Portnoy’s Complaint

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:

"Where," she asked, "did you learn something like that? "

"Shhh. There's more:

"Hey!" she cried. "Thighs!"

"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, after 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 Marion 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 spose I deed!" cries Scarlett O'Hara. Then, "Hey, I did! I understood a poem!"

"And with your cunt, no less."

"My Breakthrough-baby! You're turning this twat into a genius! Oh, Breakie, darling, eat me," she cries, thrusting a handful of fingers into my mouth-and she pulls me down upon her by my lower jaw, crying, "Oh, eat my educated cunt!"

Idyllic, no? Under the red and yellow leaves like that?

In the room at Woodstock, while I shave for di

But by me?

Why not?

Really?

Why not!

"You know something," she says to me from the tub, "my little hole's so sore it can hardly breathe."

"Poor hole."

"Hey, let's eat a big di

"How you doin'. Arn?" she asked later, when the lights were out. "This is fun, isn't it? It's like being eighty."

"Or eight," I said. "I got something I want to show you.”

"No. Arnold, no ."

During the night I awakened, and drew her toward me.

"Please," she moaned, "I'm saving myself for my husband."

"That doesn't mean shit to a swan, lady."

"Oh please, please, do fuck off-"

"Feel my feather."

"Ahhh," she gasped, as I stuffed it in her hand. "A Jew -swan! Hey!" she cried, and grabbed at my nose with the other hand. "The indifferent beak! I just understood more poem!… Didn't I? "

"Christ, you are a marvelous girl!"

That took her breath away. "Oh, am I?"

"Yes!"

"Am I?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Now can I fuck you?"

"Oh, sweetheart, darling," cried The Monkey, "pick a hole, any hole. I'm yours!"

After breakfast we walked around Woodstock with The Monkey's painted cheek glued to the arm of my jacket. "You know something," she said, "I don't think I hate you any more."

We started for home late in the afternoon, driving all the way to New York so that the weekend would last longer. Only an hour into the trip, she found WABC and began to move in her seat to the rock music. Then all at once she said, "Ah, fuck that noise," and switched the radio off.

Wouldn't it be nice, she said, not to have to go back?

Wouldn't it be nice someday to live in the country with somebody you really liked?

Wouldn't it be nice just to get up all full of energy when it got light and go to sleep dog-tired when it got dark?

Wouldn't it be nice to have a lot of responsibilities and just go around doing them all day and not even realize they were responsibilities?

Wouldn't it be nice to just not think about yourself for whole days, whole weeks, whole months at a stretch? To wear old clothes and no make-up and not have to come on tough all the time?

Time passed. She whistled. "Wouldn't that be something?"

"What now?"

"To be grown-up. You know?"

"Amazing," I said.

"What is?"

"Almost three days, and I haven't heard the hillbilly routine, the Betty-Boop-dumb-cunt routine, the teeny-bopper bit-"

I was extending a compliment, she got insulted. "They're not 'bits,' man, they're not routines-they're me! And if how I act isn't good enough for you, then tough tittie. Commissioner. Don't put me down, okay, just because we're nearing that fucking city where you're so important ."

"I was only saying you're smarter than you let on when you act like a broad, that's all."

"Bullshit . It's just practically humanly impossible for anybody to be as stupid as you think I am!" Here she leaned forward to flip on "The Good Guys." And the weekend might as well not have happened. She knew all the words to all the songs. She was sure to let me know that. "Yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah." A remarkable performance, a tribute to the cerebellum.

At dark I pulled into a Howard Johnson's. "Like let's eat," I said. "Like food. Like nourishment, man."

"Look," she said, "maybe I don't know what I am, but you don't know what you want me to be, either! And don't forget that!"

"Groovy, man."

"Prick! Don't you see what my life is? You think I like being nobody? You think I'm crazy about my hollow life? I hate it! I hate New York ! I don't ever want to go back to that sewer! I want to live in Vermont, Commissioner! I want to live in Vermont with you-and be an adult, whatever the hell that is! I want to be Mrs. Somebody-I-Can-Look-Up-To. And Admire! And Listen To!" She was crying. "Someone who won't try to fuck-up my head! Oh, I think I love you, Alex. I really think I do. Oh, but a lot of good that's going to do me!"

In other words: Did I think maybe I loved her? Answer: No. What I thought (this'll amuse you), what I thought wasn't Do I love her? or even Could I love her? Rather: Should I love her?

Inside the restaurant the best I could do was say that I wanted her to come with me to the Mayor's formal di