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The first time that Nick gets drunk is at Yale. It’s not something he intends to do, and before it happens it’s not a thought in his mind. But there’s a party one night that Tom ropes him into going to, insisting that Nick should go to at least one before they graduate, and in the end Nick isn’t quite brave enough to turn him down. There’s a comparison that Nick thinks of in his more literary moments: having Tom as a friend is a bit like keeping a tamed street dog as a pet. He’s good-natured and always willing to laugh and complain about the professors, but Nick often gets the impression that in the right situation he’d snap and that would be the end of it. So he goes and Tom stays with him at first, directing him around to introduce him to people as his “friend from Illinois” and guiding him by keeping his hand in between Nick’s shoulders. But at some point he gets distracted by someone on the football team and Nick is left to fend for himself in a way that emphasizes Tom’s absence.
Nick is careful to be moderate enough to avoid being too drunk, but even so his initial hesitation melts away after his second glass of punch and there’s an easygoing feeling that takes him over. Everything seems very fun after that, and he laughs openly and watches the other students with a sort of bored goodwill that doesn’t completely erase his feeling of separation from them. At a point late enough in the night everyone has sorted themselves into their own small groups of threes and fours and is talking intently amongst themselves. None of them contain people that Nick knows well enough to insert himself into and none of them seem to notice him, so he decides that the best thing to do is to step outside for a moment. There’s a little balcony through a glass door and when he walks out the night is pleasantly cool, a welcome change from the stuffy air of the dormitory.
There’s a shadowy figure on the opposite end, and the distance is short enough that after a moment Nick recognizes it as Tom leaning on the railing and holding a cigarette, the end of it glowing red as if it were an ember when he takes a drag. It’s odd, Nick thinks, that he should be out here too; although Tom isn’t well-liked among everyone at Yale, he’s certainly well-liked enough to easily find a place in one of the groups inside.
“I thought you’d be talking with someone,” Nick comments to get his attention. He doesn’t have to speak very loudly. Aside from the backdrop of discussions and music from within and the quiet chirping of the crickets outside, there’s no other noise.
Tom shrugs. “I wanted to smoke and Robert will throw a fit if he sees ash on the carpet. Administration says it devalues the dorm or something. They’ll charge him for it.” He offers his half-burnt cigarette to Nick, not changing his position of leaning on the railing. Beyond drinking, Nick doesn’t smoke either– he isn’t fond of the smell, and his father would blow a gasket if he did– but he takes it anyway. It’s hard for him to say no to Tom for reasons that even he doesn’t quite understand, particularly when it’s obviously a gesture of goodwill. That was the case with the party, and it’s the same with the cigarette, because Tom doesn’t offer his cigarettes to anyone. The taste of burning tobacco is unsavory and the slight head rush he gets adds a layer on top of his drunkenness, but he manages to exhale without coughing and then hurriedly hands it back to Tom, who ashes it over the railing into the bushes below. “I’m thinking of getting married,” Tom says thoughtfully, and the topic change is sharp enough to make Nick blink.
“Are you?” he asks, surprised. Tom has never seemed to be the type to settle down somewhere; whenever he mentions a girl it seems as if there’s a new one each week, flitting in and out of his life like butterflies across a field, and on Tom’s part he seems completely fine with such impermanence.
“I have to at some point, right? In my opinion it’s the right thing to do. We’re graduating soon, and then I’ll have to make something out of my life. Living on Long Island would suit me fine, and there’s a lot of nice houses for sale there…” Tom trails off and takes another drag, clearly imagining some portrait of domestic life with a young blonde wife and children dressed in white playing on a sprawling green lawn behind a manor, but then he turns back to Nick. “But what about you? There has to be something you have going on,” he points out, smoke trailing out of his mouth. “I mean, there’s gotta be a girl back home or something.”
For a moment Nick is tempted to lie, to make up a story about a pretty brunette back in Illinois who’s the daughter of his father’s business partner and who writes to him every other Sunday and signs off the letters with a kiss. But this, of course, could not be further from the truth, and even if he is drunk Nick knows that he can’t go through with it successfully. “No,” he replies, “not really.”
“You’re kidding!” Tom sounds as if he’s genuinely surprised at that. “I would’ve thought there'd be someone… I mean, look at you, Shakespeare.” He grins, affectionately patting Nick on the shoulder. “You’re a catch, y’know. Girls love shy guys. They always think your type is cute.”
Nick often feels that Tom appreciates his natural passiveness more than girls seem to (he’s certainly the first person to call it “cute”), but he takes the compliment all the same. “I’ve heard that, but I don’t have much luck with them.”
“Then you’ve never kissed anyone,” Tom declares, and although he says it as if he knows it for a fact despite Nick not saying anything about the topic, it is true.
“Well, I’ve never really had the chance, if that’s what you’re asking.” Although that is the truth it’s still slightly humiliating to admit such a thing to Tom, who seems to understand the hidden rules and tactics of intimacy in a way that Nick knows will always be impossible for him.
“That’s not good, Nick. What if one day you do find yourself in the backseat of a taxi with some pretty girl and she expects you to kiss her? You won’t know how, and there go your chances of a second night, and before you know it you’ll end up a bachelor for life.” Tom shakes his head in mock disapproval, stubbing his cigarette on the rail to put it out and tossing the end over the ledge. “No, we can’t let that happen. But there’s a solution to this.”
“And what is it?”
“You kiss me.” Tom seems completely unembarrassed by the suggestion, and he says it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Although it’s obvious that he’s drunk, this prevents Nick from saying something in disbelief or laughing it off as if it’s a joke, because it’s clearly not; he grasps almost immediately that Tom is serious about it.
Something about the offer is intriguing to Nick in spite of himself– to think that Tom, the football player who speaks so casually of summer nights in New York and sneaking off campus to see New Haven girls, would do such a thing for him is interesting. So he asks, “Would you really?”
“‘Course,” Tom says simply, shrugging again. “I like you. Why wouldn’t I?”
That’s a good question, and it's one that Nick doesn’t have the answer to. He considers it for a moment, turning it over in his mind. There’s a myriad of reasons why he shouldn’t, and he sums up the negatives by thinking that it’s simply not the right thing to do. But it’s almost the end of the semester, everyone in the room is too busy to see, and he’s drunk too, so the negatives don’t hold much weight. Besides, Tom is the one who offered, not him, and it would be nice to get some experience.
“Sure,” he says before he thinks better of it, although he’s suddenly aware of how stiffly and awkwardly he’s standing and how he doesn’t really know what to do now that he’s agreed. But Tom seems to be fine with taking charge, because he grabs Nick by the shoulders and maneuvers him into a suitably close range.
“The important thing is to be confident,” he instructs, “even if you don’t feel it.” Nick reflects that it’s likely impossible for him to be confident if it’s anything like this situation, let alone if he’s to be the one in Tom’s place– but these things come naturally to Tom, so Nick shuts up and doesn’t make any comment about his own shortcomings. His thoughts are cut short by the abrupt feeling of Tom’s hand on his face, holding his chin and angling him to look up. “Girls like it when you hold their chin,” Tom explains, and although the difference in their height isn’t particularly great, their closeness enables him to be the one to look down. Nick sees clearly that this is the time to back out, to say anything to stop it, to laugh it off and treat it as a ridiculous joke– and he doesn’t do any of that. Instead, he feels the way Tom’s fingers grasp his chin, feels the weight of them, and he doesn’t say anything at all. The dull scent of Tom’s cologne, probably put on in the morning, is almost overpowered by the smell of cigarettes pervading the air around him and the liquor on his breath. Nick, in his own passive way, thinks that unpleasant combination is probably the lump sum of Tom as a person.
“And then,” Tom continues, assuming the air of a Yale professor lecturing on a mathematical problem, “you just go for it, Shakespeare.” And he does, leaning in and firmly pressing his lips onto Nick’s, who after a split second of hesitation returns the gesture by instinct alone.
Nick forgets to close his eyes for a moment, and he hastily shuts them both in order to alleviate any thoughts of embarrassment and because there’s suddenly a certain feeling of detachment from the reality of the situation that enables him to think about it as though he’s a third party. The striking thing is that Tom is gentle. There’s no trace of pressure or harshness or demand there, and although Nick knows that’s certainly a good thing it’s also so unlike Tom’s domineering personality that it creates a genuine feeling of surprise that almost eclipses the fact that this is his first kiss. Tom’s other hand moves to his shoulder to seemingly hold him in place, and Nick grabs onto his forearm, his fingers digging into the woven material of Tom’s sleeve. It’s not bad, Nick thinks; on the contrary, it’s almost pleasant to be kissing Tom.
It only lasts for a moment, though, because after a handful of beats Tom steps back, dropping his hands and making Nick let go of his sleeve. “That’s really all there is to it,” he resumes. Nick thinks that his face seems more flushed than usual, but the light isn’t bright enough to be sure and he has been drinking. “It’s not that hard. Doing it for the first time is always the tricky part.”
“That’s–” Nick begins, but he comes very close to biting his own tongue and is forced to stop and begin again. “Thank you, Tom.” First kisses aren’t supposed to be like this, he thinks; they’re supposed to be shared with a teenage sweetheart during her escort home, and the irony of Tom Buchanan being his first instead isn’t lost on him. But there’s a good chance that Tom offered to do this precisely because of that fact, and even though Nick is drunk he realizes this with a startling clarity and something that borders on humiliation.
“‘Course, Shakespeare,” Tom shrugs, preparing to go back inside. “What else are friends for?”