Holden is meeting up with Sally in this particular quote. As she is approaching him, he is noticing every detail about her. He describes everything she is wearing and acts as if he is in love with her. This matters because Holden is very inconsistent with his feelings. He acts as if he is obsessed with her when she is meeting up with him, but he even goes on to say how he does not like her that much.

Holden previously acted like he wanted to be with Sally and even went as far as to canoodle with her in the cab ride. Fast forward later in their date, Holden gets bored of her and proceeds to insult her. This is important because Holden does not know how to be in a relationship, let alone go on a date without thinking the other person is a bore. He likes to talk a lot of nonsense, while Sally is not even paying attention to him. Because Sally was not feeding into his delusions he got annoyed with her.

"I gave old Jane a buzz but her phone didn't answer, so I had to hang up." (151)

He had a date with Sally and as soon as she left his mind shifted and started thinking immediately about Jane. That is how one can tell that he uses all those other girls as a distraction, when in the end Jane always it the last girl to pop up in his mind. He does, to some extent, care for Jane a lot which does seem to be the consistent emotion through all his indecisiveness and interactions with women that he has encountered so far. He had already gotten into an argument towards the beginning with Straddler, and showed his genuine affection for her when they were playing chess. Him needing many distractions; women, smoking, and alcohol is the way that he copes with his negative and chaotic emotions.

He recalls a scene where him and his brothers were talking about the army, after Holden watched that movie by himself. He remembers that Allie and D.B. were both into literature, and he explains how he could never be able to enlist for the army. It shows that he wouldn't be able to even handle it, if this is how he is already coping with his depression and struggles, it would have been harder on him in the army. Or it could have also possibly changed him and taught him to appreciate the small things and not take advantage of it, also not to waste away money on stupid things.

intellectual conversation"(Salinger 136).

Holden ended the date with Sally after insulting, then proceeded to think about Jane and now he's calling up an old friend from his previous school. This matters because all Holden does is distract himself and live in the past. He is always trying to reconnect with people he knew years ago. In addition to that he always analyzes the people he is talking about and says he doesn't like them but then wants to meet up with them for the fun of it.

Holden looks up to Carl Luce mostly for the fact that he has a successful sex life. He mentioned earlier a few chapters before how he was gotten close to losing his virginity and then didn't know whether he should stop or not. This simply exemplifies even more how Holden is not in touch with his emotions and to deal with things he tries to distract himself by stupid things like talking to Carl Luce mainly about sex. Back in chapter 14 we saw that he was feeling depressed in a way and tried to deal with it by paying Sunny 10 bucks to have sex, using this as a common coping mechanism in the sense of either just thinking about it or acting on those thoughts. Towards the end of the sex conversation Carl mentions that Holden is still immature, and that he should have taken his advice to see a psychoanalyst which would maybe help him in handling his emotions and his sex life.