Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“Oh, great fucking idea,” said Julian. “You ever heard of the middle of winter? It’s about fifteen degrees out there right now.”

“But that’s the whole point!” said Hoyt. “That’s the whole point! It won’t kill you—and they’ll get the fucking message!”

Vance and Julian looked at each other.

Adam now saw his apartment, his lopsided little slot, as a sanatorium for a single patient, the girl he loved…the love of his life. He wanted to proclaim his love! He literally wished he could go up on a promontory with Charlotte at his side and put one arm around her and lift the other to the heavens, saying: “Behold! Gaze upon her ineffable beauty! This is the girl I love! She…is my very life!” But who was there to proclaim it to? He knew the Mutants better than anyone else, but to proclaim to this intellectual cabal, “I’m in love!”—even the thought of all the stupid laughter and sidewise glances was more than he could bear.

At the same time, he had a deep worry, which he imagined was lodged in some posterior lobe of his brain. Jojo’s plagiarism case was unresolved. Nothing seemed to be happening. The case was dormant, to all outward appearances. But he had lied to the judicial officer…on the advice of Buster Roth, who was not his friend. He could be thrown out of Dupont! He couldn’t imagine it. It was as unreal as the thought of death. Yet there it was! He had dug the grave himself! This unimaginable thing…could happen!

Every possible moment he spent with Charlotte. He slept next to her in his little twin bed, elated by her dependence on him—she could get no sleep at all unless he held her for a couple of hours or more—and frustrated by the fact that sleeping next to her was a different preposition from sleeping with her. “Different preposition” was the very word that formed in his thoughts. “Witty,” he said to himself, without the faintest tinge of amusement.

In any case, he couldn’t spend every moment with her. This was final exam week for the first semester, and he had to ace these exams in order to be in the running for a Rhodes scholarship. At the same time he had sworn to himself to revive “The Night of the Skull Fuck”…for the Wave in some way that would make Hoyt Thorpe realize: Vengeance is ours, saith Charlotte Simmons and Adam Gellin, and we shall be paid. On top of that, a mundane but time-consuming matter: four hours of pizza deliveries every night. He was paid by the hour for tutoring athletes. But the Athletic Department had stopped giving him assignments. He, Adam Gellin, Millennial Mutant and prince, Prince of Love in a fairy tale, had to hop in that decrepit Bitsosushi and hustle PowerPizza pies.

Charlotte had taken to lying listlessly in bed during the day. If she got up, she never wore anything but Adam’s synthetic School of Hudson Bay lumberjack shirt. Obviously, she had no intention at all of leaving the apartment. One of Adam’s most urgent duties was making sure she did pull herself together, at least long enough to get dressed—in the same clothes she arrived in—and go take her exams. She protested that she couldn’t take them, because she hadn’t been able to study. Adam assured her she was a genius, that she had worked so hard and brilliantly during the first half of the semester, the momentum she already had would be enough. The past was the past, it was time to put it behind her and move forward into the billion-volt future that awaited her and her unparalleled life of the mind, and so forth and so on—dreadful, dutiful mouthfuls of clichés, in short, but he could tell that his flattery and optimism were gradually beginning to work.

Inwardly, sympathy, money, and charity were battling it out with an incessantly smoldering, smoking, smitten lust for virginiticide at the hands of and the mouth, breasts, and loins of his beloved. One moment charity would be telling him he should take her to the Health Center and put her in professional hands for treatment of depression. This girl wasn’t merely unhappy, he realized after the first day, she was depressed. But lust rebutted: that would really finish her off…sinking into the theory-quacking innards of the twenty-first-century versions of the madhouse—being perhaps declared “clinically” depressed and sent home—he couldn’t let that happen. What she needed was love, caring attention, encouragement, praise, visions of a radiant future…and order. He needed to establish a positive routine for her. Yes!—you must take your exams. Yes!—you must have a neat appearance whether you leave the apartment or not. And to himself: Yes!—this miserable poverty-rotted slot I live in must have the appearance of order.

The first day Charlotte went out, quaking, for an exam—neuroscience—Adam inserted the eyes of a movie drill sergeant into his head and saw this place for what it was: an inexcusable rat’s nest. And the bathroom…in a common hall…since all four apartments, meaning four boys who were little more than nodding acquaintances, used it, nobody ever found it worth his while to keep it clean. The filth, the foul odors, the grime in the crack where the tile floor met the tub, which had corroded green copper stains stretching out a foot or more from the drain, the shaved beard stubble hair accumulating in a sludge in the bottom of the basin, the virulent ring of sludge near the top of the basin, the grit on the tiles, which were the old-fashioned tiny octagonal kind, cracked here and there, the black mold that was spreading over the shower curtain, which was an ancient sheet of plastic the color of intravenous feeding tubing that drooped where three curtain-rod rings were missing, the paint blistering and peeling on the ceiling thanks to lack of ventilation—Adam had never seen all this with real eyes, Charlotte’s eyes, before. Bringing order to this disgrace became a mission. He found a snow shovel, an old gray wood-backed scrub brush and a one-fourth-full bottle of ammonia in the cellar. He scraped the pox-erupted paint off the ceiling…got down on all fours and scrubbed the mold and paint poxchips off the shower curtain, the scum from the basin, the corroded copper stains and poxchips out of the tub and—on hands and knees—the tile floor, nearly asphyxiating himself with the ammonia…picked up all stray garments and other detritus in his slot…made the bed with hospital corners the way his mother did…swept up the underbrush of dust balls, hair balls, mashed Band-Aids, ATM receipts, dead Snapple bottles of diluted fruit juice concoctions, black plastic caps with pocket clips from thrown-away throwaway ballpoint pens, junk-mail flyers, and magazine insert cards. It took him more than three hours.

No sooner had he put all random objects, his sneakers, the heaps of paper on his desk, his glasses cases, his medicine kit, and his Community Coffee mug, which he had to carry back and forth to the bathroom, into neat rows and piles, than Charlotte returned from the neuroscience examination. She entered the slot with a miserable look on her face. Adam waited for it to brighten when she noticed the new shining order of the place. He smiled, opened his arms wide in a comically exaggerated fashion, and said:

“Welcome to the new, brighter life chez Gellin!”

Charlotte rushed into his arms, threw her arms about his waist, lay her head on his chest, and burst into heartrending tears.

“Oh, Adam, I butchered it, I butchered it, I buh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh….” The convulsions came so fast, she couldn’t even complete the word.

“I seriously doubt—”

“I didn’t halfway study enough! It was so horrible! Now everyone’s going to give up on me! I’ve let everybody dow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-own…” She gulped for breath. “Mr. Starling, Miss Pennington…everyboh-