Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Why, then, the uneasy feeling, the sometimes desperate feeling, that came over her now…and almost every day? If only she had someone to talk to about it…to assure her that she was a very lucky girl, after all…But there was—when she thought it through—only Jojo. Aside from him, she was as alone as on the day she arrived at Dupont. Jojo was sweet. It was touching, the way he constantly turned to her for help. But Jojo was not made for talks with anyone’s soul, not even his own.

She was Charlotte Simmons. Could she ever have that conversation with herself, the way Momma told her to? Mr. Starling put “soul” in quotes, which as much as said it was only a superstitious belief in the first place, an earlier, yet more primitive name for the ghost in the machine.

So why do you keep waiting deep in the back of my head, Momma, during my every conscious moment—waiting for me to have that conversation? Even if I were to pretend it were real, my “soul,” the way you think it is, what could I possibly say? All right, I’ll say, “I am Charlotte Simmons.” That should satisfy the “soul,” since it’s not there in the first place. So why do I keep hearing the ghost asking the same tired questions over and over, “Yes, but what does that mean? Who is she?” You can’t define a person who is unique, said Charlotte Simmons. It, the little ghost who wasn’t there, said, “Well, then, why don’t you mention some of the attributes that set her apart from every other girl at Dupont, some of the dreams, the ambitions? Wasn’t it Charlotte Simmons who wanted a life of the mind? Or was what she wanted all along was to be considered special and to be admired for that in itself, no matter how she achieved it?”

That was ridiculous—but she was spared responding to that dreary, tiresome query by the Charlies’ Children’s Alumni Band. The mauve blazers with yellow piping rose from their seats and struck up with an old, old song by the Beatles called “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They played it as if John Philip Sousa had composed it as marching music for a military band with trumpets, tubas, a glockenspiel, and a big bass drum. The two teams had completed their warm-ups, and—bango!—the cheerleaders, the Chazzies, the acrobats, and the Zulj twins sprouted up from out of the floor, and all was loud music, merry madness, and oooooo’n’ahhhhhs. The Zulj boys were now juggling old-fashioned straightedge razors, blades unsheathed. If they didn’t catch every razor by its mother-of-pearl handle—ooooo…ahhhhhh—upwards of fourteen thousand basketball fans felt as if they themselves were about to lose their fingers. This was the circus’s last cavort before the game began.

The ghost in the machine kept prattling away, but there was no possibility of paying attention to it now. In no time the circus disappeared into the floor, the musicians sat down, and there beneath the LumeNex lights, on a gleaming rectangle of honey-colored hardwood, the game was on.

A towering white boy with a skiff of blond hair on an otherwise shaved head seemed to take over that entire court of superb black athletes all by himself, commandeering both backboards—he owned them, driving into the hole for slam dunks—don’t get in his way, and altering the behavior of UConn’s big men—he demolished them like Samson or the Incredible Hulk.

Dupont had sprung to a 16–3 lead before UConn called time-out. The circus sprouted out of the floor, Charlies’ Children rose up from their seats, fannies shook, acrobatic girls did gainers in midair, the band’s mighty brass wailed with greater fervor—and sheer loudness—than ever before. But the roar of the crowd drowned it out. From cliff to cliff and dome to floor, the cry rang out: Go go Jojo!…Go go Jojo!…Go go Jojo!…Go go Jojo!

A bit too late, Charlotte realized that heads were turning toward her in hopes of enjoying, sharing in, her ecstasy over the exploits of her boyfriend. Ohmygod…She sure hoped not too many had gotten a real eyeful of the glum, distracted, thoroughly uninterested look on her face. She clicked on the appropriate face just like that. Since the crowd had now launched into rhythmic clapping to the one-beat cadence of Go go Jojo, Charlotte figured she had better join in, too. So she worked on keeping the joyous smile spread across her face and clapping with some semblance of enthusiasm.

Ohmygod…the band had now thrown itself into “The Charlies’ Swing”—and in no time, so potent was the moment, the partisan crowd was bawling away with the words. It obviously behooved Jojo Johanssen’s girlfriend to join in.