Jewels, Masks, and Friendship: A Tribute to Tony Longeretta

Never thought I would refer to Tony in the past tense. I don’t know how our friendship exactly began, but I know now how it ends.

A treasured friend for 46 years, neither of us quite remember(ed) how we first met. We didn’t go to the same elementary school, nor were we in the same homeroom in high school, but we started hanging out around sophomore year. One of my earliest memories was going to a Journey concert together at the Utica Memorial Auditorium on March 21, 1978. “Some’ll win, some will lose, some are born to sing the blues, but the music never ends, it goes on and on and on…”

Tony and I were tight the last two years of school, talking daily, watching late night TV together over the summers, he on one end of the phone and I on the other--re-runs of the Odd Couple or Honeymooners, and of course, Johnny Carson. He would occasionally say to me over the years, “I can still hear your mom’s voice after picking up the phone: ‘Neeeta! Tony’s on the phone for you.’”

We would hang out frequently, each other’s partner in crime. When I was the high school yearbook editor, I went to the advisor, Mr. Villelo, confiding in him that I wanted to include a photo of a classmate rolling a joint. I was about to learn my first important journalistic lesson. Are you willing to protect your source, even when the heat gets hot? I thought about it and said Yes. I suspect the school board took the matter up with Mr. Villelo, but being the good advisor that he was, no one ever questioned me about it. The guy holding the joint was none other than Tony. The year was 1980.

Among other things, Tony was a good gossip. He knew everything about everybody, so much so that my nickname for him was Tona, a variation of the Hollywood gossip Rona Barrett. Never thought in a million years that Rona, age 86, would outlive her protégé, Tony Longeretta, taken from us much too soon at age 60.

Though Tony and I both were accepted at Ithaca College, I decided to go, and he didn’t. Instead, he went off to Texas and then San Diego. In the meantime, his family moved to Los Angeles where his father continued to practice law and his little brother graduated from high school. His two older sisters were in California, so when Tony graduated from San Diego, he stayed out there too. He and I always kept in touch and grew even closer over time and maturity.

I knew Tony was gay when we were in high school. He was infatuated with a guy that ironically another gay friend was involved with. A fun-loving personality, Tony was the flame to which so many others were drawn. One of four siblings, the family home was a raucous revolving door of friends.  

A social butterfly, he had an admirable tolerance for so many people, so many kinds of people that he had kept in touch with through the ease of Facebook. Even now, in the infant stage of his recent death, I am amazed at how many people he kept up with over time and distance and political ideologies. It was an honor to be one of his besties; no doubt there were others, as it should be. Different friends for different reasons. To everything there is a season.

I’m trying to remember everything so that I don’t forget because there were only sixty Decembers and not a single more. Fortunately, I have the benefit of pages and pages of texts exchanged over Messenger and whatever Verizon has preserved for me on my phone. I have evidence of visits over the years: our 10th high school reunion, a visit to see me in Massachusetts (I was married by then), and several visits for me out to California for either business or pleasure. I never missed a chance to see him when in Southern California. As he did with other visiting friends, he showed me where he lived and indulged me with all the touristy hangouts. When my sister and I went out to San Diego in 1997 to celebrate her completion of breast cancer treatment, he had us scaling down a cliff via rope to a jewel of a nudist beach, Black’s Beach. As soon as we got down to the beach, Tony stripped down to his skivvies and ran into the cold Pacific. He was the best kind of “girlfriend” and loved to go shopping with me. When I take out a piece of jewelry that I bought with him, I remember that we picked that out in Laguna Beach or in Beverly Hills, and I still have the dresses, even though I can’t fit in them now.

Tony was the quickest, wittiest man I have ever met. He made me laugh much and often, poking fun of everything and everyone. There wasn’t a week that went by when we weren’t in touch via text or phone call. I still laugh when I read those texts, and the stories! So many stories.

One time we went out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner in LA. We decided to split an app and have a light dinner because it was already very late. When the app arrived at the table, we burst out laughing because here we were two Italians who didn’t realize when ordering raviolo that it would turn out to be one single ravioli. Tony howled hysterically: “Twelve dollars for one ravioli that we have to split? Hope you’re not very hungry!” I can almost hear his high-pitched animated commentary right now. I won’t ever forget it. Or his sarcastic “You think?!”

Since we were in regular contact, often many times throughout the week, he’d find ways to make me laugh, asking me if I remembered this one or that one from high school. He’d have the memory of an elephant, but I’d often reply that the name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place the face. He’d send me to the yearbook to jog my memory. Though he hadn’t lived in Utica since leaving for college, he kept up with current goings on in our hometown. One time he alerted me that the New Hartford Shopping Center parking lot was finally getting repaved. When I asked how or why he would know such a mundane detail, he quipped that he was watching the city’s web cam of the parking lot. A car was going by… He was a comedian in disguise.

When he asked me what I got for Christmas one year, I told him I got some new PJ’s, he embellished the story by making them flammable, so every year thereafter he would ask me if I got any new flammable pajamas for Christmas. Funnier yet, he loved when I got body wash in my stocking, something about giving someone soap and the unspoken message it sends to the recipient about needing to bathe. He never missed an opportunity to remind me of things that made me laugh over and over again.

For such a funny, sweet, and warm human being, I knew all too well that Tony used his sense of humor to mask his pain, wielding it as a shield and a sword. It was hard being a gay man, it was hard being himself with most people; he kept his good friends close and his good friends were very few. There was profound loneliness and there were secrets. There were deep losses he was reluctant to talk about. I’m not quite sure who his true cheerleading team was. I surmise that each one of us got bits and pieces and probably no one got the whole. It was his defense mechanism. Tony was close to his sister Hope; they even looked alike and sounded alike and had similar personalities. She battled breast cancer and survived it, but was hospitalized with a horrendous flu, ultimately suffering a stroke and dying at an age younger than Tony. Tony’s parents died in 2002 and 2011, if I remember correctly, and coinciding with his mother’s death in 2011, Tony suffered the double whammy loss of his dear friend Tim, and that destroyed him. They met down in San Diego. He kept up with their mutual friend, Dan, but when Tony moved up to LA, they didn’t see each other as often and I know Tony missed him.

I repeatedly heard one man’s name come up, an unrequited love. Tony certainly had his share of relationships, but I think he would have relished being coupled more “permanently” or perhaps more securely to this man even though he admittedly required his independence. “I haven’t seen him in three years, should I call him?” We would play out in scenarios the upsides and downsides of vulnerability.

We both knew that love was fleeting. He helped me tremendously when I was going through divorce after a long marriage. I was coming up on the first anniversary after filing for divorce. Tony had a place in Palm Springs and graciously offered for me to come out to the desert to ride it out. I wrote about the transformative experience on Facebook:

Sometimes we go underground

No sign of light or sound

Until we hear the voice of a special friend

Who reaches down and lends a hand

"Don’t hide your face or your heart,

Come to the desert to bloom once again.”

… We laughed, we cried, we partied, we stayed up late watching reruns and talking way into the night. We soaked up the hot desert sun, swam under the desert stars, hiked through beautiful mountains, melted in Joshua Tree. (I think we both flirted with the same waiter too, as I recall!) We've come a long, long way from Utica, NY, but absolutely nothing has changed about our friendship. Thank you, thank you, thank you, my dear, sweet, wonderful friend.

It was during that trip he showed me the back entrance to a hotel he liked, one where he enjoyed ogling chiseled bodies. Next thing I knew, we were spending the afternoon impostering at the hotel pool, pretending we belonged.

Tony made me feel loved and treasured and beautiful. A gifted photographer (and painter), he dressed me up in glamorous dresses (long story) and photographed me and then unveiled the photos to me one by one over time. I returned home with my two favorite dresses. He might have saved my life during that visit. He made me forget temporarily about the hell I was in, preoccupying me and instilling in me the notion that I was still a whole person absent my other half. 

It was during that visit we went to see the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I had already seen it twice, but I wanted badly to see it with him. We loved the same kind of films and music, trading recommendations of things we knew the other would like. On the way into seeing this film, Tony slipped off the sidewalk, twisting his ankle. He said he wanted to tough it out and see the movie anyway. Luckily there was a CVS nearby, so I ran in to get an ice pack and the theater staff was nice enough to fill the bag with ice for him. There were few people in the theater, so Tony was able to drape his leg over the seat in front of him and we fashioned the ice pack around his ankle to keep the swelling down. I knew he would love the movie, a film about endings and beginnings and tying up loose ends. One of the characters, Graham, a gay man, wanted to reconnect with an old, Indian lover, Manoj. After the reunion, Graham died, from a heart condition he knew he had, and this had been the chance for him to reconnect with someone so instrumental to his earlier life before he died. So poetically filmed, Tony and I wept like babies watching the funeral pyre scene. I can still see Manoj slowly walking into the water, surrendering the ashes along with his grief, the ripple effects of love transcending time. “Is it our friend we are grieving for, whose life we knew so little? Or is it our own loss that we are mourning? Have we travelled far enough that we can allow our tears to fall?” That poignant movie will always remain a favorite, perhaps even more so now.

Later that year Tony was turning 50 and invited me out for the party at his brother’s house. I got to meet his good friends Dan and Mandie and a grand time was had by all, laughing and partying and singing karaoke into the wee hours of the morning. He dropped me off at the hotel, which I don’t remember. All I remember is that someone in the hotel pulled the fire alarm around 4:00 am and when I was awakened by the obnoxious alarm, I was face down on the bed still in my dress and heels and jewels. I hobbled down the stairs and out into the parking lot where most people were dressed in night clothes and there I was still decked out after a tremendous night celebrating Tony.

Happy Birthday. Love you lots. Thank you for 34+ years of making me laugh, being a good listener, calling it as you see it, encouragement, giving great hugs, and being the best personal shopper a girl could ever have ("I'm medicating!!"). Hope you have a special day and surround yourself with only the best people who deserve to have you in their presence. That goes for the rest of your life too, by the way.

Just like the I Love Lucy episode “Lucy Visits Grauman’s” Episode # 128 that aired October 3, 1955, in which Lucy gets an autographed grapefruit signed by Richard Widmark, Tony signed a grapefruit for me! I came home with the grapefruit, reluctantly tossing it when it rotted.

Soon after that Tony welcomed Oliver, aka Ollie, into his life. Oliver is the sweetest Teddy Bear of a dog, and Tony was completely devoted to him. So chill is that dog that Tony was able to get a pet duck named Wendell, and Ollie would let the duck waddle up to and over his paws, gently nudging the duck, not only figuring out how to peacefully co-exist but to play and cuddle together. Tony also raised chickens in his back yard and kidded that Oliver was his fifth chicken because he was often scared of big blow-up lawn ornaments, etc., a real-life Scooby Doo. I can’t imagine what Ollie is thinking now. I didn’t foresee Ollie outlasting Tony, just like Rona Barrett. I wish so many things now, including asking Tony whether he would like me to care for Oliver should something ever happen to him. I didn’t know that death was careening toward Tony at the speed of sound. I know Ollie had two ACL surgeries that Tony nursed him through, and we would have to figure out life together, but I would do that for Tony if that’s what he would have wanted. Oliver might like the cooler climate of Colorado with his big, beautiful shepherd coat and I would love him up as Tony would for the rest of his remaining days. Or perhaps the best thing for Ollie is to stay in California with familiar faces. Who are we to know what is exactly right for a dog missing his one and only human?

Tony’s two youngest nephews, Enzo and Sebastian, were the light of his life. He’d send me cute videos of the boys, “No one should ever trust me to babysit!” and the video would reveal the boys horsing around wildly with unbridled joy in Uncle Tony’s living room. No doubt he was the most fun uncle two little boys could ever have. Adults have a hard enough time understanding loss, and for children it is even worse. It is then they start questioning the security around them and wonder how vulnerable they are to perhaps another loss.

Back to a happier story.

On one of my trips to California, I met up with Tony and he wanted to take me to his favorite gay club hangout, Oil Can Harry’s. As soon as we walked in the door, he melted into the crowd line-dancing to a country song. It made me so happy to see him free and having fun, and there another layer of the onion was peeled back: Tony liked country music. Or maybe it was that country music picked up where the Electric Slide and the Macarena left off? I appreciated sharing that with him and for the great fortune of us being able to pick up after we left off time and time again over the course of 46 years.

In 2016 Tony revealed that he was having gastrointestinal problems requiring some surgery to remove several polyps. It turns out he needed to have about six inches of his colon removed because it had fused to his pelvis. I would say from that point forward he seemed delicate, often having appetite problems or problems with normal digestion. He always had trouble keeping weight on his petite frame, topping in at best 140 pounds. Now I worried that he would drop below that. He told me he had bloodwork done every six months, never offering any more than that.

Earlier this year, in March, he complained about tinnitus in one of his ears and the inability to get to the bottom of what was causing it. He was scheduled for an MRI on March 4, and when I asked him how it turned out, he told me he couldn’t go through with it and begged to be removed from the machine. The banging noise on top of the ringing ear was too much and he had a panic attack. I suggested he ask his doctor for an anti-anxiety aid to get through another one, to keep his eyes closed, and to focus on meditative breathing, but we didn’t talk about it again.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving when I sent him a text to wish him a happy holiday, I was surprised to hear that he was in the hospital. I called him to learn that he had driven himself to the ER two nights earlier complaining of pain. A CT-scan revealed a mass in his abdomen and a mass by his heart; apparently his lungs were clear, but he was having difficulty breathing. He revealed that he’d walk six steps and be so completely out of breath. Worse, he was in unbearable pain in his neck and shoulder, and he didn’t know why. He was scheduled to have a biopsy done on Friday, and the hospital wanted to release him after the biopsy was done. He begged to stay another day, threatening to come right back to the ER because he didn’t think he could make it at home. On Saturday his brother would be home from his trip to Oregon. Tony had been dog sitting for Luna and now that he was in the hospital, his neighbors Dede and David stepped up to watch both dogs while Tony was incapacitated. He was in bad shape on Saturday but at home. He said the only thing that gave him comfort was a heating pad applied to his neck, but it had broken. He remembered that he still had the ice pack, which doubled as a hot water bottle, and he attempted to get some relief with that coupled with his pain prescriptions. He offered that he had a telehealth appointment with a doctor on Monday to go over biopsy results.

I ordered him a special heating pad made for neck and shoulders that would arrive on Monday. He never got to use it because it all went so horribly south from there.

On Monday he called me to tell me that the biopsy showed malignant neoplasm, confirming the lymphoma diagnosis by the doctor at the hospital. He told me he was scared and wanted to live. He was in unbearable pain. Kaiser offered an oncology appointment on January 4 and Tony was incredulous that he couldn’t wait until then. He had a social worker acquaintance at Kaiser who would work on getting him in sooner. Still his humor managed to poke through, breaking into an Hispanic accent: “Are you taking thees medication and thees one too?” If he was still cracking jokes, surely, he would be alright. He had to be. It turns out that was my last conversation with my friend.

We never ended any conversation without uttering those all-important three little words and this conversation was no different.

I texted him on Tuesday, no response; Wednesday, no response; Thursday, no response. By this time, I was frantic with worry. I didn’t even know what hospital he had been in, even though I had asked him. Over the weekend when he was home, he told me he appreciated my concern, but he couldn’t deal with so many questions from so many people, so I didn’t press him for anything other than what he offered. I remembered that I was friends with his two remaining siblings, Jim and Lauren, on Facebook. I lobbed messages over the net and finally got a response on Friday. I didn’t know it, but they had been busy watching Tony slide into oblivion. Jim told me that Tony was in ICU, heavily sedated and on a ventilator, fighting for his life with aggressive lymphoma. I was up all night, talking to Tony, crying, in disbelief that he was curled up in a fetal position on the doorstep of death. At 4:29 am I texted him:

I love you, my friend. Don’t go anywhere. We’re all pulling for you. Please, please, please. Fight with all your might.

When I got word from Jim about Tony’s predicament, I reached out to a few close high school friends not knowing how much, if anything, they knew. I certainly didn’t want them to read about it on Facebook.

No more news all weekend, until Monday morning when his sister texted simply: “Tony is gone.”

Wait, did I read that right?

Tony is gone.

My friend, our friend disappeared, vaporized into thin air. His heart and his humor stopped beating. How could this be?

The pain of it was swift and sharp, like someone had ripped me wide open, taken an axe and chipped off a piece of my own heart.

Again, how could this be?

I had so many questions. I will always have questions.

He had just turned 60 in October. The photos show a beautiful, happy Tony, surrounded by a few close friends and family who were celebrating him. He was beaming.

Would the MRI, had he completed it, given him a heads up that something was woefully wrong and needing treatment right away? Or did he know and not let on to any of us or to me? He was not good at good-byes, and neither am I. Few of us are.

Words are inadequate now. I can’t imagine the rest of my life without him. Selfish thoughts, really. I always tell other people who are grieving that the depth of our grief is in equal measure to the depth of our love, and how fortunate are we to have a love so big, so bold, and so beautiful. Of course, I am grateful, even despite the horrific pain of loss that I am feeling right now. Others are feeling it too.

I have some of his paintings and photographs to remember him by. I will never hear a Stevie Nicks song without thinking of him. We belted out every word to her Bella Donna and Wild Heart albums while driving in the car. “You have such a pretty voice, Anita, especially when you are out of your head voice and using your chest voice. Put your diaphragm into it.” I’ve been singing ever since, buoyed by his advice to give my voice the same power we gave our friendship and mutual love for each other. I have jewelry and dresses and texts and paintings and photos that remind me that he and I walked the same earth at the same time under the same moon and the same sun though we were a thousand miles apart on most days.

I know this much: Tony Longeretta will never be far from my heart or thoughts.

I shall indeed love you for the rest of my days, my friend.

“Well, I miss you now

I have so many questions

About love and about pain

And strained relationships

About [pain]

As only he could explain it to me…”

--Stevie Nicks