Portnoy’s Complaint

watery-eyed sons of Jewish parents, sick to the gills from rolling through these heavy seas of guilt- so I sometimes envision us, me and my fellow wailers, melancholics, and wise guys, still in steerage, like our forebears – and oh sick, sick as dogs, we cry out intermittently, one of us or another, 'Poppa, how could you?' 'Momma, why did you?' and the stories we tell, as the big ship pitches and rolls, the vying we do- who had the most castrating mother, who the most benighted father, I can match you, you bastard, humiliation for humiliation, shame for shame… the retching in the toilets after meals, the hysterical deathbed laughter from the bunks, and the tears-here a puddle wept in contrition, here a puddle from indignation – in the blinking of an eye, the body of a man (with the brain of a boy) rises in impotent rage to flail at the mattress above, only to fall instantly back, lashing itself with reproaches. Oh, my Jewish men friends! My dirty-mouthed guilt-ridden brethren! My sweethearts! My mates! Will this fucking ship ever stop pitching? When? When, so that we can leave off complaining how sick we are-and go out into the air, and live!

Doctor Spielvogel, it alleviates nothing fixing the blame – blaming is still ailing, of course, of course-but nonetheless, what was it with these Jewish parents, what, that they were able to make us little Jewish boys believe ourselves to be princes on the one hand, unique as unicorns on the one hand, geniuses and brilliant like nobody has ever been brilliant and beautiful before in the history of childhood-saviors and sheer perfection on the one hand, and such bumbling, incompetent, thoughtless, helpless, selfish, evil little shits, little ingrates, on the other!

'But in Europe where-?' he calls after me, as the taxi pulls away from the curb.

'I don't know where,' I call after him, gleefully waving farewell. I am thirty-three, and free at last of my mother and father! For a month.

'But how will we know your address?'

Joy! Sheer joy! 'You won't!'

'But what if in the meantime-?'

'What if what?' I laugh. 'What if what are you worried about now?'

'What if-?' And my God, does he really actually shout it out the taxi window? Is his fear, his greed, his need and belief in me so great that he actually shouts these words out into the streets of New York? 'What if I die?'

Because that is what I hear, Doctor. The last words I hear before flying off to Europe -and with The Monkey, somebody whom I have kept a total secret from them. 'What if I die?' and then off I go for my orgiastic holiday abroad.

… Now, whether the words I hear are the words spoken is something else again. And whether what I hear I hear out of compassion for him, out of my agony over the inevitability of this horrific occurrence, his death, or out of my eager anticipation of that event, is also something else again. But this of course you understand, this of course is your bread and your butter.

I was saying that the detail of Ronald Nimkin's suicide that most appeals to me is the note to his mother found pinned to that roomy straitjacket, his nice stiffly laundered sports shirt. Know what it said? Guess. The last message from Ronald to his momma? Guess.

Mrs. Blumenthal called. Please bring your mah-jongg rules to the game tonight.

Ronald

Now, how's that for good to the last drop? How's that for a good boy, a thoughtful boy, a kind and courteous and well-behaved boy, a nice Jewish boy such as no one will ever have cause to be ashamed of? Say thank you, darling. Say you're welcome, darling. Say you're sorry, Alex. Say you're sorry! Apologize! Yeah, for what? What have I done now? Hey, I'm hiding under my bed, my back to the wall, refusing to say I'm sorry, refusing, too, to come out and take the consequences. Refusing! And she is after me with a broom, trying to sweep my rotten carcass into the open. Why, shades of Gregor Sarnsa! Hello Alex, goodbye Franz! 'You better tell me you're sorry, you, or else! And I don't mean maybe either!' I am five, maybe six, and she is or-elsing me and not-meaning-maybe as though the firing squad is already outside, lining the street with newspaper preparatory to my execution.

And now comes the father: after a pleasant day of trying to sell life insurance to black people who aren't even exactly sure they're alive, home to a hysterical wife and a metamorphosed child-because what did I do, me, the soul of goodness? Incredible, beyond belief, but either I kicked her in the shins, or I bit her. I don't want to sound like I'm boasting, but I do believe it was both.

'Why?' she demands to know, kneeling on the floor to shine a flashlight in my eyes, 'why do you do such a thing?' Oh, simple, why did Ronald Nimkin give up his ghost and the piano? BECAUSE WE CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE! BECAUSE YOU FUCKING JEWISH MOTHERS ARE JUST TOO FUCKING MUCH TO BEAR! I have read Freud on Leonardo, Doctor, and pardon the hubris, but my fantasies exactly: this big smothering bird beating frantic wings about my face and mouth so that I cannot even get my breath. What do we want, me and

Ronald and Leonardo? To be left alone! If only for half an hour at a time! Stop already hocking us to be good! hocking us to be nice! Just leave us alone, God damn it, to pull our little dongs in peace and think our little selfish thoughts- stop already with the respectabilizing of our hands and our tushies and our mouths! Fuck the vitamins and the cod liver oil! Just give us each day our daily flesh! And forgive us our trespasses- which aren't even trespasses to begin with!

'-a little boy you want to be who kicks his own mother in the shins-?' My father speaking… and look at his arms, will you? I have never really noticed before the size of the forearms the man has got on him. He may not have whitewall tires or a high school education, but he has arms on him that are no joke. And, Jesus, is he angry. But why? In part, you schmuck, I kicked her for you!

'-a human bite is worse than a dog bite, do you know that, you? Get out from under that bed! Do you hear me, what you did to your mother is worse than a dog could do!' And so loud is his roar, and so convincing, that my normally placid sister runs to the kitchen, great gruntfuls of fear erupting from her mouth, and in what we now call the fetal position crouches down between the refrigerator and the wall. Or so I seem to remember it- though it would make sense, I think, to ask how I know what is going on in the kitchen if I am still hiding beneath my bed.

'The bite I can live with, the shins I can live with'- her broom still relentlessly trying to poke me out from my cave- 'but what am I going to do with a child who won't even say he's sorry? Who won't tell his own mother that he's sorry and will never never do such a thing again, ever! What are we going to do, Daddy, with such a little boy in our house!'

Is she kidding? Is she serious? Why doesn't she call the cops and get me shipped off to children's prison, if this is how incorrigible I really am? 'Alexander Portnoy, aged five, you are hereby sentenced to hang by your neck until you are dead for refusing to say you are sorry to your mother.' You'd think the child lapping up their milk and taking baths with his duck and his boats in their tub was the most wanted criminal in America. When actually what we are playing in that house is some farce version of King Lear, with me in the role of Cordelia! On the phone she is perpetually telling whosoever isn't listening on the other end about her biggest fault being that she's too good. Because surely they're not listening- surely they're not sitting there nodding and taking down on their telephone pads this kind of transparent, self-serving, insane horseshit that even a pre-school-age child can see through. 'You know what my biggest fault is. Rose? I hate to say it about myself, but I’m too good.' These are actual words, Doctor, tape-recorded these many years in my brain. And killing me still! These are the actual messages that these Roses and Sophies and Goldies and Pearls transmit to one another daily! 'I give my everything to other people,' she admits, sighing, 'and I get kicked in the teeth in return and my fault is that as many times as I get slapped in the face, I can't stop being good.'

Shit, Sophie, just try, why don't you? Why don't we all try! Because to be bad. Mother, that is the real struggle: to be bad-and to enjoy it! That is what makes men of us boys. Mother. But what my conscience, so-called, has done to my sexuality, my spontaneity, my courage! Never mind some of the things I try so hard to get away with – because the fact remains, I don't. I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions.