Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“Hi!” he said, leaning his head close to hers so she could hear him. “Mind if I ask you something? I bet you get really tired of people telling you you look like Britney Spears.”

What on earth was he talking about? He had a white plastic drink container in one hand—was he drunk? It took a moment for her to entertain the notion that he might, in fact, be flirting with her. Her face turned hot, and she smiled to try to keep from looking flustered. She finally managed to say, “I don’t think so.” But in such a little voice! With such a weak, stupid smile—and such clumsy ambiguity! Was he going to think she was saying she didn’t get tired of being mistaken for Britney Spears? How awkward she was amid this swarm of sophisticates with naked belly buttons and little low-slung leather skirts!

The boy put his hand on her arm again, as if he were only trying to steady the two of them while he leaned in closer. “Well, I say you do, and Saint Rays don’t joke around.”

He must be drunk. He was so extraordinarily good-looking, it intimidated her. She ransacked her brain again for something light and deft, and came up speechless. She stood there smiling a smile she knew imparted nothing but the embarrassment of a little girl who had no experience in encounters like this.

He patted her on the arm and said, “Okay, I am kidding. You do look like Britney Spears, but if you wanna know the truth, I just wanted to say hi.” He began staring deep into her eyes from no more than six inches away. He put his hand on her shoulder and grasped it, the way a mentor might if he were about to ask his young protégée a very important question. “You having fun?”

You having fun? She had been miserable from the moment she entered this house, but how could she be frank with someone so blasé? She couldn’t even get the sickly smile off her face. “I guess so,” she said. “Mostly.”

He took his hand off her shoulder, turned it palm up, and stared at her with his mouth open. “You guess so! Mostly!” Then he put his hand back on her shoulder. “How can we change that?”

She kept smiling, gamely, which made her feel stupid. “I’m just looking for two friends of mine.”

“Male or female?”

“Two girls who live in my house in Little Yard.”

“Hey, that’s a relief. In that case—wanna dance?”

The thought terrified her. She knew practically nothing about dancing, other than the square dancing she used to do out at the Grange Hall in Sparta. At the same time, the attentions of a good-looking boy like this would certainly validate her presence here.

She finally started nodding yes and said in a little voice, “Okay.”

“Awesome!” He patted her on the arm again.

He took a sip of his drink. He placed his other hand on the small of her back and began steering her through the crowd. Well—he was only helping her, wasn’t he? It wasn’t easy getting through this mob. It was so hot, and she was sweating so much she could feel the pressure of his palm pasting the cotton dress to her skin. Wails! Thuds! The percussion shook her rib cage.

They were heading toward the back, where the strobe lights were flashing. In the roaring surf of polo shirts, T-shirts, camisoles, sleeveless jerseys, halter tops, and indefinable gossamer tops, they came upon a roly-poly boy in a blue button-down shirt and khakis, with a big plastic cup in his hand. He grinned in a cockeyed way and cried out, “Yo, Hoyto!”

Charlotte’s escort said, “W’as happenin’, Boo-man?”

There was an awkward pause as the roly-poly boy, who had a drunken, openmouthed grin on his face, gave Charlotte a frank appraisal.

“We’re taking a house tour!” said Charlotte’s escort, shouting to be heard, whereupon he slid his hand off her back and put it around her. “Boo, this is—uhhh—” He turned to Charlotte. “Have you met Boo?” He gave her a little squeeze.

The roly-poly boy chuckled and looked at his wristwatch and said at the top of his voice, “Okay, Hoyto, seven minutes, and the clock is running!”

Charlotte looked up and said, “What’s he mean, seven minutes and the clock is running?”

Good. She didn’t know. Her escort pretended to tip his plastic cup back three times in the semaphore that says, “He’s drunk,” and then added, aloud, “Beats me.”

Every few yards, it seemed, some boy or other would cry out “Hoyt!” “Hoyto!” “Hoyt-man!” or some other variation of the name Hoyt. Charlotte found herself looking up at him and smiling, not from pleasure but from the need she felt to make people think she actually knew this obviously well-known boy who had his hand on her back.

A great strapping boy wearing a polo shirt that showed off his build came up and said, “Yo, Hoytster! Where’d you get that drink?”

“I’m not drinking,” said Hoyt. “It’s water.” He lowered and tilted the cup, and sure enough, it was water. Charlotte was greatly relieved.

“Ve-ry int-ter-rest-ting,” said the great strapping boy in some sort of mock foreign accent. “So to-night…the snowman cometh.”

Hoyt shook his head. “Come on, Harrison.” Harrison put his forefinger under his nose and made a profound sniff sniff sniff sound and grinned.

Now they were very close to all the white faces flashing in the strobe lights. Charlotte could see arms and hands flashing, too—a whole mob of people dancing on a big terrace enclosed by glass. At night the glass reflected like a mirror, so that it seemed as if there were strobe lights pulsing on and off from here to beyond Ladding Walk and on to infinity. The music was so loud it hurt her ears. Scores of white people, flashing in slices. Five black men, the musicians, flashing in slices, glossy with sweat. A cadaverously thin singer with dreadlocks. His head was thrown back, and he seemed to be swallowing a handheld microphone—in slices. He was screaming, “Mackin’n’jackin’—ungggh—mackin’n’jackin’.” Next to a wall near the band—flashes of a boy and girl who were dancing on top of a table—in slices. Their faces bobbed, flashed on and off—light, dark, light, dark—in slices, their arms were flailing in slices, their legs were shimmying in slices, but they were joined at the pelvis. Their pelvic saddles bucked and reared in slices but never parted. Her jeans were so low-cut that when she torqued far enough, you got a flash of the top of the cleft of her slick, sweating buttocks. The mocking wooooo wooooo wooooos of the boys massed about the table skimmed along the crest of the noise. Hoyt was now in slices. Charlotte’s own arms were in slices. Gradually her eyes adjusted to the phenomenon, and she could see there were couples everywhere on the floor, dancing that way, locked mons pubis to mons pubis. She couldn’t believe her eyes! They were simulating…intercourse! Right out in the open! It made her think of Regina’s filthy phrase, “dry-humping.” They were pressing their genitals together! Some girls were bending over so that boys could thrust thrust thrust thrust simulate intercourse from behind, like dogs in a barnyard!

Hoyt put his arm around her again, tilted his head very close to hers, and said, “You wanna dance?”

Charlotte couldn’t speak, she was so appalled. She shook her head no, almost ferociously. Hoyt said, “Hey, you can’t do that to me!”

He said it in a jocular way—or did he? Charlotte opened her mouth—and managed only a sickly smile—after all, it wasn’t his fault—as she shook her head again.

“Come on! You said you wanted to dance! I took you all the way through that mob so we could dance! Humor me! One song! That’s it!” He had to shout to be heard.

Again she shook her head and mouthed the word no.

He cocked his head and stared at her for a moment, his tongue in his cheek, as if to say, “You really think I’ll take that for an answer?”