The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Charlie reflects on his experience with LSD: “I feel like a big fake because I’ve been putting my life back together, and nobody knows” (101). He expresses how he’s been scared lately: “Every now and then things would start moving again, and sounds were bass heavy and hollow. And I couldn’t put a thought together. The book said that sometimes people LSD, and they don’t really get out of it” (101). After reading about the hallucinogenic drug, he starts breathing fast and thinking about “the schizophrenic kids in the hospital” (101)when he was little. He has also been teased all day at school for wearing the suit Patrick got him, which compounds his anxiety.

Charlie tells Sam and Patrick about his fears. Sam explains how he’s experiencing “the trance”(102). Charlie writes about the experience: [Sam said] [t]he trance happens when you don’t focus on anything, and the whole big picture swallows and moves around you. She said it was usually metaphoric, but for people who should never do acid again, it was literal” (102). Later, Bill gives Charlie On the Road by Jack Kerouac to read. Charlie admits to his “friend” that he’s up to smoking 10 cigarettes a day.

Charlie feels great and writes about his euphoria:

I have to remember this for the next time I’m having a terrible week […] I try to remind myself when I feel great like this that there will be another terrible week coming someday, so I should store up as many great details as I can, so during the next terrible week, I can remember those details and believe that I’ll feel great again. It doesn’t work a lot, but I think it’s very important to try (103).

Charlie is seeing a psychiatrist, who he thinks is nice and better than his last doctor: “We talk about things that I feel and think and remember” (103). In particular, he remembers a trailer for a movie he saw as a child about an innocent man that went to jail: “That scared me a lot. It scared me how much it scared me. Being punished for something you didn’t do. Or being an innocent victim. It’s just something that I never want to experience. I don’t know if it is important to tell you this, but at the same time, it felt like a ‘breakthrough’” (104).

Charlie thinks On the Road was a great book. He goes to Bill’s office after school to discuss it, and Bill makes him tea: “I felt like a grown-up. He even let me smoke a cigarette in his office, but he urged me to quit smoking because of the health risks. He even had a pamphlet in his desk that he gave me. I now use it as a bookmark” (106). He and Bill talk more about life than the book, and Bill opens up about his life. He said he traveled around Europe for a while after college before joining Teach For America, but one day he wants to move to New York to write plays. He gives Charlie Naked Lunch to read next.

Charlie starts reading the book when he gets home, but he says he doesn’t know what the narrator is talking about. Sam tells him to “go with the flow” (108) of the book because the author was on heroine when he wrote it. Charlie expresses how he felt confused all day. He didn’t understand the book, he didn’t get a show his sister was watching, his mother didn’t want him helping her in the kitchen, and his dad didn’t want him asking him questions while he was watching TV.

Craig doesn’t show up to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, so Mary Elizabeth asks Charlie to play his role of Rocky: “The next thing I know, I was wearing nothing but slippers and a bathing suit, which somebody painted gold” (110). He’s nervous because of his outfit, but also because “Rocky has to touch Janet all over her body, and Sam was playing Janet. Patrick kept making jokes that I would get an ‘erection’” (110). He ends up having “the best time […]in [his] whole life” (110).Later, Charlie gets an erection in the parking lot when Mary Elizabeth asks him to the Sadie Hawkins’ dance. She tells him he looked really good in his costume.

Charlie accepts Sam would never have asked him to the Sadie Hawkins’ dance, but he is glad someone asked him to go: “Mary Elizabeth is a really smart and pretty person, and I’m glad that she is my first date ever” (112). After Charlie said yes, Mary Elizabeth announced it to the group, and he was hoping Sam would be jealous. Instead, Sam seems really happy for Charlie and gives him advice on how to treat a girl on a date.

Sam tells him to listen to Mary Elizabeth and not mind if she doesn’t stop talking. She also tells him that if he’s not ready to do anything sexual with her to just say that he’s not ready. Although Sam is trying to help with his date, he still thinks about being with her: “I wish I could stop being in love with Sam. I really do” (113).

Charlie writes about what happened at the dance: “I don’t feel very well because everything is messy” (113). He goes to the dance with Mary Elizabeth and lets her talk the entire time. He learns a lot about her, including the fact that she wants to go to Berkeley to get a degree in political science and women’s studies, she wants to explore lesbian relationships despite not being attracted to women, and she’s a vegetarian. The only question she asks Charlie is if he wants to kiss her, but he says he’s not ready. She asks him if he wants to go out again, and despite not really wanting to, he says yes. He doesn’t like how Mary Elizabeth only talks about herself.

At the dance, Sam has a bad time because of Craig, and Charlie’s sister gets in a fight with her boyfriend. Later at home, his sister is crying and reveals that she’s pregnant. When she told her boyfriend about it, he broke up with her. She asks Charlie to drive her to the clinic.

Charlie is sitting in the waiting room of the clinic while his sister is getting an abortion. He looks at the magazines, but they make him sad. He imagines the tragic lives of the models on the covers, like the pains they endure to stay skinny and their bad relationships. He then thinks about his sister and the happy memories they share, and he starts to cry. He then goes to the car and cries privately. It’s the first cry he has had since making the promise not to cry at his aunt Helen’s grave. His sister comes out and finds Charlie smoking. She says she’s going to tell their mom and dad, but he says she won’t, and they both start laughing. She falls asleep in the back seat, and he reads Walden until the sun goes down. Then they go home.

That night, she asks Charlie not to tell anyone about what happened. She says she’s going to tell her ex-boyfriend that it was just a false alarm. She says she wants Charlie to quit smoking because she really loves him, and he says he loves her too. He watches an infomercial on TV and calls the number. A woman named Michelle answers, and he asks her if she’s having a good night. She hangs up on him, and Charlie “didn’t mind a bit” (122).

Charlie continues to write about his confusion surrounding romantic relationships:“Girls are weird, and I don’t mean that offensively. I just can’t put it any other way” (122). Charlie goes on another date with Mary Elizabeth, but again she only talks about herself. Charlie’s dad lets him take his car on the date, and later talks to him about sex; mostly, he tells Charlie to use protection and to never force things if a girl says no.

Charlie and Mary Elizabeth see an art film downtown during the date. She describes the movie as “articulate” (125). Charlie is unsure of what she means: “I guess it was. The thing is, I didn’t know what it said even if it said it very well” (125). After the movie, she takes him to an underground music store and tells him all about her favorite movies and imported alternative music. She buys him a Billie Holiday record to make up for not buying him a Christmas present, and then she takes him to her house to listen to it.

They go to her basement, and Charlie is not sure what to expect. He notes how Mary Elizabeth seems giddy, and he thinks this is “strange” (125). She instructs him to prepare the drinks while she chatters about marriage. Then she puts on the record and dances over to him. She straddles Charlie, and he experiences his first real sexual moment as a teen:

Her face looked warm and different. And she leaned down and started kissing my neck and ears. Then my cheeks. Then my lips. And everything kind of melted away. She took my hand and slid it up her sweater, and I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. Or what breasts felt like. Or later, what they looked like. Or how difficult bras are (127).

She asks him if he thinks she’s pretty, and he says that she’s very pretty. They lie on the floor until they hear the garage door open.

The weather is warming up. Charlie finishes reading Walden, but he choose to write a different kind of essay: “I wrote a report pretending that I was by myself near a lake for two years. I pretended that I lived off the land and had insights. To tell you the truth, I kind of like the idea of doing that right now” (128). After covering the topics of weather and school, Charlie focuses on his previous sexual encounter: “Ever since that night with Mary Elizabeth, everything has been different” (128). Mary Elizabeth tells everyone about the night they spent together, despite him not wanting her to, and she calls him every day after school. Charlie doesn’t like how she continues to talk only about herself, and sometimes he sets the phone down to use the restroom during their phone conversations.

Now that the holidays are over, Charlie’s mom reaffirms the offer to have Patrick and Sam over for dinner. Mary Elizabeth hears about the dinner and invites herself. Charlie is upset because everyone focuses on Mary Elizabeth during the dinner instead of seeing how great Sam and Patrick are.

Charlie and Mary Elizabeth keep going on dates, but Charlie still struggles with making sense of their relationship and sexual interactions:

Sex things are weird, too. It’s like after that first night, we have this pattern where we basically do what we did that first time, but there is no fire or Billie Holiday record because we are in a car, and everything is rushed. Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be, but it doesn’t feel right (130).

Charlie’s sister’s ex-boyfriend wanted to get back together with her, but she said no. Instead, she’s been reading books about women. Charlie tells her about Mary Elizabeth, and she says that Mary Elizabeth has low self-esteem. She explains that in introducing him to her favorite things, Mary Elizabeth “gained a ‘superior position’ that she wouldn’t need if she was confident about herself” (130). She continues, adding how “people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don’t, nothing will work out the way they want” (130). She advises Charlie to be honest about his feelings, and his psychiatrist says that same thing.

Following the conversation Charlie had with his sister, he is now experiencing a social crisis: “I have made a terrible mess of things. I really have. I feel terrible about it. Patrick said the best thing I could do is just stay away for awhile” (132).

On Monday, Mary Elizabeth comes to school with a book of poetry by e.e. cummings. She heard one of the book’s poems in a movie and thought it was so beautiful that she went out and bought the book. She gives Charlie his own copy of the book: “Not the copy she bought, but a new one. All day she told me to show everyone the book” (132). He knows he should be grateful, but instead he is annoyed. He thinks about being honest with her but doesn’t think it’s the right time.

He avoids going home that day because he doesn’t want to talk to her on the phone. Instead, he goes to the book store and returns Mary Elizabeth’s book:

When I walked home, all I could think was what a terrible thing it was that I just did, and I started crying. By the time I walked in the front door, I was crying so much that my sister stopped watching television to talk to me. When I told her what I did, she drove me back to the bookstore because I was too messy to drive, and I got the book back, which made me feel a little better (133).

When he talks to Mary Elizabeth that night, she asks where he’s been, and he says he went shopping with his sister. She asks if he bought her something nice, and he says yes, even though he doesn’t think she’s serious. He feels so bad about returning her book that he goes to the store that night and buys her a gift instead of being honest.

The next day he gives her To Kill a Mockingbird as a gift, and she says, “That’s original” (133). He explains how it’s the first book Bill gave him to read outside of class and that it’s special to him. She says it’s a sweet gesture, but does not understand the significance of the gift: “[T]hen she went on to explain how she had read it three years earlier and thought it was ‘overrated; and how they turned it into a black-and-white film with famous actors […] I just kind of put my feelings away somewhere after that” (134). He doesn’t go home until late that night to avoid talking to Mary Elizabeth on the phone. He tells his father, and his father tells him to “act like a man” (134).

Mary Elizabeth is making Charlie as mad as he used to get when he played sports, and it’s scaring him. He reads Hamlet over Easter vacation. On Friday, after The Rocky Horror Picture Show, they go to Craig’s apartment to drink wine and play truth or dare. Patrick dares Charlie to “[k]iss the prettiest girl in the room on the lips” (136). Instead of kissing Mary Elizabeth, he kisses Sam. He tries to rationalize his behavior, thinking how he could blame the alcohol. However, he understands that he just couldn’t lie anymore and kissing Sam showed his true feelings. Patrick tries to salvage the evening, commenting about how awkward that was, but Mary Elizabeth walks to the bathroom so that no one sees her cry.

Sam turns to Charlie and says, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” (136). Charlie goes outside and cries. He wants to apologize, but Patrick tells him to go home. That night, he thinks about what Sam said to him: “Something really is wrong with me. And I don’t know what it is” (137).

Nobody has called Charlie since that night, and he says he doesn’t blame them. He spends the whole vacation reading Hamlet and reflecting on his current life state. He also listens to Billie Holiday and reads the book of poetry Mary Elizabeth had given him: “It has also helped me while I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. It didn’t give me any answers necessarily, but it was helpful to know that someone else has been through it. Especially someone who lived a long time ago” (138).

He calls Mary Elizabeth to tell her he has been reading the book she gave him and listening to the record, but she tells him it’s too late. He tells her he’s sorry and really means it. Patrick calls and tells him it’s best if he stays away until “things got clear” (138).

Charlie’s brother comes home for Easter. Charlie sent his report on Walden to him to have his girlfriend read it because he said she like Thoreau. When Charlie asks him if she read, it he says no; she broke up with him because she found out he was cheating on her. Charlie visits Aunt Helen’s grave: “For the first time in my life, it didn’t help. I even tried to follow my own plan and remember all the details about the last time I had a great week, but that didn’t help, either” (139). After a week of not talking to anyone, he calls Bob and buys some pot, and writes: “I’ve been smoking it all the time since” (139).