The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

let him hang up first, and then I hung up and lay back
in the pillows, feeling grim.
                    There I went again, building up
a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met
me, and all out of a few prosy nothings. A duty tour of the UN and a post-UN
sandwich!
                    I tried to jack up my morale.
                    Probably Mrs. Willard’s
simultaneous interpreter would be short and ugly and I would come to look down
on him in the end the way I looked down on Buddy Willard. This thought gave me
a certain satisfaction. Because I did look down on Buddy Willard, and although
everybody still thought I would marry him when he came out of the TB place, I
knew I would never marry him if he were the last man on earth.
                    Buddy Willard was a hypocrite.
                    Of course, I didn’t know he was
a hypocrite at first. I thought he was the most wonderful boy I’d ever seen. rd
adored him from a distance for five years before he even looked at me, and then
there was a beautiful time when I still adored him and he started looking at
me, and then just as he was looking at me more and more I discovered quite by
accident what an awful hypocrite he was, and now he wanted me to marry him and
I hated his guts.
                    The worst part of it was I
couldn’t come straight out and tell him what I thought of him, because he
caught TB before I could do that, and now I had to humor him along till he got
well again and could take the unvarnished truth.
                    I decided not to go down to the
cafeteria for breakfast. It would only mean getting dressed, and what was the
point of getting dressed if you were staying in bed for the morning? I could
have called down and asked for a breakfast tray in my room, I guess, but then I
would have to tip the person who brought it up and I never knew how much to
tip. I’d had some very unsettling experiences trying to tip people in New York.
                    When I first arrived at the
Amazon a dwarfish, bald man in a bellhop’s uniform carried my suitcase up in
the elevator and unlocked my room for me. Of course I rushed immediately to the
window and looked out to see what the view was. After a while I was aware of
this bellhop turning on the hot and cold taps in my washbowl and saying “This
is the hot and this is the cold” and switching on the radio and telling me the
names of all the New York stations and I began to get uneasy, so I kept my back
to him and said firmly, “Thank you for bringing up my suitcase.”
                    “Thank you thank you thank you.
Ha!” he said in a very nasty insinuating tone, and before I could wheel round
to see what had come over him he was gone, shutting the door behind him with a
rude slam.
                    Later, when I told Doreen about
his curious behavior, she said, “You ninny, he wanted his tip.”
                    I asked how much I should have
given and she said a quarter at least and thirty-five cents if the suitcase was
too heavy. Now I could have carried that suitcase to my room perfectly well by
myself, only the bellhop seemed so eager to do it that I let him. I thought
that sort of service came along with what you paid for your hotel room.
                    I hate handing over money to
people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me
nervous.
                    Doreen said ten percent was what
you should tip a person, but I somehow never had the right change and I’d have
felt awfully silly giving somebody half a dollar and saying, “Fifteen cents of
this is a tip for you, please give me thirty-five cents back.”
                    The first time I took a taxi in
New York I tipped the driver ten cents. The