Free The Imaginary Girlfriend by John Irving Page B

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.
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œIs 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.
    â€œI 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