The Twin Titans Together

 The Twin Titans Together


“Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.”- Shakespeare

     It is a lucky man to have a best friend in this life. I have to say I was twice blessed as I had two best friends who stood by me literally until their last breaths. While I hate to think about going forward without Timo and Greg I don't have much choice except to just continue to remember those times we shared without a thought toward damn mortality. There was a time when Greg and Timo spent lots of time with me together and that was in the years at Club Virginia when best friend Timo gave me a roof and comfort in the bottom scraping years from 1976 to 1980. Greg had graduated from college and was out in the world putting down stakes at Saturn street and making desert stops. Club Virginia was a true bachelor pad without much house cleaning but with plenty of smoke, wine, TV, music and laughter. It was during one of the great women droughts for me but Greg had some nice adventures to balance out his simple social life. Yet, for most of us hanging out together at the Club we found a safe escape from the hard world outside. Although I loved both of these guys Timo could be moody and uncommunicative at times. Once in a while he would get irritated with the carefree behavior of old Gate dudes who came to Virginia street including Tom Barney, Big E, Knowltons, Ed Carroll, Billy Hogan and some girls with spotty reputations (see half Cuban, half Puerto Rican chick who guffawed when I played Paul Robeson singing Deep River). I brought a stereo system to Club Virginia and was a music tyrant most of the time, insisting on trying out odd stuff on a captive audience. However, when Greg was moving he brought a stack of LPs to play on a visit. No problem since we liked a lot of the same stuff, maybe not as often as Greg liked to hear it. So, for months the stack of Greg's records sat in the front room leaning against the slippery leather couch next to the bathroom door. It became a bone of contention with Timo and every time Greg showed up he would admonish him "uh Greg, why don't you take those records home with you" repeatedly but then everyone would get drunk-stoned and the records stayed. Timo increased his ire which was ironic since the bathroom was a nightmare, there was no vacuum and the kitchen had not been cleaned in literally years. The records stayed for a long time and after Timo left to get married, Greg took them back home. Even in the past five years, Greg used to say to me  "take those records with you" just to get a laugh which he did.


                                     at Club Virginia... record stack 1 foot away

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