Read Joe College: A Novel Online
Authors: Tom Perrotta
Joe College: A Novel (4 page)
I think I would have lost patience with her a lot sooner if the end of the summer hadn’t been looming over us from the start. Every day, in some process of withdrawal that was as subtle as it was relentless, I looked upon her less and less as my actual girl-friend and more and more as a potential anecdote, a puzzling and amusing story I would share with my roommates in one of those
hilarious late-night conversations that I missed so much when I was away from college.
hilarious late-night conversations that I missed so much when I was away from college.
Cindy saw it differently. As I retreated, her attachment to me intensified. She hated the idea that I was just going to pack my bags and disappear, leaving her right where she was at the beginning of the summer. The average night ended with her in tears, me awkwardly trying to comfort her. Shyly at first, then more insistently, she began to explore the possibility of continuing our relationship after I returned to school. We could write and talk on the phone, couldn’t we? I could come home for occasional weekends and vacations. It was do-able, wasn’t it? Then she brought up the idea of visiting me in New Haven.
“It’s not far, right? And I’ll probably have my new car by then.” I saw how excited she was by this prospect, and how hard she was trying not to show it. “It’ll be really cool, don’t you think?”
I didn’t think it would be cool at all, but it seemed even more uncool to say so.
“Where would you sleep?” I asked, in a tone that suggested simple curiosity.
“Where would you want me to?” she asked, her excitement tempered by caution.
“What I want doesn’t seem to matter.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice was quiet now, a little defensive.
“What do you think I mean?”
“Tell me.” Even in the darkness of the Roach Coach, I could see that she was getting ready to cry again. I hated it when she cried, hated how guilty it made me feel, and how manipulative she seemed in her misery.
“My parents are away,” I told her. “We can do anything we want to. So why are we sitting here arguing about nothing?”
Something suddenly seemed very interesting to her outside the passenger window. I let her stare at it for as long as she needed to.
She came over
the following night. It happened to be the Saturday before I left for school, our last chance to take advantage of the empty house. She made the decision herself, after I made it clear that I wasn’t much feeling like going anywhere.
the following night. It happened to be the Saturday before I left for school, our last chance to take advantage of the empty house. She made the decision herself, after I made it clear that I wasn’t much feeling like going anywhere.
I had everything ready when she arrived. Hall and Oates on the record player, Mateus in the refrigerator, candles in the bedroom. In my pocket I carried two Fourex lambskin condoms. (Fourex were my condoms of choice in those days. They came in little blue plastic capsules, which, though inconveniently bulky and difficult to open, seemed infinitely classier than the little foil pouches that housed less exotic rubbers. I used the brand for several years, right up to the day someone explained to me that “lambskin” was not, in fact, a euphemism.)
We drank a glass of wine and went upstairs. I lit the candles. We kissed for a while and started taking off our clothes. Her body was everything I’d hoped for, and I would have been ecstatic if Cindy hadn’t seemed so subdued and defeated in her nakedness. She sat on the bed, knees drawn to her chest, and watched me fumble with my blue capsule, her expression suggesting resignation rather than arousal. Finally the top popped off.
“There!” I said, triumphantly producing the condom.
She watched with grim curiosity as I began unfurling it over the tip of my erection, which already seemed decidedly more tentative than it had just seconds earlier.
“This is all you wanted,” she said. She stated it as a fact, not a question.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I muttered. I found it hard enough to put on a condom in the best of circumstances, and almost impossible while conducting a serious conversation.
“I should’ve known,” she said. “This is all it ever comes down to, isn’t it?”
The condom was only halfway on, and I could feel the opportunity slipping away. I tried to save it with a speech, telling her that
sex between two people who liked and respected each other was a natural and beautiful thing, a cause for celebration, and certainly nothing for anyone to be ashamed of, but by the time I got to that part the whole issue was moot anyway. I watched her blank gaze travel down to the deflated balloon dangling between my legs and then back up to my face.
sex between two people who liked and respected each other was a natural and beautiful thing, a cause for celebration, and certainly nothing for anyone to be ashamed of, but by the time I got to that part the whole issue was moot anyway. I watched her blank gaze travel down to the deflated balloon dangling between my legs and then back up to my face.
“There,” I told her. “You happy now?”
The phone rang
a few minutes after ten. I hesitated, thinking it was probably Cindy, but then picked up anyway. Those were the days just before answering machines really caught on, and if you were curious you didn’t really have a choice.
a few minutes after ten. I hesitated, thinking it was probably Cindy, but then picked up anyway. Those were the days just before answering machines really caught on, and if you were curious you didn’t really have a choice.
“Get your coat on,” Matt barked in my ear. “I’ll meet you at Naples in ten minutes.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I can’t.”
“Whaddaya mean, you can’t?”
“I told you. I’ve got a date with George Eliot.”
“Fuck George Eliot.”
“I’ll be lucky to get to second base.”
“Ha ha.”
“Seriously, I’m supposed to read up to page six eighty-seven.”
“So?”
“Right now I’m on page two seventy-two.”
“See? You’re halfway there. Just skim the rest over breakfast.”
“Sure,” I said. “What the hell. It’s either that or the Cheerios box.”
Matt sighed to let me know how badly I was disappointing him.
“Listen,” he told me. “I don’t usually do this, but I’m gonna save you a lot of trouble. You want to know what happens at the end of
Middlemarch
?”
Middlemarch
?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“Ha, good one. You know the main character? What’s her name?”
“Dorothea?”
“Yeah, her. She throws herself under a train.”
“That’s Anna Karenina, asshole.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. I got confused. There’s a big sword fight. Everybody dies.”
“Goodbye, Matt.”
“You’re not gonna do this? You’re gonna make me go to bed hungry?”
“Go yourself. You don’t need me to hold your hand.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll really go to Naples by myself at this time of night. First I’ll have to make a sign that says,”I’m Pathetic,” so I can wear it around my neck.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I assured him.
“Touché,” he said, grimly conceding defeat. “Enjoy your reading, weenie boy.”
Cindy and I
had ended the summer on bad terms. I came back to school and threw myself into my classes with renewed passion, thanking God every chance I got for releasing me from the bondage of the lunch truck, though my happiness was diluted by the hot flashes of guilt I felt for abandoning my father. Now that I knew what his days were really like, I had to trade in the sustaining illusion of him as a happy and prosperous businessman on wheels for the more accurate and distressing image of him as captain of a sinking ship, an angry, itchy, dyspeptic man tailgating some terrified geezer as he tried to make up for lost time between the perforating company and the lumberyard.
had ended the summer on bad terms. I came back to school and threw myself into my classes with renewed passion, thanking God every chance I got for releasing me from the bondage of the lunch truck, though my happiness was diluted by the hot flashes of guilt I felt for abandoning my father. Now that I knew what his days were really like, I had to trade in the sustaining illusion of him as a happy and prosperous businessman on wheels for the more accurate and distressing image of him as captain of a sinking ship, an angry, itchy, dyspeptic man tailgating some terrified geezer as he tried to make up for lost time between the perforating company and the lumberyard.
That fall turned out to be a breakthrough semester for me, the first time I ever really felt at home in college. As thrilled as I’d been by the intellectual challenges, my freshman and sophomore years had been emotionally and socially difficult. I felt trapped and resentful a lot of the time, marooned within a small circle of friends and acquaintances, cut off from the wider life of the college, which seemed to be dominated by overlapping prep school cliques I
wouldn’t have known how to penetrate if I’d wanted to. Junior year, though, the whole place just cracked wide open.
wouldn’t have known how to penetrate if I’d wanted to. Junior year, though, the whole place just cracked wide open.
Two changes were responsible for my new sense of excitement and belonging. I got hooked up with
Reality
and went to work in the dining hall.
Reality
was a new undergraduate literary magazine founded by Liz Marin, whom I’d met the previous spring in a class on the epic tradition. Liz was the kind of person I’d never met before coming to Yale. She’d grown up in New York and Paris and had taken a year off after high school to go backpacking through Latin America. She was tall and beautiful and multilingual and fiercely opinionated. One of her opinions held that the rags that passed for literary magazines on campus were so smug and tame and insular that it was hopeless to even try to reform them; they simply needed to be replaced. Her idea was to create a magazine devoted to everything but college, one that focused on exploited workers, violent crime, urban poverty, and moral squalor—the whole wide hardscrabble world spread out like a dirty rug at the foot of our ivory tower—in a word,
Reality.
Reality
and went to work in the dining hall.
Reality
was a new undergraduate literary magazine founded by Liz Marin, whom I’d met the previous spring in a class on the epic tradition. Liz was the kind of person I’d never met before coming to Yale. She’d grown up in New York and Paris and had taken a year off after high school to go backpacking through Latin America. She was tall and beautiful and multilingual and fiercely opinionated. One of her opinions held that the rags that passed for literary magazines on campus were so smug and tame and insular that it was hopeless to even try to reform them; they simply needed to be replaced. Her idea was to create a magazine devoted to everything but college, one that focused on exploited workers, violent crime, urban poverty, and moral squalor—the whole wide hardscrabble world spread out like a dirty rug at the foot of our ivory tower—in a word,
Reality.
“No more sonnets about menstruation!” she proclaimed at our organizational meeting, with what seemed like genuine anguish. “No more wacky stories about summer jobs!”
Our first issue, published that December—the cover photo featured a stray dog with some sort of skin condition straining really hard to take a shit—made a surprisingly big splash on campus. The articles included profiles of a prison guard and a heroin-addicted prostitute, and the poems explored difficult subjects like incest and drug addiction and prison life. There were two short stories—one about a pyromaniac priest, the other about a thirteen-year-old nymphomaniac who poisons her family’s dog for reasons the author chose to leave deliberately vague. Liz herself was a talented photographer, and her unflinching portraits of the homeless, the retarded, the weird-looking, and the unlucky were scattered throughout our pages. Despite the grittiness of the content, production values were high; a supposedly anonymous alum—everyone knew he was actually Liz’s Uncle George—had donated a
substantial sum to insure that we didn’t have to cut corners on things like paper stock and high-quality photo reproduction. Just about everyone who mattered agreed that
Reality
was troubling and deeply relevant, a refreshing departure from the usual circle jerk of undergraduate publishing. As deputy assistant literary editor for fiction, I got to bask in some of the reflected glory. Strangers introduced themselves to me at parties; people who’d ignored me for two years suddenly wanted to know me better.
substantial sum to insure that we didn’t have to cut corners on things like paper stock and high-quality photo reproduction. Just about everyone who mattered agreed that
Reality
was troubling and deeply relevant, a refreshing departure from the usual circle jerk of undergraduate publishing. As deputy assistant literary editor for fiction, I got to bask in some of the reflected glory. Strangers introduced themselves to me at parties; people who’d ignored me for two years suddenly wanted to know me better.
Despite its comparative lack of glamour, though, my job in the dining hall probably had more to do with my improved mood than my association with the magazine. Hot and dirty and hectic as it could be, the work was strangely consuming, sometimes even exhilarating. Three-hour shifts would fly by in a blur of frantic activity and cheerful banter and an unspoken sense of camaraderie I hadn’t experienced anywhere else in college.
In my ugly blue shirt and paper hat, I was part of a team, the first one I’d belonged to for a long time. My teammates weren’t just fellow students like Matt or Kristin or Sarah, a shy girl I later found out was a world-class oboist as well as a member of the Yale Slavic Chorus, or Eddie Zimmer, who was always trying to recruit people for the Ultimate Frisbee Club, or Djembe, who was supposedly some sort of African prince whose family had fallen on hard times. They were the surly cooks with their unpredictable rages and muttered quips; the black and Puerto Rican women working the serving line, whose private thoughts remained hidden behind masks of polite friendliness; the dishwashers, one of whom weighed three hundred pounds and another who lived in the YMCA and had such a horrible hacking cough I regularly expected to see him start spitting up blood; and Lorelei, this sexy high school girl from New Haven whose job seemed to consist of sitting at the front desk in a pose of provocative languor and pressing a clicker every time someone entered; and Albert, the manager, who enjoyed teaching us restaurant jargon, like “eighty-six” and “sneeze guard.” Sometimes I’d get so caught up in the work I’d forget who I was and mutter under my breath about the “fuckin’ Yalies,” the privileged brats
who seemed to think the rest of us had been put on earth to serve their every need and whim.
who seemed to think the rest of us had been put on earth to serve their every need and whim.
In late October,
at the height of that unexpectedly busy and happy semester, I got a letter from Cindy. It was four pages long, written in red ink on pink stationery in this fat, meticulous, gracefully looping script. “Dear Danny,” she wrote:
at the height of that unexpectedly busy and happy semester, I got a letter from Cindy. It was four pages long, written in red ink on pink stationery in this fat, meticulous, gracefully looping script. “Dear Danny,” she wrote:
Guess what? I did it! I broke down and bought a car! A brand new Honda Civic. Silver. It’s really cute. You wouldn’t believe how good it smells. I woke up in the middle of the night last night and snuck outside of the house in my pajamas just so I could sit in it for a while. Isn’t that ridiculous! I’m still learning the stick. I’m all right with everything except starting on a hill. Yesterday I rolled backwards into a cop car at that light by the Hess station! but luckily there was no damage. The cop was nice about it—he just told me to take it easy on the clutch. It was easier once I got myself to calm down a little.
Are you surprised to hear from me?! My heart’s pounding like crazy. I don’t know why. It’s just a letter, right? I’m sure your busy with your friends and all your homework and everything, but I’m curious. Do you think about me sometimes? I’m only asking because I think about you all the time. I mean ALL THE TIME! I’ve written you like 37 letters I’ve been too scared to put in the mail, but this one I think I really might send so I’m trying to be EXTRA careful about spelling since I know it is one of your strong points (NOT one of mine!)
You know when I think of you most? Coffee break. When I step outside and see your father’s truck waiting in the road. I expect you to be there again, wearing that doofy coin belt (No offense!) or else I remember us kissing in the front seat. Remember that?
I’m really sorry if I disappointed you. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with you the way you wanted to be with me. I guess I
was just scared or something. Oh well. You probably have a new girlfriend now. I HOPE not! (Is it all right for me to say that?)
was just scared or something. Oh well. You probably have a new girlfriend now. I HOPE not! (Is it all right for me to say that?)
You don’t have to write back if you don’t want. I mainly just want to tell you about the car, since you spent so much time helping me look. I at least owe you a ride when you get back home for Thanksgiving. Would that be okay?
Wow! I don’t think I’ve written a letter this long in my whole life. I guess I’m like that once I get going I can’t seem to get myself to shut up. But I guess I don’t have to tell YOU!
Love,
Cynthia
Cynthia
ps—is it all right for me to say love?
Another letter came the next day, and another one the day after that. After her eighth unanswered letter, I finally broke down and wrote her back. I congratulated her on her new car, talked a little about my classes, and told her how much fun I was having working in the dining hall. In passing, I mentioned that I wasn’t seeing anyone new, and that I still thought about her from time to time. Three days later, she called and asked if she could drive up for a visit. (“Just for the day,” she assured me.) By that time, though, it was November already, and the late semester crunch had set in. I had papers to write, and no time for visitors. We made plans to get together over Thanksgiving break.
My first night home she picked me up in her new car, proud and happy and nervous. She had a new haircut too, shorter and less elaborate and a lot more flattering. We went to the movies, then out for a couple of drinks. We laughed a lot, and took a detour to Echo Lake on the way home. In an empty parking lot by the golf course, she showed me how the front seats of her Honda reclined like dentist chairs. With the heater running and
Greetings from Asbury Park
on the tape player, we kissed till our jaws ached and our tongues were sore, just like the summer had never ended.
Greetings from Asbury Park
on the tape player, we kissed till our jaws ached and our tongues were sore, just like the summer had never ended.
At ten thirty the phone rang again. I figured it to be Matt, weighing in with a second round of begging and hectoring, but it turned out to be Polly Wells, the deputy assistant literary editor for poetry at Reality.
“Hey,” she said, chuckling softly to herself as if remembering a good joke. “What are you doing?”
“Abusing my highlighter. It’s an ugly scene.”
“Want to go to Naples?”
“Like when?”
“Like now?”
I glanced down at the brick that was
Middlemarch
and weighed my alternatives. Polly had a cloud of reddish blond hair and the mouth of a cherub. We’d kissed each other once, experimentally, at the party celebrating the first issue of Reality, and neither one of us had mentioned it since. We were both drunk at the time, but I retained a vivid memory of her whispering, “You’re a very strange person,” and then kissing me on the mouth, as if to congratulate me on my strangeness. I believe I’d been going on about her name before that, telling her how great I thought it was that there were still people in the world named Polly. (The only thing I remembered after that was vomiting into a storm drain while Sang stood by with some guy I didn’t know, waiting patiently for me to finish.)
Middlemarch
and weighed my alternatives. Polly had a cloud of reddish blond hair and the mouth of a cherub. We’d kissed each other once, experimentally, at the party celebrating the first issue of Reality, and neither one of us had mentioned it since. We were both drunk at the time, but I retained a vivid memory of her whispering, “You’re a very strange person,” and then kissing me on the mouth, as if to congratulate me on my strangeness. I believe I’d been going on about her name before that, telling her how great I thought it was that there were still people in the world named Polly. (The only thing I remembered after that was vomiting into a storm drain while Sang stood by with some guy I didn’t know, waiting patiently for me to finish.)
“Now sounds good,” I told her.
Ten minutes later I was sitting across from her in a scarred-up wooden booth near the jukebox, waiting for my glass of foam to revert to its original liquid condition. Polly was one of the few girls I knew who was always up for splitting a pitcher, but she hadn’t quite perfected her pouring technique.
“I’m pissed at Peter,” she told me, straining to make herself heard over the din of surrounding conversations. Naples at that time on a Tuesday night seemed like the hub of the universe, and one of the few scenes at Yale that actually approximated stereotypical
images of “college life”—crowds of more or less rowdy students gathered around dark tables littered with beer glasses and pizza crusts, laughing, arguing, and occasionally bursting into song, though the general aura of medieval revelry was softened by the presence of numerous violin cases stowed under the tables, as well as the healthy population of loners scattered throughout the restaurant, holding folded pizza slices in one hand and open books in the other.
images of “college life”—crowds of more or less rowdy students gathered around dark tables littered with beer glasses and pizza crusts, laughing, arguing, and occasionally bursting into song, though the general aura of medieval revelry was softened by the presence of numerous violin cases stowed under the tables, as well as the healthy population of loners scattered throughout the restaurant, holding folded pizza slices in one hand and open books in the other.
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