The Imaginary Girlfriend

by John Irving

  The night Colin was born, George Bennett died in the same hospital; I have called George my first "critic and encourager"--he was my first reader. I remember going back and forth in the hospital between Shyla and Colin and George. During the years I'd grown up in Exeter, especially before I attended the academy, George's son had been my best friend. (I would dedicate my first novel in memory of George, and to his widow and son.) George Bennett took me to my first Ingmar Bergman film; it would have been 1958 or '59 when I saw The Seventh Seal--the movie was almost new (it was released in the U.S. in '57). It's not psychologically complicated why, when Death came for George, I saw Death as that relentless chess player in the black robe (Bengt Ekerot) who defeats the Knight (Max von Sydow) and claims the lives of the Knight's wife and the Knight's squire, too.

  I have since read that The Seventh Seal is a "medieval fantasy," and this I don't understand at all . . . well, "medieval," maybe, although most of Bergman's work is timeless to me. But The Seventh Seal is no "fantasy." That Death takes the Knight and allows the young family to live . . . well, that was how it happened to me, too. At the moment my son Colin was born, George was gone.

  In 1982, when Ingmar Bergman retired as a filmmaker--with Fanny and Alexander, the stunning memoir of his childhood--I felt another loss. Bergman was the only major novelist making movies. My interest in the movies, which was never great, has grown fainter since his retirement. I hope that Mr. Bergman is happy in the theater (where he continues to direct), although I have difficulty seeing him there--my interest in the theater was never great either.

  Not Even A Zebra

  Upon my return from Europe, Ted Seabrooke had made me feel welcome in the Exeter wrestling room, but something had changed in me; I was so happy to be wrestling again I didn't care how I compared to the competition--I didn't enter a single tournament. I worked out, hard, every day; I coached the kids at Exeter--I thought more about their wrestling than I did about mine--and I became certified as a referee. (I'd always disliked referees until I became one.)

  That winter of '65, there was an additional wrestling coach in the Exeter room--a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Cliff Gallagher. Cliff was the famous Ed Gallagher's brother. (Between 1928 and 1940, E. C. Gallagher coached Oklahoma State to 11 national team titles.) Born in Kansas, Cliff had wrestled at Oklahoma A & M--he was never beaten in a wrestling match--and he'd played football at Kansas State (he was a All-American halfback). Cliff had once held the world record in the 50-yard low hurdles, too, and he'd received a doctorate from Kansas State in 1921--in veterinary medicine, although he'd never been a practicing veterinarian. Cliff Gallagher was also a certified referee. We frequently refereed tournaments together.

  As a wrestling coach, Cliff was a little dangerous; he showed the Exeter boys a great number of holds that had been illegal for many years--the key-lock, the Japanese wrist-lock, various choke-holds and other holds that dated from a time when it had been legal to coax your opponent to his back by applying pain or the threat of asphyxiation instead of leverage. Ted explained to me that he always allowed Cliff to demonstrate these holds to the boys; at some point, following Cliffs demonstration, Ted would quietly take the time to tell the boys: "Not that one." The boys, of course, were eager to learn anything new, and Cliff had much to teach that I'd never seen before; some of Cliffs holds were new to Ted, too.

  We had to be on our toes in the Exeter wrestling room that year. There would be some kid twisting another kid's head off, and Ted or I would jump in and break it up. We'd always ask, "Did Cliff show you that?"

  "Yes, sir," the boy would say. "I think it's called a Bulgarian head-and-elbow." Whatever it was called, Ted or I would put a stop to it, but we would never have criticized Cliff for his efforts--Cliff was having a great time, and we adored him. So did the kids--I'm sure they were putting the Bulgarian head-and-elbow to good use, probably in their dormitories.

  As a referee, Cliff was completely reliable. He had all the right instincts for when to stop a potentially dangerous situation, for how to anticipate an injury before it happened; he always knew where the edge of the mat was--and which wrestler was using it, to what advantage--and he never called stalling on the wrong wrestler (he always knew who was stalling). It was a mystery to me how Cliff had memorized the rule book; as a referee, he permitted not a single illegal hold. (As a coach, Cliff Gallagher taught every move and hold he knew--legal or not.) Cliff taught me to be much better as a referee than I'd ever been as a wrestler. Refereeing is all technique; unlike wrestling, refereeing doesn't call upon superior athletic ability--or expose the lack thereof.

  I will always remember a maniacally mismanaged high-school tournament in Maine--Cliff and I were the only actual wrestlers among our fellow referees. In the preliminary rounds, Cliff and I were also the only referees who penalized a headlock without the arm contained--if you lock up a man's head, you're supposed to include one of his arms in the headlock. To encircle your opponent's head--just his head--is illegal. For the benefit of the assembled coaches and our fellow referees, Cliff put on a clinic between rounds; he made special emphasis of the headlock with an arm. This information was dismaying to the other referees, and to most of the coaches. One of them said, "It's too late in the season to be showin' 'em somethin' new."

  "It's not new, it's legal," Cliff said.

  "It's new, too," the guy said--I don't remember if he was a coach or a referee. In any case, he expressed the sentiment of the majority: they'd been using and accepting an illegal headlock all season--probably for years--and it was nothing but a nuisance to them to enforce the rule now.

  "Johnny and I are calling the illegal headlock--is that clear enough?" Cliff told them. And so we did.

  The points for a repeated illegal hold can mount against a wrestler quickly. Repeated violations lead to disqualification. In no time, Cliff and I were penalizing and disqualifying half the state of Maine. (We "disqualified" a few coaches who protested, too.) In the semifinals, I also disqualified a heavyweight for deliberately throwing his opponent on top of the scorer's table; I had twice warned and penalized this wrestler for continuing to wrestle off the mat--after the whistle blew. I'd even asked his coach if the heavyweight in question was deaf.

  "No, he's just a little stupid," his coach replied.

  When I disqualified the heavyweight, his parents came out of the stands and confronted me in the middle of the mat. I had no trouble recognizing who they were--they didn't have to introduce themselves. At a glance, I could see they'd swum forth from the same gene pool for enormity that had spawned their son. Cliff saved me.

  "If you understand nothing else, you can understand one rule," Cliff told the heavyweight's parents. "It's just one rule and I'm only going to tell you once." (I could see that he had their attention.) "This is a mat," Cliff said, pointing to where we were standing. "And that," Cliff said--pointing to the scorer's table where the heavyweight had thrown his opponent--"that is a goddamn table. In wrestling," Cliff said, "we do it on the mat. That's the rule." The heavyweight's parents shuffled away without a word. Cliff and I were alive until the finals.

  The finals were at night. Scary people from the middle of Maine emerged in the night. (My good friend Stephen King doesn't make up everything; he knows the people I mean.) The fans for the finals that night made the disqualified heavyweight's parents seem mildly civilized. In rebellion over the illegal headlock, our fellow referees had gone home; Cliff and I alternated refereeing the weight classes for the finals. When he was refereeing, I was the mat judge; Cliff was the mat judge when I was out on the mat refereeing. A mat judge can (but usually doesn't) overrule a referee's call; in a flurry of moves, sometimes the mat judge sees something the referee misses--for example, illegally locked hands in the top position--and in the area of determining the points scored (or not) on the edge of the mat, before the wrestlers are out of bounds, the mat judge can be especially effective.

  There can be 11 or 12 or 13 weight classes in a high-school wrestli
ng tournament. Nowadays, in the New England Class A tournament, the lightest weight class is 103 pounds--there are 13 weight classes, ending with the 189-pounder and the heavyweight (under 275). But in high schools there is occasionally a 100-pound class--in some states today there is also a 215-or 220-pound class, in addition to 189 and 275--and in Maine in '65 the heavyweight class was unlimited. (The weight class used to be called Unlimited.)

  In the first three weight classes, Cliff and I gave out half a dozen penalty points for the illegal headlock--apparently a feature of Maine life--and Cliff bestowed one disqualification: for biting. Some guy was getting pinned in a crossface-cradle when he bit through the skin of his opponent's forearm. There was bedlam among the fans. What could possibly be more offensive to them than a no-biting rule? (There were people in the stands who looked like they bit other people every day.)

  That night in Maine, Cliff Gallagher was 68. A former 145-pounder, he was no more than 10 pounds over his old weight class. He was pound-for-pound as strong as good old Caswell from Pitt. Cliff was mostly bald; he had a long, leathery face with remarkable ears--his neck and his hands were huge. And Cliff didn't like the way the crowd was reacting to his call. He went over to the scorer's table and took the microphone away from the announcer.

  "No biting--is that clear enough?" Cliff said into the microphone. The fans didn't like it, but they quieted down.

  We had a few more weight classes (and a lot more illegal headlocks) to get through; we kept alternating the matches, between referee and mat judge, and we kept blowing our whistles--in addition to the headlocks without an arm, there were over-scissors and full-nelsons and figure-four body-scissors and twisting knee-locks and head-butts, but there was no more biting. In the 177-pound class, I called the penalty that determined the outcome of the match; I thought the fans were going to rush me on the mat, and the coach of the penalized wrestler distinctly called me a "cocksucker"--normally another penalty, but I thought I'd better let it pass.

  Cliff conferred with me while the crowd raged. Then he went to the microphone again. "No poking the other guy in his eyes over and over again--is that clear enough?" Cliff said.

  It was Cliff who refereed the heavyweights, for which I was--for which I am--eternally grateful. The boy who'd been thrown on the scorer's table, and had thus been victorious in the semifinals, was a little the worse for wear; his opponent was a finger bender, whom Cliff penalized twice in the first period--patiently explaining the rule both times. (If you grab your opponent's fingers, you must grab all four--not just two, or one, and not just his thumb.) But the finger bender was obdurate about finger bending, and the boy who'd been bounced off the scorer's table was already . . . well, understandably, sensitive. When his fingers were illegally bent, the boy responded with a head-butt; Cliff correctly penalized him, too. Therefore, the penalty points were equal as the second period started; so far, not one legal wrestling move or hold had been initiated by either wrestler--I knew Cliff had his hands full.

  The finger bender was on the bottom; his opponent slapped a body-scissors and a full-nelson on him, which drew another penalty, and the finger bender applied an over-scissors to the scissors, which amounted to another penalty against him. Then the top wrestler, for no apparent reason, rabbit-punched the finger bender, and that was that--Cliff disqualified him for unsportsmanlike conduct. (Maybe I should have let him be thrown on the scorer's table without penalty, I thought.) Cliff was raising the finger bender's arm in victory when I spotted the losing heavyweight's mother; it was another easy gene-pool identification--this woman was without question a heavyweight's mom.

  In Maine that year--only in Maine--I had heard us referees occasionally called "zebras." I presume this was a reference to our black-and-white-striped shirts, and I presume that Cliff had previously heard himself called a "zebra," too. Notwithstanding our familiarity with the slur, neither Cliff nor I was prepared for the particular assault of the heavyweight's mom. She lumbered manfully to the scorer's table and ripped the microphone from the announcer's hands. She pointed at Cliff, who was standing a little uncertainly in the middle of the mat when she spoke.

  "Not even a zebra would fuck you," the mom said.

  Despite the crowd's instinctive unruliness, they were as uncertain of how to respond to the claim made by the heavyweight's mother as Cliff Gallagher; the crowd stood or sat in stunned silence. Slowly, Cliff approached the microphone; Cliff may have been born in Kansas, but he was an old Oklahoma boy--he still walked like a cowboy, even in Maine.

  "Is that clear enough?" Cliff asked the crowd.

  It was a long way home from the middle of Maine, but all the way Cliff kept repeating, "Not even a zebra, Johnny." It would become his greeting for me, on the telephone, whenever he called.

  That winter I took every refereeing job that I was offered. I didn't make much money, and I would never again see the likes of a tournament like that tournament in Maine. But the reason I was a referee at all, not to mention the reason I enjoyed it, was Cliff Gallagher. It was a great way to get back into wrestling.

  "I told you--you're always going to love it," Ted Seabrooke said.

  The Gold Medalist

  In Iowa--I was a student at the Writers' Workshop from 1965 until 1967--Vance Bourjaily befriended me, but Vance was not my principal teacher. For a brief moment I tried working with Nelson Algren, who--except for the unnamed Instructor C-from my unsuccessful days in Pittsburgh--represented my first encounter with a critic of an unconstructive nature. I was attracted to Mr. Algren's rough charm, but he didn't much care for me or my writing. I was "too fancy" a writer for his taste, he told me; and, worse (I suspect), I was not a city boy who'd been schooled on the mean streets. I was a small-town boy and a private-school brat; I was even more privileged than Algren knew--I was a "faculty brat." The best tutor for a young writer, in Mr. Algren's clearly expressed view, was real life, by which I think he meant an urban life. In any case, my life had not been "real" enough to suit him; and it troubled him that I was a wrestler, not a boxer--the latter was superior to the former, in Mr. A.'s opinion. He was always good-natured in his teasing of me, but there was a detectable disdain behind his humor. And I was not a poker player, which I think further revealed to Algren the shallowness of my courage.

  My friend the poet Donald Justice (a very good poker player, I'm told) once confided to me that Mr. Algren lost a lot of money in Iowa City--coming down from Chicago, as he did, and expecting to find the town full of rubes. He took me for a rube--and certainly I was--but he caused me no lasting wounds. Creative Writing, if honest at all, must be an occasionally unwelcoming experience. I appreciated Mr. Algren's honesty; his abrasiveness couldn't keep me from liking him.

  I would not see Nelson Algren again until shortly before his death, when he moved to Sag Harbor and Kurt Vonnegut brought him to my house in Sagaponack for dinner. Again I liked him, and again he teased me; he was good at it. This time he claimed not to remember me from our Iowa days, although I went out of my way to remind him of our conversations; admittedly, since they had been few and brief, it's possible that Algren didn't remember me. But in saying goodnight he pretended to confuse me with Clifford Irving, the perpetrator of that notorious Howard Hughes hoax; he appreciated a good scam, Mr. Algren said. And when Vonnegut explained to him that I was not that Irving, Algren winked at me--he was still teasing me. (You shouldn't take a Creative Writing course, much less entertain the notion of becoming a writer, if you can't take a little teasing--or even a lot.)

  But, thankfully, there were other teachers at Iowa. I was tempted to study with Jose Donoso, for I admired his writing and found him gracious--in every way that Nelson Algren was not. Then, upon first sight, I developed a schoolboy's unspoken crush on Mr. Donoso's wife; thereafter I could never look him in the eyes, which would not have made for a successful student-teacher relationship. And so my principal teacher and mentor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop became Kurt Vonnegut. (I once had a brawl in a pool hall--convincingly demo
nstrating, although never to Nelson Algren and not in his presence, that wrestling is superior to boxing--because a fellow student at Iowa, a boxer, had called Mr. Vonnegut a "science-fiction hack"; this false charge was made without the offending student's having read a single one of Kurt's books, "only the covers.")

  Did Kurt Vonnegut "teach" me how to write? Certainly not; yet Mr. Vonnegut saved me time, and he encouraged me. He pointed out some bad habits in my early work (in my first novel-in-progress), and he also pointed out those areas of storytelling and characterization that were developing agreeably enough. I would doubtless have made these discoveries on my own, but later--maybe much later. And time, to young and old writers alike, is valuable.

  Later, as a teacher--I taught at the Workshop from 1972 until 1975--I encountered many future writers among my students at Iowa. I didn't "teach" Ron Hansen or Stephen Wright or T. Coraghessan Boyle or Susan Taylor Chehak or Allan Gurganus or Gail Harper or Kent Haruf or Robert Chibka or Douglas Unger how to write, but I hope I may have encouraged them and saved them a little time. I did nothing more for them than Kurt Vonnegut did for me, but in my case Mr. Vonnegut--and Mr. Yount and Mr. Williams--did quite a lot.

  I'm talking about technical blunders, the perpetration of sheer boredom, point-of-view problems, the different qualities of first-person and third-person voice, the deadening effect of exposition in dialogue, the crippling limitations of the present tense, the intrusions upon narrative momentum caused by puerile and pointless experimentation--and on and on. You just say: "You're good at that." And: "You're not very good at this." These areas of complaint are so basic that most talented young writers will eventually spot their mistakes themselves, but perhaps at a time when a substantial revision of the manuscript might be necessary--or worse, after the book is published.