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At the beginning of chapter 17 Holden goes to meet Sally Hayes at the Biltmore Hotel. While on his way there he thinks about how most girls want phony guys and that annoyed him. When he sees Sally walking towards him he is immediately filled with lust and love. In his eyes when her first saw her she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

"I didn't even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I felt like I was in love with her and

wanted to marry her. I swear to God I'm crazy. I admit it." (Salinger 138)

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"We horsed around a little bit in the cab on the way over to the theater. At first she didn't want to,

because she had her lipstick on and all, but I was being seductive as hell and she didn't have any

alternative" (Salinger 139).

This is the first time that we saw Holden with a girl his age. The way he describes himself acting makes him seem like a creep. Holden does not have the experience with girls to be able to smooth talk them the way Stradlater does.

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"...so I went in this drugstore and had a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted, and then I went in a phone booth. I thought maybe I might give old Jane another buzz and see if she was home yet. I mean I had the whole evening free, and I thought I'd give her a buzz and, if she was home yet, take her dancing or something somewhere. I never danced with her or anything the whole time I knew her. I saw her dancing once, though. She looked like a very good dancer" (Salinger 149-150).

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"I had quite a bit of time to kill till ten o'clock, so what I did, I went to the movies at Radio City. It was probably the worst thing I could've done, but it was near, and I couldn't think of anything else. I came in when the goddam stage show was on. The Rockettes were kicking their heads off, the way they do when they're all in line with their arms around each other's waist" (Salinger 152).

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"He said it didn't matter if a guy was married or not. He said half the married guys in the world were flits and didn't even know it. He said you could turn into one practically overnight, if you had all the traits and all. He used to scare the hell out of us. I kept waiting to turn into a flit or something. The funny thing about old Luce, I used to think he was sort of flitty himself, in a way" (Salinger 158-159).

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""Hey, I got a flit for you," I told him. "At the end of the bar. Don't look now. I been saving him for ya."

"Very funny," he said. "Same old Caulfield. When are you going to grow up?"

I bored him a lot. I really did. He amused me, though. He was one of those guys that sort of amuse me a lot.

"How's your sex life?" I asked him. He hated you to ask him stuff like that.

"Relax," he said. "Just sit back and relax, for Chrissake."

"I'm relaxed," I said. "How's Columbia? Ya like it?"

"Certainly I like it. If I didn't like it I wouldn't have gone there," he said. He could be pretty boring himself sometimes. "What're you majoring in?" I asked him. "Perverts?" I was only horsing around.

"What're you trying to be--funny?"

"No. I'm only kidding," I said. "Listen, hey, Luce. You're one of these intellectual guys. I need your advice. I'm in a terrific--"

He let out this big groan on me. "Listen, Caulfield. If you want to sit here and have a quiet, peaceful drink and a quiet, peaceful conver--" (Salinger 159-160).

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Holden leaves the bar and decides to take a trip to Central Park. While there Holden drops and break the record he had bought for Phoebe. Holden then begins splashing water on his face with hopes to sober him up. He is filled with the idea that he has failed.

"I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all. My grandfather from Detroit, that keeps calling out the numbers of the streets when you ride on a goddam bus with him, and my aunts" (Salinger 171)

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With the emotion of failure on his mind, Holden decides to check his pockets to see how much money he had left. Holden was running close to nothing. He was freeing cold, drunk, and felt like a failure. At this point he decided to bite the bullet and go home.

"All I had was three singles and five quarters and a nickel left--boy, I spent a fortune since I left Pencey. Then what I did, I went down near the lagoon and I sort of skipped the quarters and the nickel across it, where it wasn't frozen. I don't know why I did it, but I did it. I guess I thought it'd take my mind off getting pneumonia and dying. It didn't, though." (Salinger 173)