"Sounds wonderful," I said, not ugg boots sale sincerely, because in fact it sounded commonplace: The Story of American Youth. It interested me only because it fitted well with the unharnessed animal that I had sometimes thought I glimpsed in Rennie.
     "You shouldn't say that," Rennie said flatly. "It wasn't anything, wonderful or otherwise. When I got out of college I went to New York to work, just because my roommate had a job there and wanted me to go along with her, and that's where I met Joe -- he was taking his master's degree at Columbia. We dated for a while, pretty casually: I wasn't much interested in him, and I didn't think he saw much in me. ugg boots sale Then one night he grinned at me and told me he wouldn't be taking me out any more. I asked him why not, and he said, 'Don't think I'm threatening you; I just don't see any point to it.' I said, 'Is it because I don't sleep with you?' and he said, 'If that was it I'd have gotten a Puerto Rican girl in the first place instead of wasting my time with you.' "
     "A good line," I remarked.
     "He said he just didn't feel any need for female companionship in itself: companionship to him meant a real exchange of everything on the. same level, and sex ugg boots sale meant sex, and I wasn't offering him either. You'll have to take my word for it that he wasn't just feeding me a line. He meant it. He said he thought I could probably be wonderful, but that I was shallow as hell like I was, and he didn't expect me to change just for his sake. He couldn't offer me a thing in return that would fit the values I had then, and he wasn't interested in me like I was, so that was that."
     "Did you fling yourself at him then?"
     "No. I was hurt, and I told him he wasn't so hot himself."
     "Good!"
     "You're silly to ugg boots sale say that, Jake."
     "I retract it."
     "Don't you see that right now you're doing all the things that Joe would never do? Those pointless remarks, half teasing me. Well, Joe just shrugged his shoulders at what I said and walked off, leaving me on the bench -- he didn't give a damn for courtesy."
     "On the bench?"
     "Yes, I forgot to tell you. The night all this happened my roommate and I were having a party for some reason or other, and all our New York friends were there -- just ordinary people. We'd been drinking and talking silly and horsing around and all: I can't even remember what we ugg boots on sale did, because I was still in my fog then. About halfway through the evening Joe had said he wanted to go walking, and I hadn't especially wanted to leave the party, but I went anyhow. We walked around in Riverside Park for a while, and when we sat on the bench I thought he was going to neck. He'd never bothered much with that before, and I was kind of surprised. But he came out with this other instead and then walked off. I realized then for the first time what a complete blank I was!