Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

That brought a burst of approval from the crowd of blue-jeaners and spurred the speaker on to greater heights.

“The sheer ignorance of it actively victimizes those who are the most vulnerable and defenseless, the children of this country! Victimizes them and subjects them to unspeakable abuse!”

A roar of approval, but Adam put the placard in front of his face again. He wasn’t joining in. Whoever this old guy was, he was a foxy old bastard. He had just happened to have to divulge that he was married and had two children. Oh, of course, to be gay was 100 percent terrific, maybe it was far, far better to be gay, but he just happened to let it out of the bag that he was a straight cat, he was, he was. Adam resented that. This faculty member, whoever he was, could score big points by appearing at the Stand Up Straight for Gay Day rally—but with a microphone to let the world know he himself was no fucking faggot…while Adam Gellin had to stand here stock-still and silent, holding a sign up over his head that said QUEER in big letters. Why couldn’t he have a microphone, too, or at least add a line to his sign? Now it said,

FREE SPEECH

IS QUEER,

TOO!

Why couldn’t he add,

AND NOT JUST

STRAIGHT

LIKE ME!

Damn, that was longer than what was already there…The damned placard by itself would have to be six feet high. With the stick…the thing would end up eight or nine feet tall…

The old guy was really soaring now, barrel rolls, outside loops, power dives, inverted spins…There was no holding him back…

Who was he, though? Overcome by curiosity, Adam sidled over to Camille, who was once more a Praetorian guard. He was careful to keep his sign facing front and his face behind it.

“Who is that?” he said.

“Jerome Quat,” said Camille out the side of her mouth. “He’s one of the few faculty members with guts. The rest just sign petitions.”

“Jerome Quat?” Adam was startled. “Teaches history?”

Camille nodded yes. A tremor went through Adam’s solar plexus. His heart started banging as if it had an appointment somewhere else. Jojo’s history professor!—the very one who had him and Jojo trapped inside a box like a couple of insects! This was him!

Adam’s every instinct told him to vanish—now. But he couldn’t very well bolt in the middle of the guy’s talk…Randy and the guilt factor…So he just stood there with the QUEER placard over his face, thinking…Gradually his mind caught up with his amygdala…

Mr. Jerome Quat came down, at length, from the heights of oratory and stood at the podium accepting the applause and cheers—real cheers—and one of the current undergraduate chants of approval, which went, Wooo wooo wooo wooo! Camille had joined in and was going wooo wooo wooo wooo as she put her placard down and hurried from her post to go back behind the dais and congratulate him. Adam followed her. Quat had descended from the dais at last and was currently thronged by Fist leaders and fans…and seemed to feel no urge to hurry away from their flattery and gratitude and more flattery.

Camille was elbowing her way to the great man with typical Deng doggedness. Adam stayed on her heels, even elbowed his way past an odd body or two the way she did. He put his hand on her shoulder. She spun about angrily but then saw who it was.

“He’s awesome!” he said to Camille. “He’s the Man! I never heard him speak before! I gotta meet him!”

“I’ll introduce you!” said Camille. “He’s the only one with any fucking guts!”

When she reached Quat, she raised her hand to give him a high five, and he slapped her palm with gusto. “Mr. Quat, you’re the only straight professor on the whole fucking faculty with any fucking guts!”

Far from being taken aback, Quat threw an arm around her, squeezed her to him and said, “It’s Jerry, Camille…Jerry. You’re the one with guts! The way you sent that bunch of frat boys packing—that was golden!”

They proceeded to do quite a duet in that fashion before Camille was aware Adam was planted right in front of them, barely thirty inches away.

“Mr. Quat—”

“Jerry.”

“—this is my friend Adam Gellin.”

“Adam Gellin…,” said Quat, as if ruminating…

“I told you about the Millennial Mutants?” said Camille. “Adam’s one of us. There’s supposed to be all these liberal straight guys who are going to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Fist? A lot of them are going to—but they’re dicks—”

“ ‘Dicks’? Camille, I love you, kid!” said Quat with a great chortle.

“—and they don’t show, but Adam did. He was right down there in front of the podium with a placard.”

Quat shook hands with Adam and began ruminating again. “Adam Gellin…Why do I know your name? Just the other day…”

“Adam writes for the Wave,” said Camille. “He wrote the story about the trustees and their Buddy Club. You see that?”

“Everybody saw that! Congratulations,” he said to Adam. “The way you made those pompous—but that isn’t what I was thinking about…It was something else…It was just the other day, too…”

Adam took a deep breath—and held it. Odds…evens. Acey-deucey…He thought of Charlotte…waiting for him. Damn it! This time he wasn’t going to let himself be frozen with timidity.

“Mr. Quat,” he said, “I think I can tell you why. Until recently I was a tutor for the Athletic Department. I was the tutor for Jojo Johanssen.”

He pursed his lips and stared straight into Quat’s eyes. He tried to resist swallowing, but he couldn’t. He’d said it—and now he was in play.

Quat didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he began nodding his head. “Ahhh,” he said. “I see.” More nodding.

He seemed as unsure of what was happening as Adam did.

Later that afternoon Adam opened his cell phone with such a feeling of elation that it even dispelled—for the moment—his fear of the Quat situation. He immediately called Greg at the Wave.

After keeping him hanging—for about five minutes, it felt like—Greg came on the phone and said, testily, “What is it, Adam? We’re on deadline here.”

“This’ll take two seconds,” said Adam. “You know the Skull Fuck story?”

“Holy shit, Adam!” said Greg. “How many times—”

“Just one thing, Greg, just one thing. I’ve got the angle! This makes it news! I just got off the phone with a source deep…deep…within the Saint Ray house. Hoyt Thorpe just took a bribe from the governor of California to keep quiet about the Skull Fuck story. And just thirty minutes before this call I got a call from Thorpe saying he’s changed his mind, and we can’t run the story. A bribe, Greg! A Dupont student gets fucking bribed by the likely Republican nominee for president!…Greg…Are you there?”

Finally, wearily, Greg said, “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Greg, this source is ironclad. We’re talking iron-fucking-clad.”

Adam assumed a role completely foreign to him. He became Charlotte’s “bad” camp counselor, the one who couldn’t care less about being known as “a good guy,” the one who insists that the campers not only obey the rules but also realize that the rules have the force of righteousness, which is to say God, behind them.

Charlotte was like many another depressed girl before her. Come the dawn she would still be wide-awake, all too alert, all too alarmed by the thought of having to get out of bed. There was the drag of inertia and the fatigue of insomnia and, worse than either, fear. The insomniac’s period of sleep, whether she falls asleep or not, is like Charlotte’s eight-hour, nine-hour, ten-hour interstate bus ride. In that period she has no duties, no obligations, no responsibilities, no one to confront, because there is no one to confront. She has official permission from God to take care of nothing for the duration.