Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

In this mood, she knew there would be no Bettina to be found upon the sunny, shaded, majestic, massive, oh so delicately glinting tableau of the Great Yard, and there wasn’t. So she finally pulled herself together and headed up the walkway that led to the library tower. In the library she could study…and sit alone in a setting where that didn’t seem pathetic.

She was halfway there, walking through a stretch of deep, ancient leafy shadows, when she became aware of the scritching sound of someone in sneakers running up behind her. She didn’t turn around; but then: “Yo! Hey! Excuse me!”

She looked back over her shoulder—and was so startled she stopped, paralyzed with dread. It was the huge guy from the French class, the wantonly stupid one who had tried to pick her up. How about lunch? She wheeled about and stiffened. He was almost upon her—the same hulk, the same tight T-shirt displaying the same grotesque muscles, the same odd little plateau of buzz-cut blond hair. He came to a stop barely two feet from her. The urge to run clashed with her desire not to look childish. The yearning for mature status prevailed. Motionless, paralyzed, aghast, she managed, but barely managed, to say in a strangled voice, “What do you want?”

His mouth fell open, and he slowly raised his hands, palms upward, as if lifting a huge plastic exercise ball. He was the very picture of a good soul misunderstood.

“I just wanted to apologize, that’s all. Honest.”

Still afraid: “For what?”

“For the other day,” said the giant, “for the way I acted, the way I just walked up…” He blushed, which to Charlotte was an indication he just might be sincere and hadn’t simply devised a new way to “hit on” her, as the terminology here at Dupont seemed to be. But it was no more than that, an indication, and she said nothing.

He rushed in to fill the conversational vacuum. “I was sort of hoping I would run into you again. I was thinking about what it must have looked like to you, and I’m really sorry.”

Charlotte didn’t say a word. She just glowered. He was so big, he was abnormal. His neck was so wide, his arms were so long, so packed with slabs of muscle…

“Come on, let me make it up to you. Let’s go have lunch at Mr. Rayon—only this time, lunch. That’s all. I swear.”

Charlotte continued to grill him with a malevolent stare. On the other hand, there was a certain…supplication in his voice.

“You don’t know who I am, do you,” he said. Somehow the way he said it didn’t reek of self-importance.

Charlotte oscillated her head as slowly as an electric fan, as if to say, “I don’t know, and you’re not even capable of conceiving how little I care about finding out,” even though she did know he was some sort of basketball player, and now a little flame had lit up her curiosity.

“My name is Joseph Johanssen, and I’m on the basketball team. Everybody calls me Jojo.”

Charlotte debated with herself.

“Come on,” said Jojo. “We’ll just go in and grab a little something.”

All she had to do was say she was late for class or…In fact, she didn’t owe him any explanation at all. All she had to do was say no and leave.

But she couldn’t budge. It was as if her autonomic nervous system had taken over. The other her, the autonomic her, the one aching so with loneliness, ruled.

So, without knowing why—the other her kept mum—she found herself saying, “All right.” She said it in a faintly disgusted way, as if she were doing him a reluctant and essentially pointless favor.

Charlotte had never set foot in Mr. Rayon before. It was on the ground floor of a huge and rather overbearing Gothic classroom building, Halsey Hall, whose exterior offered not the vaguest hint of the visual explosion that hit Charlotte as she and Jojo entered the restaurant. Slick white walls seemed to scream from all the winking electrographics and industrial lighting they reflected. Medievalish banners hung in martial ranks high above the floor. On the floor, a flotilla of black tables bordering on the cafeteria “sectors” were so slick they smacked with reflected light like the white walls. Sectors—six—different cafeterias, in effect, but not separated by walls, each with the same gleaming parallel U-shaped rows of chromed stainless-steel tubing for trays to slide on, stretched from one side of the hall to the other, presenting six different cuisines: Thai, Chinese, BurgAmerican, Vegan, Italian, and Middle Eastern. The sound system was playing an old number called “I’m Too Sexy,” whose mindlessly repeated disco sounds made the place seem far more crowded than it was. The real lunch traffic wouldn’t build up for another hour.

The giant, Jojo, got a hamburger in the BurgAmerican sector and a can of Sprite. Charlotte refused to get anything, partly because she couldn’t afford it and partly so that the giant wouldn’t think she was deigning to “dine” with him or in any other fashion allowing this to be turned into some sort of “social” situation.

As they headed for one of the slick black tables, one of a group of four guys a couple of tables away halfway rose up from his seat, waved, and yelled, “Go go, Jojo!” The giant gave him a somewhat begrudging smile and nod and kept on going. A terrible thought crossed Charlotte’s mind: If he was a basketball player, he might be very well known on campus, and suppose she were seen with him?…She wished she could put up a sign saying, THIS IS NOT A DATE. I DON’T KNOW HIM. I DON’T LIKE HIM. I’M NOT IMPRESSED BY HIM. I’M UNIMPRESSED. On the other hand, seen by whom? There was no one at Dupont University who could possibly care, except maybe Bettina. And what would she care?

They sat down, and this Jojo leaned forward over his plastic plate with the hamburger on it, as if to make sure nobody else heard him. “Remember what you said to me that day? After Mr. Lewin’s French class?”

Charlotte shook her head no. She remembered very well.

“You asked me why I ‘decided to say something foolish’—to Lewin when we were discussing Madame Bovary.”

Charlotte couldn’t hold back any longer. “Well, why did you?”

“That’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since!” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I liked that book. It really made me think. And you remember what else you said?”

This time Charlotte didn’t shake her head no. She looked at him for a moment and then ever so slowly nodded yes.

“You said, ‘You knew the answer to that question, didn’t you?’ And I did. And you wanna know why I acted as if I didn’t?”

He paused, obviously eager for a response. So Charlotte obliged: “Why?”

“Three other players, my teammates, are in the class. It’s okay to do the work, because you have to pass the courses, and you might even get away with good grades—although there’s this one really bright guy on the team, and he always tries to keep anybody from knowing his grades. But you can’t let anybody know you’re actually interested in a course—you know, like you actually enjoyed the book?—then you’re really fucked.”

“Don’t talk that way,” snapped Charlotte, genuinely offended.

Jojo stared at her, motionless, as if he had been stunned. “Hey, I’m sorry! It just slipped out!” Awkward pause…Finally he said, “Where are you from?”

Charlotte fired back rat-tat-tat: “Sparta, North Carolina—it’s up in the mountains—you never heard of it—nobody ever heard of it. Far’s that goes, you don’t even know my name, do you?”

Jojo was speechless.

Afraid she had gone too far, Charlotte said with a small, forgiving smile, “It’s Charlotte. All right, you were saying how you’re terrified of peer pressure.”