Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

Portnoy’s Complaint

Portnoy’s Complaint (pôrt΄-noiz kəm-plānt΄) 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 Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET

She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in transforming herself. Invariably she was already in the kitchen by the time I arrived, and setting out my milk and cookies. Instead of causing me to give up my delusions, however, the feat merely intensified my respect for her powers. And then it was always a relief not to have caught her between incarnations anyway—even if I never stopped trying; I knew that my father and sister were i

Of course, when she asked me to tell her all about my day at kindergarten, I did so scrupulously. I didn’t pretend to understand all the implications of her ubiquity, but that it had to do with finding out the kind of little boy I was when I thought she wasn’t around-that was indisputable. One consequence of this fantasy, which survived (in this particular form) into the first grade, was that seeing as I had no choice, I became honest.

Ah, and brilliant. Of my sallow, overweight older sister, my mother would say (in Ha

And how did my father take all this? He drank—of course, not whiskey like a goy, but mineral oil and milk of magnesia; and chewed on Ex-Lax; and ate All-Bran morning and night; and downed mixed dried fruits by the pound bag. He suffered—did he suffer!—from constipation. Her ubiquity and his constipation, my mother flying in through the bedroom window, my father reading the evening paper with a suppository up his ass . . . these, Doctor, are the earliest impressions I have of my parents, of their attributes and secrets. He used to brew dried se

To make life harder, he loved me himself. He too saw in me the family’s opportunity to be “as good as anybody,” our chance to win honor and respect—though when I was small the way he chose to talk of his ambitions for me was mostly in terms of money. “Don’t be dumb like your father,” he would say, joking with the little boy on his lap, “don’t marry beautiful, don’t marry love—marry rich.” No, no, he didn’t like being looked down upon one bit. Like a dog he worked—only for a future that he wasn’t slated to have. Nobody ever really gave him satisfaction, return commensurate with goods delivered—not my mother, not me, not even my loving sister, whose husband he still considers a Communist (though he is a partner today in a profitable soft-drink business, and owns his own home in West Orange). And surely not that billion-dollar Protestant outfit (or “institution,” as they prefer to think of themselves) by whom he was exploited to the full. “The Most Benevolent Financial Institution in America” I remember my father a

Also, he believed passionately in what he was selling, yet another source of anguish and drain upon his energies.

He wasn’t just saving his own soul when he do

They laughed at him, down in the slums. They didn’t listen. They heard him knock, and throwing their empties against the door, called out, “Go away, nobody home.” They set their dogs to sink their teeth into his persistent Jewish ass. And still, over the years, he managed to accumulate from The Company enough plaques and scrolls and medals honoring his salesmanship to cover an entire wall of the long windowless hallway where our Passover dishes were stored in cartons and our “Oriental” rugs lay mummified in their thick wrappings of tar paper over the summer. If he squeezed blood from a stone, wouldn’t The Company reward him with a miracle of its own? Might not “The President” up in “The Home Office” get wind of his accomplishment and turn him overnight from an agent at five thousand a year to a district manager at fifteen? But where they had him they kept him. Who else would work such barren territory with such incredible results? Moreover, there had not been a Jewish manager in the entire history of Boston & Northeastern ( Not Quite Our Class, Dear, as they used to say on the Mayflower ), and my father, with his eighth-grade education, wasn’t exactly suited to be the Jackie Robinson of the insurance business.