In high school my sister came up with the name that would be our father’s handle for the rest of his life.   She referred to him as The Dreaded Unit, which she summarily shortened to “The D.U.”.    It was a name he went by, and even embraced.   He signed notes “The D.U.”  It pleased him, on some level, to be regarded as dreaded.      

The D.U. was not dreaded because he was strict, or a ruthless disciplinarian.  In fact, he was in many ways a permissive parent.  You could do what you wanted, pretty much, but there was a steep price to pay for that freedom.  He would flay you about anything you did that he disapproved of.  He disapproved of most of what his children did, by the looks of it.  He was demanding only in the sense that he demanded you listen to his denunciation of what an unredeemed piece of shit you were.  I angrily fought back, my sister rarely confronted his anger directly.   It is an open question which of us suffered more from his regular abusiveness.

In thinking about this dreadedness, I realize my father had a cardinal rule. He lived in a black and white world with one overriding issue: were you with him or against him?   He laid out his theory and either you agreed with his assessment, no matter how insane, or you were an asshole.   As he was dying this is probably what he regretted most, the asininity of insisting on ‘my way or the highway’ as a credo.    It is more fitting for an authoritarian or racist-type than for a humanist with the intellect my father had.    

It was one of the central contradictions of the man.  While he was capable of taking any side in an argument, for argument’s sake, and intelligently making a detailed case for the opposite of what he believed, he was in some fundamental way unable to see nuance, to compromise, to extend mercy or the benefit of the doubt, in the context of his family.  

It was a one rule game: I am right and you are wrong.  If you disagree with me, it proves you are a fucking idiot.  I will destroy you.   While he could be irreverent, and very funny, and seemingly hip, he was also very rigid in defending his beliefs.  

As I converse with his skeleton you will see little evidence of this rigidity.   The dead Irv is much more relaxed and insightful than he was while he struggled to remain the D.U. to his children.    That’s the central tragedy of his story– what he actually was, in his essence, compared with what he was able to show of himself in the intimate circle of his nuclear family.  It is the central tragedy, I guess, of anyone who is filled with self-hatred.

Simple rule: you’re in or you’re out, with me or against me.  He enjoyed the verbal jousting match he saw black kids playing on the street.  He called it The Dozens.  It was a rank out contest, an imagination-driven cutting contest where the sharpest wit won.  It was done in public, on a stoop, street corner, in a schoolyard, candy store, barber shop.  You could keep out of it, most of the time, by keeping your mouth shut.  Once you said something, you were fair game.  It had one other rule, according to the D.U.: “if you grin, you’re in.”  Laugh at something funny said at the expense of someone else, you’re next, motherfucker.  My father loved the whole thing.

I have noticed this with bullies, too.  If you sneer, watching them in action, it’s as good as shoving them, they will come after you.  I have been in this situation too many times to count, and, although as a lawyer I learned to control my facial expressions when I was in the presence of someone abusing their power to express personal sadism, I never learned to control my micro-expressions, those subconscious tells that flash across your face in a fraction of a second. Sadists are adept at picking these up, and they will torture you as much for a micro-expression as for a long, glaring sneer.  

What made my father the D.U., exactly?  His insistence that his rule was the rule, agree to disagree, disagree to agree, the rule is the rule, it will not, cannot be changed.  This was the essence of his dreadedness.  Where did it come from?  A paranoid worldview born in the extreme childhood traumas he endured all his life.   He could not open the door to examining these traumas, it was simply too painful.  

I write of this all calmly now, at the age of sixty-one, having had decades to process my interactions with The D.U.   In the end, living on a small stipend provided by his lifetime of hard work, and my mother’s, I have had as many hours as I need to ponder it all.   It has been a very fortunate thing for me, whether or not I succeed in snappily packaging and selling this manuscript to a literary agent, signing a book contract, getting paid, being interviewed by Leonard Lopate or Terry Gross.   I will always consider myself lucky for this opportunity.    

In my childhood, though, the D.U. was a fucking monster, an incomprehensible, implacable monster.  I have described the war zone at the dinner table every night.  For many years the D.U. worked two jobs.  He’d arrive home from work exhausted and fall asleep on the couch for an hour or two.  When he’d wake up, dinner would be ready, the battlefield prepared.  

Our mother might start things off, complaining about what pricks my sister and I had been to each other, to her.  We were often pricks to her, I realize. We mocked and bullied her.  She’d turn to the D.U. to do something about it.  

In reality, there was nothing the D.U. could do about it.  We were all playing by the insane rules he set, the only ones he knew.  He was powerless, sitting in his landlocked seat in the worst corner of the kitchen table, a counter behind him, a wall to his left, my sister and the refrigerator blocking his exit.  He would shuffle his feet in his slippers menacingly, like a rattler rattling  his tail.  He would make random threats of violence, retribution, of my sister and I losing the war, no matter how many battles we thought we were winning.   He would curse and rage.   I can see all this clearly, as well as the reasons for it, in ways I could not see until I was a middle aged man.  I spent years ruminating on the insane dinner time battles.  

If I’d smacked my sister, or, as I did one afternoon, hung her favorite doll by the neck at the top of the stairs (a doll she pulled down and whacked me in the eye with), my mother would put this angrily to the D.U.   The D.U. would turn to my sister and, in a tone of paternal reasonableness, blame her.  “I’ve told you a thousand times, if you play with the cobra you’re going to get bit!”   I was the cobra in that scenario, no matter that I had a black eye from the doll’s foot.  My sister, in spite of her lifelong terror of snakes, was a pretty competent mongoose.

It was, like any war, a vicious affair that nobody could ever win.   “Look at him, sitting there glaring, like a fucking rattlesnake…”  I was waiting, on one level, for the day, at fifteen, when I stood up angrily and the D.U. actually cowered.  I was completely disgusted by his show of cowardice.  He was a big man, I was a skinny adolescent.  I guess part of his fear was knowing I had every right to take a swing at him.  I had the seat at the kitchen table right next to the door, and I often stormed out that door, while the war raged on.

After dinner, which almost always involved a screaming match and choking down the food on our plates, my father would often go to his bathroom in the basement.   He’d pause at the top of the stairs, as my mother became tense. “Irv, so help me, I’ll divorce you!” she would threaten, as a strained look came across his face.  

“Prepare…. for….” my father would begin, as the three of us raised our voices in protest, “gassing!”  He would then let loose a loud fart, chuckle, and head downstairs.  

“You’re a pig!” my mother would shout after him, not incorrectly.  

A half hour later my father would be in the Buick, driving out towards the tiny office of Nassau-Suffolk Young Judaea.  I can only imagine his thoughts as he headed east into the night.