For many people, this time of year kicks off a certain kind of joy. It’s the exciting and festive start of the holiday season, with at least one major celebration a month from now until the end of the year. The air is thick with anticipation.
But for me, October brings something a little darker now – a little more Woody Allen in attitude.
It's a reminder the year is running out of time. The days get shorter, the night comes earlier, the chill lasts longer. Also, every October is one more year my lifelong friend Mark Geldman has been gone.
Mark died of cancer in October 2007, but not before living a wild, full and adventurous life. Not only was he one of my very best friends, he was also an artist, a poet, a writer, an activist, an entrepreneur and a ladies man. He was married four times. Some people just never learn.
In high school, there were three of us: me, Mark and Sandy Frey. We were inseparable and unstoppable. Together, we stole our parents cars before we could legally drive (note to my kids: don’t even think it). We organized a political demonstration that shut down our junior high school for a few days. At the time, Mark was a member of the Young Socialist Alliance, and his parents belonged to the Socialist Workers Party. If I heard one lecture about Eugene Debs I heard a hundred. (As a side note, years later when I asked Mark if he was still a socialist, he told me he worked in Hollywood, where everyone including him was a devout capitalist).
Anyway, like friendships that have been so close for so long sometimes do, we went our different ways after high school.
About 14 years ago, I was reading the Calendar section of the L.A. Times. It was some article about Mickey Rourke and how impossible he was being (I know, I was as shocked as you are) with a project he was involved in. The article listed the screenwriter as Mark Geldman. I hadn’t seen or heard Mark’s name in a very long time, and wondered whether it was the same one. So I called 411, asked for his number, and got it. Then I called him.
I think our first conversation was two hours – two wonderful hours catching up on the years that’d gone by.
I wound up reconnecting for a short time with Mark. My wife and I had dinner at his house. We met his wife and kids. They came to our house. It was a great time. The thing about knowing someone so long and well is they can fill in the blanks for you. Among other things, Mark reminded me of a dinner we'd had years earlier at an Indian restaurant in New York called Nirvana (I didn't even remember being in New York). And of the Tribeca apartment he could've signed a 20-year lease on for $300 a month.
It’s easy for me to recall the last time I saw Mark because I have a good milestone to remember it. It was the night before my daughter was born. Together with our wives, we had dinner at L’Opera in downtown Long Beach. It was a drizzly Sunday night, and we were sitting by the large windows looking out at the Metro Blue Line as it came and went. It was all very east coast, and it felt right.
And then he was gone. I never spoke to him again.
Fast forward to the end of September, beginning of October 2007. I got a call from Mark’s high school girlfriend and fourth wife, Jodi. When I answered, in tears she said, “We lost Mark.” When I told my wife Mark had died, the first words out of her mouth were, “You have to tell Sandy.”
I couldn’t even remember the last time I talked to Sandy, so I took to the interwebs and Googled him. Turns out Sandy was a partner in a prestigious law firm in downtown L.A. Come to find out in what I now refer to as the lost years, he done good.
I emailed him about Mark passing away, and I now know when he got the email he was in a client meeting and had to step outside because of the tears in his eyes.
When Jodi let me know the date of the memorial service, Sandy and I got together beforehand for a reunion of our own. Even though Mark wasn’t there, he couldn’t have been more present. As Mark and I had done, Sandy and I spent the time we had before the service filling in the blanks for each other, rekindling both memories and a friendship that had never really been gone, just dormant.
At the service, although we didn’t speak, we were spoken about. People talked about Mark’s friends Sandy and Jeff because they’d heard about us from Mark.
While a lot of that day is a blur, the thing I remember most is after the service and get together at his cousins house, Sandy and I were walking to our cars with Ron Yanover, Mark’s writing partner. He told us how often Mark had spoken of us over the years. Then, he stopped for a minute and said, “We had the best of him.”
What brought all this on is now, every year since Mark's service, Sandy and I get together around October 8th, Mark’s birthday, to have dinner at Blair’s in Silverlake and raise a glass to Mark. Then we have dessert at Pazzo Gelato, the shop Mark opened with his neice and nephew.
I think it’s strange yet comforting Mark managed to bring Sandy and I back together. The three of us were always, and I mean always, together. When Sandy and I are together, it feels like we still are. We both have a fierce determination never to let the years slip away again. At least we know we’ll always see each other one night a year.
Next Wednesday night, you’ll find Sandy and me at Blair’s, talking about ourselves, our work, our lives and Mark.
And remembering we had the best of him.
