The Water-Method Man

  Also, on the Greyhound map of the United States, Boston was roughly halfway between Maine and New York. And on a map of me, he thought, that's about where I am.

  37

  Audience Craze, Critical Acclaim

  and Rave Reviews for Fucking Up

  VARIETY ANNOUNCED THAT 'Ralph Packer's newest film is clearly the best thing to come out of the so-called underground this year. Of course this distinction could conceivably be awarded to any film with some content and style, but Packer's film is even subtle. He has at last expanded his documentary approach to a finely focused situation; he is dealing with characters at last, instead of groups, and technically his work is as fine as ever. Admittedly, not many viewers will find much to interest them in Packer's rather self-centered and inert main character, but ...'

  The New York Times said, 'If an era of commercially successful, low-budget films is truly upon us, we may at last give birth in this country to the vital documentary style which the Canadians have been producing with such excellence in recent years. And if small, independent film makers can ever achieve widespread and major theater-distribution, then the sleight-of-hand style - which Ralph Packer has at last found a home for, in his "F--ing Up" - is going to be much imitated. I am not sure that it is a truly enriching or satisfying style, but Packer has sharpened his craft well. It is Packer's subject which eludes me. He doesn't develop a subject; he simply keeps bringing it up ...'

  Newsweek called the film 'An elaborately polished, honed, slicked-over, bantering movie which disguises itself as a quest: to explore the psyche of its main character - through a choppy montage of pseudo-interviews with the character's former wife, present girlfriend, dubious friends, and with irritating interruptions from the main character himself, who plays a cute game of pretending he wants nothing to do with the movie. If that were true, he would indeed be wise. Not only does the film never get to the bottom of what makes the main character tick, but the film stops ticking long before its end.'

  Time, honoring a long tradition of disagreeing with Newsweek, trumpeted: 'Ralph Packer's "F--ing Up" is a beautifully compressed film - quiet and understated in every way. Bogus Trumper, credited with the film's innovative sound track, gives a fine acting performance in the role of an aloof, tight-lipped failure with one busted marriage in his past, one cool and shaky relationship in the present - an absolute paranoiac victimized by his own self-analysis. He is the unwilling subject of Packer's uncannily delicate scrutiny, which takes the form of a trim, point-blank documentary which pieces together and overlaps interviews and random comments with some exquisitely straight and deceptively simple shots of Trumper doing perfectly ordinary things. It is a film about making a film about someone involved in making a film, but Trumper emerges as a kind of hero when he rejects all his friends and the movie - Packer's subtle way of putting down a psyche-picking belief in the discovery of any true motives ...'

  Trumper read all these in his father's den at Great Boar's Head.

  'Is that the Time review?' his mother asked him. 'I like the Time review.'

  His mother had collected and saved all the reviews, and apparently the reason she liked the one from Time was that it mentioned Trumper by name. She hadn't seen the movie and didn't seem to realize that it was about her son's cruel, sad life. Neither did the reviewers.

  His father said, 'I don't suppose it will ever be shown up here.'

  'All the films we want to see never get up here,' his mother said.

  The film hadn't gotten out of New York yet, though it was scheduled to be show in Boston, San Francisco and a few other big-city art cinemas. It might reach a few large campuses too, but it wasn't likely to turn up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire - thank God. He himself hadn't seen the film yet.

  He'd been through a month of teacher interviews in and around Boston and had come home for a weekend now and then, to console his father's ulcer and to appear grateful - which he truly was - and for the new Volkswagen his father had given him. A kind of graduation present, he supposed.

  It looked more and more likely that he'd have to wait until spring to find a job; he had discovered that his new PhD had about the same appeal and importance at an interview as having freshly shined shoes. About the only openings at this time of year were in public high schools, and somehow a PhD in comparative literature, with a thesis in Old Low Norse, did not seem suitable training for a class in world culture, from Caesar to Eisenhower, and English composition. Also, he didn't even know how to look at a sixteen-year-old.

  His father fixed himself another milk and honey, and made Bogus another bourbon with an expression on his face that revealed how much he'd like to trade stomachs with his son.

  Bogus read some more of his mother's collection of reviews.

  The New Yorker said that it was 'rare and refreshing to see an American film with enough self-confidence to trust in a light touch. What Packer manages with his new crew of non-actors should make some of our superstars feel insecure - or at least angry with their screenwriters. Lead actor Bogus Trumper (whose sound tracking is just a bit too clever) is remarkably effective in portraying the self-protective, shallow cool of a man who has failed to communicate with women beyond a self-satisfying level ...'

  'The women are beautiful!' proclaimed The Village Voice. 'What's missing in Packer's film is any clue whatsoever as to why two such frankly open and stunning complete women would have anything to do with such a weak, enigmatic, unfulfilled man ...'

  Playboy termed the film 'hip and complex, with the sexual vitality of the characters just barely concealed, like the impression of a voluptuous body under silk ...'

  Though it enjoyed 'the vivid pace of the film', Esquire found the ending 'a cheap emotional device. The pregnancy scene is simply an old and over-used gimmick for soliciting audience response.'

  What pregnancy scene? wondered Bogus.

  The Saturday Review, on the other hand, found the ending 'pure Packer at his understated best. The light casualness of the pregnancy brings all the airy intellectual speculations up against the hard fact that she loved him ...'

  Why? Trumper thought. Who loved him? Loved whom? Was Ralph wringing sentiment from Biggie's recent child by Couth? But how had he tied that in?

  Life fumbled to articulate it. 'The surface vignette approach almost demands a nonending sort of ending; a progression which fails to develop in depth, but instead elects to swivel a story - simply showing more facets on the surface - would be pretentious in choosing a dramatic ending centered on an inevitable event. "F***ing Up" leads to no such inevitable event. Rather, in that last blunt image of pregnancy - brief and matter-of-fact - Packer achieves a definitive non-statement ...'

  A what? Bogus thought. He realized that he had to go see the fucking movie.

  Part of the reason why he wanted to see it had nothing to do with the reviews. He wanted to see Tulpen again, but he couldn't quite bear the thought of her seeing him. Trumper as voyeur, and interested party, would go see Fucking Up.

  He had a job interview at the Litchfield Community College of the Liberal Arts in Torrington, Connecticut, which was more or less on the way to New York. After his interview, he could sneak into the city and see the film.

  It turned out that the job opening was for two sections of a survey of British literature and two sections of expository writing for freshmen. The chairman of the English department was impressed with Trumper's credentials, especially the Old Low Norse. 'Gosh,' the chairman said, 'we don't even have a foreign-language requirement here.'

  His mind a simmering stew, Trumper got to the Village in time for the nine o'clock showing of Fucking Up. The sight of his name among the sound and acting credits impressed him, though he fought it. The finished version was a lot more fluid than he remembered it; he found himself looking at it expectantly, as at a photograph album full of old friends in funny clothes and ten pounds lighter. But it was all very predictable; he remembered everything, right up until the end, when he saw the scene he'd only over
heard: Tulpen in the bathtub, telling Ralph and Kent that it was time for them to leave.

  Then he saw the scenes he'd patched together of his own leaving. Ralph had reversed the order of their appearance. There was Trumper leaving the pet shop, saying, 'Goodbye, Ralph. I don't want to be in your movie any more.' There were Trumper and Tulpen and Colm on the subway to the Bronx Zoo, with Trumper's voice-over saying, 'Tulpen, I am sorry. But I do not want a child.'

  Then came two new scenes.

  Tulpen in exercise tights is performing the preparatory exercises for natural childbirth: deep-breathing, odd squat-thrusts, and the like. Ralph's voice-over says, 'He left her.'

  Then a shot of Tulpen working in the editing room. The camera sees her from behind; she is sitting down, and only when she turns her head do we recognize her, in profile. Slowly, she acknowledges the camera's presence; she looks over her shoulder into the lens, then turns away. She couldn't care less about the camera. Offstage, Ralph asks, 'Are you happy?'

  Tulpen seems self-conscious. She gets up from her workbench with an odd gesture; from behind, her elbow lifts like the wing of a bird. But Trumper knows: she is lifting her lovely breast with the back of her hand.

  When she turns in a full-length profile to the camera, we see that she is pregnant.

  'You're pregnant ...' Ralph's voice nags.

  Tulpen gives the camera a no-shit sort of look. Her hands are busy, tucking the shapeless folds of her maternity dress around her great abdomen.

  'Whose baby is it?' Ralph says relentlessly.

  There is no hesitation, only a casual shrug of her breasts, but she won't face the camera. 'His,' Tulpen says.

  The image freezes to a still, over which the credits appear.

  When the lights came on, there was a crush of Greenwich Village film addicts all around him. He sat as if anesthetized, until he realized that no one could get past his splayed knees; then he rose and walked up the aisle with the crowd.

  In the lobby's miasma of sickly light and candy smells, kids were lighting cigarettes and milling around; trapped in the slow-moving crowd, Trumper overheard snatches of talk.

  'What a perfect shit,' a girl said.

  'I don't know, I don't know,' someone complained. 'Packer gets more and more hung up on himself, you know?'

  'Well, I liked it, but ...' said a thoughtful voice.

  'The acting was really OK, you know ...'

  'They weren't exactly actors ...'

  'Well, OK, the people, then ...'

  'Yeah, great.'

  'Good camera work too.'

  'Yeah, but he didn't do anything with it ...'

  'You know what I say when I see a film like this?' a voice asked. 'I say, "So what?" That's what I say, man.'

  'Give me the keys, motherfuck ...'

  'Another piece of shit is another piece of shit is ...'

  'But it's relative ...'

  'It's all the same.'

  'Excuse me ...' Bogus thought of biting the slender neck of a tall girl in front of him, thought of turning and kneeing a covey of callow philosophers behind him who were calling the film 'great nihilism'.

  Just before the door, he knew he'd been recognized. A girl with a drug complexion and dirty-saucer eyes stared at him, then plucked her companion's sleeve. They were a part of a group, and in a minute all of them turned to regard Trumper, wedged in a clutch of people by the door. It was a double door, but half of it was stuck closed. As someone snapped it open, a cheer went up, and for a second, Trumper actually imagined the applause was for him. Then a young man in a Union Army uniform, who had an elegant Smith Brothers' beard and yellow teeth, blocked his way.

  'Excuse me,' Trumper said.

  'Hey, it's you,' the young man said, and turning to his friends, he called, 'hey, I told you - it's that guy ...'

  Instantly a dozen people were gawking at him in celebrity fashion.

  'I thought he was taller,' a girl said.

  Some of the young ones - just kids, silly and laughing - followed him all the way to his car.

  Another girl teased him. 'Oh, come home and meet my mother!' she sang.

  He got into his car and drove away.

  'A new Volkswagen!' a boy said with mock awe. 'Far out ...'

  Trumper drove around and got lost; he'd never driven in New York before. Finally, he paid a taxi to lead him to Tulpen's apartment. He still had his key to the place. It was after midnight, but he was thinking of other kinds of time. Like months, and how long he'd been gone; like how pregnant Tulpen had been when the film was finished; like how much time had passed before the film was released. Though he knew better, he had an image of Tulpen as he expected her to look now: only a little more swollen than in the film.

  He tried to let himself in, but she had fastened the safety chain. He heard her sit up startled in bed, and he whispered, 'It's me.'

  It was a long time before she would let him in. She was in a short bathrobe, cinched tight at her waist; her belly was as flat as before; she'd even lost some weight. In the kitchen, he collided with a box of paper diapers and crunched a baby's plastic pacifier under his foot. A perverted demon in his head kept telling bad jokes to his brain.

  He tried to smile. 'Boy or girl?' he asked.

  'Boy,' she said. Looking down, she pretended to rub the sleep in her eyes, but she was wide-awake.

  'Why didn't you tell me?'

  'You made yourself pretty clear. Anyway, it's my baby.'

  'Mine too,' he said. 'You even said so, in the film ...'

  'In Ralph's film,' she said. 'He wrote the script.'

  'But it is mine, isn't it?' he asked her. 'I mean, really ...'

  'Biologically?' she said crisply. 'Of course it is.'

  'Can I see him?' Trumper asked. She was very tense, but she faked a shrug and led him past her bed to a little nook made out of stacked bookcases and more fish.

  The boy slept in a huge basket, with lots of toys around him. He looked the way Colm had looked at the age of a few weeks, and a lot like Biggie's new baby, who was probably only a month or so older.

  Bogus stared at the baby because it was easier than looking at Tulpen; though there's not much to see in a child that age, Trumper appeared to be reading it.

  Tulpen banged around in the background. From the linen cabinet, she took some sheets and some blankets and a pillow; it was clear she was making up the couch for Bogus to sleep on.

  'Do you want me to go?' he asked.

  'Why did you come?' she asked. 'You just saw the movie, right?'

  'I've been wanting to come before,' he said. When she just went on making up the couch he said stupidly: 'I got my PhD.' She stared at him, then went back to tucking in the blanket. 'I've been looking for a job,' he said.

  'Have you found one?' She flounced the pillow.

  'No.'

  She beckoned him away from the sleeping baby. In the kitchen, she opened a beer for him, pouring off some for herself. 'For the breasts,' she said, toasting him with her glass. 'It makes the milk run.'

  'I know.'

  'Oh right, you would,' she said. She played with her bathrobe belt, then asked, 'What do you want, Trumper?'

  But he was too slow to answer.

  'You just feeling guilty?' she asked. 'Because I don't need that. You owe me nothing more than your straight, honest feelings, Trumper ... If you have any,' she added.

  'How do you live?' he asked her. 'You can't work,' he began, then stopped, knowing that money wasn't the issue. His straight, honest feelings were a long way down in a bog he'd been skirting for so long that now it seemed impossible to dive in and grope.

  'I can work,' she said mechanically, 'and I do. I mean, I will. When he gets a little older. I'll take him to Matje's while I work half-days. Matje wants to have a baby herself soon ...'

  'That's Ralph's new girl?' he asked.

  'His wife,' Tulpen said. 'Ralph married her.'

  Trumper realized then that he knew absolutely nothing about anybody. 'Ralph's married?' he
said.

  'He sent you an invitation,' Tulpen said. 'But you'd already left Iowa.'

  He was beginning to be aware of just how much he had left. But Tulpen was tired of his long interior monologues, and he guessed she didn't need any more of his silences, either. From the living room he watched her go to bed; she took her bathrobe off under the covers and threw it on the floor. 'Since you remember babies, it won't surprise you that there's a two o'clock feeding,' she said. 'Goodnight.'

  He went into the bathroom and peed with the door open. He'd always left the bathroom door open; it was another of his foul habits which he only remembered in the midst of practicing them. When he came out, Tulpen said, 'How's the new prick?'

  What's this - humor? he wondered. He had no genuine instincts to rely on. 'Perfectly normal,' he said.

  'Goodnight,' she said, and as he tiptoed to his made-up couch he had an impulse to hurl his shoes against the wall and wake up the baby just to hear his piercing cries fill this empty place.

  He lay listening to his own breathing, and Tulpen's, and the baby's. Only the baby was asleep.

  'I love you, Tulpen,' he said.

  A turtle in the aquarium nearest him seemed to respond; it dove deeper.

  'I came here because I want you,' he said.

  Not even a fish moved.

  'I need you,' he said. 'I know that you don't need me, but I need you.'

  'Well, it's not quite like that,' she said, so softly that he could hardly hear her.

  He sat up on the couch. 'Will you marry me, Tulpen?'

  'No,' she said. There was no hesitation.

  'Please?' he said softly.

  This time she waited, but then she said, 'No, I won't.'

  He put on his shoes and got up. There was no other way to leave except by walking past the open alcove of aquariums around her bed, and when he reached the spot, she was sitting up, staring at him and looking furious.

  'Jesus!' she said. 'Are you walking out again?'

  'What do you want me to do?'

  'Jesus, you don't know?' she said. 'I'll tell you, Trumper, if I have to. I won't marry you yet, but if you want to stay around a while, I could wait and see! If you want to stay, you should stay, Trumper!'