My friend who was "too intense for reality..."

He died in 1999 but I think of him often

I’ve found that, as I age, I think more and more of the friends who didn’t make it this far. As Mark Twain said, “growing old is a privilege denied to many.” Ain’t that the truth.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my close friend Tom who died in 1999. He’s a ghost in my life, someone who was once very real but, now, I live off our memories.

Tom with my daughter, shortly after she was born in 1986

Tom was an intense guy, friendly but intense. When we chose our work email addresses at The Daily News, he asked for TNT. Someone once told Tom that he was “too intense for reality”; he loved that and often used it to describe himself. No surprise then that he worshipped The Who and The Rolling Stones. It was because of Tom that I saw both bands at their height and one summer, Tom and I attended Who concerts on both coasts.

But of course it wasn’t only that. Tom went out of his way to bring me into his circle of friends as they caroused on Long Island where he was raised. We began to travel together—Montreal, London, California, a cruise. We were often on the move at a time in my life when I needed distraction, that period of young adulthood right after college when some of us didn’t know what we were doing.

I don’t think Tom knew what he was doing either but he was constant movement. And full of ideas and passions.

Tom moved to Long Island City in the late ‘70s when only a few hearty residents lived there. One day, he just looked on a map, figured it was a quick commute into Manhattan (one subway stop), and rented an apartment. And because his passions often turned to obsessions (in a good way), he had a photography dark room in his extra bedroom because he loved photography. In those days before digital, photography was a commitment and Tom was committed.

Me in Montreal shot by Tom. We were fooling around. I never smoked although I did wear that tie and those shoes!!

His interests often became my interests. We bought twin Mazda 626s on the same day from the same car lot. When we traveled to London, he took me to his favorite restaurant—Simpsons on the Strand; to his favorite play, a bawdy British comedy I can’t recall the name of; and to meet his muse, a teenaged British girl he took tons of photos of. He loved her punk look. I have no idea what she was thought of these two bald guys from America but there was a look of bemusement on her face, always.

Tom had many sides. Somewhere along the line, he discovered the philosopher Thomas Merton, and then author and public speaker Leo Buscaglia, who was known as “Dr. Love.” A road trip with Tom wasn’t complete if we didn’t listen to hours of Leo expounding about love and life. It could have been worse. I never embraced Leo the way Tom did but he made a lot of of good points.

Tom also had a thing for Betty Buckley. I was with him the first time he saw her off-Broadway hit, “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road.” Back then, Betty would linger on stage and take questions from the audience. Tom loved it and her so much he went back at least a dozen times. He eventually was able to interview Buckley for a Daily News story but it was proof you should never meet your heroes. She was cool to Tom’s charms and not the character from the play.

Eventually, I got married and began having children and didn’t see Tom as much. Then Tom got married and moved to Arizona, seeking a life that wasn’t quite so intense. I guess by then he was slowing down. He and his wife did not have children but they did have five cats. I visited them out there and he was the same as ever, playing basketball, eating healthy, loving life.

We drifted apart a little as life separated us, but we were always in touch and wrote each other long emails.

And then, one day a friend called, telling me Tom had had a heart attack. I said I’d call him or his wife immediately. “Hey,” my friend said, “Tom didn’t make it. He’s gone.”

I was stunned. I knew what losing a family member was like because my father had died unexpectedly of a heart attack a few years before. But I didn’t know what losing a close friend was like, not back then.

Tom’s death really threw me. I could not believe it. He was 46 years old and I’m sad to this day is that he did not live to see the new millennium. He was looking forward to that, partly because he worked on the digital side and wanted to outsmart Y2K. If anyone could do it, Tom could.

The nicest tribute I heard about Tom after his death came from one of his managers at the Arizona Republic who said: “I’ll always think of him as one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

I don’t know why Tom popped into my head today except that he’s often in my thoughts. And when I think of him, I think of all these things but mostly how we stood back to back or face to face at parties, imitating Mick and Keith and shouting the lyrics to “Shattered” and “Start Me Up.” We were our very own Glimmer Twins.