Free I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

Dis was who Charles had chosen for the locker room. Doctor Dis was so sociopathic and generally disgusting, Jojo had the suspicion that Doctor Dis himself was a cynic who created this stuff as a parody of the genre. He’d stick in words like “beast” and “cease,” words more than half the Dupont national basketball champions had never uttered in their lives. At this very moment, in fact, the Doctor was singing?—saying?—

    â€œKnow’m saying?
Call yo’self a cop? Swap yo’ dick and yo’ass,
Ev’ry time you shit, yo’ balls go plop plop.
Wipe yo’ dick, and it bleeds choc’late.
You needs to fuck with yo’ butt, cocksucking cop cop.
Know’m saying?”

    But the locker room itself was luxurious beyond anything the thousands of hooples who had watched the “pickup game” could have imagined. The lockers were made not of metal, but of polished oak in its natural light color with a showy grain. Each one was nine feet high and three and a half feet wide, with a pair of louvered doors and all manner of shelves, shoe racks, beechwood hangers, lights that came on when the doors opened, and a fluorescent tube near the floor that was on twenty-four hours a day to keep things dry. Above the door was a brass strip with the player’s name engraved on it, and above that, framed in oak, a foot-high photograph of the player in action on the court. Jojo’s was one from the publicity department. It showed him soaring above a thicket of upstretched black arms and tapping in a rebound. He loved that picture.
    As Jojo entered the room, four black players, all with the shaved heads, he noticed, Charles, André, Curtis, and Cantrell, were standing around in front of Charles’s locker. Jojo couldn’t resist joining them. Had to … Their conversation offered the possibility of recognizing the triumph of Jojo Johanssen, the white boy who took no shit.
    As Jojo approached, Charles was saying, “Say what? What’s that motherfucker know about my grades ? What’s he care ? He’s one dumb motherfucker, that motherfucker.”
    André, grinning at him: “I’m just telling you what the man said, Charles. Man said you go over the library every night after study hall and hump the books. Said he saw you.”

    â€œThe fuck he saw me. That motherfucker’s so dumb he don’t know where the library’s at.” Charles was no longer his witty and ironic self. He had just been accused of not only getting good grades—it was rumored that his GPA was 3.5—but of trying to get them. “What’s he talking about— books. He don’t know what a book looks like. Motherfucker’s so dumb he counts on his fingers and can’t get past one.” Whereupon Charles extended his middle finger.
    â€œOoo-ooo-weee!” said Cantrell. “Gil hear that, man, he gon’ come gitchoo!”
    â€œShit, he ain’ gon’ come git nothing. He gon’ put his finger up his ass’s all he gon’ do. Talking about my grades …”
    â€œHey, man,” said Curtis, “what grades you be getting anyway, you don’t mind me asking.”
    â€œHeghhh heghhh heghhh …” André began laughing from deep down in his belly. “Maybe we don’t need no more swimmies. We got Charles.”
    Jojo sidled up to the group and said, “Take no shit from’m, Charles. You got grades!”
    He glanced at the others to register their amusement at this witty turn on the expression “You got game.” Instead, he got three blank faces.
    â€œWhaz good, Jojo?” said Charles with an empty expression of his own. Charles always said “Whaz good?” instead of “Whuzzup.”
    â€œNot much,” said Jojo. “Not much. I’m beat.” He figured that would give them an opportunity to think about what had forced him to work so hard—and whom