The Water-Method Man

'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.