Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“Those guys are half human and half fucking creatine,” said another boy, Julian, a real mesomorph—his short, thick arms and long, ponderous gut made him look like a wrestler—who had sunk so far back into a couch, he was able to balance a can of beer on his upper abdomen.

“Creatine?” said Vance. “They don’t take creatine anymore. Creatine’s a boutique drug. Now they take like gorilla testosterone and shit like that. Don’t give me that look, Julian. I’m not kidding. Fucking gorilla testosterone.”

“The fuck, they take gorilla testosterone,” said Julian. “How do they get it?”

“They buy it. It’s out there for sale on the drug market.” Vance had managed to make an entire statement without using the word fuck or any of its derivatives. The lull would be brief.

“Okay,” said Julian, “then answer me this. I don’t care if you’re the greatest fucking drug lord in the history of the world. Who the fuck’s gonna go out there in the jungle and harvest the fucking crop?”

Everybody broke up over that, and they immediately turned to a boy sitting in a big easy chair in the corner, as if to say, “But…do you think it’s funny, Hoyt?”

Hoyt was genuinely amused by Julian, but mainly he was aglow with the realization that this happened all the time now. The boys would crack a joke or make what was meant to be an interesting observation, particularly in the area of what was or wasn’t cool, and they’d all turn to him to see what Hoyt thought. It was an unconscious thing, which made it even greater proof that what he had hoped for, what he had predicted, had come to pass. Ever since word had spread about how he and Vance had demolished the big thug bodyguard on what boys in the Saint Ray house now referred to as the Night of the Skull Fuck, they had become legends in their own time.

So Hoyt laughed, by way of bestowing his blessing upon Julian, and knocked back another big gulp of beer.

“Holy shit,” said Boo McGuire, a roly-poly boy who had one leg slung over the arm of a couch and one elbow crooked behind his head, “I don’t care how big they are. If they’re taking gorilla testosterone, then they’ve all got balls the size of fucking BBs.”

And everybody broke up over that, since it was well known to habitués of SportsCenter that the downside to taking testosterone supplements to build muscle was that the body’s own testosterone factory shut down and the testicles atrophied. The room glanced at Hoyt again, to ratify the fact that Boo McGuire had indeed gotten off a funny line.

Just then Ivy Peters, a boy notable for how fat his hips were—and the way his black eyebrows ran together over his nose—appeared in the doorway and said, “Anybody got porn?” Sticking up in front of his chin was the sort of microphone one wears in order to use a hands-free cell phone.

This was not an unusual request. Many boys spoke openly about how they masturbated at least once every day, as if this were some sort of prudent maintenance of the psychosexual system. On the other hand, among the cooler members, Ivy Peters was regarded as one of the fraternity’s “mistakes.” They had been carried away by the fact that his father, Horton Peters, was CEO of Gordon Hanley, and a majority of Saint Rays with no particular aptitudes assumed they would become investment bankers, Hoyt among them. At first behind his back and now sometimes to his face, they had begun calling him Ivy Poison or Mr. Poison or I.P., which they made sure he knew didn’t stand for Ivy Peters. Hoyt’s own face went glum all of a sudden, as it often did when he saw I.P. these days…Gordon Hanley…to get hired by an i-bank like that these days you needed a transcript that shined like fucking gold…and his grades…He refused to think about them. That’s next June’s problem, and this was only September.

Vance was making an insouciant upward gesture for I.P.’s benefit. Barely even looking at him, he said, “Try the third floor. They got some one-hand magazines up there.”

“I’ve built up a tolerance to magazines,” said the mistake. “I need videos.”

Boo McGuire said, “What’s the microphone for, I.P.? So you can call your sister while you jack off?”

I.P ignored that. Julian got up off the couch and left the room.

Hoyt lazily knocked back some more beer and said, “Oh, f’r Chrissake, I.P., it’s ten o’clock at night. In another hour the cum dumpsters will start coming over here to spend the night. Right, Vance-man?” He gave Vance a mock leer of a look, then turned back to I.P. “And you’re looking for porn videos and a knuckle fuck.”

The mistake shrugged and turned his palms up as if to say, “I want porn. What’s the big deal?” He didn’t seem to realize that Julian was sneaking up behind him…Bango! Julian wrapped his arms around I.P.’s chest, pinning the mistake’s arms to his sides, and began thrusting his wrestler’s gut and pelvis against the mistake’s big rear end like a dog in the park.

Everybody broke up again.

“Leggo a me, you grotesque faggot!” screamed I.P., his face contorted with anger as he thrashed his pinioned body about.

Convulsive laughter, waves and waves of it.

“What makes you so fucking grotesque, Julian?” said Boo McGuire, coming up briefly for air. The repetition of the fancy word threw everybody into a new round of paroxysms.

I.P. broke loose and stood there for a moment glowering at Julian, who put on a sad face and said, “Don’t I get one little hump?”

The mistake then turned and glowered at everybody in the room and started shaking his head. Without another word he stormed out into the entry gallery, toward the stairs.

A big, rugged varsity lacrosse player named Harrison Vorheese yelled after him, “Happy hand job, I.P.!”—and everybody cracked up, convulsed, and dissolved all over again.

Julian’s rutboar embrace was a form of fraternal gibe known as humping, generally inflicted upon brothers caught doing dorky things such as covertly working on a homework assignment in the library while SportsCenter was on or coming into the library at ten o’clock at night looking for porn videos, especially if you were a mistake in the first place.

“What is all this walking around the house with a fucking microphone in his face?” said Boo. “I.P.’s become some kind of wireless nut. You should see the shit he has up in his room.”

Once they finally got control of themselves, Harrison, invigorated by the success of his “hand job” crack, said to Hoyt, “Speaking of cum dumpsters, did you know—”

Boo broke in. “What the fuck’s this cum dumpster shit, Hoyt? Didn’t I see a little cutie-pie in disco clothes coming out of your room at seven-thirty this morning?”

Everybody went “Wooooooooooo!” in mock dismay.

Harrison said, “Like I was saying—”

“I was speaking generically, not specifically,” said Hoyt. “Specifically, I only allow discriminating visitors in my room.”

Horselaughs and groans. “Oh, brother”…“Discriminate this, Hoyt”…“Where’d she come from?”…“What’s her name?”

“Whattaya think I am,” said Hoyt, “a fucking playa? I wouldn’t tell you her name even if I knew it.”

Harrison said, “Like I was saying—” Laughs and groans directed at Hoyt drowned him out.

“What the fuck were you saying, Harrison?” said Vance.

“Thank you,” said Harrison. “It’s nice to run into a gentleman in this fucking place once in a while. What I was saying was”—he looked at Vance and then at Hoyt—“did you know Crawdon McLeod’s started hooking up with you guys’ favorite ice-cream eater?”

“Craw?” said Hoyt. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Does he know who she fucking is?”