Dave Itzkoff, Do You Know Where Your Father Is?

When I'm in the mood to be horrified by a coke-fiend father's depravity I can always google Joel and Lisa Steinberg. That's why reading Dave Itzkoff's morbidly unflinching grievances against his father ("Cocaine's Kid", New York Magazine 8/1/2005) is not merely for my uneasy voyeuristic pleasure, but because nobody else is this good and peculiarly honest when writing about themselves.

What at first glance appears to be a self-serving "tell-all" not worthy of the writer's skills is in fact a crime story replete with a murdered childhood, a zealous cop (adult Dave) whose efforts at justice have so far been thwarted, and a detective (author Dave) who is just unable to close the file and walk away.

To his credit, Mr. Itzkoff does not rig his writing to keep us from wondering what kind of person writes such material without changing the names, and he concedes his narcissism possibly as a caveat to the reader that all may not be what it seems. He does not waste his words, so when they don't resonate with the others they are potential clues, evidence out of place at a crime scene. Contemplating a name change and unlisted number in response to a bad therapy session whimpers next to the sound and velocity of his father's totaling the car after the same session due to one self-destructive behavior or another.

While the son is unwilling to see past his own experiences, it wasn't always so. Relating what seemed to be his last moment of unspoiled childhood, the boy asks his mother why his father did drugs. The writer's weak treatment of her response deserved exclusion of the Q&A from the article, but he suspects some truth to be found there. "If I knew that, maybe I'd be on drugs myself." Now at an age of responsibility, the son does not have the stones to ask the question again.

Mr. Itzkoff ends the article without resolution, more desperate about his father's mortality when his father seems happier than at any time in Dave's lifetime. He should re-check the witness list for new information before the case gets suddenly and permanently cold.