Portnoy’s Complaint

Ba-ba-lu, you sound like my mother. You must mean plumber, or electrician. Because I will not believe it! I mean down in my kishkas, in my deep emotions and my old beliefs, down beneath the me who knows very well that of course Smolka and Mandel continue to enjoy the ranch houses and the professional opportunities available to men on this planet, I simply cannot believe in the survival, let alone the middle-class success, of these two bad boys. Why, they're supposed to be in jail- or the gutter. They didn't do their homework, damn it! Smolka used to cheat off me in Spanish, and Mandel didn't even give enough of a shit to bother to do that, and as for washing their hands before eating… Don't you understand, these two boys are supposed to be dead! Like Bubbles. Now there at least is a career that makes some sense. There's a case of cause and effect that confirms my ideas about human consequence! Bad enough, rotten enough, and you get your cock-sucking head blown off by boogies. Now that's the way the world's supposed to be run!

Smolka comes back into the kitchen and tells us she doesn't want to do it.

'But you said we were going to get laid!' cries Mandel.

'You said we were going to get biowed! Reamed, steamed, and dry-cleaned, that's what you said!'

'Fuck it,' I say, 'if she doesn't want to do it, who needs her, let's go- '

'But I've been pounding off over this for a week! I ain't going anywhere! What kind of shit is this, Smolka? Won't she even beat my meat?'

Me, with my refrain: 'Ah, look, if she doesn't want to do it, let's go- '

Mandel: 'Who the fuck is she that she won't even give a guy a hand-job? A measly hand-job. Is that the world to ask of her? I ain't leaving till she either sucks it or pulls it- one or the other! It's up to her, the fucking whore!'

So Smolka goes back in for a second conference, and returns nearly half an hour later with the news that the girl has changed her mind: she will jerk off one guy, but only with his pants on, and that's all. We flip a coin- and I win the right to get the syph! Mandel claims the coin grazed the ceiling, and is ready to murder me- he is still screaming foul play when I enter the living room to reap my reward.

She sits in her slip on the sofa at the other end of the linoleum floor, weighing a hundred and seventy pounds and growing a mustache. Anthony Peruta, that's my name for when she asks. But she doesn't. 'Look,' says Bubbles, 'let's get it straight- you're the only one I'm doing it to.

You, and that's it.'

'It's entirely up to you,' I say politely.

'All right, take it out of your pants, but don't take them down. You hear me, because I told him. I'm not doing anything to anybody's balls.'

'Fine, fine. Whatever you say.'

'And don't try to touch me either.'

'Look, if you want me to, I'll go.'

'Just take it out.'

'Sure, if that's what you want, here… here,' I say, but prematurely, 'I-just-have-to-get-it-' Where is that thing? In the classroom I sometimes set myself consciously to thinking about DEATH and HOSPITALS and HORRIBLE AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS in the hope that such grave thoughts will cause my 'boner'' to recede before the bell rings and I have to stand. It seems that I can't go up to the blackboard in school, or try to get off a bus, without its jumping up and saying, 'Hi! Look at me!' to everyone in sight- and now it is nowhere to be found.

'Here!' I finally cry.

'Is that it?'

'Well,' I answer, turning colors, 'it gets bigger when it gets harder…'

'Well, I ain't got all night, you know.'

Nicely: 'Oh, I don't think it'll be all night- '

'Laydown!'

Bubbles, not wholly content, lowers herself into a straight chair, while I stretch out beside her on the sofa- and suddenly she has hold of it, and it's as though my poor cock has got caught in some kind of machine. Vigorously, to put it mildly, the ordeal begins. But it is like trying to jerk off a jellyfish.

'What's a matter?' she finally says. 'Can't you come?'

'Usually, yes, I can.'

'Then stop holding it back on me.'

'I'm not. I am trying. Bubbles- '

'Cause I'm going to count to fifty, and if you don't do it by then, that ain't my fault.'

Fifty? Ill be lucky if it is still attached to my body by fifty. Take it easy, I want to scream. Not so rough around the edges, please!- 'eleven, twelve, thirteen'- and I think to myself. Thank God, soon it'll be over-hang on, only another forty seconds to go- but simultaneous with the relief comes, of course, the disappointment, and it is keen: this only happens to be what I have been dreaming about night and day since I am thirteen. At long last, not a cored apple, not an empty milk bottle greased with vaseline, but a girl in a slip, with two tits and a cunt-and a mustache, but who am I to be picky? This is what I have been imagining for myself…

Which is how it occurs to me what to do. I will forget that the fist tearing away at me belongs to Bubbles- I’ll pretend it's my own! So, fixedly I stare at the dark ceiling, and instead of making believe that I am getting laid, as I ordinarily do while jerking off, I make believe that I am jerking off.

And it begins instantly to take effect. Unfortunately, however, I get just about where I want to be when Bubbles' workday comes to an end.

'Okay, that's it,' she says, 'fifty,' and stops!

'No!' I cry. 'More!'

'Look, I already ironed two hours, you know, before you guys even got here- '

'JUST ONE MORE! I BEG OF YOU! TWO MORE! PLEASE!'

'N-O!'

Whereupon, unable (as always!) to stand the frustration-the deprivation and disappointment- I reach down, I grab it, and POW!

Only right in my eye. With a single whiplike stroke of the master's own hand, the lather comes rising out of me. I ask you, who jerks me off as well as I do it myself? Only, reclining as I am, the jet leaves my joint on the horizontal, rides back the length of my torso, and lands with a thick wet burning splash right in my own eye.

'Son of a bitch kike!' Bubbles screams. 'You got gissum all over the couch! And the walls! And the lamp!'

'I got it in my eye! And don't you say kike to me, you!'

'You are a kike, Kike! You got it all over everything, you mocky son of a bitch! Look at the doilies!'

It's just as my parents have warned me- comes the first disagreement, no matter how small, and the only thing a shikse knows to call you is a dirty Jew. What an awful discovery- my parents who are always wrong… are right! And my eye-it's as though it's been dropped in fire- and now I remember why. On Devil's Island, Smolka has told us, the guards used to have fun with the prisoners by rubbing sperm in their eyes and making them blind. I'm going blind! A shikse has touched my dick with her bare hand, and now I'll be blind forever! Doctor, my psyche, it's about as difficult to understand as a gradeschool primer! Who needs dreams, I ask you? Who needs Freud? Rose Franzblau of the New York Post has enough on the ball to come up with an analysis of somebody like me!

'Sheeny!' she is screaming. 'Hebe! You can't even come off unless you pull your own pudding, cheap bastard fairy Jew!'

Hey, enough is enough, where is her sympathy? 'But my eye!' and rush for the kitchen, where Smolka and Mandel are rolling around the walls in ecstasy. '- right in the'- erupts Mandel, and folds in half onto the floor, beating at the linoleum with his fists- 'right in the fucking- '

'Water, you shits. I'm going blind! I'm on fire!' and flying full-speed over Mandel's body, stick my head beneath the faucet. Above the sink Jesus still ascends in his pink nightie. That useless son of a bitch! I thought he was