The Imaginary Girlfriend

by John Irving

  "Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions," Greene wrote. I used to have that typed on a yellowing piece of paper, taped to my desk lamp, long before I understood how true it was. Something I understood sooner--as soon as I began to write--is this cutting I also made from The End of the Affair: "So much of a novelist's writing . . . takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them."

  The End of the Affair is the first novel that shocked me. I read it at a time when most of my contemporaries (those who read at all) were being shocked by The Catcher in the Rye, which I thought was as perfunctory as masturbation. Salinger's familiar creation, that troubled boy, knew nothing that could compare to Bendrix's frightening knowledge that "there is no safety anywhere: a humpback, a cripple--they all have the trigger that sets love off."

  Later, to think of Greene making the disclaimers he made--or describing some of his work, as he did, as mere "entertainments"--was confounding to me. Greene's manipulations of popular though "lesser" forms (the thriller, the detective story) obviously cost him the critical appreciation that is withdrawn from writers with too many readers.

  I am reminded of Maurice Bendrix thinking of one of his critics. "Patronizingly in the end he would place me: probably a little above Maugham because Maugham is popular and I have not yet committed that crime, not yet; but although I retain a little of the exclusiveness of unsuccess, the little reviews, like wise detectives, can scent it on its way." Greene wrote this about Bendrix in 1951; Greene himself was already becoming popular--he would soon commit "that crime"--and the "wise detectives" would sniff at his success and bestow their praise on far less perfect craftsmen than Greene.

  If, in the beginning--when I first read him in prep school--Graham Greene showed me that exquisitely developed characters and heartbreaking stories were the obligations of any novel worth remembering, it was also Greene, later, who taught me to loathe literary criticism; to see how the critics would dismiss him made me hate critics. Until his death, in 1991, Graham Greene was the most accomplished living novelist in the English language; in any language, he was the most meticulous.

  As Greene was always keen to observe: coincidence is everywhere. Greene's niece, Louise Dennys, is my Canadian publisher. The man who introduced me to Greene, the Reverend Frederick Buechner--no longer the school minister at Exeter--is my old friend and neighbor in Vermont. (Small world.) And it is only mildly astonishing to me that by the time I left Exeter I had already read most of the writers who would matter to me in my life as a writer; it is also true that the hours I spent reading them contributed (in combination with my dyslexia) to the necessity of my spending a fifth year at a four-year school.

  It hardly matters now. And it's a good lesson for a novelist: keep going, move forward--but slowly. Why be in a hurry to finish school, or a book?

  A Backup

  While the intelligentsia of my Exeter classmates moved on to various Ivy League colleges, or to their elite equivalents--George Trow moved slightly south to Harvard, where Larry Palmer would go the following year, and Chuck Krulak was accepted at the Naval Academy (Krulak had left Exeter for Annapolis the previous year)--I attended the University of Pittsburgh because I wanted to wrestle with the best.

  I would have been happier at Wisconsin, where I was wait-listed for admission because I wasn't in the top quarter of my graduating class. (It's questionable that, if I'd gone to Exeter High School instead of the academy, I would have been, although this was my feeling at the time.) Rather than wait for Wisconsin to accept me, I chose Pitt. Why? Because Pittsburgh didn't make me wait.

  I made a mistake. I liked George Martin, the Wisconsin wrestling coach, and he liked me; his son Steve, a future 157-pounder for Wisconsin, had been a teammate of mine (and a close friend) at Exeter. When I visited Madison, I loved the place--I loved the Badger wrestling room, too. Had I attended the University of Wisconsin, I might never have been a place winner in the Big 10 tournament--or even a starter on the Wisconsin team--but I know that I would have kept wrestling, and I would have stayed four years (maybe longer) in Madison; there's no question that I would have graduated. But I was 19--Pittsburgh had accepted me, and Wisconsin had told me to wait and see. When you're 19, you don't want to "wait and see."

  Coach Seabrooke warned me that I might be getting in over my head at Pitt; I should go to a smaller school, I should try a less competitive wrestling program--these were Ted's recommendations. But when he couldn't persuade me, he wrote to Rex Peery, the coach at Pittsburgh, giving Rex his evaluation of me. Knowing Ted, I presume he didn't exaggerate my potential. Coach Peery was prepared for me to be no better than "halfway decent"; as it turned out, I was worse than that.

  Rex Peery was an Oklahoma boy and a former three-time national champion--even his sons had been three-time NCAA champions--and Pittsburgh was loaded with future Ail-Americans the year I arrived. Dick Martin, the 123-pounder, would be an All-American; Darrel Kelvington (147) and Timothy Gay (157) and Jim Harrison (167) and Kenneth Barr (177) would also be All-Americans. (Harrison was a future national champion; he would win an NCAA title in 1963.) Then there were Zolikoff at 137 and Jeffries at 191 and Ware at Unlimited--I once could recite that lineup in my sleep.

  Sherman Moyer, the Pitt 130-pounder and my most frequent workout partner, was married and had completed his military service. Sherm was reputed to smoke one cigarette a week--usually in a toilet stall before his match (at least this was the only place I ever saw him smoke)--and he was devastating in the top position. Sherman Moyer was simply impossible to get away from; he could ride me, and did, all afternoon. At the time, it was small consolation to me that Moyer's abilities as a "rider" led him to defeat Syracuse All-American Sonny Greenhalgh twice in that season. (Sonny and I still talk about Moyer.) Nor was it greatly consoling that Moyer was a gentleman; he was always decent and good-humored to me--ever friendly--while grinding me into the mat.

  As for my fellow freshmen at Pitt, they were a tough lot, too--especially in and around my weight class. Tom Heniff was from Illinois and Mike Johnson was from Pennsylvania; they were often my workout partners--and Moyer's. Heniff and I were 130-pounders--I had dropped three pounds from my Exeter weight class--and Johnson, who wrestled at 123 and at 130, could take apart anyone in the wrestling room up to about 140 or 150 pounds. In the next year, Mike Johnson would be an All-American; he was an NCAA runner-up in '63. (Johnson is a high-school wrestling coach in Du Bois, Pennsylvania, today.)

  I also worked out with a couple of freshman 137-pounders: a redhead named Carswell or Caswell, who was pound for pound the strongest person I ever wrestled--I remember him as about five feet five with a 60-inch chest--and a smiling guy named Warnick who had an arm-drag that left you looking for your arm. The freshman recruit at 147 pounds was (I believe) a guy named Frank O'Korn; I don't remember him well--I must have wrestled him only occasionally. At 157 pounds, John Carr had won a New England Interscholastic title as a PG at Cheshire. (Carr would transfer from Pitt to Wilkes; until recently, he was a high-school coach in the Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania.) And topping off that freshman class was a highly recruited 177-pounder named Lee Hall.

  I knew they would be good--I had gone there because they were the best. But in the Pittsburgh wrestling room, in the '62 season, there was not one wrestler I could beat--not one.

  My technique was not the problem; I had been well coached at Exeter. The problem in Pittsburgh was that my limited athletic ability placed me at a considerable distance from the top rank of college wrestlers around the nation. Because of Ted Seabrooke, I wasn't a bad wrestler; I also wasn't a good athlete, as Ted had told me. I took a pounding at Pitt. "Halfway decent" didn't cut it there.

  I won't presume to define that essential ability which makes a "good athlete" for all sports, but for wrestling good balance is as important as quickness; it is also as uncoachable. And
by balance I mean both kinds: the ability to keep your balance--to a small degree this can be taught, by maintaining good position--and how quickly you can recover your balance when you lose it. The latter ability is un-teachable. The speed with which I can recover my balance when I lose it is mournfully slow; this is my weakness as an athlete. (It is a sizable limitation for a wrestler.)

  In '62, freshmen were ineligible for varsity competition; yet I'd anticipated a challenging schedule of dual-meet matches and tournaments for the Pittsburgh freshman team--we would have been a winning team. But Johnson and Heniff and Warnick and O'Korn and Carr were either academically ineligible or nursing injuries, or both; what there was for a freshman wrestling schedule was canceled. The only competition I would see, until the year-end tournament--the Freshman Eastern Intercollegiates at West Point--was the considerable competition in the Pitt wrestling room. And I could easily predict my future, if I stayed at Pittsburgh. I would be a backup to Johnson or Heniff or Warnick (or to all three); later, I would be a backup to whatever talented freshmen would enter next year's wrestling room with the new freshman class. I would always be a backup. When one of the starters was sick, when he was hurt or couldn't make weight, I would sneak into the lineup; and there was little doubt what my role would be then--it wouldn't be to win but to not get pinned. It would be, at best, a career spent facing Vincent Buonomano--like my first time in the pit.

  It was what success I had met with in the pit--after the beating by Buonomano--that made the backup role hard for me to bear. At Exeter, I had been a three-year starter. Years later, as a coach, I had the highest respect for the backup wrestlers on good wrestling teams; they were what made the teams good--as teams. They were the necessary workout partners who could have been starters at a smaller school, in a less competitive program. But once I'd been part of a program like Pittsburgh's, I couldn't have been satisfied with anything less; nor was I wise enough to recognize the distinction of backing up a wrestler of Mike Johnson's quality. Instead, I was disappointed in myself--in my limitations. I wanted to leave Pittsburgh, but there was nowhere else I wanted to go.

  For once I was not struggling academically; yet, for the first time, I was lazy (academically), too. I worked hard in the wrestling room, but--without any outside competition--I couldn't see my own improvement as a wrestler. I could only see that I wasn't improving against Moyer or Johnson or Heniff or Warnick, or Carswell or Caswell--whatever the strong redhead's name was. And I was bored with everything but the wrestling; to simply see more of it--since I couldn't compete--I asked Coach Peery to take me on varsity road trips as the team manager. Rex took me; he knew I was discouraged, and he was being kind to me--I was an easily distracted manager. (Daydreamers have pathetic managerial skills.)

  Rex Peery was always kind to me, except once when he cut my hair. We were traveling--we were in the training room at either Navy or Maryland--and he'd warned me earlier to get a haircut. I wasn't being in the slightest rebellious; I'd just forgotten to do it--I would have done anything to please Rex.

  Coach Peery put a surgical basin on my head--it was a bowl, but not a round one--and he cut my hair with a pair of snub-nosed shears, of the kind used for removing adhesive tape from injured ankles and knees and shoulders and wrists and fingers . . . and whatever else could be taped. (By the end of a wrestling season, almost everything was taped.) All things considered, it wasn't a bad haircut--Rex would never try to make anyone look foolish. Besides, emblematic of my experience at Pitt, I had brought the haircut on myself.

  The Hundred-Dollar Taxi Ride

  It was about that time when I started smoking--just a little bit, although a little more than Sherman Moyer. Maybe Moyer had inspired me; if I couldn't get out from under him on the mat, at least I could outsmoke him. It was a stupid way to try to say goodbye to wrestling, which I wouldn't say goodbye to until I was 47--whereas I would quit smoking almost as soon as I started. Most self-destructive behavior is simply ridiculous--never mind how complexly compelled by personal demons. Given my limited talent, I could ill afford to undermine one of my few advantages as a wrestler--before I started smoking, I was in fanatically good shape.

  A pack would last me at least a week, often two weeks; and the more I smoked, the harder I trained. What was the point of it? So little smoking hardly constitutes an unbreakable habit--I'd never had the habit. In Pittsburgh, I could have used a school psychiatrist--and not for my spelling. In the back of my mind, even as I smoked, I imagined that I could redeem myself at the Freshman Eastern Intercollegiates; the three Pitt freshmen who were uninjured and eligible--I was one of them--would get to go.

  It was probably because of my brief managerial experience that I was trusted with the bus tickets and pocket money for the trip to West Point; Coach Peery put me in charge. The varsity team was staying in Pittsburgh, preparing for the nationals; no coach would accompany Lee Hall and me, and Carswell or Caswell--I'm going to call him Caswell--to the tournament at Army. It seemed simple enough. I had bus tickets from Pittsburgh to the Port Authority in New York City, together with something called "transfer passes" from New York to West Point. I was told to get the three of us to Manhattan and take the first available bus up the Hudson. What could have been easier? But the bus from Pittsburgh was delayed; by the time we reached the Port Authority, it was midnight. The next available bus to West Point was at 8:00 in the morning; from filling out the registration forms from Army, I remembered that the weigh-ins were at 7:00 A.M.

  "We can't miss the weigh-ins and still wrestle," Caswell said.

  "What do we do?" Lee Hall asked me.

  Inevitably, I recalled the surgical basin on my head--at either Navy or Maryland--and I wondered what Rex Peery would have wanted us to do. The whole year the three of us had been wrestling only our teammates in the wrestling room; it wouldn't have been like missing one tournament--it would have meant missing our only tournament. I counted the pocket money that Coach Peery had given me: $100. I had our return "transfer passes" from West Point to the Port Authority, and our return tickets from New York to Pittsburgh. All we had to do was get ourselves up the Hudson to West Point before 7:00 in the morning. What did we need the $100 for? (We had to make weight--we couldn't eat anything, anyway.)

  Once outside the Port Authority--now it was well after midnight--I was glad to be in the company of our highly recruited 177-pounder, Lee Hall, and with Caswell, the pound-for-pound strongest person in the world. (Caswell would be wrestling at Army at 137 pounds. I was listed to weigh in at 130.) It took me a dozen cabs, or more, before I found a taxi driver who would take us to West Point for $100.

  "West Point? A hundred bucks? Sure, man," the driver said. "Where's West Point?"

  Caswell said he couldn't read a map in a moving car without throwing up, and Lee Hall couldn't comfortably fit in the front seat; the meter crowded him (Lee had to cut a lot of weight to weigh 177 pounds). Therefore, I was our navigator--I sat up front with the driver.

  "You just go up the Hudson," I told him.

  "Sure, man," he said. "Up the what?"

  I have flown nonstop from New York to Tokyo; I have driven nonstop from Iowa City to Exeter, New Hampshire. But that trip up the Hudson was the longest of my life. Didn't the Dutch explore the Hudson in boats? Not even in a boat could we have made worse time.

  In the first place, the only map was a map of Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx. In the second place, as soon as the city lights were gone, our driver informed us that he was afraid of the dark.

  "I never drove in the dark before," he whimpered. "Not dis dark!"

  We inched along. It began to sleet. It seemed that only back roads led to West Point--at least they were the only roads we found.

  "I never seen so many trees," our driver said. "Not dis many!"

  If our taxi driver was terrified of the dark, and of the unusual number of trees, the soldiers who were dressed to kill--and who guarded the formidable entrance to the United States Military Academy at West Point
(I presume they were M.P.s)--were his undoing. The Military Police were not expecting the predawn arrival of three wrestlers from Pittsburgh; the other wrestlers had long ago arrived--the soldiers presumed they'd gone to bed. However, it was not necessary to open our gym bags in order to verify that we were wrestlers; it was only necessary for the M.P.s to get a look at Lee Hall.

  It was then a matter of deciding on the whereabouts of our barracks. Where were all the other wrestlers sleeping? The soldiers at the gate, intimidating though they were, were not brave enough to call the Army wrestling coach and ask him where we were to be sheltered--it was about 4:00 A.M., only three hours to weigh-ins. Lee Hall and Caswell knew what I was thinking when I suggested to the soldiers that we sleep in the gym. I explained that the mats were usually rolled out the night before; that way the mats are lying flat by the time of competition--you don't have to tape the corners to the floor. We could sleep on the mats, I offered--we didn't mind.

  Lee Hall and Caswell knew that I was thinking of the scales, not the mats--I couldn't have cared less about the mats, or sleeping. We had three hours before weigh-ins and we hadn't been able to check our weight since we left Pittsburgh. If I was a half-pound over, I needed to sweat; I'd been a pound and a half over when we left Pittsburgh. I'd eaten nothing, and I'd had nothing to drink; usually, if I was a pound and a half over in the afternoon before a morning weigh-in, I could drink eight ounces of water and still lose the weight in my sleep. I hadn't slept or had my usual eight ounces of water, but I was dying to get on the scales, to be sure.

  The M.P.s didn't think that letting us into the gym was a good idea. There was a barracks somewhere for visiting teams; the soldiers sounded more or less sure of this, although they weren't sure which barracks it was.