Portnoy’s Complaint

Ronald and Leonardo? To be left alone! If only for half an hour at a time! Stop already hocking us to be good! hocking us to be nice! Just leave us alone, God damn it, to pull our little dongs in peace and think our little selfish thoughts- stop already with the respectabilizing of our hands and our tushies and our mouths! Fuck the vitamins and the cod liver oil! Just give us each day our daily flesh! And forgive us our trespasses- which aren't even trespasses to begin with!

"-a little boy you want to be who kicks his own mother in the shins-?" My father speaking… and look at his arms, will you? I have never really noticed before the size of the forearms the man has got on him. He may not have whitewall tires or a high school education, but he has arms on him that are no joke. And, Jesus, is he angry. But why? In part, you schmuck, I kicked her for you!

"-a human bite is worse than a dog bite, do you know that, you? Get out from under that bed! Do you hear me, what you did to your mother is worse than a dog could do!" And so loud is his roar, and so convincing, that my normally placid sister runs to the kitchen, great gruntfuls of fear erupting from her mouth, and in what we now call the fetal position crouches down between the refrigerator and the wall. Or so I seem to remember it- though it would make sense, I think, to ask how I know what is going on in the kitchen if I am still hiding beneath my bed.

"The bite I can live with, the shins I can live with"- her broom still relentlessly trying to poke me out from my cave- "but what am I going to do with a child who won't even say he's sorry? Who won't tell his own mother that he's sorry and will never never do such a thing again, ever! What are we going to do, Daddy, with such a little boy in our house!"

Is she kidding? Is she serious? Why doesn't she call the cops and get me shipped off to children's prison, if this is how incorrigible I really am? "Alexander Portnoy, aged five, you are hereby sentenced to hang by your neck until you are dead for refusing to say you are sorry to your mother." You'd think the child lapping up their milk and taking baths with his duck and his boats in their tub was the most wanted criminal in America. When actually what we are playing in that house is some farce version of King Lear , with me in the role of Cordelia! On the phone she is perpetually telling whosoever isn't listening on the other end about her biggest fault being that she's too good. Because surely they're not listening- surely they're not sitting there nodding and taking down on their telephone pads this kind of transparent, self-serving, insane horseshit that even a pre-school-age child can see through. "You know what my biggest fault is. Rose? I hate to say it about myself, but I’m too good." These are actual words, Doctor, tape-recorded these many years in my brain. And killing me still! These are the actual messages that these Roses and Sophies and Goldies and Pearls transmit to one another daily! "I give my everything to other people," she admits, sighing, "and I get kicked in the teeth in return and my fault is that as many times as I get slapped in the face, I can't stop being good."

Shit, Sophie, just try , why don't you? Why don't we all try! Because to be bad . Mother, that is the real struggle: to be bad-and to enjoy it! That is what makes men of us boys. Mother. But what my conscience, so-called, has done to my sexuality, my spontaneity, my courage! Never mind some of the things I try so hard to get away with – because the fact remains, I don't . I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear. See, I am too good too, Mother, I too am moral to the bursting point- just like you! Did you ever see me try to smoke a cigarette? I look like Bette Davis. Today boys and girls not even old enough to be bar-mitzvahed are sucking on marijuana like it's peppermint candy, and I'm still all thumbs with a Lucky Strike. Yes, that's how good I am, Momma. Can't smoke, hardly drink, no drugs, don't borrow money or play cards, can't tell a lie without begi

"That there are women who are homosexual persons." "Come on," grumbles Poppa Bear, "what kind of garbage is that, what kind of crap is that-?" "Jack, please. I'm not making it up. I read it in Cosmo! I'll show you the article!" "Come on, they print that stuff for the circulation- " Momma! Poppa! There is worse even than that- there are people who fuck chickens! There are men who screw stiffs! You simply ca

So there.

…

What a pantomime I had to perform to get my zylon windbreaker off my back and into my lap so as to cover my joint that night I bared it to the elements. All for the benefit of the driver, within whose Polack power it lay merely to flip on the overhead lights and thus destroy in a single moment fifteen years of neat notebooks and good grades and teeth-cleaning twice a day and never eating a piece of fruit without thoroughly washing it beforehand… Is it hot in here! Whew, is it hot! Boy oh boy, I guess I just better get this jacket off and put it right down here in a neat little pile in my lap… Only what am I doing? A Polack's day, my father has suggested to me, isn't complete until he has dragged his big dumb feet across the bones of a Jew. Why am I taking this chance in front of my worst enemy? What will become of me if I'm caught!