Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

She was wary—no, plain-long scared.

Charlotte hesitated. Fear of the unknown and a chance at social triumph wrestled on the edge of a cliff above the abyss of doom…and…the social striver won. She followed Hoyt. The door closed behind them with a heavy thunk. The noise of the party was suddenly faint. Wherever they were, it was ten or twenty degrees cooler. They were on a landing, which was the threshold of a narrow, poorly lit stairway with black rubber treads that twisted downward around a curved wall. They headed down and around. The stairway, it turned out, led to a small cellar chamber consisting of a concrete floor painted furnace-room gray, tired-beige walls, and a wide metal door of the same color with a small square window in it. The ceiling was so low it seemed to Charlotte like some immense mass about to crush her. Hoyt pressed a button beside the door, and a scowling face appeared at the window. The face saw Hoyt and relaxed, and the door opened.

“Yo, Hoyto!”

The face belonged to a suddenly cheery big boy wearing the ever-present—fashionable?—khakis with the tail of a button-down shirt hanging outside it. The dank, sour, oddly rich odor Charlotte had detected upstairs—in here it was ten times stronger—and she realized what it was: a room the size of a living room saturated, re-saturated, eternally soaked in spilt beer. Downlighters recessed in a low ceiling cast light on a bare wooden floor, and cigarette smoke hung in the beams. The ceiling and the walls were painted a lumpy dark brown. Over the sound system came a squeaky, staccato jazz saxophone and a voice that talked the lyrics and kept saying, “Chocolate City.” Some boisterous students were clustered about something or other on the wall opposite…

“Hey, Hunter,” Hoyt said to the keeper of the gate. “Had any issues?”

“Not so far,” the boy said. He embarked on a long discourse about how “the monitors” were supposedly everywhere tonight, about how you tell one from a genuine student, and why you had to be extremely careful all the same. Throughout this conversation, neither one, Hoyt or this Hunter, made the slightest acknowledgment of Charlotte’s presence, even though Hoyt had his arm about her waist.

Her resentment was rising fast as he began steering her into the room, his arm still around her. Make him let go! On the other hand, this underground room, with its loud drinkers and smokers, made her claustrophobic, and he was her protector and her validation for being here at all. So she let him lead her that way toward the crowd. The students were hiving about an old-fashioned bar of dark wood, with a brass footrail. Happy—abnormally happy—to have made it into a special place where others couldn’t go, they babbled, laughed, and shrieked. The bottom end of a bottle arced up above the head level of the swarm. It took a moment for Charlotte to realize that the bottle was in the grip of a boy who was pouring whatever was in it straight down his throat.

Cries of “Hoyt!” and “W’as up, Hoyto!” from the crowd. The party had reached the stage at which conversation disintegrates into inarticulate jubilation over being young, drunk, and immune to disapproval in the company of others who are likewise young and drunk and what of it. Off to the side, a boy and girl were lying together on a couch in a profound embrace, bodies pressed together. No one seemed to take any notice.

Behind the bar were two middle-aged black men in white shirts, their sleeves rolled up over their forearms, their black neckties pulled up tight at the throat. The shirts had great crescents of sweat beneath the armpits. Before them, on the bar, was a lineup of bottles of whiskey, rum, wine, vodka, and other things harder to figure out. Everything—big drinks, small drinks, beer, or vodka—they served in identical plastic cups.

Still holding Charlotte tightly, Hoyt said, “What would you like?”

“Nothing, thanks.” She forced a smile.

“Oh come on. You wouldn’t dance with me! So you gotta at least have a drink!”

He said it so loud! People at the table were turning around.

Barely above a whisper: “I don’t drink.”

Hoyt boomed out, “Not even beer?”

She croaked out, “Uh…no. You’re not drinking.”

The boomer: “I will if you will!”

More people were turning around. Charlotte could feel the color surging into her face. She tried to utter the word no, but could only say it by shaking her head. The smile on her face was meant to indicate to them that this was all in fun. In fact—and she was conscious of it—it was the sickly smile of someone who thinks she has just committed a terrible gaffe.

“Well then, how about some wine? Wine isn’t even drinking! It doesn’t even count!” Everyone could hear him.

“Don’t listen to him! He’s a lapsed recovering alcoholic!”

Out the corner of her eye Charlotte could tell that came from a big, strapping boy—khakis, blue button-down shirt, tail out—near the table. He had his arm around a lissome girl in a miniskirt. Her eyes were bleary and switched off. She looked as if she would fall to the floor if he took his arm away. But Charlotte didn’t dare look at the guy, since she had no idea how she might possibly come up with an answer.

Once more looking at her, the boy said, “You know you’re standing next to the poster boy for Mothers Against Binge Drinking?”

“Fun-nee,” said Hoyt. “Why don’t you sing us a song, Julian? They say drunks can sing songs even after they start bubbling at the mouth.”

Hoyt still had his arm around Charlotte. He looked down at her, smiled, gave her a mighty squeeze, and began steering her toward the bar.

She had no idea what to say to this big guy who kept directing questions to her—or supposedly to her. Her face was aflame with embarrassment over the proprietary hugs Hoyt was giving her in front of everybody. She wanted to show everybody she didn’t belong to him—but did she dare make a scene in this secret cellar or wherever she was? Worst of all, she could feel one of her greatest strengths, the fact that Charlotte Simmons was one of those rare young people who never caved in to peer pressure, ebbing away moment by moment. She couldn’t have all these people, these sophisticated upper-classmen, staring at her as if she were some naïve freshman oddity. In the next moment, she heard herself saying to Hoyt, “Maybe some wine.”

“Way to go!” said Hoyt. Arm still around her, he led her into the throng by the table.

The big guy, Julian, edged over toward them and said, “You are so bad, Hoyt.” He said it as if she wasn’t even there.

Hoyt leaned over toward him and said in a low voice, “You know what a cock block is, Julian?” To Charlotte: “Red wine or white?”

“I don’t know. Red?”

He let go of her for a moment and started to muscle his way through the crowd to the table. He stopped and looked off to the side. Then he yelled out, “Yo! Get a room!”

The boy on the couch had thrust one denim leg between the girl’s denim thighs, and she had wrapped one leg way up practically around his waist, and they were making little thrusting motions. People started laughing, and three or four others yelled, “Yeah, get a room!” The couple disentangled and propped themselves up on their elbows, staring stupidly at their audience. The girl Julian was supporting started making a sputtering sound, like air escaping from the tiny opening of a party balloon. Her lips were flapping. Her eyes were open but saw nothing. Just like that she collapsed. Julian barely managed to keep her from hitting the floor.

“Aw, shit,” he said. He lifted up her inert form and flung it over his shoulder. “Fucking Roofies.”

He turned to carry the girl out of the room—and a sludgy brown stream was running down the back of one leg. It was putrid. Feces.