All our dads were pricks.
Willie the Cop beat his kid, my friend Billy, in public. Jamesy’s dad tore him a new one at least once a week. Big Larry would scream unintelligibly at his kids. Big Mort, my dad, would scream “No sudden outbursts!” or “Goddamit to hell!” and chase my sister and I until we dove under a bed for safety. Trent and his dad came to blows. Fistfights!
And it wasn’t just us kids in the working class sections of the Bronx. Out in the leafy ‘burbs, my wife’s dad beat her and one time pushed her down the stairs. It didn’t stop after she kicked him in the nuts. It only stopped after his wife threatened to leave.
Her friend’s dad locked his sons out of the house, and told his eldest, after some infraction, “I wouldn’t give you the sweat off my balls!” Nice talk.
I bring this to you after watching “Falling”, an award-winning new film produced, directed, written, and starring Viggo Mortensen.
It’s a movie that will stir memories. The stern father, an upstate New York farmer, doles out just enough kindness to keep his kids close. For the most part, though, he’s a prick. To his wife. To his daughter. To his son. To his grandkids.
At one point, a throwaway line of dialogue; he admits his dad was rotten to him as well. Pricks beget pricks.
As I watched the movie, I marveled at the restraint of the adult Viggo character, and his adult sister, played with nuance (as always) by the fabulous Laura Linney. They take his abuse, hurled even in front of their own kids — the prick’s grandkids — and all you see as they absorb his acid is a little twitch of the eye, the cheek.
Me? I wanted to reach into the bloody TV monitor and rip the guy’s throat open with my bare hands.
Afterward, I wondered. Was I a prick to my son? Probably, at times. Maybe I was a hybrid prick, one who doesn’t just act with oblivious, pricky intent, but who felt guilt when I lost control, and the Big Mort-esque anger within me proved too big a wave to manage. But I did lose it, from time to time, and of this I’m not proud. I tried to make it right, after the rage relented. Too little, too late? Maybe.
One thing though. Later in life, after absorbing my parents’ vitriol with only a Viggo/Laura Linney twitch to signal my pain, I blew up at them. Big time. No, I mean BIG TIME. I ripped them a new one, I screamed at them, cursed them, all the bile hurtling forth like molten lava.
Now, the pain and the anger it created have dissipated. OK, once in awhile my volcano releases some steam. But mostly, it’s released through my stories (buy it today: “A Shoebox Full of Money” on Amazon. Operators are standing by.)
Dad is long dead, and when he died, I felt free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I was free at last.
And mom? We’re estranged. Which is a nice was of saying I no longer allow myself to get wound up over her brand of narcissistic personality disorder that tied my guts in knots for decades.
Mom? We don’t talk. And, in fact? I wouldn’t give her the, well, you know.