Portnoy’s Complaint

Meanwhile I wonder if with my father dead I will have to get a job after school and Saturdays, and consequently give up skating at Irvington Park- give up skating with my shikses before I have even spoken a single word to a one of them. I am afraid to open my mouth for fear that if I do no words will come out- or the wrong words. "Portnoy, yes, it's an old French name, a corruption of porte noir, meaning black door or gate. Apparently in the Middle Ages in France the door to our family manor house was painted…" et cetera and so forth. No, no, they will hear the oy at the end, and the jig will be up. Al Port then, Al Parsons! "How do you do. Miss McCoy, mind if I skate alongside, my name is Al Parsons- " but isn't Alan as Jewish and foreign as Alexander? I know there's Alan Ladd, but there's also my friend Alan Rubin, the shortstop for our softball team. And wait'll she hears I'm from Weequahic. Oh, what's the difference anyway, I can lie about my name, I can lie about my school, but how am I going to lie about this fucking nose? "You seem like a very nice person, Mr. Porte-Noir, but why do you go around covering the middle of your face like that?" Because suddenly it has taken off, the middle of my face! Because gone is the button of my childhood years, that pretty little thing that people used to look at in my carriage, and lo and behold, the middle of my face has begun to reach out toward God! Porte-Noir and Parsons my ass, kid, you have got J-E-W written right across the middle of that face- look at the shnoz on him, for God's sakes! That ain't a nose, it's a hose! Screw off, Jewboy! Get off the ice and leave these girls alone!

And it's true. I lower my head to the kitchen table and on a piece of my father's office stationery outline my profile with a pencil. And it's terrible. How has this happened to me who was so gorgeous in that carriage. Mother! At the top it has begun to aim toward the heavens, while simultaneously, where the cartilage ends halfway down the slope, it is beginning to bend back toward my mouth. A couple of years and I won't even be able to eat, this thing will be directly in the path of the food! No! No! It can’t be! I go into the bathroom and stand before the mirror, I press the nostrils upward with two fingers. From the side it's not too bad either, but in front, where my upper lip used to be, there is now just teeth and gum. Some goy. I look like Bugs Bunny! I cut pieces from the cardboard that comes back in the shirts from the laundry and

Scotch-tape them to either side of my nose, thus restoring in profile the nice upward curve that I sported all through my childhood… but which is now gone! It actually seems that this sprouting of my beak dates exactly from the time mat I discovered the shikses skating in Irvington Park- as though my own nose bone has taken it upon itself to act as my parents' agent! Skating with shikses? Just you try it, wise guy. Remember Pinocchio? Well, that is nothing compared with what is going to happen to you. They'll laugh and laugh, howl and hoot-and worse, calling you Goldberg in the bargain, send vou on your wav roasting with fury and resentment. Who do you think they’re always giggling about as it is? You! The skinny Yid and his shnoz following them around the ice every single afternoon- and can't talk! "Please, will you stop playing with your nose," my mother says. "I'm not interested, Alex, in what's growing up inside there, not at dinner." "But it's too big" "What? What's too big?" says my father. "My nose!" I scream. "Please, it gives you character," my mother says, "so leave it alone!"

But who wants character? I want Thereal McCoy! In her blue parka and her red earmuffs and her big white mittens- Miss America, on blades! With her mistletoe and her plum pudding (whatever that may be), and her one-family house with a banister and a staircase, and parents who are tranquil and patient and dignified, and also a brother Billy who knows how to take motors apart and says "Much obliged," and isn't afraid of anything physical, and oh the way she'll cuddle next to me on the sofa in her Angora sweater with her legs pulled back up beneath her tartan skirt, and the way shell turn at the doorway and say to me, "And thank you ever so much for a wonderful wonderful evening," and then this amazing creature- to whom no one has ever said "Shah!" or "I only hope your children will do the same to you someday!"- this perfect, perfect-stranger, who is as smooth and shiny and cool as custard, will kiss me- raising up one shapely calf behind her- and my nose and my name will have become as nothing.