I met Teo going up a rickety elevator in an office building on Hollywood Boulevard. We were the only two in the small space, which traveled only one floor. I couldn't help but comment on the hospital bracelet he was wearing. "What happened?" I asked, pointing to his wrist. "Just out of the hospital... drug overdose," was his surprisingly honest answer. As my eyes widened and then narrowed on this enigma of a man, a decade-long friendship and lifetime of cherished memories began.

Nothing seemed to make sense about Teo. He claimed to be a writer, and certainly appeared well cast as a down-on-his-luck artist-type sleeping, practically homeless on the floor of his friend’s movie production office. But something set him apart from the cast of misfits in the small building on Hollywood Boulevard, across from Hollywood’s oldest and famous Musso and Frank Grill. Was it his Armani jackets? Or maybe his faint British accent? Mostly, it was his intellect and charm that exposed a rich inner world of experiences he could access freely and share generously. I didn’t need to explain what I was doing in this same, strange, slightly-seedy building. I didn’t need to justify that I was trying my own hand at writing and “Hollywood,” hiding from a law career that I felt had charred me to a crisp in two short years, at the age of 26. Teo understood.

I have to admit that there was more than a little fate that brought us together. There are some people that you simply cannot avoid knowing in life, no matter what, and Teo was a part of that circle of friends. When he learned I lived in Clark Gable’s old house in the Hollywood Hills, he immediately knew where it was and told me that he had lived next door, in Pola Negri’s (think silent screen goddess) old house, while he was having an affair with Gail Getty, who unknown to me, was my next door neighbor. He told me that they had met while in film school at nearby AFI, and that he had, through Gail, become best friends with her son, J. Paul Getty III (Paul) who also lived on my street, across from Gail, diagonal from where I rented the guest house, (first floor of Clark Gable’s old house). He told me that he and Paul had been friends for 26 years (it was 1991) and that he simply had to introduce me. Some months later, we went out to dinner with Paul, me, Teo and Paul’s nurses and when I told Paul that I had worked in law school for someone who knew his family and asked if he knew Justice William Newsom (yes, Gavin’s father), Paul went crazy howling and after many whispered discussions amidst the nurses, revealed to me the Justice Newsom was in fact Paul’s godfather. This was strange, because during the summer I clerked for Justice Newsom (while I was in law school), the Judge took me to lunch one day and I got to spend time with him in his chambers, where, with me sitting in front of his desk, he took a phone call and was made trustee of Paul’s trust. This was four years before I met Paul, through Teo! Destiny weaves a brilliant tapestry and Teo was a tool for the head designer, for sure. Paul and I also enjoyed several decades of a wonderful, loving friendship. I thank Teo for that treasure! Both of these indefinable men are in my heart permanently.

Other memories of Teo which I cherish (I would say fond memory, but as you all know Teo, you appreciate why I don’t choose to say it that way…) would have to include the time when he called me to ask that I pick him up from an elderly woman’s home where he had been living in Beverly Hills. I believe that this woman was in her 90’s. He said that he was moving out and wondered if I could help him to pick up his things. I did and went inside of the large mansion to help Teo with his belongings which were stuffed into pillowcases. Once loaded in my car, he asked me to drive to an antique/pawn dealer off Rodeo Drive and told me that his sister had sent him things “to sell,” to help him with expenses. I knew that his parents had been lost in a plane crash and that he and his sister had inherited much, but Teo said that it was all in a trust until he was sober for at least five years. So far, he hadn’t been able to reach the five year mark to receive his trust funds, he said, so his sister would send him things to sell, when he needed cash. It sounded believable to me, but when he handed me a Matisse woodprint “for my trouble,” I started to seriously question the source of his loot!

On another occasion, after I had moved from the Gable property, I was subletting a friend’s studio apartment in Los Feliz. I let Teo stay there when I was not there, but one time came home, to find the door chained and Teo refusing to let me in. He was apparently shooting up and invited me to join him, which increased my fury! I smoked some pot at the time but had never tried heroin and certainly didn’t want to start! I realize now that these “low moments” were Teo’s addiction talking and not the caring, gentle soul who usually occupied his striking form.

It would be easy to be sad for Teo, to worry that he didn’t make the most of his opportunity in the human world. He had been given so much (and had much taken away) that one can’t help but wonder if he didn’t have such heavy addiction-issues, what he might have accomplished. This isn’t generally where my mind wanders when thinking about our friend. What I witnessed, what traces are left with me, reveal a soul in exploration, a god who had fallen to the earth wanting to experience all of the peaks and valleys of the human experiment, to rub shoulders with kings and Goddesses, and to bed down in the streets off the Sunset Strip with the crack whores and flea-ridden dogs. He loved it all. I’m pretty sure he was relishing every moment. It was all part of the wonderful novel he was writing in his head and heart, with his blood, sweat and tears. He was Hamlet and must have answered piercingly for himself, the question: “What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?”

I’m glad to have known you, Teo and to have shared a bit of your story.

Lisa Dawn Sterling