by Philip Roth
Mother, how? How else? Consorting with Christian girls.
Mandel the next day tells me that within half an hour after my frenetic departure, Bubbles was down on her fucking dago knees sucking his cock.
The top of my head comes off: “She was?”
“Right on her fucking dago knees,” says Mandel. “Schmuck, what’d you go home for?”
“She called me a kike!” I answer self-righteously. “I thought I was blind. Look, she’s anti-Semitic, Ba-ba-lu.”
“Yeah, what do I give a shit?” says Mandel. Actually I don’t think he knows what anti-Semitic means. “All I know is I got laid, twice.”
“You did? With a rubber?”
“Fuck, I didn’t use nothing.”
“But she’ll get pregnant!” I cry, and in anguish, as though it’s me who will be held accountable.
“What do I care?” replies Mandel.
Why do I worry then! Why do I alone spend hours testing Trojans in my basement? Why do I alone live in mortal terror of the syph? Why do I run home with my little bloodshot eye, imagining myself blinded forever, when half an hour later Bubbles will be down eating cock on her knees! Home—to my mommy! To my Tollhouse cookie and my glass of milk, home to my nice clean bed! Oy, civilization and its discontents! Ba-ba-lu, speak to me, talk to me, tell me what it was like when she did it! I have to know, and with details—exact details! What about her tits? What about her nipples? What about her thighs? What does she do with her thighs, Ba-ba-lu, does she wrap them around your ass like in the hot books, or does she squeeze them tight around your cock till you want to scream, like in my dreams? And what about her hair down there? Tell me everything there is to tell about pubic hairs and the way they smell, I don’t care if I heard it all before. And did she really kneel, are you shitting me? Did she actually kneel on her knees? And what about her teeth, where do they go? And does she suck on it, or does she blow on it, or somehow is it that she does both? Oh God, Ba-ba-lu, did you shoot in her mouth? Oh my God! And did she swallow it right down, or spit it out, or get mad—tell me! what did she do with your hot come! Did you warn her you were going to shoot, or did you just come off and let her worry? And who put it in—did she put it in or did you put it in, or does it just get drawn in by itself? And where were all your clothes?—on the couch? on the floor? exactly where? I want details! Details! Actual details! Who took off her brassiere, who took off her panties—her panties—did you? did she? When she was down there blowing, Ba-ba-lu, did she have anything on at all? And how about the pillow under her ass, did you stick a pillow under her ass like it says to do in my parents’ marriage manual? What happened when you came inside her? Did she come too? Mandel, clarify something that I have to know—do they come? Stuff? Or do they just moan a lot—or what? How does she come! What is it like! Before I go out of my head, I have to know what it’s like!
THE MOST PREVALENT FORM OF DEGRADATION IN EROTIC LIFE
I don’t think I’ve spoken of the disproportionate effect The Monkey’s handwriting used to have upon my psychic equilibrium. What hopeless calligraphy! It looked like the work of an eight-year-old—it nearly drove me crazy! Nothing capitalized, nothing punctuated—only those oversized irregular letters of hers slanting downward along the page, then dribbling off. And printed, as on the drawings the rest of us used to carry home in our little hands from first grade! And that spelling. A little word like “clean” comes out three different ways on the same sheet of paper. You know, as in “Mr. Clean”?—two out of three times it begins with the letter k. K! As in “Joseph K.” Not to mention “dear” as in the salutation of a letter: d-e-r-e. Or d-e-i-r. And that very first time (this I love) d-i-r. On the evening we are scheduled for dinner at Gracie Mansion—D! I! R! I mean, I just have to ask myself—what am I doing having an affair with a woman nearly thirty years of age who thinks you spell “dear” with three letters!
Already two months had passed since the pickup on Lexington Avenue, and still, you see, the same currents of feeling carrying me along: desire, on the one hand, delirious desire (I’d never known such abandon in a woman in my life!), and something close to contempt on the other. Correction. Only a few days earlier there had been our trip to Vermont, that weekend when it had seemed that my wariness of her—the apprehension aroused by the model-y glamour, the brutish origins, above everything, the sexual recklessness—that all this fear and distrust had been displaced by a wild upward surge of tenderness and affection.
Now, I am under the influence at the moment of an essay entitled “The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life”; as you may have guessed, I have bought a set of the Collected Papers, and since my return from Europe, have been putting myself to sleep each night in the solitary confinement of my womanless bed with a volume of Freud in my hand. Sometimes Freud in hand, sometimes Alex in hand, frequently both. Yes, there in my unbuttoned pajamas, all alone, I lie, fiddling with it like a little boy-child in a dopey reverie, tugging on it, twisting it, rubbing and kneading it, and meanwhile reading spellbound through “Contributions to the Psychology of Love,” ever heedful of the sentence, the phrase, the word that will liberate me from what I understand are called my fantasies and fixations.
In the “Degradation” essay there is that phrase, “currents of feeling.” For “a fully normal attitude in love” (deserving of semantic scrutiny, that “fully normal,” but to go on—) for a fully normal attitude in love, says he, it is necessary that two currents of feeling be united: the tender, affectionate feelings, and the sensuous feelings. And in many instances this just doesn’t happen, sad to say. “Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love.”
Question: Am I to consider myself one of the fragmented multitude? In language plain and simple, are Alexander Portnoy’s sensual feelings fixated to his incestuous fantasies? What do you think, Doc? Has a restriction so pathetic been laid upon my object choice? Is it true that only if the sexual object fulfills for me the condition of being degraded, that sensual feeling can have free play? Listen, does that explain the preoccupation with shikses?
Yes, but if so, if so, how then explain that weekend in Vermont? Because down went the dam of the incest-barrier, or so it seemed. And swoosh, there was sensual feeling mingling with the purest, deepest streams of tenderness I’ve ever known! I’m telling you, the confluence of the two currents was terrific! And in her as well! She even said as much!
Or was it only the colorful leaves, do you think, the fire burning in the dining room of the inn at Woodstock, that softened up the two of us? Was it tenderness for one another that we experienced, or just the fall doing its work, swelling the gourd (John Keats) and lathering the tourist trade into ecstasies of nostalgia for the good and simple life? Were we just two more rootless jungle-dwelling erotomaniacs creaming in their pre-faded jeans over Historical New England, dreaming the old agrarian dream in their rent-a-car convertible—or is a fully normal attitude in love the possibility that it seemed for me during those few sunny days I spent with The Monkey in Vermont?
What exactly transpired? Well, we drove mostly. And looked: the valleys, the mountains, the light on the fields; and the leaves of course, a lot of ooing and ahhing. Once we stopped to watch somebody in the distance, high up on a ladder, hammering away at the side of a barn—and that was fun, too. Oh, and the rented car. We flew to Rutland and rented a convertible. A convertible, can you imagine? A third of a century as an American boy, and this was the first convertible I had ever driven myself. Know why? Because the son of an insurance man knows better than others the chance you take riding around in such a machine. He knows the awful actuarial details! All you have to do is hit a bump in the road, and that’s it, where a convertible is concerned: up from the seat you go flying (and not to be too graphic), out onto the highway cranium first, and if you’re lucky, it’s a wheelchair for life. And turn over in a convertible—well, you can just kiss your life goodbye. And this is statistics (I am told by my father), not some cocka
maimy story he is making up for the fun of it. Insurance companies aren’t in business to lose money—when they say something, Alex, it’s true! And now, on the heels of my wise father, my wise mother: “Please, so I can sleep at night for four years, promise me one thing, grant your mother this one wish and then she’ll never ask anything of you again: when you get to Ohio, promise you won’t ride in an open convertible. So I can shut my eyes in bed at night, Alex, promise you won’t take your life in your hands in any crazy way,” My father again: “Because you’re a plum, Alex!” he says, baffled and tearful over my imminent departure from home. “And we don’t want a plum to fall off the tree before it’s ripe!”
1. Promise, Plum, that you’ll never ride in a convertible. Such a small thing, what will it hurt you to promise?
2. You’ll look up Howard Sugarman, Sylvia’s nephew. A lovely boy—and president of the Hillel. He’ll show you around. Please look him up.
3. Plum, Darling, Light of the World, you remember your cousin Heshie, the torture he gave himself and his family with that girl. What Uncle Hymie had to go through, to save that boy from his craziness. You remember? Please, do we have to say any more? Is my meaning clear, Alex? Don’t give yourself away cheap. Don’t throw a brilliant future away on an absolute nothing. I don’t think we have to say anything more. Do we? You’re a baby yet, sixteen years old and graduating high school. That’s a baby, Alex. You don’t know the hatred there is in the world. So I don’t think we have to say any more, not to a boy as smart as you. ONLY YOU MUST BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR LIFE! YOU MUST NOT PLUNGE YOURSELF INTO A LIVING HELL! YOU MUST LISTEN TO WHAT WE ARE SAYING AND WITHOUT THE SCOWL, THANK YOU, AND THE BRILLIANT BACK TALK! WE KNOW! WE HAVE LIVED! WE HAVE SEEN! IT DOESN’T WORK, MY SON! THEY ARE ANOTHER BREED OF HUMAN BEING ENTIRELY! YOU WILL BE TORN ASUNDER! GO TO HOWARD, HE’LL INTRODUCE YOU AT THE HILLEL! DON’T RUN FIRST THING TO A BLON-DIE, PLEASE! BECAUSE SHE’LL TAKE YOU FOR ALL YOU’RE WORTH AND THEN LEAVE YOU BLEEDING IN THE GUTTER! A BRILLIANT INNOCENT BABY BOY LIKE YOU, SHE’LL EAT YOU UP ALIVE!
She’ll eat me up alive?
Ah, but we have our revenge, we brilliant baby boys, us plums. You know the joke, of course—Milty, the G.I., telephones from Japan. “Momma,” he says, “it’s Milton, I have good news! I found a wonderful Japanese girl and we were married today. As soon as I get my discharge I want to bring her home, Momma, for you to meet each other.” “So,” says the mother, “bring her, of course.” “Oh, wonderful, Momma,” says Milty, “wonderful—only I was wondering, in your little apartment, where will me and Ming Toy sleep?” “Where?” says the mother. “Why, in the bed? Where else should you sleep with your bride?” “But then where will you sleep, if we sleep in the bed? Momma, are you sure there’s room?” “Milty darling, please,” says the mother, “everything is fine, don’t you worry, there’ll be all the room you want: as soon as I hang up, I’m killing myself.”
What an innocent, our Milty! How stunned he must be over there in Yokohama to hear his mother come up with such a statement! Sweet, passive Milton, you wouldn’t hurt a fly, would you, tateleh? You hate bloodshed, you wouldn’t dream of striking another person, let alone committing a murder on him. So you let the geisha girl do it for you! Smart, Milty, smart! From the geisha girl, believe me, she won’t recover so fast. From the geisha girl, Milty, she’ll plotz! Ha ha! You did it, Miltaleh, and without even lifting a finger! Of course! Let the shikse do the killing for you! You, you’re just an innocent bystander! Caught in the crossfire! A victim, right, Milt?
Lovely, isn’t it, the business of the bed?
When we arrive at the inn in Dorset, I remind her to slip one of her half-dozen rings onto the appropriate finger. “In public life one must be discreet,” I say, and tell her that I have reserved a room in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Mandel. “A hero out of Newark’s past,” I explain.
While I register, The Monkey (looking in New England erotic in the extreme) roams around the lobby examining the little Vermont gifties for sale. “Arnold,” she calls. I turn: “Yes, dear.” “We simply must take back with us some maple syrup for Mother Mandel. She loves it so,” and smiles her mysteriously enticing Sunday Times underwear-ad smile at the suspicious clerk.
What a night! I don’t mean there was more than the usual body-thrashing and hair-tossing and empassioned vocalizing from The Monkey—no, the drama was at the same Wagnerian pitch I was beginning to become accustomed to: it was the flow of feeling that was new and terrific. “Oh, I can’t get enough of you!” she cried. “Am I a nymphomaniac, or is it the wedding ring?” “I was thinking maybe it was the illicitness of an ‘inn.’” “Oh, it’s something! I feel, I feel so crazy … and so tender—so wildly tender with you! Oh baby. I keep thinking I’m going to cry, and I’m so happy!”
Saturday we drove up to Lake Champlain, stopping along the way for The Monkey to take pictures with her Minox; late in the day we cut across and down to Woodstock, gaping, exclaiming, sighing, The Monkey snuggling. Once in the morning (in an overgrown field near the lake shore) we had sexual congress, and then that afternoon, on a dirt road somewhere in the mountains of central Vermont, she said, “Oh, Alex, pull over, now—I want you to come in my mouth,” and so she blew me, and with the top down!
What am I trying to communicate? Just that we began to feel something. Feel feeling! And without any diminishing of sexual appetite!
“I know a poem,” I said, speaking somewhat as though I were drunk, as though I could lick any man in the house, “and I’m going to recite it.”
She was nestled down in my lap, eyes still closed, my softening member up against her cheek like a little chick. “Ah come on,” she groaned, “not now, I don’t understand poems.”
“You’ll understand this one. It’s about fucking. A swan fucks a beautiful girl.”
She looked up, batting her false eyelashes. “Oh, goody.”
“But it’s a serious poem.”
“Well,” she said, licking my prick, “it’s a serious offense.”
“Oh, irresistible, witty Southern belles—especially when they’re long the way you are.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Portnoy. Recite the dirty poem.”
“Porte-noir,” I said, and began:
“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.”
“Where,” she asked, “did you learn something like that?”
“Shhh. There’s more:
“How can those terrified vague fingers push.
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?”
“Hey!” she cried. “Thighs!”
“And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
“That’s it,” I said.
Pause. “Who wrote it?” Snide. “You?”
“William Butler Yeats wrote it,” I said, realizing how tactless I had been, with what insensitivity I had drawn attention to the chasm: I am smart and you are dumb, that’s what it had meant to recite to this woman one of the three poems I happen to have learned by heart in my thirty-three years. “An Irish poet,” I said lamely.
“Yeah?” she said. “And where did you learn it, at his knee? I didn’t know you was Irish.”
“In college, baby.” From a girl I knew in college. Also taught me “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” But enough—why compare her to another? Why not let her be what she is? What an idea! Love her as she is! In all her imperfection—which is, a
fter all, maybe only human!
“Well,” said The Monkey, still playing Truck Driver, “I never been to college myself.” Then, Dopey Southern, “And down home in Moundsville, honey, the only poem we had was ‘I see London, I see France, I see Mary Jane’s underpants.’ ’Cept I didn’t wear no underpants … Know what I did when I was fifteen? Sent a lock of my snatch-hair off in an envelope to Marlon Brando. Prick didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge receipt.”
Silence. While we try to figure out what two such unlikely people are doing together—in Vermont yet.
Then she says, “Okay, what’s Agamemnon?”
So I explain, to the best of my ability. Zeus, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Helen, Paris, Troy … Oh, I feel like a shit—and a fake. Half of it I know I’m getting wrong.
But she’s marvelous. “Okay—now say it all again.”
“You serious?”
“I’m serious! Again! But, for Christ’s sake, slow”
So I recite again, and all this time my trousers are still down around the floorboard, and it’s growing darker on the path where I have parked out of sight of the road, beneath the dramatic foliage. The leaves, in fact, are falling into the car. The Monkey looks like a child trying to master a multiplication problem, but not a dumb child—no, a quick and clever little girl! Not stupid at all! This girl is really very special. Even if I did pick her up in the street!
When I finish, you know what she does? Takes hold of my hand, draws my fingers up between her legs. Where Mary Jane still wears no underpants. “Feel. It made my pussy all wet.”
“Sweetheart! You understood the poem!”
“I s’pose I deed!” cries Scarlett O’Hara. Then, “Hey, I did! I understood a poem!”
