Portnoy’s Complaint

"You'll see," he says, nodding miserably, "you'll get sick"- and suddenly a squeal of anger, a whine out of nowhere of absolute hatred of me!- "you'll get old, and you won't be such an independent big shot then!"

"Alex, Alex," begins my mother, as my father walks to my window to recover himself, and in passing, to comment contemptuously about "the neighborhood he lives in." I work for New York, and he still wants me to live in beautiful Newark!

"Mother, I'm thirty-three! I am the Assistant Commissioner of Human Opportunity for the City of New York! I graduated first in my law school class! Remember? I have graduated first from every class I've ever been in! At twenty-five I was already special counsel to a House Sub-committee-of the United States Congress, Mother! Of America! If I wanted Wall Street, Mother, I could be on Wall Street! I am a highly respected man in my profession, that should be obvious! Right this minute, Mother, I am conducting an investigation of unlawful discriminatory practices in the building trades in New York- racial discrimination! Trying to get the Ironworkers' Union, Mother, to tell me their little secrets! That's what I did just today! Look, I helped solve the television quiz scandal, do you remember-?" Oh, why go on? Why go on in my strangled high-pitched adolescent voice? Good Christ, a Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!

Anyway, Sophie has by this time taken my hand, and with hooded eyes, waits until I sputter out the last accomplishment I can think of, the last virtuous deed I have done, then speaks: "But to us, to us you're still a baby, darling." And next comes the whisper, Sophie's famous whisper that everybody in the room can hear without even straining, she's so considerate: "Tell him you're sorry. Give him a kiss. A kiss from you would change the world."

A kiss from me would change the world! Doctor! Doctor! Did I say fifteen? Excuse me, I meant ten! I meant five! I meant zero! A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant! Listen, come to my aid, will you-and quick! Spring me from this role I play of the smothered son in the Jewish joke! Because it's beginning to pall a little, at thirty-three! And also it hoits, you know, there is pain involved, a little human suffering is being felt, if I may take it upon myself to say so- only that's the part Sam Levenson leaves out! Sure, they sit in the casino at the Concord, the women in their minks and the men in their phosphorescent suits, and boy, do they laugh, laugh and laugh and laugh-"Help, help, my son the doctor is drowning!"- ha ha ha, ha ha ha, only what about the pain, Myron Cohen! What about the guy who is actually drowning! Actually sinking beneath an ocean of parental relentlessness! What about him- who happens, Myron Cohen, to be me! Doctor, please, I can't live any more in a world given its meaning and dimension by some vulgar nightclub clown. By some- some black humorist! Because that's who the black humorists are- of course!- the Henny Youngmans and the Milton Berles brealdng them up down there in the Fountainebleau, and with what? Stories of murder and mutilation! "Help," cries the woman running along the sand at Miami Beach, "help, my son the doctor is drowning!" Ha ha ha-only it is my son the patient, lady! And is he drowning! Doctor, get these people off my ass, will you please? The macabre is very funny on the stage-but not to live it, thank you! So just tell me how, and I’ll do it! Just tell me what, and I'll say it right to their faces! Scat, Sophie! Fuck off, Jack! Go away from me already!