Portnoy’s Complaint

"I'm not giving off shit! I've said nothing."

"You've got those black Hebe eyes, man, they say it for you. Tutti!"

"Relax, Monkey."

"You relax!"

"I am!" But my manly resolve lasts about a minute more. "Only for Christ's sake," I tell her, "don't say cunt to Mary Lindsay!"

"What?"

"You heard right. When we get there don't start talking about your wet pussy to whoever opens the door! Don't make a grab for Big John's shlong until we've been there at least half an hour, okay?"

With this, a hiss like the sound of air brakes rises from the driver-and The Monkey heaves herself in a rage against the rear door. "I'll say and do and wear anything I want! This is a free country, you uptight Jewish prick!"

You should have seen the look given us upon disembarking by Mr. Manny Schapiro, our driver. "Rich joik-offs!" he yells. "Nazi bitch!" and burns rubber pulling away.

From where we sit on a bench in Carl Schurz Park, we can see the lights in Gracie Mansion; I watch the other members of the new administration arriving, as I stroke her arm, kiss her forehead, tell her there is no reason to cry, the fault is mine, yes, yes, I am an uptight Jewish prick, and apologize, apologize, apologize.

"-picking on me all the time-in just the way you look at me you pick on me, Alex! I open the door at night, I'm so dying to see you, thinking all day long about nothing but you, and there are those fucking orbs already picking out every single thing that's wrong with me! As if I'm not insecure enough, as if insecurity isn't my whole hang-up, you get that expression all over your face the minute I open my mouth- I mean I can't even give you the time of the day without the look: oh shit, here comes another dumb and stupid remark out of that brainless twat. I say, 'It's five to seven,' and you think, 'How fucking dumb can she be!' Well, I'm not brainless, and I'm not a twat either, just because I didn't go to fucking Harvard! And don't give me any more of your shit about behaving in front of The Lindsays. Just who the fuck are The Lindsays? A God damn mayor, and his wife! A fucking mayor! In case you forget, I was married to one of the richest men in France when I was still eighteen years old-I was a guest at Aly Khan's for dinner, when you were still back in Newark, New Jersey, finger-fucking your little Jewish girl friends!"

Was this my idea of a love affair, she asked, sobbing miserably. To treat a woman like a leper?

I wanted to say, "Maybe then this isn't a love affair. Maybe it's what's called a mistake. Maybe we should just go our different ways, with no hard feelings." But I didn't! For fear she might commit suicide! Hadn't she five minutes earlier tried to throw herself out the rear door of the taxi? So suppose I had said, "Look, Monkey, this is it"-what was to stop her from rushing across the park, and leaping to her death in the East River? Doctor, you must believe me, this was a real possibility-this is why I said nothing; but then her arms were around my neck, and oh, she said plenty. "I love you, Alex! I worship and adore you! So don't put me down, please! Because I couldn't take it! Because you're the very best man, woman, or child I've ever known! In the whole animal kingdom! Oh, Breakie, you have a big brain and a big cock and I love you!"

And then on a bench no more than two hundred feet from The Lindsays mansion, she buried her wig in my lap and proceeded to suck me off. "Monkey, no," I pleaded, "no," as she passionately zipped open my black trousers, "there are plainclothesmen everywhere!"-referring to the policing of Gracie Mansion and its environs. "They'll haul us in, creating a public nuisance-Monkey, the cops-" but turning her ambitious lips up from my open fly, she whispered, "Only in your imagination" (a not unsubtle retort, if meant subtly), and then down she burrowed, some furry little animal in search of a home. And mastered me with her mouth.

At dinner I overheard her telling the Mayor that she modeled during the day and took courses at Hunter at night. Not a word about her cunt, as far as I could tell. The next day she went off to Hunter, and that night, for a surprise, showed me the application blank she had gotten from the admissions office. Which I praised her for. And which she never filled out, of course-except for her age: 2.9.

A fantasy of The Monkey's, dating from her high school years in Moundsville. The reverie she lived in, while others learned to read and write: