Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“That’s easy,” said Charlotte. “You begin with Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. That’s where all philosophy begins, with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” said Jojo.

What crossed Charlotte’s mind was, “Everybody knows that.” What she said was—shrugging, “I guess I just pay attention.”

Jojo remained seated upright. But the smile became even warmer, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and what had been mere seepage now flowed and flowed and flowed and flowed.

She couldn’t very well let that continue. Nevertheless, her very loins were astir with the power.

This wasn’t the first time Jojo had had an appointment with Coach Roth in the Rotheneum, but it was the first time he had made an appointment on his own initiative…and oh, man, had he had to do some double-talking to avoid having to tell Coach’s secretary among secretaries, Celeste, what he wanted to see the great man for…Jojo’s going-on-seven-foot self now entered the Rotheneum lobby feeling small and devious.

The Rotheneum was a section of the Buster Bowl building, created specially as an office facility for Buster Roth and his minions. Some young cynic on the school newspaper had come up with “Rotheneum,” and now everybody called it that, although not within Coach’s earshot. “Rotheneum” was a play on the word “atheneum.” Jojo didn’t know what an atheneum was, but he knew the word had to do with the higher things, things intellectual in nature. The Wave obviously thought of Buster Roth as a lower thing, a big-time college coach who made more than a million in salary plus at least twice that in endorsements, public appearances, life-is-like-a-basketball-game motivational speeches for businessmen, and swoosh deals, as they were known because of the swoosh symbol of the Nike company, still the biggest swoosh dealer of them all. In a swoosh deal, the coach dresses the entire team, from top to bottom—jerseys, shorts, basketball shoes, and socks—in the company’s products, with each item identified by a logo—in return for…nobody ever seemed to know exactly how much. But it was known that Nike all by itself had a $200 billion advertising budget and that swooshing, also known as “branding,” was their most important form of advertising. As coach of last year’s national champions, Buster Roth had just signed a new swoosh deal, this time with the up-and-coming And 1. The numbers being bruited about were phenomenal. Whatever the sum, every cent of it went to Coach.

And there you had the mental atmosphere of the Rotheneum. It was the palace of the sports empire bearing a benign relationship with one of its most important colonies, Dupont University. The Rotheneum lobby had stark-white walls featuring glassed-in niches lined with mauve velvet to display Coach’s many trophies. Last year’s NCAA national championship trophy was in a niche directly opposite the main entrance. Everywhere you looked, star gleams were exploding off the trophies, thanks to high-intensity pinhole spotlights within the niches.

Coach’s domain took up the entire third floor. There was a screening room with a sloping theater floor and forty seats—posh upholstered theater seats that popped up when you stood up—solely for the analysis of Dupont basketball games and practice sessions and the play of upcoming opponents. “Now, keep your eye on Number 8, Jamal Perkins…See that!…I’m gonna rewind…Okay…You see the way he sticks his fucking knee out when he executes a pick? Fucking refs never call it!” Jojo could hear Coach’s exasperated voice in his head.

The elevator opened into a waiting room with a high ceiling, twelve feet at least…Downlighters cast dazzling beams upon epic-scale photographs framed in the most minimal (1.5 mm) brushed aluminum strips and hung upon more smacking white walls. There was a horseshoe-shaped banquette upholstered in a smart tan leather, on which sat three fortyish white business types with neckties. Opposite the banquette was a glass fence etched with diagonal lines of Dupont D’s leaning in cutting-edge italic. Behind the fence, at workstations, as they were called, was Coach’s harem of secretaries and assistants, all of them young women with short skirts and glistening shanks. Queen of Coach’s harem was Celeste, a tall, willowy brunette with alabaster-white skin. More than one was the basketball player who entertained the desire to hit on Celeste, and Jojo was among them, but she was said to be the “office girl” of Coach himself. As Jojo walked in, she stood up and said, “Ahhh, the man of mystery arrives! Have a seat, Jojo.” She gestured toward the banquette.

Jojo said, “Yo, Celeste,” and let it go at that. He didn’t take a seat immediately. He eased his shoulders back to emphasize the swell of his pectorals beneath his T-shirt and gave the business types a few seconds in which to fully admire his overpowering height and muscles and to register the fact that here, even if they didn’t happen to recognize him, was a Dupont athlete.

And if they didn’t know it then, they certainly got it just a few minutes later when Celeste summoned him into Coach’s office ahead of them.

And there he was: Coach—reared back grandly in a modernistic leather-upholstered swivel chair before a gigantic slab of mahogany—his desk—in the bay created by the great curved wall of glass at his corner of the building. He had his fingers interlaced behind his head and his elbows winged out on either side. Still vain about his once-athletic body, he had tensed his biceps, which in this posture protruded from the short sleeves of his polo shirt, and inflated his chest to create a mighty shelf above his gathering paunch. The room was not big in square feet, but with the sweeping curve of glass, the high ceiling a-dazzle with downlighters, the mahogany, the startlingly white walls, and stainless-steel furniture upholstered in tobacco-brown leather, it was dramatic.

“Come in, Jojo,” he said—quietly, for him.

Then he gave Jojo a look every player on the team was familiar with. He lowered his head slightly, looked upward into Jojo’s eyes with his teeth touching and his lips parted in a slight smile. It made Jojo feel as if Coach had just MRI’d his innards and found all his secrets, including the ones he didn’t even know about.

“So—to what do I owe this pleasant surprise, Jojo?” said Coach. “Celeste calls you the man of mystery.”

Jojo just stood there, beginning to feel extremely awkward. He realized he had never thought out, in so many words, what he wanted to say. “Well, I guess I should—I mean, I really appreciate you taking the time—”

Coach interrupted: “Go ahead, have a seat, Jojo.” He motioned toward a semicircular chair of stuffed brown leather in a stainless-steel frame. So Jojo sat down—and couldn’t get comfortable in the damned thing. The back was at a right angle to the seat, and the seat was too low. He felt like his head was a foot lower than Coach’s.

Buster Roth gave Jojo a kindly smile. “You don’t look one hundred percent yourself, Jojo. What’s up? Anything wrong?”

“Well…” Jojo began rubbing the backs of his hands with his palms. “I wouldn’t say ‘wrong,’ exactly.”

“Okay, then…what, Jojo?”

“It’s about academics, Coach.”

Coach’s voice turned a bit stern. “What about academics, Jojo? What class? I’ve told you guys a hundred times, you don’t let things develop. The first sign of some issue, you come to one of us. You don’t let these damned things just drift along.”

“It’s nothing like that, Coach.” Jojo was rubbing his hands so hard, Coach glanced at them. “It’s—I guess—what I want to say is—I guess I just don’t feel I’m getting enough out of it, that’s all.”