Chapter 7 (The Fight from Stradlater's Point of View Given to the Psychoanalyst)
After I got back from my date with Jean, I came into Holden and my's dorm and he was just sitting there staring out the window at the snow. I tried to strike up a conversation with him about the weather by saying how cold it was outside. When I asked him where everyone was, he didn't bother to say anything nor answer me. I thought he was in his own little world there. As I started to get undressed, he turned, and just sat there staring at me. I thought he was waiting for a thank you for letting me wear his hound's-tooth jacket. So I thanked him but that apparently wasn't what he was looking for. When I finished undressing, I remembered that I had asked him to write my English paper on something descriptive. I asked him wear it was and he responded that it was on my bed. I hadn't noticed it at first and as I read it, I suddenly realized that the fool had written it about a glove. A baseball glove to be exact. How stupid was that? That's when I kind of got mad at him. I had asked him to do a task that should have been simple for him, and even he managed to screw it up. He was supposed to be an ace in english composition and this is the end result? A paper about a baseball glove? I confronted him about it right there and then, I told him that he wrote about a goddam baseball glove and the fool had the nerve to ask, "So what?" He didn't realize that he had done the paper wrong. So I told him how it was supposed to be about a room, house, or something that you had lived in. Then the darn fool got this look on his face like he had snapped his cap. He asked for it so I gave the paper to him. Then the knucklehead rips the paper up! I had definitely snapped his cap, or so I thought. But then he goes on acting all cooled down and stuff. Despite the rules of Pencey, which should be followed to a tee, Holden pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started smoking away in our dorm. It's a good thing the knucklehead flunked out of the place so I don't have to worry about getting in trouble for his actions in the future. He then asked about my time with Jane (it was pretty uneventful, she was quite a bore). Which reminded me of what he said about her keeping her Kings in the back row when they played checkers. Like who even knows that about a girl? Whatever. I wanted to get him to stop talking about the crummy date so I tried to distract him. I was pretending to box his shoulder and that's when he got real bitter. I don't know why. That's when he spewed his guts out practically busting my chops. He was asking if I gave her the time, where I took her, what did I take her in, and if I gave her his regards (of course I didn't). I could tell he was angry. However, I was cool, and calm, so I just started brushing my teeth. That's when the fool got so angry he hit me in the head. That got me mad then. I was only roughhousing around with the darn fool and here he is busting my chops about this Jean girl and how she played checkers. I was proud of myself and I couldn't just let him get away with hitting me so I sort of tackled him to the ground and was restraining him on the floor. I was bigger and stronger than he was because I'm the athlete of the two of us. I have to give him credit for trying to get me off of him. I realized how mad he was. He was practically crying cuz I could see his face getting all red and his eyes were all watery. He kept calling me a moron, which I hate being called. He was cruisin' for a bruisin' and I was in the mood to give him one. I warned him to shut his mouth. I was bummed because of the crummy date with Jean and I just wanted to go to bed peacefully. He kept calling me a moron and that's when I had an idea to make him stop. I came up with a compromise. If he stopped calling me a moron, I would get off his chest. He agreed to it but when I got off of him he just had to keep it going. He didn't know when to shut up and I was pretty close to just releasing my anger on him. Finally I swung on him. It was sort of a blur in fact. I barely remember my fist connecting with his nose but all of a sudden he was on the ground bleeding. I quickly ran and grabbed my toilet kit to wash his face off and clean him up. It was eerie seeing him bleeding so much. There was blood all over his face but he didn't seem to mind. I think he had a minor concussion because he started talking funny. I could tell that he was out of it. He kept saying, "You're a goddamn moron. I'm a gentleman and you probably gave Jane the time in Ed Banky's goddam car! You probably snowed her into thinking you were such a great goddam guy so you didn't have to admit what a goddam moron you are." After five minutes, he suddenly seemed to snap back to reality. I was so tired and I didn't want to be bothered by him, but, I was scared that I had broke his nose but he didn't appear to be in much pain. I told him to go wash his face, and he of course told me to go wash my own face. Pretty childish right? That's when he went into the bathroom and that was the basis of our fight the night that Holden disappeared. I then went to the bathroom after I thought he was done and he wasn't there. I cleaned up myself then I went back to our dorm and went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, Holden was gone. The kid was not all there. I could tell that he was different. He repressed a lot of things and he seemed slightly slow. Is that all? Do you want to know anymore? I didn't tell Holden to go running away from Pencey in New York. Am I the reason that he went crazy? I didn't mean any harm. Please tell him that I'm sorry and I want to explain to him what happened the night I went out with Jean.