Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth [73]
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 dinner party.
“Arnold, let’s have an affair, okay?”
“—Meaning?”
“Oh, don’t be cautious. Meaning what do you think? An affair. You bang just me and I bang just you.”
“And that’s it?”
“Well, sure, mostly. And also I telephone a lot during the day. It’s a hang-up—can’t I say ‘hang-up’ either? Okay—it’s a compulsion. Okay? All I mean is like I can’t help it. I mean I’m going to call your office a lot. Because I like everybody to know I belong to somebody. That’s what I’ve learned from the fifty thousand dollars I’ve handed over to that shrink. All I mean is whenever I get to a job, I like call you up—and say I love you. Is this coherent?”
“Sure.”
“Because that’s what I really want to be: so coherent. Oh, Breakie, I adore you. Now, anyway. Hey,” she whispered, “want to smell something—something staggering?” She checked to see if the waitress was in the vicinity, then leaned forward, as though to reach beneath the table to straighten a stocking. A moment later she passed her fingertips over to me. I pressed them to my mouth. “My Sin, baby,” said The Monkey, “straight from the pickle barrel … and for you! Only you!”
So go ahead, love her! Be brave! Here is fantasy begging you to make it real! So erotic! So wanton! So gorgeous! Glittery perhaps, but a beauty nonetheless! Where we walk together, people stare, men covet and women whisper. In a restaurant in town one night, I overhear someone say, “Isn’t that what’s-her-name? Who was in La Dolce Vita?” And when I turn to look—for whom, Anouk Aimée?—I find they are looking at us: at her who is with me! Vanity? Why not! Leave off with the blushing, bury the shame, you are no longer your mother’s naughty little boy! Where appetite is concerned, a man in his thirties is responsible to no one but himself! That’s what’s so nice about growing up! You want to take? You take! Debauch a little bit, for Christ