I Am Charlotte Simmons (45 page)
Read I Am Charlotte Simmons Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
We, thought Adam. You'd have caved completely if Camille hadn't stepped in. Yeah, well, Greg had put up
some
resistance, hadn't he. Couldn't very well deny him that.
some
resistance, hadn't he. Couldn't very well deny him that.
“He won't fuck with
anybody
anymore!” crowed Camille. “Not at Dupont! That cretin is
roadkill
! And you're all my witnesses, right?”
anybody
anymore!” crowed Camille. “Not at Dupont! That cretin is
roadkill
! And you're all my witnesses, right?”
She looked at each of them, including Charlotte, until all nodded yes. In fact, testifying in some kind of procedure against that lacrosse player was the last thing in the world Charlotte wanted to do. He had been sarcastic and mildly insulting, but Camille was a total ⦠bitch. She was ready to bring the whole world up on “charges.” Why? For what? The guy wasn't all that bad. He was virile. He was good-looking in a rugged way, acne scars and all ⦠Beverly, on all fours:
Where are the lacrosse players?
Should he be expelled from Dupont, maybe have his life ruined, for calling a bitch like Camille a slit-eyed skank after what she said to him? Shoving a lacrosse stick net-firstâ
Where are the lacrosse players?
Should he be expelled from Dupont, maybe have his life ruined, for calling a bitch like Camille a slit-eyed skank after what she said to him? Shoving a lacrosse stick net-firstâ
Camille's vulgarity made Charlotte queasy. No, it was more than that. It had shocked her in some fundamental way. In order to attack, Camille had abandoned all pretense of being feminine. Charlotte could still see the guy's stunned expression ⦠It had shocked him, too ⦠How anguished he looked as compared to a few moments beforeâ
She glanced at Adam. He was looking straight at her, and she found herself in an eye lock. Adam was still sitting there on the step. He hadn't budged.
What was it he saw in her face? Adam wondered. It wasn't an accusation, in any case. Such a tender beauty she had ⦠the purity of it ⦠the innocence ⦠the lithe legs, the sweet, delicate, lubricious curve of her lips ⦠all in one. And she was as inexperienced as himself ⦠forgiving yet intensely desirable ⦠This was no mere observation. It was a feeling as real as any of his five senses. It suffused his body even unto the most remote nerve endings, suffused his body, his mind, everything within himâ
Charlotte wanted to put an arm around him. He looked so forlorn and hopeless, sitting on that same spot where he had been sitting all along. He hadn't moved a muscle.
Reduce the world to a cocoon in which there were just the two of them. Just that, thought Adam, and he wouldn't ask for anything else.
I'm only eighteen, Charlotte thought, but I guess he needs
someone
to tell him everything is going to be okay. She broke the eye lock and departed that sad moment.
someone
to tell him everything is going to be okay. She broke the eye lock and departed that sad moment.
She thought the guy hadn't even noticed her, but all at once he had turned toward her, smiled, winked, and said, “Hey, babe.”
A
s he and his family rolled into the Clarence Beale Parking Arbor in their Lincoln Navigator, a lawyer from Pittsburgh named Archer Miles got his first glimpse of the Bowl through the big old sycamores that stood in rows on the parking lot's landscaped dividers. The noonday sun was so strong, Archer had to squint. Would you believe it? More than four decades had elapsed, but it sure looked the same ⦠an hour and forty-five minutes before the game, and already cars were pouring onto this vast arboreally umbrellaed asphalt plain and heading for ⦠the Charlie Bowl ⦠When was the last time he'd been to a game here? Must have been just three or four years after he graduated. Not one of Dupont's architectural gems, the Bowl, but awesome nonetheless ⦠a stupendous tub of concrete, the equivalent of twenty stories high ⦠officially named the Dupont Bowl ⦠but back when Yale became the Bulldogs, and Princeton became the Tigers, Dupont, like Harvard, stood aloof from this cute vogue of naming athletic teams after animals with big teeth or sharp beaks. The students called them the Charlies, in jolly if ironic reference to the first name of the founder, Charles Dupont, and this became the Charlie Bowl.
s he and his family rolled into the Clarence Beale Parking Arbor in their Lincoln Navigator, a lawyer from Pittsburgh named Archer Miles got his first glimpse of the Bowl through the big old sycamores that stood in rows on the parking lot's landscaped dividers. The noonday sun was so strong, Archer had to squint. Would you believe it? More than four decades had elapsed, but it sure looked the same ⦠an hour and forty-five minutes before the game, and already cars were pouring onto this vast arboreally umbrellaed asphalt plain and heading for ⦠the Charlie Bowl ⦠When was the last time he'd been to a game here? Must have been just three or four years after he graduated. Not one of Dupont's architectural gems, the Bowl, but awesome nonetheless ⦠a stupendous tub of concrete, the equivalent of twenty stories high ⦠officially named the Dupont Bowl ⦠but back when Yale became the Bulldogs, and Princeton became the Tigers, Dupont, like Harvard, stood aloof from this cute vogue of naming athletic teams after animals with big teeth or sharp beaks. The students called them the Charlies, in jolly if ironic reference to the first name of the founder, Charles Dupont, and this became the Charlie Bowl.
Oh lore! Oh traditions! Oh Dupont! Who would have thought it would get to him like this, returning after all these years for a tailgate before a football
game? I guess it's sort of like coming home to my youth, he thought. Although Archer could be profound and incisive before the bar, that was just about as deep as his powers of self-analysis ever got. Whatever, he wasn't going to express any such sentiment to Debby, his blond, twenty-two-years-younger, andâas he had noticed a lot recentlyâsharp-tongued second wife, who was sitting in the Navigator's other lofty leather-upholstered front seat. Debby was already bored and, in fact, had been bored ever since he thought up this trip. Nor was there any use sharing his tender thoughts with their two boys, Tyson and Porter, who sat right behind them in the Navigator's middle seats. They were Archer's second set of children and paragons of contemporary teenage cynicism. They enjoyed setting fire to the tails of tender thoughts.
game? I guess it's sort of like coming home to my youth, he thought. Although Archer could be profound and incisive before the bar, that was just about as deep as his powers of self-analysis ever got. Whatever, he wasn't going to express any such sentiment to Debby, his blond, twenty-two-years-younger, andâas he had noticed a lot recentlyâsharp-tongued second wife, who was sitting in the Navigator's other lofty leather-upholstered front seat. Debby was already bored and, in fact, had been bored ever since he thought up this trip. Nor was there any use sharing his tender thoughts with their two boys, Tyson and Porter, who sat right behind them in the Navigator's middle seats. They were Archer's second set of children and paragons of contemporary teenage cynicism. They enjoyed setting fire to the tails of tender thoughts.
“You sure you want to park here?” said Debby. “They all look like students to me.”
That they did. From here to way over there you could see SUVs and pickup trucks parked in rows, with boys and girls milling about.
“Well, that's the whole idea, sweetheart,” said Archer. “I want Tyson to see a little student life, too. These tailgates are always really fun.”
Tyson was in his junior year at Hotchkiss. To Archer it was crucial that his boys go to Dupont. It had somehow become part of his conception of his own worth.
Archer gazed upon the great tableau again. It was a bit ⦠odd. As far as you could see, the asphalt was littered with plastic cups, they looked like. They were even in the grass in the dividers beneath the sycamore trees. And the students ⦠He knew, of course, that students were more casual these days, but the ones he was looking atâshorts, T-shirts, flip-flopsâand
pickup trucks
? Things change, of course, but he couldn't get out of his mind the old picture of Ford and Buick station wagons with studentsâDupont was all male thenâhanging around the tailgates wearing button-downs, neckties, and tweed jackets or blazers.
pickup trucks
? Things change, of course, but he couldn't get out of his mind the old picture of Ford and Buick station wagons with studentsâDupont was all male thenâhanging around the tailgates wearing button-downs, neckties, and tweed jackets or blazers.
Just in caseâhe wasn't sure of whatâhe parked the Navigator at the end of a row of spaces, three spaces from the nearest vehicleâan SUV with a bunch of students huddled about something at its back end.
Archer turned off the ventilation system and opened his window. A low garble of music was in the air, apparently from the radios of God knew how many vehicles, and a heavy, rich, sour, rancid odor. Archer could have sworn there were
two
odors ⦠beer ⦠and great fluffy fumes of human piss.
two
odors ⦠beer ⦠and great fluffy fumes of human piss.
“Yuckamamie,” said the younger boy, Porter, with a whine, “what's that
smell
?”
smell
?”
“Oh ho! I can tell you what it is,” said Debby. “It's plain oldâ”
Archer nudged her thigh with his hand and cut her off. “I don't know
what
it is,” he said. He gestured grandly out the window. “Now,
that's
a Dupont tailgate.”
what
it is,” he said. He gestured grandly out the window. “Now,
that's
a Dupont tailgate.”
You could see quite a lot from up here in the high seats of the Navigator. Curious, but all across the great panorama of vehicles and students â¦
things
were bobbing up and down â¦
bubbling â¦
the way bubbles pop up on the surface of boiling soup, all over the place but in no discernible order. Archer squinted again. They weren't bubbles, they were ⦠heads, shoulders, elbows, going up and down, up and down, on the asphalt by the SUVs and on the truck beds of the pickups. Why? From all over the place you could hear shouts of “Yo
something
!”
â¦
but Yo-
what
? ⦠and high keening wails that went
Woooooo-ooooooo
!
things
were bobbing up and down â¦
bubbling â¦
the way bubbles pop up on the surface of boiling soup, all over the place but in no discernible order. Archer squinted again. They weren't bubbles, they were ⦠heads, shoulders, elbows, going up and down, up and down, on the asphalt by the SUVs and on the truck beds of the pickups. Why? From all over the place you could hear shouts of “Yo
something
!”
â¦
but Yo-
what
? ⦠and high keening wails that went
Woooooo-ooooooo
!
From the huddle of students behind the SUV three spaces away came paroxysmal laughs. Then the huddle broke, and you could see a huge aluminum container standing on end in a plastic tub. One boy was furiously pumping a handle on top of it. Another had hold of the end of a sickly green hose that came from it, trying to fill a jumbo plastic cup, but something came foaming up out of the cap uncontrollably and went all over the boy's shorts.
“Fuck, Mark!” said the boy with the hose. “Lay off! Whattya think you're pumping, premium crude?”
The others were doubled over, spastic with merriment.
“A beer keg!” Archer announced, ignoring the word
fuck.
“I didn't know what it was! When I was here, they were all horizontal.”
fuck.
“I didn't know what it was! When I was here, they were all horizontal.”
They descended from the heights of the Navigator. Archer stretched and then said, “Tyson, Porter, come here.” Dutifully the two boys went there. He pointed. “See between those branches? That's the Charlie Bowl. It seats seventy thousand people. It used to be the biggest college football stadium in the country. When I was here, it was packed for every game.
More
than packed.” He chuckled, smiled, and shook his head over what a wild time “more than packed” alluded to.
More
than packed.” He chuckled, smiled, and shook his head over what a wild time “more than packed” alluded to.
Tyson, the sixteen-year-old, couldn't have looked more bored, and the human capacity to look bored peaks at sixteen. Porter, the thirteen-year-old, feigned an interest by staring at the thing for a few seconds.
Turning toward Debby in hopes of getting some good old times going,
Archer said, “Mommy, did I ever tell you? We used to bring our dates over here the night before the game for a little ⦠what you might call ⦠nocturnal tailgating.”
Archer said, “Mommy, did I ever tell you? We used to bring our dates over here the night before the game for a little ⦠what you might call ⦠nocturnal tailgating.”
“Yo, Dad!” said Tyson. “What kind of tail?”
It genuinely annoyed Archer when Tyson acted as if he were now old enough to share off-color double entendres with adults. Of course, he himself had walked right into that one with his choice of words.
“Oh,
fudge
!
”
said Debby, who had not been listening to either one of them. Sweating, several wisps of hair pasted to her forehead, she was inspecting a tawny peach fingernail she had just broken trying to drag a wicker picnic basket out of the Navigator's cargo area and onto the tailgate.
fudge
!
”
said Debby, who had not been listening to either one of them. Sweating, several wisps of hair pasted to her forehead, she was inspecting a tawny peach fingernail she had just broken trying to drag a wicker picnic basket out of the Navigator's cargo area and onto the tailgate.
“You can say the real word,” said Tyson. “Everybody's heard it before, even the Hulk.”
Tyson had taken to calling his brother, Porter, the Hulk, since he was skinny, reedy, small for his age, and wouldn't take his shirt off because his ribs showed. With a look of patient disdain, Porter changed the subject. In the best of whinesâand, as opposed to looking bored, the human ability to whine peaks at thirteenâPorter said, “If the game starts at one o'clock, why are we here at eleven-fifteen?”
“Because I spent four hours stuffing these baskets full of food,” said Mommy, “and you're going to have lunch right here. While Dad has his drinks and dreams about the old days, you can come back here and help me drag these things out there instead of standing around whining and complaining. Okay?”
“Yuckamamie,” whined Porter. “I wasn't complaining, I was asking a question. I mean, yuckâaâmamie.”
“What's âhis drinks' supposed to mean?” said Archer.
“You've got enough
bottles
back here,” said Debby. “You must think you're nineteen again.”
bottles
back here,” said Debby. “You must think you're nineteen again.”
“And what's so terrible about that? Or dreaming, for that matter.”
“Nothingâ”
“Oh, this is just great, all of you,” said Tyson with the sort of arch sarcasm boys acquire in northeastern boarding schools. “I can see why we got up at five-thirty and drove all the way from Connecticut for a tailgate at old Dupont. I mean like it's so
cool
and everything, and everybody's having such a
good time
.”
cool
and everything, and everybody's having such a
good time
.”
Archer wanted to strangle him ⦠or at least punish him with some withering sarcastic comeback ⦠but he didn't. He looked down at the asphalt
and made himself cool off. It was maddening when children were sarcastic to adults, but it could be crushing when adults were sarcastic to children.
and made himself cool off. It was maddening when children were sarcastic to adults, but it could be crushing when adults were sarcastic to children.
A sudden blast of music from a car radio. He looked upâ
Tyson was no longer interested in him at all. His head was turned, his eyes were as big as saucers, and his mouth was agape and grinning at the same time.
“Oh wow!” he exclaimed. “Look at those guys! You see them?”
In the row of vehicles just ahead of them, some great, strapping young men were up on the truck bed of a pickup, engaged in a beer fight. There was no missing their “ripped” bodies, that being Tyson's term for lean, highly defined muscular builds, since practically all were naked except for the shorts that hung from way down on their hips. Barks of anger, cries of laughter, thrashing arms. One of them produces a punctured can of beer and sprays another in the face from two feet away. “Die, asshole!” the victim yells in a macho voice, whereupon he throws himself upon his assailant and they go crashing to the truck-bed floor. Knees, feet, legs, shoulders, grimaces, bloodred faces pop up and crash as they grapple. Over the pickup's radio, a throaty young woman wails in the pell-mell cadence of the new pop music craze, crunk: “âspears her haunches Dirty Sanchez dude what wants her nude and slutty pseudo-ruts her butt so rudely taunts her ⦔ Others, including a regular young giant, maybe six feet six, rangy but with muscles everywhere, stand over the combatants, cheering ironically and egging them on. Behind the giant, another boy sneaks up, holding a jumbo plastic cup of beer in the air as if he were about to throw a baseball. “Hey, Mac!” he says. The giant turns about, and the boy hurls his beer bomb, cup and all, at his midsection. The beer goes all over Mac. It soaks his shorts clear down to the crotch. “Oh you dick!” roars Mac as he goes at him, but the boy dodges and vaults over the side of the truck bed and down to the asphalt. “Come on back up here, you wuss, and fight like a wuss!” And on it goes, as the crunk singer wails, “Gots the curse her pad her madder hearse her cold cunt cash her outta odor ⦔
Tyson was enjoying it immensely. Maybe this tailgate stuff wasn't as lame as he'd thought. Archer was trying to work it out in his mind that, after all, tailgate parties had always been about sheer exuberant fun, and this was different only in style, except that the next thing he knew, two of the great strapping lads were leaning out over the tailgate and hoisting a girl up by her
arms. She was a big blonde, a bit heavy but good and chesty, wearing tight bootleg jeans and a lacy whisper of a camisole unbuttoned way down to
there
. She shrieked a shriek that wavered between protest and giddiness. As she twisted her torso this way and that, as if to escape, more and more breast bulged out of her flimsy top. They had just hoisted her, twisting and straggling, up to the truck bed itself whenâ
bango!
âthe flimsy camisole popped open completely. She wore no bra. There were her breasts, her areolae, her nipples, big as life.
arms. She was a big blonde, a bit heavy but good and chesty, wearing tight bootleg jeans and a lacy whisper of a camisole unbuttoned way down to
there
. She shrieked a shriek that wavered between protest and giddiness. As she twisted her torso this way and that, as if to escape, more and more breast bulged out of her flimsy top. They had just hoisted her, twisting and straggling, up to the truck bed itself whenâ
bango!
âthe flimsy camisole popped open completely. She wore no bra. There were her breasts, her areolae, her nipples, big as life.
“Woooooooooo!” came the ironic but excited cry of the boys up on the truck bed and the others standing around the tailgate.
With a gasp of mortification, the girl stuffed them back inside her shirt and hopped off the truck's tailgate, smiling, but with eyes cast down, and going, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod ⦔
From out of nowhere sprang a boy with a long but well-defined wrestler's gut, clad in low-slung plaid boxer undershortsâout of the fly of which protruded a two-foot-long plastic novelty penis with a clownishly large glans. A grizzle ran from the dome of this boy's head, down his jaws, under his nose, over his chin, and down under where it met a tangle of hair sprouting up from his chest.
“Where'd she go?” he howled drunkenly. He turned about in slow circles, his toy penis swaying in a variable lag.
Archer was stunned. What were Tyson and Porter supposed to come away with? Jesus Christ, collegiate was collegiate, but this was ⦠indecentâ
immoral
was the term that crossed his mind, but the very word had become obsolete. It had vanished from sophisticated conversation.
immoral
was the term that crossed his mind, but the very word had become obsolete. It had vanished from sophisticated conversation.
He cut a glance at Tyson and Porter. They were utterly absorbed.
The rich, sour odor rose up from the asphalt. Oh, it was beer, all right, four acres of sloshed beer. And those big white scraps littering even the sycamore islands? Mashed beer cups. And that bubbling panorama of bobbing heads, shoulders, elbowsâfour acres of America's college elite, Dupont students, pumping thousands,
thousands
of gallons of beer and hosing it down their gullets, and it comes out ⦠where? And the result wasâwhat?âpiss, piss, great fluffy fumes of piss, four acres of it.
thousands
of gallons of beer and hosing it down their gullets, and it comes out ⦠where? And the result wasâwhat?âpiss, piss, great fluffy fumes of piss, four acres of it.
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