REMEMBERING THOM-ASS

Portrait of a true coyote

I first met Thomas Pasley when he was cast as the Hunter Thompson character in my play, XXX LOVE ACT, at the Ohio Theater in SoHo, Manhattan, in the early nineties. 

“We’re taking the Hunter Thompson character kind of…another way,” the director told me carefully.   “We’ve more made the role accommodate this particular actor that we cast.  He’s really intense, very gay.”  

I wasn’t sure what to think — the Hunter Thompson character is quite a well established phenomenon, and not remotely gay in mannerism, but I was curious as to why the director thought this was a good idea. 

“I should maybe tell you about his hands,” said the director.  “He has lobster hands.  It’s a birth defect.”  

This just gets better and better, I was thinking.  

Thomas turned out to be a riveting actor of smoldering, Shakespearean proportions.  He was dark haired and skinny but had a deep voice and a vulpine, somewhat vampiric physical way about him.  He transformed “Gunther”  (the Hunter Thompson character) into a serious, somewhat scary gay man with a beard, a gown, and pink satin opera-length gloves custom made for his hands, which consisted of split palms, a long thumb and one large finger, each.  

We ended up becoming fast friends.   He loved to drink and carouse. Once we went to a Susanne Bartsch party/bondage club together — I was wearing a powder blue rubber dress.  Thomas was wearing a pair of mesh running pants through which you could see his junk, if you looked hard enough.  

Suddenly we espied in the crowd a gigantic, beautiful man in a kilt. He was enormous - over 7 feet tall with a chiseled rugby physique and a gorgeous face.  Thomas was overcome.  He ran out in front of the man and started celebrating his beauty with a very spirited and eccentric dance.  The giant in the kilt was charmed, and danced with him. 

One Halloween, Thomas took his shirt off at the bar we were at in the East Village, and I painted Micronesian tattoos on his back in grease-paint.  I was dressed as a Christian snake-handler. 

Thomas gave me an incredible gift one year: a plaster cast of one of his hands, positioned in red velvet in a cardboard box.  I thought this very tender.  I loved his hands, and could only imagine how the gay boys loved his oversize fingers, which were essentially two more dicks, if you wanted to view them that way, and I can only reckon that many did. 

My best friend picked a fight with me right before my wedding, so I had Thomas (who always signed his name Thom-ASS) step in as a last minute bridesmaid at my wedding.  He was wearing a lavender pinstriped suit and a fuzzy little lamb hat (it was compulsory for everyone at my wedding to wear large hats.) 

Later he told me that during the time he attended my wedding, he hooked up with a guy who was really into doing crystal meth,  then having sex in a multiple-angled mirror box.  This was the kind of high-risk behavior Thom-ASS indulged — safely, I presumed, because he was HIV-positive. 

I did a one-man show at Vassar, as a kind of satellite of the New York Stage and Film program there in the summer.  Thom-ASS offered to be my director, and came with me to Poughkeepsie and the Vassar dormitories, which weren’t terrible.  We listened to Indian movie soundtracks we bought on cassette at a nearby corner store. 

Thom-ASS did a fine job of directing my show, but wouldn’t stick around for the actual performance when there was a possibility of Poughkeepsie sex in the offing.   I ended up doing my show for two people: an older couple — high school sweethearts who were reunited after some forty years, and were very much in love. The woman wore pounds of plastic jewelry like a six-year old and was one of the most charming women I’ve ever met. 

While Thom-ASS could be unpredictable and a bit flighty, he could also come through like the kind of magnificent friend that makes you want to write about him, years later. 

Once, on my birthday, he showed up at my party in a long black dress with a winsome young violinist.  He was quite drunk, but he and the musician poured out a beautiful, soulful version of “World of Pure Imagination,” which he knew to be one of my favorite songs.  He sang and kept adding verses for about 10 minutes until I finally just started clapping.  But I’ll never forget it. 

Thom-ASS was living a bit fast and loose for a while.  I heard he crashed and burned and moved back to his parents’ house in Oklahoma.  It was there that his HIV moved into full-blown AIDS. 

He called me at one point in his infirmity to tell me he’d read my novel, Colors Insulting to Nature.  “Congratulations on writing the Great American Novel,” he said, which was unbelievably sweet. 

I’d come to hate those conversations with gay men that I loved — conversations I knew were going to be the last conversation.  I did what I usually did and made some flimsy excuse for getting off the phone.  I didn’t want to say any kind of final goodbye.  One of the great benefits to being a Buddhist is the belief you will reincarnate and see your friends again. 

In Native American mythology, the coyote spirit, in broadest strokes, is often considered a comical trickster.  Sometimes he is lecherous and malevolent; sometimes he brings fire to mankind.  To befriend such people is to hold lightning in your hand. It burns like hell, but looks cooler than anything.  Thom-ASS is missed.   I hope to see him in the Happy Hunting Grounds, where he will be wearing pink opera-length gloves and riding a kilted giant.  

Artwork: “Theda Bara,” oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2022