Portnoy's Complaint II
Bill Long 11/30/08
Sexual and Literary Obsession
I have decided that for the sake of all my underage readers that I won't be quoting at length from stories of Alexander Portnoy's sexual obsessions. Nevertheless, I should note that Rother's frank and hilarious insertion of detailed accounts of Portnoy's sexual proclivities gives the book such a dynamic and whooshing!-type quality that a true review can't avoid it. Even though Alex's sexual exploits stand on their own, so to speak, they normally are connected with the other obsessions of his life--especially his Jewishness and the desire to avoid shame--so that they are woven into the fabric of the book. For example, when speaking of his uncontrollable urge to masturbate in public places, Alex imagines being "discovered" so doing and then exposed in newspaper headlines ranging from the Newark papers to the NY Times--and thus shaming his family. Two stories will suffice to tell the "sex story."
The Bus Ride
He is riding the bus home one night from NYC to his Jersey home, sitting next to a shikse (goy female) and feels the urge to wank. But then, hitting a note of ethnic hilarity that permeates the novel, he notices the Polish (Polack) driver. Immediately he confronts a crisis. He has to pleasure himself because his dick is gradually winning the argument with his mind on that score, but he also has this piece of advice from his father running in his mind. "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" (p. 127). So, he blithely continues his outrageous and dangerous activity--knowing that not only is there a good chance that he will be discovered as he jerks himself next to the sleeping shikse but it will result in the most humiliating ignominy for himself and his family. But then comes in the "famous" Yiddish proverb, though Alex doesn't relate how he knows it:
"Ven der putz shteht, ligt der sechel in drerd."
Or, it can be rendered, "when the prick stands up, the brains get buried in the ground!" So, oblivious to the dangers, skirting disaster and familial shame, he goes on with his pleasure. He simply can't help it. So, this is another thing to lacerate himself for his imperfections. As Portnoy says in another context, for a Jew, "self-laceration is never more than a memory away" (p. 217). But then he decides that he simply has to face it, to embrace this part of himself, to celebrate what others would count as a lasting shame. He wants to put the ID back in YID, a statement so immediately funny that I couldn't help convulsing in laughter.
We are getting the flavor of the peculiar brand of humor, self-hatred and drivenness that I first met in large measure when I majored in religion at Brown University and tended to gravitate towards classes mostly taken by Jewish students. Why was I, a WASP, hanging around with Jewish students in class? Well, as I would have said at that time, my "boss" was a Jewish Carpenter. I learned a lot of things from those classes and students...
A Second Sexual Scene
Another story of gut-busting hilarity where Alex's sexuality gets the best of him is when he is introduced to 18 year-old Bubbles Girardi by his "lascivious classmate Smolka." Smolka had given Alex the impression that Bubbles would do it with two guys simultaneously, and Alex just couldn't be left out in the cold on that one. After all, she is the type of girl that hangs out at the public swimming pool, but in order to get her there a person has to:
"be willing to risk polio from the pool, gangrene from the footbath, ptomaine from the hot dogs, and elephantiasis from the soap and the towels" (p. 165).
The Jewish hyper-fears just keep piling up, don't they? But he manages to dodge all those bullets and finds himself with Bubbles, Smolka and another guy. But then, the worries begin. Even though her brother is in the service, her mother dead and her father at work, her father actually is a driver for the Mob, and the thought runs through Alex's mind--what if the father bumps off his guy early today and rushes home to find his beloved Bubbles humping two guys? Or, as he says, "And who says Geronimo is going to be all night in Hoboken? And what if the person the gangsters are supposed to murder has already dropped dead from fright by the time they arrive, and Mr. Girardi is sent home early for a good night's rest?" (p. 167). The worries cascade. What if Bubbles in fact has the "syph?" What if the Trojan condom, which Alex has carefully been carrying around in his wallet for the last six months is sporting a hole or two. All his efforts at water-testing the condoms, which he scientifically has done in the basement of his home, would then go for nought. As it was, Bubbles isn't any too eager to do it with two guys, and she only agrees to a brief hand-job of Alex. This doesn't give Alex any pleasure, really, and he slinks home with no satisfaction, only to learn later that the other guy stayed around and eventually "made it" with Bubbles. So, Alex is the big loser all around. What a despicable guy I am, he thinks. Endless rounds of self-recrimination and self-abuse follow.
Conclusion
But Alex doesn't let himself stay down in the dumps too long because there are always other shikses out there on whom to avenge oneself for the myriad hurts that Protestants have brought on the Jewish people. Indeed, one of the hilarious scenes in the book is where Alex links up with the daughter of a "big WASP" from NY/CT area, whose daughter went to Vassar. That story, and a few remaining thoughts about his literary humor, will complete my review.
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