My father liked to mention his high threshold for physical pain. He took great, manly pride in his above-average ability to withstand pain.   I don’t know whether he had a high threshold for pain or not.  I imagine that he might have learned to keep an impassive face when, as a young child, his mother whipped him furiously across the face with the heavy, chafing cord of her steam iron.

When he was on his death bed I asked him if he was in pain.  “Only psychic pain,” he said.  

It’s possible that the kind of death he was dying, which I witnessed the very end of, was not physically painful.  Liver cancer eventually shuts down the kidneys and when the kidneys shut down you have increasing fatigue and finally one last breath and you’re done.  A mercifully painless way to go, still, I have no idea what other pain he was in, though psychic pain is often quite enough, thank you.

“I want to talk to you, later.  I’m still putting my thoughts together,” he told me from his deathbed the afternoon I arrived.  

By the time I sat with him the last night of his life he had put together his thoughts in that impressive way he had.  He spoke like he was dictating a final draft of a book to an amanuensis.  The verbatim transcript of the recorded parts of that last conversation reads as though edited by a skilled wordsmith.  I know about his psychic pain in great detail, and will go into it at length later on.  

But while his threshold for pain may have been high, his tolerance for frustration was very, very low.  As self-possessed as he usually was in any public setting, in private he was prone to being overcome with frustration and bursting into a tantrum.  I can think of a hundred examples, but maybe the most poignant was his reaction to the random theft of a long letter he wrote me, a review of my master’s thesis Me Ne Frego [1].

He had worked for the Board of Education for many years, retiring with a pension, and knew what a maddeningly Kafkaesque outfit it was.  Meritocracy had little to do with the hierarchy there, and he had swallowed gallons of bile in his dealings over the years with imbecile supervisors and idiots promoted to positions of power based purely on the dexterity and shamelessness of their ass-licking. 

He watched my struggles when I worked for a series of these highly qualified supervisors, as I was fired from one school and moved from that sizzling frying pan to the next.  I did this for about five years, the average attrition time of a new teacher, and finally wound up in the perfect storm of a nightmare class set against an incompetent and destructive new principal.   Unqualified to be the principal of a Harlem elementary school is about the nicest way to put it.  The woman was a living nightmare.  Here’s a quick snapshot, since I am talking about her:

Minnie Frego was an insecure, crazy woman desperate to be loved. I hated her and didn’t have the compassion not to, nor the sense or skill to hide it from her even a little bit, even as I smiled, pretended to like her and we danced our clumsy, for me deadly, dance.

“We’re not here to date each other and fall in love,” Ms. Frego said from the stage of the auditorium.  She was addressing all of her teachers, assembled by her for another required emergency after-school meeting.

“She’s looking right at you, Widaen,” Violet said out of the corner of her mouth.

“Shut up,” I said.  Minnie was looking at me, a little jealous of the friendship I had with a female colleague.

“Is what I’m saying funny, Mr. Widaen?” asked Minnie from the stage.

“Not at all,” I said, and there was a twitter of laughter from my colleagues who knew me as an ironic man.

I wrote the manuscript, a novel length description of my long nightmare at the Board of Ed, in fulfillment of the Master’s Degree Requirement for elementary school teachers.  Ironic, I know, but Creative Writing was deemed functionally related to my duties as a “Common Branches” teacher and so I happily took the writing degree instead of one in Phonics or Advanced Departmental Analingus.

(I know, I know…)

Another irony is that I was, while taking graduate courses and working on the manuscript, exhausting my legal remedies against Minnie Frego’s arbitrary and capricious firing.  After arbitration that decision rested on air and should have been overturned after an Article 78 proceeding that would have allowed me to resume my teaching career with back pay for the lost time.  Instead, since nobody told me about the 90 day statute of limitations for an Article 78, my slam dunk appeal was time barred and I wound up blacklisted. 

When I completed the manuscript I sent my father the heavy tome in the mail.  He read it and called to tell me he liked it very much.  The comment I recall is “it was remarkably devoid of self-pity.”  This was salient because the narrator realizes he’d brought on his troubles by his own inability to simply keep his mouth shut and smile.  My father told me he was working on a longer reaction to the book and would send it to me.

“Did you get my letter?” he asked me a week or so later.  It was rare to get any letter from him, rarer still to have a long review of what is, to date, my greatest sustained literary work.  I’d been greatly looking forward to his comments.  I told him I hadn’t received it.

“I sent it a week ago,” he said, “it was seven or eight pages long.  It’s odd you haven’t gotten it yet.”   I agreed it was odd, went down to check my mail and — nada.   A little research revealed that, for the only time in the 40 years I’ve lived here, some junkies, delinquents or criminals had broken into the mail distribution box on the corner and all that day’s mail had been lost.  I had to request a couple of duplicate bills I hadn’t received.  I called my father back to tell him this.

I can still hear his howl of pain.  He cursed and yelled for a while, a mortally wounded lion slain by an army of hamsters.  I never got a word in the mail about Me Ne Frego, nor another comment about the manuscript he’d admired.  It was all just too fucking frustrating for the poor guy.

 

[1] fuck, talk about frustrating, here’s the intro to “Minnie Frego” I was just able to open on my computador  (keep scrolling, actual footnote at the end of these glyphs):

ò òINTRODUCTIONó ó:€<font€color=€”red”>ÔÿÔò ò€Me€Ne€Fregoó óÔÿJÔ€

---

<font€size=5>€ñBñÔ#†¼þt¼XX5B¡#ÔñBñÐ d ´ ÐÌÔ‡îz`î¼¼þtÔñDñà àñDñAlthough€opinion€is€divided€on€the€marketing€wisdom€of€doing€so,€IÐ d ´ Ðcontinue€toÔ#†¼þt¼îîz`%#Ô€Ô‡îz`î¼¼þtÔcall€this€book€ñ;ñò òñ;ñMe€Ne€Fregoñ;ñó óñ;ññ<ñ.ñ<ññ=ñ.ñ=ñ€€For€non-Italian€speakers€and€thoseÐ ˆ Ø Ðreaders€whose€knowledge€of€€the€history€of€fascism€may€be€spotty–€”me€neÏfrego,”€a€salty€expression€of€non-concern,€was€a€rallying€cry€of€the€ItalianÏfascists€during€the€years€leading€up€to€the€Second€World€War.ñ>ñ€ñ>ññ?ñÌÌà àñ?ññ>ñ

ñ>ñ€It€was€a€verbal€sneer€of€bravado,€famously€spoken€by€€Il€Duce€himselfÏafter€his€armies€invaded€Ethiopa€in€1936,€using€planes,€bombs,€machine€guns,Ïand€other€state€of€the€art€weapons€to€slaughter€an€army€mounted€on€horsesÏand€camels€and€armed€with€primitive€rifles€and€swords.€€When€newsÏcorrespondents€asked€him€if€he€wasn’t€worried€that€invading€an€AfricanÏcountry€might€cause€an€international€incident€Mussolini€grabbed€his€crotchÏand€in€an€operatic€gesture€of€disdain€barked€:€”Eh!€Me€ne€frego!”€€(“it€meansÏas€much€to€me€as€rubbing€dead€skin€off€my€ass”).€€The€New€York€TimesÏtranslated€Mr.€Mussolini’s€slogan€as€”I€don’t€give€a€damn”€which€does€conveyÏthe€sense€of€it,€though€without€the€piquance.€Wounded€fascists€would€scrawlÏ’me€ne€frego’€on€their€bandages€with€their€blood,€mutter€it€with€a€smirk€as€aÏleg€was€amputated.€

€€Ìñ@ñÌñ@ñà àThe€phrase€retains€currency€in€modern€Italian,€macho€men€and€womenÏare€referred€to€as€€me€ne€freghistas’€and€the€quality€of€being€a€tough€son€orÏdaughter€of€a€bitch€is€called€€me€ne€freghissimo’.€€€In€my€experience,€it€is€aÏpose€usually€struck€in€situations€where€one€has€the€least€power€over€theÏprevailing€stink.€€Sometimes€the€smirk€and€the€sneer€of€me€ne€fregissimo€areÏthe€only€defenses€circumstances€allow.€€€

ÌÌMinnie€Frego€is€also,€by€pure€coincidence,€€the€name€of€the€last€principalÏI€worked€for,€as€a€full-time€regular€teacher,€at€the€New€York€City€Board€ofÏEducation.Ô#†¼þt¼îîz`à#ÔÐ X,¨’$ ÐñCñÔ‡X5BX¼¼þtÔñCññEñà àà ` àà ¸ àà àà h àà À àñEñ

Irv would have been howling in despair and anger at this point.  I was able to pull this up, by taking a few deep breaths and coming up with a workaround:

“Me ne frego”
-Benito Mussolini
INTRODUCTION
I call this book Me Ne Frego. I have to explain the title to readers who aren’t fluent in the history of fascism. “Me ne frego” was a rallying cry of the Italian fascists during the years leading up to the Second World War. It was a verbal sneer of bravado, originally spoken by Il Duce himself after his armies invaded Abyssinia. When news correspondents asked him if he wasn’t worried that invading an African country, sending bombers against men with rifles on horseback, might cause an international incident Mussolini grabbed his crotch and in an operatic gesture of disdain barked : “Eh! Me ne frego!” (“it means as much to me as rubbing dead skin off my ass”).

The New York Times translated Mr. Mussolini’s slogan as “I don’t give a damn” which does convey the sense of it, though without the flavor. Wounded fascists would scrawl ‘me ne frego’ on their bandages in blood, say it smirking as a leg was amputated.

Minnie Frego is also, by pure coincidence, the name of the last principal I worked for at the Board of Education.