen hammer? She was naked. He was naked.

“Hoyt!”

“What?”

Charlotte smiled nervously and said, “I don’t know about this.” She was so hoarse all of a sudden.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I have something.” Whereupon he reached over to the bedside table and took a condom out of his wallet and held it up in the air for a moment. See?

“Uhhh…I don’t mean that. I mean I don’t know if we should do this.” Very hoarse. Couldn’t even make herself smile any longer. Hoyt’s arms had already crawled as far as the midpoint of her thighs. He already loomed over her…a hulk with a big ball-peen hammer…But he stopped. He looked as if he had been poleaxed at the base of the skull. He looked stunned…and beyond stunned, devastated.

“But I really want to make love to you.” Oh, what a pleading warble was lodged in his throat! “I’ve wanted to make love to you from the moment I first saw you.”

“But you don’t understand—”

“I understand what I felt—and what I feel!” Quite dramatic, he was. “I came up to you as soon as I saw you at our party. I knew! There were so many—but there was only you. There is only you!”

“But you don’t understand—I’ve never—I’ve never—”

“You’re a virgin?”

Charlotte lay there, her lips parted in a stuporous way and her mind racing and racing before she finally let the damning admission out: “Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll be really slow, then,” said Hoyt. A certain smile was on his face, the reassuring buck-up, won’t-hurt-a-bit smile, not just of a physician but of a healer whose devotion to her well-being—to her joyful flight through this trial—ran deeper than the very oath of Hippocrates, “First, do no harm.”

“It’s okay. Don’t be scared. I’ve wanted this for so long. It’ll feel good. I promise.”