Chapter 3

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. I do it all the goddamn time. So when I told Old Spencer I had to leave to pick up the stuff from the gym that was a sheer lie. I don’t even keep my god dam equipment in the gym.

I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing at Pencey. It was only for juniors and seniors. Stradlater, my roommate, he was a senior. Our wing was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made quite a lot of dough undertaking after he left Pencey. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river. Anyway he gave Pencey a pile of dough to name the wing after him. He came to Pencey once to make a goddamn speech telling us all how we should pray to Jesus. He said he talked to Jesus all the time and all. That killed me. The only good part of the speech was when Edgar Marsalla laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do in chapel and all but it was very amusing. Boy was old Thurmer, sore after he heard it. Anyway that’s where I lived at Pencey, the Ossenburger Memorial Wing.

It was kind of cosy back in my room, you know because everyone was at the game. I put on this red hunting hat I bought in New York. It only cost me $1. I liked to wear it with the peak at the back - very corny I know, but that’s the way I liked it. I looked good in it that way. I started to read this book I got, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. It was a very good book. What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while, like The Return of the Native. Anyway I put on my new hat and started to read my book. I’d only read about three pages when Robert Ackley came in. He was this guy that roomed next to me. He’s a very peculiar guy and hardly goes anywhere. that’s why he wasn’t at the game with everyone else. Nobody ever called him anything except ‘Ackley’. If he ever gets married his wife will probably call him ‘Ackley’ too. He was very, very tall - around six foot four - with lousy teeth and pimples. He damn near made you sick if you ever saw him with his mouth full. I wasn’t too crazy about him, to tell you the truth.

Old Stradlater came back from the game. Ackley didn’t like Stradlater all that much. He didn’t like anyone really. Stradlater had a date as usual. He borrowed my hound’s-tooth jacket. He had bigger shoulders than me though so I made him promise not to stretch the goddamn thing.