kloiterra

verified.
well, that didn't take too long.

we met tony back in '93 or '94 while working at Holiday Inn. we were all still in high school but he was a few years younger than us.
a typical small town party kid, we took him in and he started hanging out with us.
he had a drum set but had never taken lessons, much like rob and i with our guitars.
he could keep a beat, so we invited him to jam with us and before too long, our band Hawkline Daughters was formed. i was at the party in Spring Hill, KS the night that he got Nicole pregnant. they were living together in Kansas City when we recorded our 4-song demo in 2001. we took him to mardi gras with us that year. when he and nicole split up, he started dating an older woman, Melissa. he moved in with her and we used her house to practice. reaping the benefit of her alleged connections in the recording/music industry is what fueled our band to work at a frantic pace and when nothing panned out was one of the major causes of its eventual disintegration. another cause was Tony's increasing flakiness. we dubbed him 'the latin lover', but eventually called him the 'manic 'Spanic.' Melissa moved to Washington state after the band broke up in 2003 and after a short time at a friend's house i'm not really sure where Tony went--he was just around less and we suspected that what he was experiencing wasn't the slightly comical result of too many drugs, but the onset of schizophrenia. we found out that he'd moved to Lawrence but rarely heard from him.
one day, out of the blue he showed up at my old place in Olathe in a rage. his shirt was torn and a little bloody and his hair was dirty. he'd been in a fight at work and was so upset that he was almost scary. it seemed he was growing increasingly delusional. he'd been talking about taking classes at KU, about becoming some sort of holistic doctor. he told the trees and creatures how beautiful they were while the rest of us shot knowing, skeptical glances at one another. he showed up at my old place once more after that and it seemed like he knew that he knew me and that i represented friendship but he had no idea of the details beyond that. he seemed totally lost and during his verging-on-uncomfortably long goodbye hug i wondered how he could possibly function in society. that was over two years ago and it was the last time i saw him.
the thought of Tony, the concern for his well-being crossed my mind every so often amidst rumors that he was living in a homeless shelter. even Nicole didn't know his living situation until he took his daughter to stay with him at the homeless shelter during one of his visitation periods. from what i understand, that was the last time he was allowed to see his daughter. Gordo reported a Tony sighting in Lawrence about two months ago but he didn't speak to him. apparently Tony had lost a lot of weight.
having no contact information or means of communication, i really have no idea what the last couple of years were really like for him. supposedly, he'd been seeing a psychiatrist who put him on antidepressants. the stories of people having the ironic side-effect of suicidal thoughts and urges came flooding into my mind as i listened to the story of how he apparently cashed in everything he had, bought a gun, went out to Perry Lake, where his successful little brother had a boat, and shot himself. "blew his head off," as robbie reported.
it's a fucking shame. believable, predictable, but unexpected.
i assumed he'd end up in some sort of state care situation. pondering the mortality of my family of friends, he wasn't the one that i considered most likely to kill himself.
after constantly searching since i heard about it on sunday, i found on the University of Kansas news that his body was found on Saturday the 27th. i believe he was 8 days from turning 30.