Portnoy's Complaint

by Philip Roth

  Thank God, at any rate, for Heshie’s weights. They became mine after he died. I would carry them into the backyard, and out in the sunshine I would lift and lift and lift, back when I was fourteen and fifteen years old. “You’re going to give yourself a tsura yet with those things,” my mother would warn me from her bedroom window. “You’re going to get a cold out there in that bathing suit.” I sent away for booklets from Charles Atlas and Joe Bonomo. I lived for the sight of my torso swelling up in my bedroom mirror. I flexed under my clothes in school. I examined my forearms on the street corner for bulge. I admired my veins on the bus. Somebody someday would take a swing at me and my deltoids, and they would live to regret it! But nobody swung, thank God.

  Till Naomi! For her, then, I had done all that puffing and quivering under the disapproving gaze of my mother. That isn’t to say that she still didn’t have it over me in the calves and the thighs—but in the shoulders and chest I had the edge, and forced her body down beneath me—and shot my tongue into her ear, tasting there the grit of our day’s journey, all that holy soil. “Oh, I am going to fuck you, Jew girl,” I whispered evilly.

  “You are crazy!” and heaved up against me with all her considerable strength. “You are a lunatic on the loose!”

  “No, oh no,” I told her, growling from my throat, “oh no, you have got a lesson to learn, Naomi,” and pressed, pressed hard, to teach my lesson: O you virtuous Jewess, the tables are turned, tsatskeleh! You on the defensive now, Naomi—explaining your vaginal discharge to the entire kibbutz! You think they got worked up over those watches! Wait’ll they get a whiff of this! What I wouldn’t give to be at that meeting when you get arraigned on the charge of contaminating the pride and future of Zion! Then perhaps you’ll come to have the proper awe for us fallen psychoneurotic Jewish men! Socialism exists, but so too do spirochetes, my love! So here’s your introduction, dear, to the slimier side of things. Down, down with these patriotic khaki shorts, spread your chops, blood of my blood, unlock your fortressy thighs, open wide that messianic Jewish hole! Make ready, Naomi, I am about to poison your organs of reproduction! I am about to change the future of the race!

  But of course I couldn’t. Licked her earholes, sucked at her unwashed neck, sank my teeth into the coiled braids of hair … and then, even as resistance may actually have begun to recede under my assault, I rolled off of her and came to rest, defeated, against the wall—on my back. “It’s no good,” I said, “I can’t get a hard-on in this place.”

  She stood up. Stood over me. Got her wind. Looked down. It occurred to me that she was going to plant the sole of her sandal on my chest. Or maybe proceed to kick the shit out of me. I remembered myself as a little schoolboy pasting all those reinforcements into my notebook. How has it come to this?

  “’Im-po-tent in Is-rael, da da daaah,’” to the tune of “Lullaby in Birdland.”

  “Another joke?” she asked.

  “And another. And another. Why disclaim my life?”

  Then she said a kind thing. She could afford to, of course, way up there. “You should go home.”

  “Sure, that’s what I need, back into the exile.”

  And way way up there, she grinned. That healthy, monumental Sabra! The work-molded legs, the utilitarian shorts, the battle-scarred buttonless blouse—the beneficent, victorious smile! And at her crusty, sandaled feet, this … this what? This son! This boy! This baby! Alexander Portnoise! Portnose! Portnoy-oy-oy-oy-oy!

  “Look at you,” I said, “way up there. How big big women are! Look at you—how patriotic! You really like victory, don’t you, honey? Know how to take it in your stride! Wow, are you guiltless! Terrific, really—an honor to have met you. Look, take me with you, Heroine! Up to the mountain. I’ll clear boulders till I drop, if that’s what it takes to be good. Because why not be good, and good and good and good—right? Live only according to principle! Without compromise! Let the other guy be the villain, right? Let the goyim make a shambles, let the blame fall solely on them. If I was born to be austere about myself, so be it! A grueling and gratifying ethical life, opulent with self-sacrifice, voluptuous with restraint! Ah, sounds good. Ah, I can just taste those rocks! What do you say, take me back with you—into the pure Portnovian existence!”

  “You should go home.”

  “On the contrary! I should stay. Yes, stay! Buy a pair of those khaki short pants—become a man!”

  “Do as you wish,” she said. “I am leaving you.”

  “No, Heroine, no,” I cried—for I was actually beginning to like her a little. “Oh, what a waste.”

  She liked that. She looked at me very victoriously, as though I had finally confessed to the truth about myself. Screw her. “I mean, not being able to fuck away at a big healthy girl like you.”

  She shivered with loathing. “Tell me, please, why must you use that word all the time?”

  “Don’t the boys say ‘fuck’ up in the mountains?”

  “No,” she answered, condescendingly, “not the way that you do.”

  “Well,” I said, “I suppose they’re not as rich with rage as I am. With contempt.” And I lunged for her leg. Because never enough. NEVER! I have TO HAVE.

  But have what?

  “No!” she screamed down at me.

  “Yes!”

  “No!”

  “Then,” I pleaded, as she began to drag me by her powerful leg across toward the door, “at least let me eat your pussy. I know I can still do that.”

  “Pig!”

  And kicked. And landed! Full force with that pioneer’s leg, just below the heart. The blow I had been angling for? Who knows what I was up to? Maybe I was up to nothing. Maybe I was just being myself. Maybe that’s all I really am, a lapper of cunt, the slavish mouth for some woman’s hole. Eat! And so be it! Maybe the wisest solution for me is to live on all fours! Crawl through life feasting on pussy, and leave the righting of wrongs and the fathering of families to the upright creatures! Who needs monuments erected in his name, when there is this banquet walking the streets?

  Crawl through life then—if I have a life left! My head went spinning, the vilest juices rose in my throat. Ow, my heart! And in Israel! Where other Jews find refuge, sanctuary and peace, Portnoy now perishes! Where other Jews flourish, I now expire! And all I wanted was to give a little pleasure—and make a little for myself. Why, why can I not have some pleasure without the retribution following behind like a caboose! Pig? Who, me? And all at once it happens again, I am impaled again upon the long ago, what was, what will never be! The door slams, she is gone—my salvation! my kin!—and I am whimpering on the floor with MY MEMORIES! My endless childhood! Which I won’t relinquish—or which won’t relinquish me! Which is it! Remembering radishes—the ones I raised so lovingly in my Victory Garden. In that patch of yard beside our cellar door. My kibbutz. Radishes, parsley, carrots—yes, I am a patriot too, you, only in another place! (Where I also don’t feel at home!) But the silver foil I collected, how about that? The newspapers I carted to school! My booklet of defense stamps, all neatly pasted in rows so as to smash the Axis! My model airplanes—my Piper Cub, my Hawker Hurricane, my Spitfire! How can this be happening to that good kid I was, with my love for the R.A.F. and the Four Freedoms! My hope for Yalta and Dumbarton Oaks! My prayers for the U.N.O.! Die? Why? Punishment? For what? Impotent? For what good reason?

  The Monkey’s Revenge. Of course.

  “ALEXANDER PORTNOY, FOR DEGRADING THE HUMANITY OF MARY JANE REED TWO NIGHTS RUNNING IN ROME, AND FOR OTHER CRIMES TOO NUMEROUS TO MENTION INVOLVING THE EXPLOITATION OF HER CUNT, YOU ARE SENTENCED TO A TERRIBLE CASE OF IMPOTENCE. ENJOY YOURSELF.” “But, Your Honor, she is of age, after all, a consenting adult—” “DON’T BULLSHIT ME WITH LEGALISMS, PORTNOY. YOU KNEW RIGHT FROM WRONG. YOU KNEW YOU WERE DEGRADING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. AND FOR THAT, WHAT YOU DID AND HOW YOU DID IT, YOU ARE JUSTLY SENTENCED TO A LIMP DICK. GO FIND ANOTHER WAY TO HURT A PERSON.” “But if I may, Your Honor, she was perhaps somewhat degraded before I met her. Ne
ed I say more than ‘Las Vegas’?” “OH, WONDERFUL DEFENSE, JUST WONDERFUL. GUARANTEED TO SOFTEN THE COURT’S JUDGMENT. THAT’S HOW WE TREAT UNFORTUNATES, EH, COMMISSIONER? THAT’S GIVING A PERSON THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE DIGNIFIED AND HUMAN ACCORDING TO YOUR DEFINITION? SON OF A BITCH!” “Your Honor, please, if I may approach the bench—what after all was I doing but just trying to have … well, what? … a little fun, that’s all.” “OH, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” Well, why, damn it, can’t I have some fun! Why is the smallest thing I do for pleasure immediately illicit—while the rest of the world rolls laughing in the mud! Pig? She ought to see the charges and complaints that are filed in my office in a single morning: what people do to one another, out of greed and hatred! For dough! For power! For spite! For nothing! What they put a shvartze through to get a mortgage on a home! A man wants what my father used to call an umbrella for a rainy day—and you ought to see those pigs go to work on him! And I mean the real pigs, the pros! Who do you think got the banks to begin to recruit Negroes and Puerto Ricans for jobs in this city, to send personnel people to interview applicants in Harlem? To do that simple thing? This pig, lady—Portnoy! You want to talk pigs, come down to the office, take a look through my In basket any morning of the week, I’ll show you pigs! The things that other men do—and get away with! And with never a second thought! To inflict a wound upon a defenseless person makes them smile, for Christ’s sake, gives a little lift to their day! The lying, the scheming, the bribing, the thieving—the larceny, Doctor, conducted without batting an eye. The indifference! The total moral indifference! They don’t come down from the crimes they commit with so much as a case of indigestion! But me, I dare to steal a slightly unusual kind of a hump, and while away on my vacation—and now I can’t get it up! I mean, God forbid I should tear the tag from my mattress that says, “Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law”—what would they give me for that, the chair? It makes me want to scream, the ridiculous disproportion of the guilt! May I? Will that shake them up too much out in the waiting room? Because that’s maybe what I need most of all, to howl. A pure howl, without any more words between me and it! “This is the police speaking. You’re surrounded, Portnoy. You better come on out and pay your debt to society.” “Up society’s ass, Copper!” “Three to come out with those hands of yours up in the air, Mad Dog, or else we come in after you, guns blazing. One,” “Blaze, you bastard cop, what do I give a shit? I tore the tag off my mattress—” “Two.” “—But at least while I lived, I lived big!”

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!

  PUNCH LINE

  So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?

  In 1997, Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998, he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and, in 2002, he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow, among others. He has twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In 2005, The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003-2004.” He has also won American PEN’s two highest awards: the PEN/Nabokov and the PEN/Bellow. He is the only living American novelist to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. The last of nine volumes is scheduled for publication in 2013.

  The famous confession of Alexander Portnoy, who is thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Hilariously funny, boldly intimate, startlingly candid, Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

  As Portnoy endeavors to satisfy his inextinguishable desires, he’s overcome by Portnoy’s Complaint: “(pôrt´-noiz kəm-pl´nt´) n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933 - )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: ‘Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful: as a consequence of the patient’s ‘morality,’ however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.’ (Spielvogel, O. “The Puzzled Penis,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV p. 909.) It is believed by Speilvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds in the mother-child relationship.”

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1994

  Copyright © 1967, 1968, 1969, 1994, by Philip Roth

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in slightly different form by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1969.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Simon and Schuster for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Leda and the Swan” from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1928 by Macmillan Publishing Company. Copyright renewed 1956 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster.

  Sections of this book have appeared in slightly different form in Esquire, New American Review, and Partisan Review.

  The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-74405-0

  www.vintagebooks.com