I met Dom Deluise on a day that the only reason not to kill myself was that it would mean the people making feel that way would "win".

My stripper had just dumped me because she was in love with our roommate, my best friend. As I pieced the puzzle together I realized that practically all of my close friends at the time would have know what was going on behind my back and had not told me anything. But if I had really wanted to kill myself I would not have been dropping my car off to get the brakes fixed before I went to the only place that made sense to me at the time... Death Valley.

As I meandered away from the repair shop not really wanting to go back to the townhouse where my friendship was clearly not reciprocated, a car pulled up and I heard Could You Tell Me How To Get To Such & Such Street? I'd delivered pizza in this corner of Studio City for several years while I was an "actor". So I quickly told him exactly how to get there and continued shuffling my feet down the sidewalk. He said No Wait Please I Have A Really Important Meeting and I'm Really Bad With Finding Places These Days. So I told him again. He said Do You Have Any Place You Need To Be? Could You Go With Me And Make Sure I Get There? I had no place I wanted to be; so I opened the door of his white Lincoln Town Car; leaned in close and said "You're not going to try to Fuck Me are you? OH No, No; Really I just Need Some Help. I Can Drop You Off Wherever You Need To Be After My Meeting.
I got in.

I guided him to his meeting and waited for him in the Town Car for about a half hour... mulling over my miserable existence. When he came back he was pretty somber. He'd gone to an audition. We began telling each other our troubles. Him a faded star now forced to audition for bit parts in B movies and me the failed actor/pizza boy who just found out that most of his friends weren't friends.

We decide to go for lunch. He took me to a great little Italian place and we continue our commiserating over linguine & clam sauce. At one point he looked real sad and said softly You Don't Know Who I Am, Do You? I laughed and told him how much his career had meant to me. That I thought he was fuckin' genius and that for the first time since coming to Hollywood, I just wasn't in a place to give a shit about meeting a star. He smiled and we carried on talking about life.

Afterward we got a car wash and went shopping for an apricot tree for his backyard. It was weird walking around with him. Watching people react as the severely obese (to the point of disability) former star crossed their path was equally as sad as my situation.

We spent about 5 hours hanging out together and then he dropped me off at the repair shop; they had called and said the car was ready. As I got out of his car, I told him that I was in the middle of writing a screen play (I was) and that there just happened to be a perfect role for him in it. It was the first time that I had spoke much about "the business". The role, I said "was a mafia Godfather forced to serve community service time as a Santa Claus in the mall" and that I hoped he would read it when I was done. He laughed hard and said he would, but that nobody would care if he signed on for the part.. that it would mean nothing to the financiers we would need.

Months later I sent the screen play to him and he loved it, wanted to do it... said "Call Me When You Got The Money And I'm In". That never happened and I never heard from him again.

The following day I drove to Death Valley and survived on raw food and granola for two weeks. I taunted Death by walking the dunes (2 miles across, 4 miles per hike) at high noon, in July, naked, on acid. I often thought I would die there but realized I had important things do; yet had no idea what they were until 911.

I'm sure Dom's spirit is very lite on it's feet. He was truly the sad clown when I met him and so was I. We bonded that day, in the way that strangers do in bars. His death last week has reinforced my desire to live for today and flip the bird at death. To not be controlled by that fear because it won't make any difference in the end. Nobody get's out alive.