I Am Charlotte Simmons

9. Socrates

This wasn’t the first time Jojo had had an appointment with Coach Roth in the Rotheneum, but it was the first time he had made an appointment on his own initiative…and oh, man, had he had to do some double-talking to avoid having to tell Coach’s secretary among secretaries, Celeste, what he wanted to see the great man for…Jojo’s going-on-seven-foot self now entered the Rotheneum lobby feeling small and devious.

The Rotheneum was a section of the Buster Bowl building, created specially as an office facility for Buster Roth and his minions. Some young cynic on the school newspaper had come up with “Rotheneum,” and now everybody called it that, although not within Coach’s earshot. “Rotheneum” was a play on the word “atheneum.” Jojo didn’t know what an atheneum was, but he knew the word had to do with the higher things, things intellectual in nature. The Wave obviously thought of Buster Roth as a lower thing, a big-time college coach who made more than a million in salary plus at least twice that in endorsements, public appearances, life-is-like-a-basketball-game motivational speeches for businessmen, and swoosh deals, as they were known because of the swoosh symbol of the Nike company, still the biggest swoosh dealer of them all. In a swoosh deal, the coach dresses the entire team, from top to bottom—jerseys, shorts, basketball shoes, and socks—in the company’s products, with each item identified by a logo—in return for…nobody ever seemed to know exactly how much. But it was known that Nike all by itself had a $200 billion advertising budget and that swooshing, also known as “branding,” was their most important form of advertising. As coach of last year’s national champions, Buster Roth had just signed a new swoosh deal, this time with the up-and-coming And 1. The numbers being bruited about were phenomenal. Whatever the sum, every cent of it went to Coach.

And there you had the mental atmosphere of the Rotheneum. It was the palace of the sports empire bearing a benign relationship with one of its most important colonies, Dupont University. The Rotheneum lobby had stark-white walls featuring glassed-in niches lined with mauve velvet to display Coach’s many trophies. Last year’s NCAA national championship trophy was in a niche directly opposite the main entrance. Everywhere you looked, star gleams were exploding off the trophies, thanks to high-intensity pinhole spotlights within the niches.

Coach’s domain took up the entire third floor. There was a screening room with a sloping theater floor and forty seats—posh upholstered theater seats that popped up when you stood up—solely for the analysis of Dupont basketball games and practice sessions and the play of upcoming opponents. “Now, keep your eye on Number 8, Jamal Perkins…See that!…I’m gonna rewind…Okay…You see the way he sticks his fucking knee out when he executes a pick? Fucking refs never call it!” Jojo could hear Coach’s exasperated voice in his head.

The elevator opened into a waiting room with a high ceiling, twelve feet at least…Downlighters cast dazzling beams upon epic-scale photographs framed in the most minimal (1.5 mm) brushed aluminum strips and hung upon more smacking white walls. There was a horseshoe-shaped banquette upholstered in a smart tan leather, on which sat three fortyish white business types with neckties. Opposite the banquette was a glass fence etched with diagonal lines of Dupont D’s leaning in cutting-edge italic. Behind the fence, at workstations, as they were called, was Coach’s harem of secretaries and assistants, all of them young women with short skirts and glistening shanks. Queen of Coach’s harem was Celeste, a tall, willowy brunette with alabaster-white skin. More than one was the basketball player who entertained the desire to hit on Celeste, and Jojo was among them, but she was said to be the “office girl” of Coach himself. As Jojo walked in, she stood up and said, “Ahhh, the man of mystery arrives! Have a seat, Jojo.” She gestured toward the banquette.

Jojo said, “Yo, Celeste,” and let it go at that. He didn’t take a seat immediately. He eased his shoulders back to emphasize the swell of his pectorals beneath his T-shirt and gave the business types a few seconds in which to fully admire his overpowering height and muscles and to register the fact that here, even if they didn’t happen to recognize him, was a Dupont athlete.

And if they didn’t know it then, they certainly got it just a few minutes later when Celeste summoned him into Coach’s office ahead of them.

And there he was: Coach—reared back grandly in a modernistic leather-upholstered swivel chair before a gigantic slab of mahogany—his desk—in the bay created by the great curved wall of glass at his corner of the building. He had his fingers interlaced behind his head and his elbows winged out on either side. Still vain about his once-athletic body, he had tensed his biceps, which in this posture protruded from the short sleeves of his polo shirt, and inflated his chest to create a mighty shelf above his gathering paunch. The room was not big in square feet, but with the sweeping curve of glass, the high ceiling a-dazzle with downlighters, the mahogany, the startlingly white walls, and stainless-steel furniture upholstered in tobacco-brown leather, it was dramatic.

“Come in, Jojo,” he said—quietly, for him.

Then he gave Jojo a look every player on the team was familiar with. He lowered his head slightly, looked upward into Jojo’s eyes with his teeth touching and his lips parted in a slight smile. It made Jojo feel as if Coach had just MRI’d his innards and found all his secrets, including the ones he didn’t even know about.

“So—to what do I owe this pleasant surprise, Jojo?” said Coach. “Celeste calls you the man of mystery.”

Jojo just stood there, beginning to feel extremely awkward. He realized he had never thought out, in so many words, what he wanted to say. “Well, I guess I should—I mean, I really appreciate you taking the time—”

Coach interrupted: “Go ahead, have a seat, Jojo.” He motioned toward a semicircular chair of stuffed brown leather in a stainless-steel frame. So Jojo sat down—and couldn’t get comfortable in the damned thing. The back was at a right angle to the seat, and the seat was too low. He felt like his head was a foot lower than Coach’s.

Buster Roth gave Jojo a kindly smile. “You don’t look one hundred percent yourself, Jojo. What’s up? Anything wrong?”

“Well…” Jojo began rubbing the backs of his hands with his palms. “I wouldn’t say ‘wrong,’ exactly.”

“Okay, then…what, Jojo?”

“It’s about academics, Coach.”

Coach’s voice turned a bit stern. “What about academics, Jojo? What class? I’ve told you guys a hundred times, you don’t let things develop. The first sign of some issue, you come to one of us. You don’t let these damned things just drift along.”

“It’s nothing like that, Coach.” Jojo was rubbing his hands so hard, Coach glanced at them. “It’s—I guess—what I want to say is—I guess I just don’t feel I’m getting enough out of it, that’s all.”

“Out of what, Jojo?” Coach had pulled his eyebrows together over his nose. Obviously he hadn’t a clue as to what Jojo was trying to say.

“Out of the academics, Coach, out of my classes.”

“What classes? You’re not having any trouble passing, are you? You had a two-point-two grade point average last time I heard anything about it. So what’s the problem, Jojo?”

“Well…” said Jojo, struggling—he now had the fingers of both hands intertwined and thrust deep down between his thighs, which caused his whole upper torso to hunch over—“like…like I’m taking this upper level French course for my language requirements?”

“Yeah…”

“And we read the books in English instead of French, that kind of thing.”

“Mr. Lewin, right?”

Jojo nodded yes.

“He’s terrific. He’s a real friend of the program, Jojo. He understands the importance of athletics in higher education. Most professors at Dupont are fine people. But every now and then, as you know, you run into some prick who’s got a hard-on for athletes. Lewin’s not like that. He’s a stand-up guy.”

“But we do all our reading in English, Coach. I’m not really learning any French.”

“So what? Whattaya wanna be, a language scholar? Jesus Christ. Besides, that’s not true. You learn plenty of French in that class, plenty of French literature. Plenty of our guys have taken that course. They all tell me he’s a great lecturer. They learn all about the great French writers—you know, like Proust…” Coach was obviously rummaging through his memory bank for more names and coming up short. “And you actually learn more…about more great writers, because Lewin don’t make you do all this translating. I had to take a foreign language when I was in college, too, you know. All that translating does for you is eat up time and break your balls. Don’t forget, this is Dupont, Jojo. You couldn’t be taking a better French course anywhere in this country. Jesus Christ, count your blessings. Lewin is great.”

So Jojo gave up on From Flaubert to Houellebecq. “Well…that’s not the only thing, Coach. The other day I’m talking to this student, and she says something about Socrates. I don’t mean something like…complicated or anything. She wasn’t trying to show off. She just assumed everybody would understand that much about Socrates. I mean, I knew the name, Coach, but that was all, and like Socrates is the foundation of philosophy.”

“The foundation of philosophy, hunh? Who told you that, Jojo?”

“This girl.”

“This girl,” said Coach. “Well, I can tell you about Socrates, Jojo. He committed suicide. He drank a glass of hemlock. You know what hemlock is?”

“Like a tree?”

“Very good,” said Coach, although Jojo wasn’t sure about the look on his face. Was he making fun of him? “In this case,” said Coach, “it’s a poison made from the leaves. Socrates was a man of great principle, Jojo. He committed suicide rather than…Well, anyway, it all had to do with his principles. And you know what, Jojo? That’s all you’re gonna need to know about Socrates for the rest of your life. That’s all anybody needs to know. You’re still too young to understand this, but you’ll get by fine as long as you have some vague idea of who these characters are when their names come up. Nobody you meet’s gonna know any more than that, either, except for a few learned nerds, and they can’t do anything about anything anyway.”

“I know, Coach, but shouldn’t I learn some of this stuff, all the same? I mean, here I am, and like you say, this is Dupont, and maybe while I’m here, shouldn’t I—I mean, as long as I’m here and there are all these courses you can take instead of—like this econ course I’m taking?”

A weary note slipped into Coach’s voice. “What econ course, Jojo?”

“It’s called Fundamentals of Market Fluctuation. Mr. Baggers.”

“I know him well. Great guy. Great teacher, too.”

“I guess so, Coach, but it’s also sort of econ for dummies.”

Tersely: “Yeah? Which means what?”

“The other students call it Stocks for Jocks.”

“Oh? Maybe you got a better idea.”

“There’s this philosophy course, Coach. Somebody told me about it.”

“ ‘This girl,’ I suppose.”

“Well…yeah. But it sounds like a great course. It’s called the Age of Socrates.”

Coach stared at Jojo for what seemed an eternity with the kind of astounded, malevolent look a father might give a teenager who has just walked in and told him he totaled the old man’s Lamborghini in a drag race. Then he pressed an intercom button. “Celeste, get me the course catalog…Right. For Dupont College…”

Then he resumed the stare, saying nothing. Jojo felt as if he were being shriveled and shrunk by some sort of ray.

In no time, Celeste popped in and gave Jojo a flirtatious, almost leering smile—hunhhh?—and handed the course catalog to Coach. Coach swiveled in his chair so that his back was to Jojo as he opened the catalog to a certain place and began running down the pages with his forefinger; then he swiveled back to face Jojo.

Tonelessly: “Could this be the one, Jojo?” He read from the catalog: “ ‘Philosophy 308. The Age of Socrates: Rationalism, Irrationality, and Animistic Magic in Early Greek Thought. Mr. Margolies.’”

“Yeah, that’s it,” said Jojo, brightening. “I remember there was this part about animalistic magic!”

Coach rolled his eyes but made no comment. Pause…Then: “Philosophy 308. You know what the 308 means, Jojo?”

Jojo shook his head no.

“It means it’s the highest level. The three hundreds are the hardest courses they got. You ever had a three hundred course before?”

Jojo shook his head no.

Coach looked at the catalog again. “You know what Rationalism, Irrationality, and Animistic Magic mean?”

“Sort of,” said Jojo, “more or less.”

“Sort of more or less. That’s great.”

Jojo could feel emotion rising in his throat. “Okay, Coach, you’re right, I’m kidding myself if I say I know, but I want to learn something, Coach! If I’m gonna be sitting in classes anyway, I’m tired of—you know, skimming and scamming by the way I’ve been doing. I’m not just a stupid jock, and I’m tired of treating myself like one!”

Coach ignored all of that and said, “You know who Mr. Margolies is, by any chance?”

“No, but I hear he’s really good.”

“Yeah, really good,” said Coach in a thoughtful, contemplative tone. Then—bango! “REALLY GOOD AT BEING ONE OF THOSE PRICKS I TOLD YOU ABOUT! THAT FUCKER’D LOVE TO GET HIS HANDS ON SOMEBODY LIKE YOU! HE’D CHEW YOUR ASS UP AND SPIT IT OUT THE CORNER OF HIS FUCKING MOUTH! The Age of Socrates…You simpleminded shit, I got news for you. As far as you’re concerned, THIS IS THE FUCKING AGE OF JOJO! You got it? You got any fucking idea what I mean? YOU GOTTA MAKE IT RIGHT OVER THERE!” He thrust his right forefinger in the general direction of the basketball arena so hard, his whole shoulder and upper torso jerked. “AND YOU GOTTA MAKE IT THIS YEAR!—OR YOUR ASS IS FUCKED! The Age of Socrates…YOU’RE HERE TO DO THINGS WITH A ROUND ORANGE BALL!” He made a basketball shape with his hands—“THAT’S THE ONLY FUCKING AGE YOU GOT TO THINK ABOUT!”

Jojo had never shown his anger to Buster Roth, but the “simpleminded shit” crack had breached the Coach/coached barrier. “You’re just like everybody else! You think I’m stupid, don’t you! You—”

“That isn’t what I was saying—”

“You think I’m good for one thing in this world! You think I’m this animal you put out there to take your goddamned round orange ball off the boards and set up picks so other—”

“That isn’t what—”

“—other animals can shove your round orange ball through your—”

“Jojo! Listen to me! That ain’t—”

“—fucking basket and whack the shit outta the big motherfuckers the other team’s got inside—” It occurred to Jojo that he had just mentioned three things instead of one. That caused just enough of a hiccup in the gusher of anger for Coach to break in successfully:

“Jojo”—he had his palms up in the whoa whoa stance—“come on! You know me better than that! We been close for a long time. Ever since that night—remember that night?—one second, one split second after midnight, July first—I had your whole telephone number already punched in except for the last digit—and as soon as my watch said twelve-oh-oh, I punched that last digit—it was a seven—right?—I even remember the fucking number—am I right or not!—and I said, ‘Jojo, this is Coach Roth. I want you here at Dupont as much as any player I’ve ever tried to recruit in my entire career.’ That was God’s own truth then, Jojo, and it’s—”

“Yeah, but you just called me a simpleminded shit!”

“—and it’s true now! Christ, I don’t wanna sound sappy, Jojo, but I’ve always though of you as a son. Like my firstborn. If I didn’t, I wouldna used a term like—like what I said. But you and me, we’re so close we can exaggerate to each other to make a point, and I wasn’t even talking about you, in the sense of you, Jojo Johanssen”—he spread his arms out wide, as if Jojo Johanssen were about as grand as things got in this world—“I was talking about this one decision you wanted to make, a course with a prick like Margolies. That’s all. I just thought it wasn’t savvy, and you’re as savvy as any player I’ve ever coached. Why do I depend on you to set picks? I’ll tell you why. You know this game, Jojo. Other players just play the game. But you know the game while you play the game. You see what I mean?”

Part of Jojo didn’t believe a word of it for one moment. And yet…another part of Jojo purred, however reluctantly, under the stroking.

“Yeah, but you shouldna called me that, Coach.”

Coach. Even Jojo realized that his anger had just gotten flattered back down below the Coach/coached barrier.

“Of course I shouldna. But I get emotional when the subject’s a great player like you. I guess that’s a personal defect I got, Jojo, but having somebody like you to coach is what this game is all about, if you’re a coach. Someday, someday way down the line, years from now, when you decide to call it a career on the hardwood, you might wanna be a coach yourself. Oh, you’ll have plenty a other options. Sometime remind me to tell you all the different great things our players have gone on to do. When you play the game the way you do, a lot of doors open, Jojo. You’ll have a lotta options. But if you wanna coach, you’ll be a great coach, Jojo, a great coach, and you’ll understand how much it means”—he tapped his fist against the center of his chest—“to have a player as talented and smart as you are right now.”

Jojo averted his eyes, set his lips into an angry twist, heaved his great chest, and sighed…and nodded his head several times, ever so slightly, in assent, as if to say, “Don’t think for one minute I’m not still angry at you…but I am willing to be justly praised.”

Coach said in as calm a voice as you please, “You know, this is big-time basketball we play here at Dupont, Jojo. It’s as big-time as it gets. But it’s also college, and I think of myself as a teacher, and I am a teacher. I know some players hear me say that, and they think it’s just something I say because it sounds good, but I mean it. I mean it as much as anything I’ve ever meant in my life. We were just talking about Socrates, right? Well, Socrates was a Greek, and in the age of Socrates the Greeks had a saying: Mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body.”

Jojo didn’t know the first thing about Greek, but for some reason that didn’t sound Greek. It sounded more like—that was the problem, he didn’t even know what it sounded more like. He was dying to interrupt Coach and demonstrate the wattage of the Johanssen brain, yet he couldn’t very well interrupt and say something told him Coach was wrong, but he didn’t have the remotest idea what it was.

“See?”—Coach went on—“The Greeks knew something we’ve lost sight of. A good mind don’t mean much unless it’s one and the same thing”—he held up his hands and interlaced his fingers—“with a good body. Mens sana in corpore sano. That’s Greek for ‘If you want a great university, you damn well better have a great athletic program.’ Whether you know it or not, you’re an educational leader here at Dupont. Yeah! A leader. You’re a role model for the whole campus.” He lifted his right hand to eye level and made an almost 180-degree sweep of the hand to indicate the whole campus. “They see a guy like you, and they see what they gotta shoot for. Now, none a those kids are gonna get a body like yours”—he gestured toward the Johanssen body. “A body like yours is a gift from God plus a lot of hard work. But that’s what they oughta shoot for. The reason our program has to put a slightly greater emphasis on the corpore is because it’s our program that teaches the entire student body what protects and fortifies and energizes the mens and enables it to make a difference in the world. We’re all educators—me, you, the whole program. Like I say, you’re a role model. You’re helping teach all of this great university the Greek ideal: Mens sana in corpore sano. Every time they see you out on that hardwood—hell, every time they see you on the campus—they all know you by sight—they all say Go go Jojo—you’re teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching them the Greek ideal: Mens sana in corpore sano, Jojo, mens sana in corpore sano.”

With that, Coach sank back comfortably into the swivel chair and beamed Jojo a Solomonic look.

Shit. Jojo felt like he was treading water in a vat of mineral oil. The goo made him feel like anything he tried to do would be half speed. Was this how his big decision, his big academic turnaround, was winding up—with him floating like a dead bug in a vat of slippery Buster-brand bullshit? With his last ounce of moral courage he said oh so slowly and oh so hoarsely, “I never thought about it that way before, Coach—”

“Of course you didn’t. There was no reason for you to. You’re a great guy and totally committed to the program. Now you step back a few feet and take a look at the big picture and realize what a big part you’re playing.”

“—and I’d like to take the Socrates course, too.”

Coach put his hand over his eyes, massaged his temples with his widespread thumb and middle finger, swiveled about twenty degrees away from Jojo, and let out the kind of sigh that sounds like an eighteen-wheeler’s air brakes. Without turning back toward Jojo or lifting his head or removing his manual eyeshade from his brow, Coach said calmly, softly, albeit wearily, “Jojo, do me a favor. Take a nice long walk before practice tomorrow. Think about what I’ve just told you. Think about your role on this campus and your obligations and loyalties in life. Or if you don’t wanna think about that, then think about a big, enormous, resentful prick. His name is Margolies. Anyway, think about something. Anything. Anything that’ll make you use your head and not just your impulse of the moment.”

He still didn’t look at Jojo. He didn’t budge from his posture of pain. And he didn’t say any more.

So Jojo got up from his chair and stood there a moment. The whole thing was damned awkward.

“Coach—” But he decided not to continue. If he made one final pitch for the Age of Socrates—he wasn’t even up to imagining what might happen.

So he just turned around and left.