The Water-Method Man Read online

  About the Book

  Fred 'Bogus' Trumper is a wayward knight-errant in the battle of the sexes and the pursuit of happiness. He also happens to have a complaint more serious than Portnoy's. Yet he stubbornly clings to the notion that he'll make something of his life, and is about to commit himself to a second marriage that bears remarkable resemblance to his first.

  The Water-Method Man is a work of consummate artistry and comic invention, bizarre imagery and sharp social and psychological observation.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  1. Yogurt & Lots of Water

  2. War-Built Things

  3. Old Tasks & Plumbing News

  4. Iowa Evening Rituals

  5. A Dream to Me Now

  6. Prelude to the Last Stand

  7. Ralph Packer Films, Inc. 109 Christopher Street New York, New York 10014

  8. Other Old Mail

  9. Mice, Turtles & Fish First!

  10. Let's Not Lose Track of Certain Statistics

  11. Notre Dame 52, Iowa 10

  12. Do You Want to Have a Baby?

  13. Remember Merrill Overturf?

  14. Fighting the Good Fight

  15. Remember Being in Love with Biggie?

  16. Fathers & Sons (Two Kinds), Unwanted Daughters-in-Law & Fatherless Friends

  17. Reflections on the Failure of the Water Method

  18. One Long Mother of a Day

  19. Axelrulf Among the Greths

  20. His Move

  21. Home Movies

  22. Slouching after Overturf

  23. Taking it Personally

  24. How Far Can You Get with an Arrow in Your Tit?

  25. Getting Ready for Ralph

  26. 'Gra! Gra!'

  27. How is Anything Related to Anything Else?

  28. What Happened to the Hashish?

  29. What Happened to Sprog?

  30. What Happened to Merrill Overturf?

  31. A Pentothal Movie

  32. Another Dante, a Different Hell

  33. Welcome to the Order of the Golden Prick

  34. Into a Life of Art: Prelude to a Tank on the Bottom of the Danube

  35. Old Thak Undone! Biggie Puts on Weight!

  36. Akthelt Beset With Doubt! Trumper Grinds to a Halt!

  37. Audience Craze, Critical Acclaim and Rave Reviews for Fucking Up

  38. The Old Friends Assemble for Throgsgafen Day

  In One Person Extract

  About the Author

  Also by John Irving

  Copyright

  THE WATER-

  METHOD MAN

  John Irving

  for Shyla

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author is grateful to the director, Irvin Kershner, for a valuable and exciting film experience in 1969 and 1970, and to the Rockefeller Foundation for their assistance in 1970 and 1971.

  Especially, the author is indebted to Donald Harington. A vital passage in this book is his.

  1

  Yogurt & Lots of Water

  HER GYNECOLOGIST RECOMMENDED him to me. Ironic: the best urologist in New York is French. Dr Jean Claude Vigneron: ONLY BY APPOINTMENT. So I made one.

  'You like New York better than Paris?' I asked.

  'In Paris, I dared to keep a car.'

  'My father is a urologist, too.'

  'Then he must be a second-rate one,' Vigneron said, 'if he didn't know what was wrong with you.'

  'It's nonspecific,' I said. I knew the history of my ailment well. 'Sometimes it's nonspecific urethritis, once it was nonspecific prostatitis. Another time, I had the clap - but that's a different story. Once it was just a common germ. But always, nonspecific.'

  'It looks very specific to me,' Vigneron said.

  'No,' I said. 'Sometimes it responds to penicillin, sometimes sulpha does the trick. Once, Furadantin cured it.'

  'There, you see?' he said. 'Urethritis and prostatitis don't respond to Furadantin.'

  'Well, there,' I said. 'You see? It was something else that time. Nonspecific.'

  'Specific,' Vigneron said. 'You can't get much more specific than the urinary tract.'

  He showed me. On his examination table I tried to be calm. He handed me a perfect plastic breast, as lovely a one as I've seen: realistic color and texture, and a fine, upstanding nipple.

  'My God ...'

  'Just bite on it,' he said. 'Forget about me.'

  I clutched the rare boob, looking it straight in the eye. I'm sure that my father employs no such up-to-date devices. When you're erect, the nasty glass rod goes in a bit easier. I recall I pulled a muscle, trying not to cry.

  'Very specific,' said Jean Claude Vigneron, who responded in sly French when I told him it was at least unusual to hold a breast whose nipple one could bite without reserve.

  Vigneron's diagnosis of my ailment is best understood with some historical perspective. Odd and painful peeing is not new to me.

  Seven times in the last five years, I have suffered this unnamable disorder. Once it was the clap, but that's another story. Usually, the apparatus is simply stuck together in the morning. A careful pinch sets things right, or almost right. Urinating is often a challenge, the sensations always new and surprising. Also, it's time-consuming - your day spent in anticipation of the next time you'll have to pee. Sex, typically, is unmentionable. Orgasm is truly climactic. Coming is a slow experience - the long, astonishing journey of a rough and oversized ballbearing. In the past I had given up the act altogether. Which drives me to drink, which makes the pee burn: an unfriendly circle.

  And always the nonspecific diagnosis. Terrifying new strains of possibly Asian venereal diseases are never substantiated. 'Some kind of infection' is carefully not named. Different drugs are tried; one eventually works. The Medical Encyclopedia of the Home reveals vague and ominous symptoms of cancer of the prostate. But the doctors always tell me I'm too young. I always agree.

  And now, Jean Claude Vigneron puts his glass rod on the problem. Specifically a birth defect. Not surprising - I have already suspected the existence of several.

  'Your urinary tract is a narrow, winding road.'

  I took the news pretty well.

  'Americans are so silly about sex,' Vigneron said. From my own experience, I felt unfit to argue. 'You think everything is washable, but the vagina remains the dirtiest thing in the world. Did you know that? Every unexposed orifice harbors hundreds of harmless bacteria, but the vagina is a superior hostess. I say "harmless" - but not to you. Normal penises flush them out.'

  'But not my narrow, winding road?' I said, thinking of its odd crannies, where hundreds of bacteria could lead a secret life.

  'You see?' said Vigneron. 'Isn't that specific?'

  'What's the recommended treatment?' I still held the plastic breast. A man with an invulnerable nipple can be brave.

  'You have four alternatives,' Vigneron said. 'There are lots of drugs, and one will always work. Seven times in five years is not surprising, considering such a urinary tract as yours. And the pain isn't severe, is it? You can live with this periodic inconvenience to your peeing and your screwing, can't you?'

  'I have a new life now,' I said. 'I want to change.'

  'Then stop screwing,' Vigneron said. 'Consider masturbation. You can wash your hand.'

  'I don't want to change that much.'

  'Remarkable!' Vigneron cried. He is a handsome man, big and cocksure; I gripped the plastic breast tightly. 'Remarkable, remarkable ... you are my tenth American patient to face these alternatives, and every one of you rejects the first two.'

  'So what's remarkable about that?' I said. 'They're not very att
ractive alternatives.'

  'For Americans!' cried Vigneron. 'Three of my patients in my Paris days chose to live with it. And one - and he wasn't an old man, either - gave up screwing.'

  'I haven't heard the other two alternatives,' I said.

  'I always pause here,' said Dr Vigneron. 'I like to guess which one you'll choose. With Americans I've never guessed wrong. You are a predictable people. You always want to change your lives. You never accept what you're born with. And for you? For you, I can sense it. It's the water method for you!'

  I found the doctor's tone offensive. With breast in hand, I was determined that the water method would not be for me.

  'It is a fallible method, of course,' Vigneron said. 'A compromise, at best. Instead of seven times in five years, maybe one time in three years - healthier odds, that's all.'

  'I don't like it.'

  'But you haven't tried it,' he said. 'It's very simple. You drink lots of water before you screw. You drink lots of water after you screw. And you go easy on the booze. Alcohol makes bacteria happy. In the French Army, we had an ingenious test-cure for the clap. Give them the normal dose of penicillin. Then give them three beers before bedtime when they tell you they think they're cured. If they have a discharge in the morning, more penicillin. You just need lots of water. With your curious tract, you need all the flushing you can get. After intercourse, just remember to get up and pee.'

  The breast in my hand was only plastic. I said, 'You expect me to perform the sexual act on a full bladder? That's painful.'

  'It's different,' Vigneron agreed. 'But you'll have bigger erections. Did you know that?'

  I asked him what the fourth alternative was, and he smiled.

  'A simple operation,' he said. 'Minor surgery.'

  I sliced my thumbnail into the plastic nipple.

  'We simply straighten you out,' said Vigneron. 'We widen the road. It doesn't take a minute. We put you to sleep, of course.'

  In my hand was an absurd synthetic mammary gland, an obvious fake. I put it down. 'It must hurt a little,' I said. 'I mean, after the operation.'

  'For forty-eight hours or so.' Vigneron shrugged; all pain appeared equally tolerable to him.

  'Can you put me to sleep for forty-eight hours?' I asked.

  'Ten out of ten!' Vigneron cried. 'They always ask that!'

  'Forty-eight hours?' I wondered. 'How do I pee?'

  'As fast as you can,' he said, poking the upright nipple on the examination table as if it were a button summoning nurses and anesthetists - bringing him the polished scalpel for this surgical feat. I could imagine it. A slender version of a Roto-Rooter. A long, tubular razor, like a miniature of the mouth of a lamprey eel.

  Dr Jean Claude Vigneron eyed me as if I were a painting he was not quite finished with. 'The water method?' he guessed.

  'You're ten for ten,' I said, just to please him. 'Did any of your patients ever choose the operation?'

  'Just one,' said Vigneron, 'and I knew he would, from the start. He was a practical, scientific, no-nonsense sort of man. On the examination table he was the only one who scorned the tit.'

  'A hard man,' I said.

  'A secure man,' said Vigneron. He lit a foul, dark Gauloise and inhaled without fear.

  Later, living with the water method, I thought about his four alternatives, I thought of a fifth: French urological surgeons are quacks, seek another opinion, seek lots of other opinions - any other opinion ...

  I had my hand on a real breast when I phoned Vigneron to tell him of this fifth alternative that he should offer his patients.

  'Remarkable!' he cried.

  'Don't tell me. You're ten for ten?'

  'Ten out of ten!' he hollered. 'And always about three days after the examination. You're right on time!'

  I was quiet on my end of the phone. In my hand her breast felt like plastic. But only for this quiet moment; she came to life when Vigneron boomed at me.

  'It's not a matter of another opinion. Don't kid yourself. The geography of your urinary tract is a fact. I could draw you a map, to scale ...'

  I hung up. 'I've never liked the French,' I told her. 'Your gynecologist must have it in for me, recommending that sadist. He hates Americans, you know. I'm sure that's why he came here, with his goddamn glass rods ...'

  'Paranoia,' she said, her eyes already closed. She's not a big talker, this one. 'Words,' she says, in her harumphing way. She has a gesture for what she thinks of words: she lifts one breast with the back of her hand. She has good, full breasts, but they need a bra. I'm very fond of her breasts; they make me wonder how that fake boob of Vigneron's had any effect on me. If I had it to do again, I wouldn't take the tit. Well, yes I would. She wouldn't ever need a device like that, though. She's a practical, no-nonsense, gut-level, secure person. Offer her those four alternatives and she'd take the operation. I know; I asked her.

  'Surgery,' she said. 'If something can be fixed, then fix it.'

  'The water's not so bad,' I said. 'I like water. It's good for me too, in lots of ways. And I have bigger erections. Did you know that?'

  She lifts the back of her hand and one breast stands up. I really like her very much.

  Her name is Tulpen. That means tulips in German, but her parents didn't know it was German, or what it meant, when they named her. Her parents were Polish. They died peacefully in New York, but Tulpen was born in an RAF hospital outside London during the blitz. There was a nice nurse whose name was Tulpen. They liked the nurse, they wanted to forget everything Polish, and they thought that the nurse was a Swede. Nobody found out what Tulpen meant until Tulpen took German in high school, in Brooklyn. She came home and told her parents, who were very surprised; it wasn't the cause of their death, or anything like that; it was just a fact. None of this is important; these are just facts. But that's when Tulpen talks; when there's a fact. And there aren't many.

  Following her example, I began with a fact: my urinary tract is a narrow, winding road.

  Facts are true. Tulpen is a very honest person. I am not so honest. I'm a pretty good liar, in fact. People who've really known me tend to believe me less and less. They tend to think I lie all the time. But I'm telling the truth now! Just remember: you don't know me.

  When I talk like this, Tulpen lifts a breast with the back of her hand.

  What in hell do we have in common? I'll stick to the facts. Names are facts. Tulpen and I have the carelessness of our names in common. Hers was a mistake, which doesn't matter to her. I have several; like hers, they're all pretty accidental. My father and mother named me Fred, and it never seemed to bother them that almost no one else ever called me that. Biggie called me Bogus. That was the invention of my oldest and dearest friend, Couth, who coined the name when he first caught me lying. The name stuck. Most of my friends called me that, and Biggie knew me then. Merrill Overturf, who is still lost, called me Boggle. Like any name, there were vague reasons. Ralph Packer named me Thump-Thump, a name I despise. And Tulpen calls me by my surname, Trumper. I know why: it's the closest to a fact that you can come to in a name. Male surnames don't often change. So most of the time I'm Fred 'Bogus' Trumper. That's a fact.

  Facts fall out of me slowly. So I don't get lost, I'll repeat them. Now there are two. One: My urinary tract is a narrow, winding road. Two: Tulpen and I have the carelessness of our names in common. And possibly not much else.

  But wait! I am reaching for a third fact. Three: I believe in Rituals! I mean, there have always been things like the water method in my life; there have always been rituals. No particular ritual has ever lasted very long (I told Vigneron I have a new life, that I want to change, and this is true), but always I have moved from one ritual to another. Right now it's the water method. Some historical perspective on my rituals will take a little time, but the water method is clear. Also, Tulpen and I share an early morning ritual, of sorts. Although the water method has me getting up a little earlier - and a few times in the night - Tulpen and I have persisted in this routine. I get
up and pee and brush my teeth and drink a lot of water. She starts coffee and puts on a stack of records. We meet back in bed for yogurt. Always yogurt. She has a red bowl, I have a blue one, but if we have different flavors we often trade the bowls back and forth. A flexible ritual is the best kind, and yogurt is a sensible, healthy food which is very kind to your mouth in the morning. We don't talk. This is nothing new for Tulpen, but even I don't talk. We listen to records and eat our yogurt. I don't know Tulpen very well, but apparently she's always done this. An addition to her ritual was introduced by me: when the yogurt is all gone, we make love for a long time. After that, the coffee's ready and we have it. We don't talk as long as the records play. The only variation caused by the water method is minor, and falls somewhere after love and during coffee. I get up to pee and drink a lot of water.

  I haven't lived with Tulpen for very long, but I've a feeling that if I'd lived with her for years and years, I wouldn't know her any better.

  Tulpen and I are both twenty-eight, but she's really older than I am; she has outgrown having to talk about herself.

  It's Tulpen's apartment and all the things in it are hers. I left my things, and my child, with my first and only wife.

  I said to Dr Jean Claude Vigneron that I have a new life, etc.; I said that some historical perspective on my rituals will take a little time; I also said that I'm not so honest. But Tulpen is. She helps me keep things straight by raising one breast with the back of her hand. In no time at all, I learned not to talk as long as the records play. I learned to say only what's essential (though people who've known me would tend to say that I am lying even now. Fuck them! I say, for such pessimism).

  My urinary tract is a narrow, winding road, and right now there's yogurt and lots of water. I'm going to stick to the facts. I want to change.

  2

  War-Built Things

  AMONG HIS OTHER kicks, Fred Bogus Trumper likes to remember Merrill Overturf, the diabetic. In Trumper's Iowa phase, his memories of Overturf are especially sweet. It helps, for accuracy, that some of Overturf is tape-recorded.

  Such escapism. Listening to Merrill, in Vienna - while Trumper looks out his Iowa window, through a rusty screen and a fat katydid's wing; he sees a slow-moving, beshitted truck, brimming with hogs. Over the complaining pigs, Bogus listens to the ditty Merrill composed at the Prater - later used, Merrill claimed, to seduce Wanga Holthausen, a singing coach for the Vienna Boys' Choir. The background music is from the Prater go-kart track, where Merrill Overturf once held the 20-lap record. Possibly, he still holds it.