Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Fiske Hall, the building he had just departed, was right on the Great Yard. Everywhere you looked were the old-fashioned stone buildings that said “Dupont” even to people who had seen them only in photographs. The famous library tower was right over there…All over the Yard’s lush green lawn, students were hustling along the walkways to their next classes. Jojo stood on a walkway pondering the matter of which direction would satisfy his urge quickest…He could already see, or thought he could see, some students nudging each other and discreetly pointing out his famous towering figure. Yes, it was a good feeling…His eminence at this particular crossroads of American college life, the Great Yard at Dupont, was incalculable…What an awesome day it was. He filled his lungs with the perfect air…He opened his very pores to the perfect sunshine…It wasn’t a question of whether, but when, some student would salute and sing out Go go, Jojo!

A girl from behind him walked past, heading in the direction of the library, a trim girl with nice legs, good calves, and long brown hair, who evidently hadn’t recognized him at all as she approached him from the rear. He liked what he could make out of the nice, firm bottom inside those denim shorts…Hey, wait a minute…It was the girl from the class, the brainy one. He recognized that hair. He had taken a long look at it from where he sat…It didn’t matter what a brain she was. In fact, there was something nice and feminine about that. It went with a look she had. She wasn’t just some hot number. She wasn’t beautiful in any way you usually thought about at this place. He couldn’t have given it a name, but whatever she had was above all that. She looked like an illustration from one of those fairy-tale books where the young woman is under a spell or something and can’t come to until she gets a kiss from the young man who loves her, the kind of girl who looks pure—yet that very thing about her gives you even more of the old tingle. And she had come walking by him obviously not even knowing what an eminence she had just been so close to.

He strode after her with his big long legs. “Hey! Hi!…Hi!…Wait a second!”

She stopped and turned, and he walked up to her, beaming a certain winning smile and waiting for the usual. But she didn’t even yield up a girlish grin, much less say, “You’re—Jojo Johanssen!” In fact, she didn’t make any positive response at all or exhibit even the slightest sign of vulnerability. She looked at him—well, like some guy she didn’t know, who had just accosted her. Her apprehensive expression seemed to be asking, “Why are you delaying me?” Aloud she said nothing at all.

Broadening his smile, he said, “I’m Jojo Johanssen”…and waited.

The girl merely stared.

“I’m in the class.” He gestured toward the building they had just left…and waited. Nothing. “I just wanted to say—you were really terrific. You really know this stuff!” She didn’t even smile, much less say thanks. If anything, she looked more apprehensive. “I’m not kidding! Honest! I was genuinely impressed.” Nothing; her lips didn’t move in any way, shape, or form. He vaguely realized that saying “I’m not kidding,” “Honest!” and “genuinely” one after the other was like erecting a billboard that said PHONY. Her eyes looked frightened. There was nothing left to say but what he was leading up to in the first place: “Wanna grab some lunch?”

To anybody on the basketball team, that—or something like it—was just clearing your throat before saying, “Would you like to see my suite?” which in turn was a polite formality before putting your hand on her shoulder and getting it on. In his mind he could see Mike going at it with that wild-haired blonde…gross, but a turn-on…

She stared at him but didn’t say a word.

“Well…how about it?”

For the first time her lips moved. “I can’t.” She turned her back and headed off at a good clip.

“Hey! Come on! Please! Whoa!”

She stopped but didn’t turn completely toward him. He tried on a look of as much warmth, friendliness, tenderness, and understanding as he was capable of and said softly, “You can’t—or you won’t?”

She turned away again, then spun about and confronted him. Her little voice was trembling. “You knew the answer to that question Mr. Lewin asked, didn’t you?”

He was speechless.

“But then you decided to say something foolish.”

“Well—you could maybe say—”

A hoarse little whisper: “Why?”

“Well, I mean, shit, I didn’t…” He was still ransacking his brain for an answer when she turned away once more and hurried in the direction of the library.

He called after her. “Hey! Listen! I’ll see you next week!”

She slowed down only enough to say over her shoulder, “I won’t be there. I’m switching out.”

He shouted after her, “What for?”

He thought he heard her say, something something “for dummies,” something something “cruise-ship French.”

Jojo stared after her retreating little figure. He was stunned. She had not only completely rejected him, she’d as much as called him a fool or a dummy or a dumb fool!

Godalmighty…the old tingle stirred and stirred and stirred his loins.

The next night, before dinner, Vance, an ultra-solemn look on his face, beckoned Hoyt into the otherwise empty billiard room, crossed his arms over his chest, and said, “Hoyt, we’ve got to have a serious talk about this shit.”

“What shit is that, Vance?”

“You know ‘what shit.’ This governor of California shit. You think the fucking thing’s funny. I don’t. And you want to know why?”

I already know why, Vancerman, thought Hoyt. You’re scared shitless, that’s all. As he stood there waiting for Vance’s lips to stop moving, his mind wandered…

…those who cower and those who command…Europe in the Early Middle Ages, taught by a wizened old Jew named Crone, as Hoyt thought of him, whose droning voice would put you right under but who was a notoriously, or gloriously, easy grader. To Hoyt’s own surprise, the course had captured his imagination. He had experienced the sort of moment that real scholars, as opposed to Saint Rays, lived for: the Aha! phenomenon. In the early Middle Ages, according to old Crone, there were only three classes of men in the world: warriors, clergy, and slaves. That was it—China, Arabia, Morocco, England, everywhere. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a leader of the people was, or had been, a warrior, baptized in battle. In the hundredth case, the man was the high priest of the local religion. Mohammed had been both warrior and high priest. Likewise Joan of Arc. Everybody else on earth was some sort of slave: serf, indentured servant, or outright chattel, including artists, poets, and musicians, who were merely entertainers existing at the sufferance of warrior-leaders. In the Bible, according to Crone, King David had started out as a boy of the slave class who had volunteered to fight the Philistines’ champion of “single combat”—Goliath. When, against all odds, David defeated the giant, he became Israel’s warrior of all warriors. He ascended to King Saul’s royal household and became king when Saul died, leapfrogging over Saul’s own son, Jonathan.

Hoyt loved that story, the Nobody who was King. His own ambitions were analogous. His father, George Thorpe, was—

“—hire a bunch of goombahs to intimidate witnesses—”

Goombahs. Every now and then some phrase from Vance’s earnest, frightened lips would snag in Hoyt’s mind.

“What’s a goombah?” he said, not because he wanted to know, but just to make Vance think he was paying attention.