I Am Charlotte Simmons (89 page)

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Authors: Tom Wolfe

BOOK: I Am Charlotte Simmons
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Demurely: “Can I come in?'
“Oh … sure, sure,” said Jojo, ever the courteous giant. As he held the door open for her, he started trying to figure out how to tell her she couldn't stay. How did she even know what room he was in?
She came in and stood right in front of him as he let go of the door, which closed by itself.
“Wow!” she said with big eyes and a lovely girlish smile. “You look tall on TV … but you're really
tall
!
”
Jojo was confused. She was one of those people you can just tell right away are nice and well-mannered.
“How did you know what room I was in?”
“Your teammates told me.” She continued to smile in the nicest, sunniest fashion. “They said you've been studying very hard and feeling lonesome, and you needed a break … and here I am.”
Jojo shook his head. “Oh, those—” He stared at the floor and shook his head some more. Then he lifted his head, and she hadn't moved. Her face was no more than eighteen inches from his, and most of that was due to his being a foot taller than she was. “Look—Marilyn—it's Marilyn, right?”
She nodded yes with the same simple, adoring look as before.
“You're nice to come give me a break and all, but I got to study. Don't listen to my—” He caught himself as he was just about to say “fucking” but caught himself. “—teammates, especially the guy—the white guy. Mike.”
Her expression never changed: cheery, lovely, straightforward, utterly non-ho'-like. “Well … could I just watch?”
“Watch? Whaddya mean, could you watch?”
“Watch you study.”
He searched her face for irony—and found none. She was different from most groupies. She didn't gush with all the
likes
and
seriouslys
. She didn't flirt with her eyes.
“Why would you want to watch me study?”
She looked up at him in the same open, guileless way, still smiling. But now her smile had a slight cant to it, as if to tell him he still didn't understand, did he.
“I won't stay long,” she said.
No sooner had the word
long
left her lips than—
bango!—
her hand cupped his crotch. She was still looking straight into his eyes with the same smile, which kept saying, “Oh, I wish you understood.” Now she had unzipped his khakis and put her hand inside.
Jojo shook his head … but without conviction. Now she had her hand inside the fly of his boxer shorts, and Jojo involuntarily closed his eyes and in an odd, trancelike way began saying, “Oh shiiiiit … oh shiiiiit …”
By the time they reached the bed, she had somehow managed to unbuckle his belt and undo the top button of his khakis. Like many a man before him, his brain had dropped like a stone into his groin.
He was barely cognizant of the next few hours …
Rising up toward an opening from out of some sort of dark shaft into a blinding light … For an instant he had absolutely no idea where he was. From deep darkness into excruciating light, it hurt his eyes, was all he knew, that and the odor of spilled beer.
In the next instant Mike's voice: “Aw, shit, roomie, didn't mean to—” He emitted a high-pitched whistle, using his tongue and upper teeth. “So that's what your friend Soc—uh, your Greek friend looks like. Not bad. Go go, Jojo. If I'd known the Age of Soc, uh, uh, was like that, that's who I'd be studying, too.”
Groggily, Jojo propped himself on one elbow. Mike and some sort of blond bimbo were standing about five feet inside the door staring at him—at
them!
—him and Whatshername? Marilyn? Whatshername was lying facedown, stark-naked, the inside of his right thigh lay athwart her bare bottom, and his foot was hooked beneath
her
thigh. They had fallen asleep! Jojo couldn't think of what to say. He lay there sprawled and speechless, still deep in the hypnotic state. He tried to figure out which was worse, lying there like he was or removing his thigh from the girl's naked bottom, giving Mike's groupie an eyeful of his genitals.
“Jojo,” said Mike, “I want you to meet Samantha.”
Jojo just stared. The girl's blond hair was so short but so curly, it reminded Jojo of ivy grown amok. She had on a lacy top, resembling a peignoir, with jeans, at the moment a fashionable teenage clash of chords deemed provocative.
“Samantha, say hello to Jojo.”
“Hi, Jojo,” the girl said.
“And Marilyn,” said Mike.
“Hi, Marilyn,” the blond groupie said, even though the naked girl in the bed looked dead to the world.
“It's ‘Marilyn,' right, roomie?” said Mike, with a mocking smile. “She looks wiped out.”
Jojo said nothing. He was staring groggily at Mike's blond groupie. She was smiling at him flirtatiously—
flirtatiously
—and so broadly, it brought out the dimples in her cheeks and forced her eyes into squints. She had on such long, mascara-laden false eyelashes, they looked like rows of charred matchsticks. She wanted to
flirt
?—and him stark-naked with one leg wrapped around a stark-naked girl?
Now the girl, Marilyn, was beginning to stir. She rolled toward Jojo, so that his leg enclosed yet more of her body. She lifted her head, puzzled, then spotted Mike and his groupie. She turned back toward Jojo and gave him a kiss on the lips, then said, “I have to go tinkle.”
With that, she got up and sauntered stark-naked to the bathroom, as if this were the most natural social situation in the world.
Mike stared at her approvingly. “Whattaya been studying, Jojo, Helen of Troy?”
Jojo sat up on the bed, conscious of the fact that this laid his flaccid but still-swollen penis out flat on the undersheet, then retrieved the covers, which were bunched up at the foot of the bed, and got a glimpse of his and Whatshername's clothes abandoned all over the floor in the first rush of lust.
“He's really big!” Mike's groupie whispered to Mike, nodding at Jojo.
“Yeah, he's big in many places,” Mike said in a full voice obviously aimed more at Jojo than at the groupie. “But that don't mean he's big every place.”
Jojo didn't so much as look at them. He just reached down, pulled the covers up, got under them, and rolled over on his side, turning his back on Mike and the groupie.
Pretty soon Whatshername Marilyn returned from the bathroom. For some reason she had a towel around her waist. It covered her up down to the knees. But she sauntered toward Jojo with her shoulders back and her breasts rampant, then abandoned the towel upon the floor along with everything else and climbed into bed. He hadn't really taken it in before, but she had shaved her pubic hair, too. How
did
the word get around?
Mike finally shut out the lights. Jojo could hear him and his Whatshername Samantha undressing and getting into bed amid a lot of giggling and teasing and
Oh-no-you-don'ts
. The next thing he knew, Whatshername Marilyn's hand was between his legs.
She whispered in his ear, “Hmmm … I think
he's
awake, too.” The sensation of her breath blowing across the stand of little hairs in his ear aroused him.
“Oh shiitt … oh shiitt …” Since he had already been about as totally embarrassed as you could be, there was no longer anything left to act discreet about, much less proper, was there …
The last thing he remembered, before failing asleep again, was himself scrogging his groupie with complete moral abandon—“moral” was the unwelcome word that crashed the party in his central nervous system—and listening to the unnghhhs,
Yesyesyesses, notyetnotyetnotyets
(the groupie), and
Yeahbabyyeahbabyyeahbabies
from the next bed. In the nearly but not altogether total darkness he could make out Mike's groupie straddling his hips and bouncing up and down.
It made Jojo think of a rodeo. All she needed was a cowboy hat to wave in the triumph as she scored her animal.
Later on—he couldn't have said when—he woke up again. This time it was dark, and Mike was saying in full voice, “Jojo! Jojo! Yo! Jojo!”
“Uhhhht?” Jojo managed to say, meaning “What.”
“Wanna swap?”
“Not.”
“If you change your mind, let me know. You'll love Samantha, I'm telling you. Say hello to Jojo, Samantha.”
“Hi, Jojo,” the groupie said.
“See?” said Mike. “Nice girl.”
Even in his groggy state, Jojo was appalled. By the light that came in under the door, he could see Mike and his groupie head to the bathroom.
He rolled toward Marilyn and embraced her, this time with pity and guilt and an urge to … save her. Something about her made him think she really was a nice girl.
She misinterpreted Jojo's intentions. She put her hand between his legs again.
This time he was not aroused. Embracing her more tightly than ever, he whispered into her ear, “I can tell you're a nice girl. Why do you do this?”
“Do what?” she whispered.
“Well—” He didn't know how to put it … “Wh … be so nice and obliging to somebody like me. Like … make yourself available and everything. You don't even know me, and that girl—she don't know Mike.”
“You're
serious
?” She said it in such a way that obviously he was either making a little joke or was a little dense.
“Uh … yeah. Why?”
“You really don't understand?”
“No.”
“You're a star.” Most obvious thing in the world.
“And therefore?”
“Every girl wants to … fuck … a star.” She said it in the same sweet, sincere voice she said everything else. “Any girl who says she doesn't is lying. Any girl.”
Try as he might, Jojo could not think of a cogent reply.
A moment later she added, “And
every
girl.”
In the morning—she was gone. Jojo loathed himself.
 
 
A pair of speakers boomed out over the length and breadth of the Great Yard.
“
Think
about it! … you know? … Think about it … Freedom of expression extends only to conventional expression? Is that the message the university is sending but doesn't have the guts to come right out and say? Or should I say
straight
out?”
Got a small ripple of laughter from the throng with that one. “How come straight writers can write about straight intercourse from the lubricant secretions of the vaginal ducts—which they call ‘juicy'—that's what they call it, ‘juicy'—and then they bury their faces in this juicy pie, and that's supposed to be romantic passion—”
Got a big laugh with that one, did Randy. Namby Pamby Randy Grossman was at the podium up on a jerry-built dais on the plaza at the entrance to the Library Tower, the same place presidents and dignitaries spoke at commencements and convocations. A crowd of what?—four hundred?—five hundred?—students wearing blue jeans stood upon the grass facing Randy. On Stand Up Straight for Gay Day every student was supposed to wear blue jeans to show support for gay rights. Adam had his blue jeans on. Not only that, he stood on the ground in front of the dais, a good ten feet below the level of the microphone, along with nine other students supporting lengths of raw pine lumber bearing placards. His read, FREE SPEECH IS QUEER, TOO! In other words, he had become one of Randy Grossman's
spear carriers. He wondered if it would look odd if he held the placard over his face.
“But just let us write on one of Dupont's sacred walkways in chalk about Eskimo pie juice, in which—if you haven't tried it, don't trash it—a guy puts an ice cube in his mouth and then your cock and massages your prostate with two fingers, and you're telling me that's weirder than the straight guy with his face in the pie lapping up bodily fluids plus every bacterium and virus known to STD plus the odd streak of urine?”
Oh, Randy got whoops, screams, yodels of laughter with that one—and Adam, in his heart of hearts, wanted to drop through a crack in the Library Plaza and disappear. Morally, politically, he felt not only duty-bound and righteous in what he was now doing, but courageous as well, a bit noble, if the truth were known. The Gay and Lesbian Fist, and specifically Randy, had challenged all progressives on campus, students, faculty, administrators, employees, all and whomever, to join the Stand Up Straight for Gay Day demonstration, so that no longer could anyone dismiss it as Oh
them
again. One progressive cause was everybody's progressive cause. Otherwise, they would never build up the momentum they needed. Randy had caught him and Edgar in the
Wave
office and left them no room to wiggle out of it. So here he was, on the plaza in front of the Library Tower, the most prominent spot in the Great Yard—there were TV crews—he could see the cameras, and their red lights, showing that the camera was on, were aimed right at him—or at least they couldn't miss him.

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