The Imaginary Girlfriend by John Irving Read Free Book Online Page A

was soaked through—my eyebrow was bleeding on the mat. The referee called a time-out to wipe up the blood, and I was given a quick rebandaging. However few cigarettes I’d been smoking, I was tired; it’s not unreasonable to blame my tiredness on my lack of sleep, or on a dawn spent running up and down the stairs (into a wall)—but I blame the cigarettes. The mainstay of what had made me “halfway decent” as a wrestler was my physical conditioning; now a time-out for bleeding had given me a much-needed rest. (In those days, a college wrestling match was nine minutes long; in prep school, I had been used to six minutes. A three-minute period feels a
lot
longer than a two-minute period. Nowadays, a college match is only seven minutes overall—divided in periods of three, two, two—and the high-school or prep-school match is what it always was: six minutes, in periods of two, two, two.)
    And I got lucky again: the referee hit the Cornell wrestler with a warning for stalling. It was a questionable call. With the score 4-3 on the scoreboard (5-3 with riding time), I knew that a takedown could tie it; a takedown could win it for me, too—if I could stay on top long enough to negate his riding-time advantage. The stalling warning against my opponent would hurt him in a tie; in the rules of that tournament, there was no overtime, no sudden death—a draw would mean a referee’s decision. I was sure that my opponent’s warning for stalling would give any referee’s decision to me—I thought a tie would win it.
    I don’t remember my takedown—whether it was Warnick’s arm-drag or Johnson’s duck-under, or whether it was a low, outside single-leg, which was my best takedown from Exeter—but there were less than 20 seconds showing on the clock, and the scoreboard said 5—4 in my favor. The Cornell kid had the riding-time point locked up—I couldn’t erase his advantage in less than 20 seconds—and so the match would be a draw, 5-5,
if I
could just hold on.
    There was a scramble, a mix-up of the kind that Coach Seabrooke had warned me against; fortunately, for me, we both rolled off the mat. When the referee brought us back to the circle, there were 15 seconds on the clock; I had to ride him for only 15 seconds. This is a drill in every practice session in every wrestling room in America. Sometimes the drill is called “bursts.” One of you tries to hang on, the other one tries to get away.
    I don’t remember how my opponent escaped, but he got free in a hurry. I had less than five seconds to initiate a desperation shot at a takedown; I wasn’t close to completing a move when the buzzer sounded—I lost 6-5. I couldn’t bear watching the Cornell kid in the finals; I don’t know if he won the weight class or not—or, as I say so often, I don’t remember. All I know is, that kid would never have gotten away from Sherman Moyer—not even in 15
minutes.
    Point by point, move by move, you never know how close you are to getting into the finals of a tournament until you
don’t
get into the finals. I called my parents in Massachusetts and told them to be at West Point early in the morning; the consolation rounds would start early. If I lost my first consolation match, I’d be eliminated from the tournament—I’d be a spectator for the rest of the day. If I won, I could keep wrestling; I could place as high as third, if I kept winning.
    My next opponent was an Army boy—a home-crowd favorite of the West Point fans. I remember all those cadets in gray, leaning over the mats from the wooden track above the gym; I remember them screaming. It was a larger teacup than the pit at Exeter, but it was the same teacup effect—except that these were
his
fans, not mine. I’d wrestled as good a match as I could against the Cornell kid. Possibly it was the effect of the cadets, or maybe I was trying to