At work I encountered a new hire in the hall as I was leaving to visit a lumber mill. He called me a ‘Christian-killing Yid.’ Anger welled up inside me, and I bowed to him in my stiffest, most formal manner. Then I scurried on past him. Later I planned a vacation, so that this man would not have to look at me for at least a week. Take that, gentile!

After my reading at Max’s, a woman came up to me and said, ‘Your story about a man who turns into an insect is the silliest pile of bunk I’ve ever listened to. It’s so stupid, I would burn it if I were you.’ Drawing myself up to my full height, I replied, ‘Of course, you ought to read Goethe. He puts me to shame.’ Chalk one up for the Cockroach Kid!

The man who works in the office next to mine was ribbing me about my love life. ‘I hear you’re engaged again!’ he said, guffawing. He himself had married his childhood sweetheart and now was responsible for eleven brats. ‘This is your fourth fiancée, isn’t it?’ he went on unstoppably. ‘I’m betting there’ll be a number five and even six, because I think you’re really gay, my friend.’ I grasped his arm and whispered, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ I heard later that he put in to have his office location switched. Whoo hoo! Don’t mess with the dry goods merchant’s boy!

In the theater, a fat man sat in the seat in front of mine. I had been sitting carelessly with my foot in the space where his seat folded down, and now the seat came down with all of the man’s weight on top of it, trapping and crushing my foot. Through five acts I suffered without saying a word; I did not even remove my foot when the man got up at intermission, fearing that on his return he would find something different about his seat and blame me for it. After the final curtain I limped into the lobby on my swollen and painful extremity and there came face to face with the man himself. As he fastened his overcoat to go outside, he told me, a perfect stranger, that he had been much put out during the performance, as his seat did not lower properly. I replied, ‘You think you were put out? The man behind me coughed the whole time.’

My friend Max can be very trying. For example, he fixed me up with a seven-foot giantess for our double date Saturday night. He thought I wouldn’t mind her size, and it was true; I didn’t. But the girl showed up unwashed and had body odor like cat litter. So afterward, when Max asked me how it had gone, I told him, ‘Her nose reminded me of death. And her chin--my God!--was the ghetto!’

Finding myself in a rough quarter of Prague that I usually avoided, I entered a bar. I thought a glass of absinth would make me feel safer. The bartender said to me, ‘What’s yours, Jewboy?’ Without missing a beat, I replied, ‘Make mine a circumcision, my man.’ Quickly realizing the danger I had put myself in, I changed my order to a bottle of spring water and drank it while fingering a rosary.

No longer able to stand the sight of my law books, I signaled to a prostitute from my bedroom window and then descended the stairs and crossed the square to her. She took me to her room, and there, as she undressed, she called me a puppy, a mama’s boy, a runt, and no gentleman. I let her have it with both barrels: ‘You forgot limpdick.’

After dinner, as usual, my tyrannical father retreated into the living room to play his set of trap drums for thirty minutes before turning in. He began on brushes, then switched to sticks and built up a driving rhythm, while I went on trying to write in the next room. Finally I could stand the racket no longer, threw down my pen and marched in to him. ‘Who the hell plays trap drums after dinner?’ I demanded, adding, ‘Have you never heard of a piano?’ Executing a roll, he commanded me to throw myself off the bridge into the river. ‘On the other hand, I love how you kick off *Yakety Sax*,’ I responded.

At the sanatorium, the insufferable doctor swore I had ruined my lungs going on nude hayrides and inhaling the dust from unclean library books. He furthermore stated that of course I had syphilis, since nothing else was to be expected from my decades-long habit of kissing diseased trollops. Finally, the man announced that he was doubling my bill, his usual way of dealing with those of my religious faith. Exasperated beyond endurance, I told him, ‘Hey! Would you like to warm that stethoscope before you touch me with it?’

I was in my favorite vegetarian restaurant. There was a new waitress, slow, clumsy, and rude. Uncaring, she placed the special of hot sauerkraut and steaming potato dumplings cold before a customer who then called her, with some justification, a ‘pea-brained slut.’ As she served me my rolls and soup, she dropped the food on the counter before me with a crash. She then glared at me in defiance, awaiting the curse that must fall from my lips. Casually I picked up my spoon and turned it over in my hand. ‘Whoa!’ I exclaimed. ‘Is this spoon clean!’

With Leni in the forest. Got sick of the breeze blowing me off the hiking trail. Finally persuaded Leni to rest under a shade tree. As I lay with her, breathing heavily against her breast, she asked me to be more ardent. More ardent! ‘The last time I was ardent,’ I reminded her, ‘my nosebleed lasted six days.’

Played cards with the family in the evening. After a while we laid the cards down on the table and hurled anti-Semitic insults at each other. I went first, calling my mother a Jewish Whore, my father a Jewish Bastard, and my three sisters Jewish Bitches. Then each of them in turn returned my fire, blasting me with such terms as Jewish Enigma and Jewish Neurotic Asshole. ‘Damn, that felt good,’ I said when we had finished slurring each other. ‘Tonight I’ll sleep like a top.’ Everyone laughed, but I did.