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- "So do I! So do I regard it as a wuddayacallit--a physical and spiritual experience
and all. I really do. But it depends on who the hell I'm doing it with. If I'm doing it with
somebody I don't even--"
"Not so loud, for God's sake, Caulfield. If you can't manage to keep your voice
down, let's drop the whole--"
"All right, but listen," I said. I was getting excited and I was talking a little too
loud. Sometimes I talk a little loud when I get excited. "This is what I mean, though," I
said. "I know it's supposed to be physical and spiritual, and artistic and all. But what I
mean is, you can't do it with everybody--every girl you neck with and all--and make it
come out that way. Can you?"
"Let's drop it," old Luce said. "Do you mind?"
"All right, but listen. Take you and this Chinese babe. What's so good about you
two?"
"Drop it, I said."
I was getting a little too personal. I realize that. But that was one of the annoying
things about Luce. When we were at Whooton, he'd make you describe the most personal
stuff that happened to you, but if you started asking him questions about himself, he got
sore. These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you
unless they're running the whole thing. They always want you to shut up when they shut
up, and go back to your room when they go back to their room. When I was at Whooton
old Luce used to hate it--you really could tell he did--when after he was finished giving
his sex talk to a bunch of us in his room we stuck around and chewed the fat by ourselves
for a while. I mean the other guys and myself. In somebody else's room. Old Luce hated
that. He always wanted everybody to go back to their own room and shut up when he was
finished being the big shot. The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid somebody'd say
something smarter than he had. He really amused me.
"Maybe I'll go to China. My sex life is lousy," I said.
"Naturally. Your mind is immature."
"It is. It really is. I know it," I said. "You know what the trouble with me is? I can
never get really sexy--I mean really sexy--with a girl I don't like a lot. I mean I have to
like her a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all. Boy, it really
screws up my sex life something awful. My sex life stinks."
"Naturally it does, for God's sake. I told you the last time I saw you what you
need."
"You mean to go to a psychoanalyst and all?" I said. That's what he'd told me I
ought to do. His father was a psychoanalyst and all.
"It's up to you, for God's sake. It's none of my goddam business what you do with
your life."
I didn't say anything for a while. I was thinking.
"Supposing I went to your father and had him psychoanalyze me and all," I said.
"What would he do to me? I mean what would he do to me?"
"He wouldn't do a goddam thing to you. He'd simply talk to you, and you'd talk to
him, for God's sake. For one thing, he'd help you to recognize the patterns of your mind."
"The what?"
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