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.

My new short story collection, “A Shoebox Full of Money”, is out and my Zoom readings have begun. In the Q&A part of my evenings, I am asked “where do the stories come from?”

And my answer is: “From the voices in my head. I take dictation for the voices in my head.”

It’s not that I WANT to write these stories. It’s that I HAVE to write them. The voices within grow insistent, until I am forced to open a new MS Word document and begin. Only then does the pressure subside. Only then are the voices quieted.

For awhile.

And then, once the story is written, the cacophony begins anew. It builds, the cross-talk, the internal arguing — “NO, that’s not how it was!” or “NO, you can’t say THAT in public!” — the psychic pain.

I am my own neurosurgeon, drilling little holes in my head, to let the steam out. So much tension, so much anger, fuels my stories. I want others to know hurt, betrayal, fear, like I do. Why suffer alone?

Increasingly, my stories slant towards aging and death and, perhaps, this is how it should be in this Age of ‘Rona. My dreams are swirls of sadness, mixed in with poison, a toxic Ben & Jerry’s cocktail of doom: “Manic Marty Madness”. The death tallies mount every day, in my stories, as in real life, as we are told that the count from Covid might reach 450,000…500,000…600,000. It’s like a Cheyenne livestock auction: “do I hear A MILLION? A MILLION FIVE!”

The story I am working on now is about a couple dealing with Covid. This afternoon, I will see four Zoom one-act plays about Covid. The front page is filled with Covid. A response I wrote minutes ago to a NYT article about airline travel during the pandemic, and unruly passengers, just got 50 likes in the blink of an eye. Now, it’s up to 110.

It stalks us. It hunts us. It infiltrates our waking hours and our dreams. There is no escape. It is war. A medical war. We are all untrained soldiers, fighting an unseen foe with pitchforks, baseball bats, and slipping facemasks.

The voices in my head scream in deadly earnest. WRITE THIS DOWN! BEAR WITNESS TO THIS TRAGEDY!

I don’t want to write it. But I have to write it. The voices are far to loud to ignore.

Even though I want them, really want them, to shut the hell up. Even though I want, really want, to just let it go.

My hope for this New Year, 2021, is for it to be just like my Miele dishwasher. It is a mid-line model, not the flashiest, not the most expensive. It just does what it’s supposed to do, unlike the inefficient, leaky machine — a noisy antique — it replaced.

It is virtually silent, this Miele of mine. Many is the time I ask my wife, “is this feckin thing ON?” You can’t hear it. Yet, soon enough, little electronic beeps and boops go off, and the dishes, flatware and glassware are spotlessly clean. They look like restaurant-quality utensils. At least, from what I remember about restaurants, since I haven’t set foot in one since early March.

For 2021, I want a year that uses my Miele as a role model. I want leaders with energy and skill and good intentions to right the ship of state. We have a long list of “must-haves” : a national plan for vaccine distribution, jobs, economic support for people and their employers. Efficiency. Expertise. Compassion. These are things I think we can muster.

At least from what I remember about past administrations.

What I shout every day since early 2016– in the direction of Washington, D.C.by way of my TV — is “cut the rebop”, in my best Marlon Brando-as-Stanley imitation.

Last year was the worst, a maraschino cherry atop a pile of manure. It has been the year of Erik Satie. Let me explain: I’ve been taking piano lessons with a musical genius for almost three years now. Every couple of months, when I have a piece pretty much (ok, “somewhat”) nailed down, we discuss the next challenge.

This past November, without prompting, I asked if we could try Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie Number 1. Boomers will recognize this piece as the opening cut on the second Blood Sweat & Tears album. Yes, this is the one that foisted David Clayton-Thomas and his marzipan-style of singing (a little goes a long way) upon us more blues-oriented Al Kooper-Danny Kalb BS&T/”Child Is Father To The Man” fans.

The Satie piece I selected is dark and brooding. It conjures a wistful moment, a cold rainy day when hope has gone absent. The score indicates “lent et douloureux” and Satie, he ain’t kiddin’ bro: it takes you to the town called “despair” and stops just, and I mean JUST, short of dread.

My piano instructor said the piece would be difficult for me, because of the left hand jumps. It would be a stretch, but I wanted to try. And he agreed, being a reverent admirer of Satie, and of Debussy. I think he is bemused by my bullheadedness. He relented and gave me this color commentary:

“Have you ever been to Paris in winter,” my maestro asked. No, I had not. Only in summer and fall. “Winter is bleak. Everyone dresses in black, or dark grey; no one is smiling,” he said, recalling his upbringing there and his days at The Sorbonne (for Ph.D #1). “It is cold. It is dreary. It is relentless.”

And, I thought, “well, no wonder I picked that particular piece.” My subconscious knew: It was the perfect soundtrack to 2020. Torrents of bad news that begat bad news. It was Death in “The Seventh Seal”, leaning over the chessboard, while we were all Gene Wilder, in The Producers, snot-sobbing “no…way…out….no….way….out….”

It has taken six weeks, but I am getting the better of this Satie Gymnopedie Number 1. I am mastering the jumps. I am playing it to tempo. OK, “almost” to tempo (but it’s supposed to be very slow, I tell myself).

I am going to master this mofo. Just like I am going to make it through the months ahead, despite the pain, the loss, the tears of the previous year.

No more Gene Wilder gifs for 2021. Next month, pitchers and catchers report; a clean slate of a baseball season. No, for the New Year, I’m thinking more along the lines of Gloria Gaynor’s disco anthem, “I Will Survive”. Hey, 2020: “Go on now, go, walk out the door, just turn around now, ’cause you’re not welcome anymore.”

My Juilliard and Sorbonne trained piano teacher may not go for it, the disco tune, but that’s alright. For 2021, I’m using my Miele as my role model. Not the flashiest. But quietly, I’m going to get the job done, do what I have to do, to the very best of my ability.

What about you? Are you with me on this?

I was caught up short by the entries in my “week at a glance” calendars from 2019 and 2020. Yes, as usual I made a post-Christmas Staples run and got my new paper calendars, and no judgement — please — on the fact that I still use analog scheduling tools.

This morning I started making the switch, inserting the new calendar leaves into my ancient leather-bound (no vegan vinyl for me!). I peaked through the entries from 2019 and 2020.

My heart sank. There were entries for birthday parties, business meetings. Piano lessons at Juilliard. Wine and cheese karaoke gatherings. Religious services. A Florida winter vacation. Paris vacation planning (and cancellation). Opera performances. Restaurant reservations. In-person readings of my work.

There were reminders of the Kahlo exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Dinner party plans. Visits to Yankee Stadium. Library book return reminders. Dinner at Yonkers Raceway (don’t ask!). Pick up dry cleaning!!! CAR INSPECTION DUE!!!

Nothing super big. Nothing super fancy. Just the social and cultural glue of a New Yorker, middle-class life. I kept turning pages, memories of a recent past. But then came December of 2019.

Life got worse. Travel plans to Pikesville (the funeral for my BIL’s mother, who was an integral part of the clan). Trips to the Atria for my MIL. Doctor appointments for MIL. She fell, again. A trip to the hospital, in the midst of a pandemic. A positive test.

Hospice reminders for my MIL. FaceTime goodbyes. Funeral arrangements for my MIL.

May to November: where was I? What did we do? I can’t remember, even reading reminders from a long-term sleepwalk. Cancellations for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. When was the last time I saw my son? Really? I don’t remember.

Today, the suspended animation of a once-vibrant life. It’s Sunday? It’s December?

In ancient times, mankind hovered in the dark of their caves, built fires, and prayed that they’d survive to the light of day.

What, if anything, has changed?

All we can do is wait it out, and hold each other tight.

—

You’re gonna love it. It’s “A Shoebox Full of Money” — my second collection of short stories that take place in, and around, New York City. (OK, one story takes place in Heathrow Airport. So, sue me.)

You’ll meet gamblers, weird little kids, handball champions, old ladies and their burned-out, adult children, Vietnam vets, IT experts, a Miss America winner, Jaco Pastorius, The Beatles, Tolentine parishioners, a flight attendant for Emirates, a Carlyle club singer, schoolyard b-ballers, even a Brooklyn-based, Beaufort-born, sorceress.

Twenty stories, some set back then — and some set right now. If you like The Real New Yorkers, you’ll be right at home with “A Shoebox Full of Money”.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to these folks, and then click on the link below:

“Martin Kleinman weaves powerful stories in distinctly diverse New York accents and ring true to this New Yorker. I enjoyed, and will treasure, every one of them.”

–Fernando Ferrer, former Borough President of The Bronx, and two-time New York City mayoral candidate

“Kleinman’s latest collection gently rocks between essay and fiction, and will show you how a New York Tuesday is different than any other Tuesday. With tales full of wit and nostalgia, Kleinman opens up the doors to his home, his museums, his bodegas, his street corners. If there ever was a time when one could use a “Shoebox Full of Money”, it is now.”

–Kate Hill Cantrill, Author of Walk Back From Monkey School

“Martin Kleinman’s short story collection is a treasure trove of riches. It’s all perfect – not a false note anywhere. By the time you’ve finished the book, you will have gone through a sea-change yourself, into a fuller consciousness. Not to be missed!”

–Ron Kolm, editor of Sensitive Skin and author of Swimming in the Shallow End

“Reading Martin Kleinman’s A Shoebox Full of Money is like slow-dancing to a love song by La Lupe. His poignant stories are remembrances of life, love, and loss.”

–Angel Franco, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist

“A Shoebox Full of Money is real city life itself, with all its sights, sounds, complexities, pain, and glory. You will recognize your friends, your relatives, your nabe, and most of all, yourself.”

–Gary Axelbank, host of BronxTalk and the Bronx Buzz on BronxNet, and publisher of thisistheBronX

The sky is grey, the temperature is below freezing, the dirty snow streets are dotted with dog pee.

Welcome to another New York City winter!

But this one is unlike any other in my memory. We hunker down, captured by Covid, and tune into our information silos, run by content masters intent on retaining viewers via non-stop infuriation. The pressure builds until we explode/implode. We write a venomous social media post, down another pour of booze, eat another batch of cookies.

Death stalks us, walks amongst us, hides in the shadows, flicks our earlobes for attention.

Four decades ago, Christmas Eve meant a frantic call from Long Island. My father in law was taken to the hospital, where he died of a heart attack at 70. Three packs a day will do that. Well, to be fair, three packs plus a sedentary lifestyle, plus the impact of his young son’s tragic death two years earlier.

I remember racing to the hospital from Jackson Heights. I remember the crying. I remember seeing his lifeless body on a gurney with a white sheet over him. I remember being asked to call my sister in law to tell her the news.

The relationship between this man and my wife, his older daughter, was complicated. On the plus side: they shared intellectual curiosity and an accrued wealth of knowledge. On the negative side: he delivered decades of mental and physical abuse.

Forty years is a long time. So long that my wife forgot to light a memorial candle for her long-dead dad this year. Another 2020 “first”.

The yahrzeit candle for her dad would flicker on our apartment walls at holiday time, in cruel mimicry of a Channel 11 Yule Log. But not this year. This year, we mourn other, more recent, deaths. My MIL, taken in April by Covid. My BIL’s mom, taken a year ago. My son’s bestie, taken at 33 last March by Covid. On deck: my mother, with late-stage cancer and a positive test.

I’m told it might rain this Christmas, which I suppose would be only fitting for this shit-show of a year. What else could possibly go wrong? A bungled vaccine distribution? Holiday-fueled super-spreader events that hasten our demise? Imposition of martial law? A Russian hack of our electrical grid? Sure, bring it on. Why not?

Top of the world, ma!

Elton John’s album, 11-17-70, was recorded live for a WPLJ-FM concert here in New York City. Just days later, me and my crew slapped on our Caswell-Massey patchouli, took the #4 train to 14th Street, and walked to the Fillmore East.

It wasn’t to see Elton, though.

We were Leon Russell fans and Elton was just icing on the cake. We heard the ‘PLJ concert and we were intrigued. The trio’s set list was far more energetic than the introspective tunes on his first album. In our heads, Elton and Bernie Taupin were decent, up-and-coming singer songwriters. Elton had a great voice and played well. We expected, you know, “Your Song.”

The acts that night were to be McKendree Spring, then Elton, then Leon Russell. Well. Elton comes out in a canary yellow tux and rocks out for WAY over his time limit, does multiple encores, and leaves the audience limp and exhausted for poor Leon, who had to race through his set. We were like, WHAT did we just see here?

We followed him through the years and rooted for him through his personal trials and tribulations. Financial disasters. Substance abuse. Shifting tectonic plates in the recording industry.

Fifty years later, guess who’s still standing. Elton. Bloodied but not broken.

Today, thinking about that WPLJ-FM concert, and the Fillmore East show, and Elton’s career evolution (and mine), I feel a sense of wistfulness. I know, the rains of November will do that to a person’s psyche.

What I do know is, his hard rocking songs are fun and showy, but his ballads — with Bernie’s lyric genius — are timeless.

And what I also know is, on this strange erev-Thanksgiving in The Time of Covid-19, this song of his springs to mind as his finest.

We’re lucky. We’re alive. We’re still healthy. We’re still standing! Stay safe and enjoy. See you on the other side, with a fridge full of leftovers.

The Monday before Thanksgiving, the work in the Kleinman-Stolzenberg household usually begins.

But, not this year.

I have a Thanksgiving folder with all our favorite family recipes: the turkey, the sage sausage stuffing, sweet potatoes, Boursin mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels Sprouts, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, silky butternut squash soup. This is what we made every year for up to 18 knuckleheads since the mid-90s.

But not this year.

Usually on Monday, I’d go down to the basement and bring up the folding chairs. But not this year.

Then we’d tussle about how much charcuterie to buy, for pre-dinner snacks. “We don’t need that much!” I’d say. “Stop being so cheap!” she’d say. “It’s not cheap — it’s wasteful!” I’d counter. She’d always win, and we had leftover triple creme and manchego for days.

But not this year.

On Tuesdays before the Turkey, we’d go shopping and panic when the store was out of control, brimming with clueless consumers arguing about the difference between a yam and a sweet potato, or consulting on cooking times, turkey sizes, and other holiday minutiae we had down cold.

But not this year.

The night before, we’d get to work on the pies and sides. But not this year.

The day-of, Ronni would do the table and it was always so festive. We used our special reddish tablecloth with a cool autumny centerpiece. But not this year.

Invariably, someone (usually my parents, or her mother, or sometimes BOTH), would come hours early. Ding-dong! We’d answer the doorbell, still vacuuming, in our sweatpants. Why? Who the eff knows? It was part of the ritual.

But not this year.

No, this year, we are going back to Brooklyn, just the two of us, to have a quiet session with Dan and Mo. We’ll bring lots of wine and a pie. Dee and Mo are doing all the rest. They are great hosts and master chefs. The food is going to be top shelf; they always go all-out.

Maybe this is the year the Thanksgiving baton is passed? No one is sure of anything anymore. It’s one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, like Phillippe Petite between the two World Trade Center towers. Whatever you do, don’t look down.

Not this year.

Note: this is NOT a pineapple slice. NYC does not do pineapple pizza. Two, notice how people keep walking. That is correct. Just another day in paradise.

Click on the link and see what I mean.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHs2S4RDAXL/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

At first, I liked this newcomer, a new guy at a client’s company. He was roughly my age, he played the guitar; we liked the same music. Above the black Les Paul that hung on the wall of his suburban office in the Midwest was a big old bar sign of a man hoisting a mug of suds.  Beneath the man were the words: “Beer.  Helping ugly people have sex since 1862.”

I wanted to believe we were kindred spirits.  And at this phase of life, I’ll take all the new friends I can get.

But in the weeks that followed, this new fellow quickly got under my skin.  It wasn’t his “dontcha know?” Fargo accent, either.  Rather, it was the fact that he took every opportunity to break my chops about my regional accent. In his approximation of New Yawk-speak, I’d be treated to his lame “Yo, how’s it goin’?”

I supposed that is what passed for wit amongst his sunset-seating, walleye-eating crowd. His part of the world (deleted here, to protect the innocent) is a very nice place, of the sort where the locals consume king-cut prime rib by the roaring fireplace of The Double Muskie Pub, secure that their eight-eight percent white world would forever repel virtually all manner of “the other.”

And at the risk of getting all “Sarah Vowell-ish,” it is instructive to note that taciturn Europeans settled to the region’s wild prairies and virgin forests, via emotionally reserved New England.  The locals vamoosed out of Vermont as soon as the Erie Canal was complete and the Blackhawk Wars were won. 

In short order, Yankee elites came to this guy’s home turf for “the waters” and the area was recast as the “Saratoga of the West” – that is, until the healthy, healing waters were befouled by radium pollution.

Groaning Geiger counters aside, Money Magazine ranked it as one of our “100 Best Places to Live.” 

Last November, I sat at my desk in anticipation of my recent weekly client update conference call.  Then the new guy, let’s call him, oh, “John Smith,” called.

Midwesterners enjoy starting business calls with chitchat.  Generally, I’m ok with their “how’s the weather?” and “what are you doing this weekend?” opening gambits.  But this particular phone call caught me completely off-guard.

He actually started, in his New Yawk, put-on accent, with: “Yo, you havin’ pastrami and all the trimmings this Thanksgiving.”

I was shocked.  Because he knew that I am Jewish, and he knew what he thought he could say, that is, get away with, since he was – after all – “the client”.

And, thus taken aback, I wanted to say:  “You know, my dad had the front of his head rubbed by southern boys when he was in basic training in Camp Van Dorn Mississippi.  They were looking for his Jew horns.”

And I wanted to add: “And weeks before he shipped out to fight Nazis, he got into a bar brawl at a local roadhouse, and had his forehead split open by an MPs baton, because he dared to play Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five on the juke box.

“And the following winter, his foxhole buddy drawled, in the snow and sleet of the Bulge, ‘you a Jew?’”

And I felt my blood pressure build. And my gut said stomp on the gas, rev it up, Thelma and Louise, baby, screw the account, forget the money, damn my professional “reputation.” Just tell him to piss off, because after all the years, and all the BS, I’ve had it.  And now this?  “Yo…you havin’ pastrami for Thanksgiving?”  And he actually added: “With all the trimmings?”

But the adult me, thankfully, as befit the holiday, grabbed back the steering wheel and I answered, flatly:

“Actually, I’m serving Oregon Pinot Noir, and we’re having roast turkey, and sage sausage dressing, cranberry sauce, pan roasted Brussels sprouts, candied yams, walnut bread, pumpkin and apple pie – you know, our usual, traditional fare…

“So, to look at our table, you’d never suspect that we were….”

And I stopped myself. And there was silence at the other end.  And we continued our update meeting.  As if nothing, at all, was wrong.