The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [260]
No. (Teasing.) I'd have a better one if. . . you know.
Uh-uh, momma knows best. (Silence, her head on his shoulder.) I feel funny when I start thinking of us.
Me too.
Do you suppose everybody is like us? I wonder if Madge pets the way I do, she always giggles when I try to pump her. (Augury of the practical woman) Something fishy there. (The maiden again) Don't you feel funny when you start thinking about things?
Yeah, it's all very. . . funny. (But said profoundly.)
I feel much older since I've known you, Willie.
I know what you mean. Gee, it's swell talking to you. (She has so many virtues; she feels so soft, and her mouth excites him so, and she's a good dancer, looks swell in a bathing suit, and besides that she's intelligent. He can talk to her. No one else had it like this. He glows with the intoxicating esteem of first love.) Oh, Beverly.
At the State University he is accepted in a good frat, is disappointed vaguely because initiations are forbidden. (He sees himself as a senior conducting it.) But it is fine. He learns to smoke a pipe, is introduced to the rewards of college life. Brother Brown as a pledgee in good standing of Tau Tau Epsilon we will preside over the circumsional rites. In the vernacular you will lose your cherry.
The brothel is expensive, catering to the college. He has heard of it before, is drunk enough to acquit himself without fear. Afterward in the college quadrangle he sings. Once in a While. . . Wheeeee-hooooooooh. Once in a while, get it, Father Perkins.
Quiet.
You're a good sonofabitch. (A new theme.)
He never means to slip, he has the best intentions in the world, but somehow drafting, freshman trig, freshman physics, etc., etc., is a little less vital than he has imagined. He tries to study, but there are better things. A man wants to get out after spending the whole afternoon in a lab.
The glamour of getting plastered on beers in the local tavern, the long deep conversation. I got a girl, Gert, I tell you she can't be beat. She's beautiful, look at her picture. It's a goddam shame the helling around I do, cheating on her and writing lovey-dovey letters.
Hell, boy, she ain't missin' any bets either.
Now, don't say that, or I'm gonna take offense. She's pretty goddam pure.
All right, all right, just take it from my point of view. What she don't know won't hurt her.
He considers this, begins to giggle. I gotta tell ya the truth, that's the way I feel about it. Have a beer.
I wish I could tell you boys (slightly drunk) just what the hell this is all gonna mean to us years from now. We're storin' up memories, and that's a fact. They ain't, all right I said ain't even if I am in college, but shit I'm just plain folks, they ain't a one of you I'll ever forget, that's the goddam Lesbian truth.
What the hell you talkin' about, Brown?
Damn if I know. (Laughter.) Tee hell with the physics test tomorrow. I just got helling in my blood.
Amen.
In June, after he has flunked out, it is hard to face his father, but he comes back with resolutions.
Listen, Pop, I know I've been an awful disappointment to you, and it's a damn shame after all your sacrifices, but I just don't think I'm cut out for that kind of work. I ain't gonna make any apologies about my intelligence 'cause I still think it's as good as anyone's my age, but I'm the kind of a fellow who needs something he can get his teeth into better. I believe I'm cut out for selling or something like that. I like to be around people.
(The long sigh) Maybe, maybe. No use cryin' over spilt milk is what I say. I'll talk to some of my friends.
He gets a job with a farm-machinery company, is making fifty dollars a week before his first year is out. He introduces Beverly to his folks, takes her to see Patty, who is now married.
Do you think she liked me? Beverly asks.
Sure she did.
They're married in the summer, and settle down in a six-room house. He's up to seventy-five dollars, but they're always a little in debt; liquor runs to twenty or twenty-five dollars a week counting what it costs them to go out.
Still, they don't have a bad time. The wedding night is a shambles but he recovers quickly, and after a decent interval their lovemaking is rich and various. They have a secret catalogue: