Portnoy's Complaint (1972)

Karen Black: The Monkey

Photos 

Quotes 

• The Monkey : Is this your idea of a love affair, where you treat a woman as a leper?

• The Monkey : Who's Thereal?

  Alexander Portnoy : Thereal?

  The Monkey : I think that's what you said.

  Alexander Portnoy : When?

  The Monkey : When you were cumming. You cried out, "Thereal!" Come on, who the hell is she?

  Alexander Portnoy : Do you really wanna know?

  The Monkey : Better be good.

  Alexander Portnoy : She was a mythical, marvelous whore I invented when I was a kid in high school. A girl of my erotic dreams: Thereal McCoy.

  The Monkey : Oh, and I'm your erotic dream come true.

• Alexander Portnoy : I was totally incapable of keeping my paws from my dong once it started to climb.

  The Monkey : Me too.

  Alexander Portnoy : Nay. In the middle of a class I would rush to the boys' room and beat off into urinal. At the movies, I'd leave my friends, go to the candy machine and wind up in a distant balcony seat squirting my seed into the empty wrapper from a Mounds Bar.

  The Monkey : God, I love this.

  Alexander Portnoy : Once at a picnic, my mother cored an apple for me. And when I saw what it looked like, I ran off with it into the woods. And pretended that the cool and mealy hole of the fruit was between the legs of that wonderful girl who always called me "big boy" and pleaded for more. "Oh, shove it in me, big boy", cried the cored apple as I banged it silly, on that picnic. "Big boy, big boy. Oh, give me all you've got!" begged the empty milk bottle that I kept hidden in our basement to drive wild after school with my vaselined upright. "Cum, big boy, cum!" screamed the maddened piece of liver that in my insanity I bought one afternoon at a butcher shop and believe it or not, violated behind a billboard on the way to a Bar Mitzvah lesson.

  The Monkey : Liver. That's really creative.

• The Monkey : What do you want?

  Alexander Portnoy : Buy you a drink.

  The Monkey : Real swinger.

  Alexander Portnoy : To eat your pussy baby, how's that?

  The Monkey : That's more like it.

• The Monkey : This married couple I know, pretty close friends, came by to make dinner for me. Well, they could hardly wait to finish the meal. Right in the middle of the jello, they said they wanted me to watch them screw.

  Alexander Portnoy : In the middle of the jello?

• The Monkey : I'm Mary Jane Reid. They call me The Monkey.

  Alexander Portnoy : The Monkey?

  The Monkey : New position I once invented made a guy I knew, become a monkey.

  Alexander Portnoy : Mm-hmm. Am I gonna get a crack at that zoo sometime?

  The Monkey : I'll give it some thought.

• The Monkey : You wanna hear our groovy sex life? Me, in bed beside him while he's jerking off into a copy of a magazine.

• The Monkey : Why should it be that I earn as much in one hour posing in a girdle as my illiterate old man used to make in a week in the mines?

  Alexander Portnoy : Because Monkey dear, the output of one West Virginia coal miner has far less influence on the national economy than your delicious body in Vogue or Harpers Bazaar.

• The Monkey : Now me, you.

  Alexander Portnoy : Really?

  The Monkey : Yeah. One good turn deserves another.

• Alexander Portnoy : Being in public life, I have to be discreet.

  The Monkey : Just as long as you make up for it in private.

• The Monkey : Wouldn't it be nice to just not think about yourself? For whole weeks at a stretch. Wear old clothes and be yourself and not have to come on smartass and tough all the time.

• Alexander Portnoy : I know a poem and I'm going to recite it.

  The Monkey : Oh! Not now. I don't understand poems.

  Alexander Portnoy : You'll understand this one. It's about fucking. A swan fucks a beautiful girl.

  The Monkey : Oh! Goody!

  Alexander Portnoy : But it's a serious poem!

  The Monkey : Recite the dirty poem, Portnoy.

  Alexander Portnoy : "A sudden blow: the great wings beating still, Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed, By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast."

  The Monkey : Hmm, where did you learn something like that?

  Alexander Portnoy : Shh-shh-shh. There's more." How can those terrified vague fingers push, The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?"

  The Monkey : Hey, thighs.

  Alexander Portnoy : "And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there..."

  The Monkey : Yeah, shuddering loins.

  Alexander Portnoy : "The broken wall, the burning roof and tower, And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power. Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?"

  The Monkey : Oh!

  Alexander Portnoy : That's it.

• The Monkey : You know something? My little Virginia is so sore, it can hardly breathe.

  Alexander Portnoy : Poor little Virginia.

• The Monkey : Oh, sweetheart, darling, do anything you want to me.

• The Monkey : Oh, my breakthrough baby. You're turning me into a genius.

  [kiss] 

  The Monkey : Oh, baby darling, take me. Take every educated part of me.

• The Monkey : Fix yourself a drink. Better make it a big one.

• The Monkey : I was a guest at Ali Khan's for dinner when you were still back in Newark, New Jersey, finger fucking your little Jewish girlfriends.

  Alexander Portnoy : They weren't Jewish.

• Alexander Portnoy : Can I ask you a very personal question?

  The Monkey : If you hold my hand or my leg.

• Alexander Portnoy : For Christ's sake, don't say "cunt" to the Mayor's wife.

  The Monkey : What?

  Alexander Portnoy : You heard me. When we get there don't start talking about your favorite positions, to whoever opens the door. Don't make a grab for big John's schlong until we've been there at least an hour. Okay?

  The Monkey : I'll say and do, and wear anything I want. This is a free country, you up up-uptight Jewish prick!

• Alexander Portnoy : I've said nothing.

  The Monkey : You got those black heeb eyes. Man, they say it for you.

• The Monkey : All I want is to please you, darling. I want you to be so God damn happy with me that you burst from it. I'll do anything to make you happy. *Anything* you want.

• The Monkey : I know the truth about you. I know the truth about you, Alex. You make women sleep with whores.

• The Monkey : To you, I'm just another her anyway. You with all your big words and your big shit holy ideals. And all I am in your eyes is just a lesbian - and a whore!

• Alexander Portnoy : You gotta be kidding.

  The Monkey : If I'm kidding, what's that bulge in your trousers? A chocolate eclair?

• The Monkey : As for you, I've never seen one city make one man so horny.

• The Monkey : No good bastard.

  Alexander Portnoy : Me?

  The Monkey : Making me do a thing like that.

  Alexander Portnoy : Me?

  The Monkey : Yes, you.

  Alexander Portnoy : You're the one who stuck your hand between her legs and got the ball rolling. You kissed her on the goddamn lips.

  The Monkey : Because if I'm gonna do something, then like I do it.

• Alexander Portnoy : Do you like girls?

  The Monkey : Is that the question? Do you dig men?

  Alexander Portnoy : Never. Notice I answered. You didn't.

• The Monkey : What a fake. What a hypocrite and a phoney. Big man to a lot of pitiful spics!