13. Tom Barnes

Lucky #13. Tom Barnes. While I had met Tom once before, it was on Halloween night of 1990 that we were properly introduced. There was a big party at City of Women, Karen Hancock and Vicki Clarke's house in Fremont, and I was dressed as Pebbles with short leopard print skirt and my hair tied up with a bone. The party was pretty wild - I mean, it was Halloween and we were all in our twenties or early thirties, well, except for Tom - and you know, one thing led to another and I fell backwards off of the six foot porch down into a holly bush. I stumbled to my feet and brushed myself off and, covered in bloody scratches, I went down to the basement to find my sister.That is where I formally met Mr. Tom Barnes, a person who would become one of my very best and truest friends through thick and thin to this day and forever. He was completely drunk, loud and libidinous, drinking shots out of a bottle, and he offered me one as I wobbled in, inspecting my wounds. I needed some consolation from my fall and was all to happy to have another shot of whiskey.I don't remember exactly how the friendship went from there, I just probably saw him around all the time with Karen and Vicky. Tom was always the life of the party, or at least the center of attention. He liked to drink, he liked to hit on young women, and he liked to do physical comedy. Come to think of it, those first two things haven't changed. I suppose it if were not for the really bad knee from one particularly dramatic display of physicality, that last one might not have either.Tom always dressed flamboyantly to go out, and I ended up being his hair stylist, cutting and coloring his hair for years, although I had no training or particular skill. We both lived up on the hill and liked to go out drinking and listening to music together. I remember one time in 1992 in my civic, when we were driving up that steep hill that ends up at the Deluxe, and Tom putting a cassette into my cassette player. It was The Gits, Frenching the Bully, and I became obsessed with that first song I heard, It All Dies Anyway, I went out and bought the cassette and we listened to that tape incessantly in my car for months.When I joined 66 Saints, Tom loved to come to our shows. In those days, he could get seriously out of hand. My dad still refers to the time we played a show at Moe's and Tom got up on stage and mooned the audience. Every time I mention Tom's name, to this day, my dad says, "Is he the one that likes to drop his pants?" That was Tom being more or less innocuous. It would be less than a year later when he, in a fit of drunken rage, feeling spurned for not being on the guest list at a show at Rebar, that he went up to the hill and kicked in the window of Linda's tavern, but not before stopping by his house and leaving an obscene rant not only on my voicemail, but also on the out-going message of his own!!!! - cursing me for not being a good friend. (We had never talked about the guest list before that, I swear....) Tom did shit like that then, and sometimes we would go for months without speaking when he had crossed some line that just felt like one - or a hundred - steps too far.But he kept coming back into my life. We shared a core group of friends, but more than that, I always loved Tom. No matter what. Because what else I knew was that, when I was still relatively new to town, Tom was the person who I could call in the middle of the night when I broke up with my boyfriend. Tom was someone who I could talk to about the troubles in 66 Saints, or my insecurities about playing in a band. Tom would always be up for going to a party or checking out a band. He was, and still is, an incredible artist and while sometimes being overbearing with his opinions, especially when he was drinking, he was well read and well informed and always had interesting opinions. But most of all, Tom was (is) one of the tenderest people I know. The depth of Tom's empathy is matched by the depth of his intelligence. I knew then, and know now, that Tom would do anything for me and would love me no matter what. And that's pretty precious.But there's more than that. Much later in our friendship, somewhere in 2005, Tom invited me to the place where he often went "in the mountains" "to make art." I put those things in sort of "air quote" parentheses, because for the longest time I had heard Tom talking about going to the mountains to make art, but I always just assumed that was really code for a bender, so I mostly didn't ask. And when he would tell me things like that he was at a christian community, or that he was the cook, and that he had cooked for and spent a weekend with a young women's silent retreat, it only led to my sense of the absurd and belief that no such place actually existed. It was only when the place where I had run my Samarya teacher trainings was sold and I had to look for a new retreat center that Tom insisted I take him seriously and check out this place where he spent so much time. That place turned out to be theGrunewald Guild, a place that has become so dear to my heart and such an integral part of my life that I can hardly imagine a time when to me it was just a stand in for a weekend binge.It's true that I didn't always listen to Tom, which sometimes was for the better, but just as often, he had very sage advice. Ever since I started Samarya in 2001, I was going to Kinko's to get my schedules and brochures copied. I was always complaining that it was too expensive, or that they didn't come out right, and Tom was always saying, "Why do you use that stupid corporate place when you could be using a local place? The place I use up the street is great, and has great customer service." Tom is a dedicated painter and back then was making these amazing books out of his work, and needed to make high quality copies. He spent half his life in the copy shop. But I was used to using Kinko's, it was familiar to me from making flyers and postcards for my bands and I was stuck in the habit.One early morning in 2005 though, I was walking to yoga class and realized that I was right in front of CK Graphics, the place that Tom was always telling me to go to. I needed schedules copied, so I dropped them off before my practice and picked them up afterward. The guy at the counter was pretty cute, so I told him that I was a friend of Tom's and that Tom was the one that had told me I should come in. The guy just smiled this funny knowing smile and nodded his head. "Yeah, I know Tom. He's good people.""By the way," he said, "My name is Sasha."Tom Barnes, my life would never be what it is today if not for you. Yes, you introduced me to the Gits who turned my musical world around. You introduced me to my husband and to the Grunewald Guild, the place where I have discovered my own soul more than any other, where I focus on teaching and on my spiritual life, the place where, in front of some of my best friends and family, I married Sasha and became Molly Lannon Kenny.But more than anything else, Tom, you taught me that it is always worth seeking and seeing tenderness, even in the unlikeliest of places.That the truest friends, and the truest people, may be the ones who challenge you the most.That people are always a lot more than what they seem.That art is worth orienting your life toward.That expressions of emotion matter - even when they are messy.And that love is always both the goal and the answer.I love you beyond measure and will have your back until the end of time."When you're looking at pain you're looking at truthNothing like pain to make us all the same." ~ Mia Zapata