Portnoy’s Complaint

Here a little struggle took place as I rushed her at the side of the bed. I reached for a breast, and with a sharp upward snap of the skull, she butted me on the underside of the jaw.

"Where the hell did you learn that," I cried out, "in the Army?"

"Yes."

I collapsed into my chair. "That's some training to give to girls."

"Do you know," she said, and without a trace of charity, "there is something very wrong with you."

"My tongue is bleeding, for one-!"

"You are the most unhappy person I have ever known. You are like a baby."

"No! Not so," but she waved aside any explanation I may have had to offer, and began to lecture me on my shortcomings as she had observed them that day.

"The way you disapprove of your life! Why do you do that? It is of no value for a man to disapprove of his life the way that you do. You seem to take some special pleasure, some pride, in making yourself the butt of your own peculiar sense of humor. I don't believe you actually want to improve your life. Everything you say is somehow always twisted, some way or another, to come out 'funny.' All day long the same thing. In some little way or other, everything is ironical, or self-depreciating. Self-depreciating?"

"Self-deprecating. Self-mocking."

"Exactly! And you are a highly intelligent man-that is what makes it even more disagreeable. The contribution you could make! Such stupid self-deprecation! How disagreeable!"

"Oh, I don't know," I said, "self-deprecation is, after all, a classic form of Jewish humor."

"Not Jewish humor! No! Ghetto humor."

Not much love in that remark. I'll tell you. By dawn I had been made to understand that I was the epitome of what was most shameful in "the culture of the Diaspora."

Those centuries and centuries of homelessness had produced just such disagreeable men as myself-frightened, defensive, self-deprecating," unmanned and corrupted by life in the entire world. It was Diaspora Jews just like myself who had gone by the millions to the gas chambers without ever raising a hand against their persecutors, who did not know enough to defend their lives with their blood. The Diaspora! The very word made her furious.

When she finished I said, "Wonderful. Now let's fuck."

"You are disgusting!"

"Right! You begin to get the point, gallant Sabra! You go be righteous in the mountains, okay? You go be a model for mankind! Fucking Hebrew saint!"

"Mr. Portnoy," she said, raising her knapsack from the floor, "you are nothing but a self-hating Jew."

"Ah, but Naomi, maybe that's the best kind."

"Coward!"

"Tomboy."

"Shlemiel!"

And made for the door. Only I leaped from behind, and with a flying tackle brought this big red-headed didactic dish down with me onto the floor. I'll show her who's a shlemiel! And baby! And if I have VD? Fine! Terrific! All the better! Let her carry it secretly back in her bloodstream to the mountains! Let it spread forth from her unto all those brave and virtuous Jewish boys and girls! A dose of clap will do them all good! This is what it's like in the Diaspora, you saintly kiddies, this is what it's like in the exile! Temptation and disgrace! Corruption and self-mockery! Self-deprecation-and self-defecation too! Whining, hysteria, compromise, confusion, disease! Yes, Naomi, I am soiled, oh, I am impure-and also pretty fucking tired, my dear, of never being quite good enough for The Chosen People!

But what a battle she gave me, this big farm cunt! this ex-G.I.! This mother-substitute! Look, can that be so? Oh please, it can't be as simplistic as that! Not me! Or with a case like mine, is it actually that you can't be simplistic enough! Because she wore red hair and freckles, this makes her, according to my unconscious one-track mind, my mother? Just because she and the lady of my past are off-spring of the same pale Polish strain of Jews? This then is the culmination of the Oedipal drama. Doctor? More farce, my friend! Too much to swallow. I'm afraid! Oedipus Rex is a famous tragedy, schmuck, not another joke! You're a sadist, you're a quack and a lousy comedian! I mean this is maybe going too far for a laugh, Doctor Spielvogel, Doctor Freud, Doctor Kronkite! How about a little homage, you bastards, to The Dignity of Man! Oedipus Rex is the most horrendous and serious play in the history of literature-it is not a gag!