Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth [74]
Ah, but there is (let us bow our heads), there is “my dignity” to consider, my good name. What people will think. What I will think. Doctor, this girl once did it for money. Money! Yes! I believe they call that “prostitution”! One night, to praise her (I imagined, at any rate, that that was my motive), I said, “You ought to market this, it’s too much for one man,” just being chivalrous, you see … or intuitive? Anyway, she answers, “I have.” I wouldn’t let her alone until she explained what she’d meant; at first she claimed she was only being clever, but in the face of my cross-examination she finally came up with this story, which struck me as the truth, or a portion thereof. Just after Paris and her divorce, she had been flown out to Hollywood (she says) to be tested for a part in a movie (which she didn’t get. I pressed for the name of the movie, but she claims to have forgotten, says it was never made). On the way back to New York from California, she and the girl she was with (“Who’s this other girl?” “A girl. A girl friend.” “Why were you traveling with another girl?” “I just was!”), she and this other girl stopped off to see Las Vegas. There she went to bed with some guy that she met, perfectly innocently she maintains; however, to her complete surprise, in the morning he asked, “How much?” She says it just came out of her mouth—“Whatever it’s worth, Sport.” So he offered her three hundred-dollar bills. “And you took it?” I asked. “I was twenty years old. Sure, I took it. To see what it felt like, that’s all.” “And what did it feel like, Mary Jane?” “I don’t remember. Nothing. It didn’t feel like anything.”
Well, what do you think? She claims it only happened that once, ten years ago, and even then only came about through some “accidental” joining of his misunderstanding with her whimsy. But do you buy that? Should I? Is it impossible to believe that this girl may have put in some time as a high-priced call girl? Oh Jesus! Take her, I think to myself, and I am no higher in the evolutionary scale than the mobsters and millionaires who choose their women from the line at the Copa. This is the kind of girl ordinarily seen hanging from the arm of a Mafiosa or a movie star, not the 1950 valedictorian of Weequahic High! Not the editor of the Columbia Law Review! Not the high-minded civil-libertarian! Let’s face it, whore or no whore, this is a clear-cut tootsie, right? Who looks at her with me knows precisely what I am after in this life. This is what my father used to call “a chippy.” Of course! And can I bring home a chippy, Doctor? “Momma, Poppa, this is my wife, the chippy. Isn’t she a wild piece of ass?” Take her fully for my own, you see, and the whole neighborhood will know at last the truth about my dirty little mind. The so-called genius will be revealed in all his piggish proclivities and feelthy desires. The bathroom door will swing open (unlocked!), and behold, there sits the savior of mankind, drool running down his chin, absolutely gaa-gaa in the eyes, and his prick firing salvos at the light bulb! A laughingstock, at last! A bad boy! A shande to his family forever! Yes, yes, I see it all: for my abominations I awake one morning to find myself chained to a toilet in Hell, me and the other chippy-mongers of the world—“Shtarkes” the Devil will say, as we are issued our fresh white-on-white shirts, our Sulka ties, as we are fitted in our nifty new silk suits, “gantze k’nockers, big shots with your long-legged women. Welcome. You really accomplished a lot in life, you fellows. You really distinguished yourselves, all right. And you in particular,” he says, lifting a sardonic eyebrow in my direction, “who entered the high school at the age of twelve, who was an ambassador to the world from the Jewish community of Newark—” Ah-hah, I knew it. It’s no Devil in the proper sense, it’s Fat Warshaw, the Reb. My stout and pompous spiritual leader! He of the sumptuous enunciation and the Pall Mall breath! Rabbi Re-ver-ed! It is the occasion of my bar mitzvah, and I stand shyly at his side, sopping it up like gravy, getting quite a little kick out of being sanctified, I