Was it….???

 

Recently, I was watching one of the Mission Impossible movies, and it got me thinking about the time that I met Tom Cruise…maybe.

It was that magical summer of 1983, and I was sharing an apartment on Park Avenue (East Orange, NJ) with two friends and a bunch of other guys who crashed on the sofa and the floor, etc. as needed. I had a part-time job at a restaurant, which allowed me to pay my share of the rent, be able to eat and to pitch in for the party supplies. That was all I needed, along with my 1973 Toyota Corolla, with the bald tires and the holes in the floor!

Anyway, one of the guys I shared the apartment with had gone to high school in the neighboring town of Glen Ridge, with Tom Cruise, who had just hit it big in the movie “Risky Business”. I was not sure whether or not to believe him, but it did make some sense, Tom was our age, and did live in Glen Ridge for a few years…so who knows?

That was a pretty wild summer, and I was doing quite a lot of drinking and other substances, so I pretty much forgot about my buddy’s claim to know the newly famous actor, until he announced that his old friend Tom was coming over!

It was a hot night, we did not have air conditioning, I had worked all day, and I was already getting well organized, though it was early in the evening and still light out. Well, the drunker I got, the more I asked my friend if he really knew Tom Cruise, and then of course, I made it clear that this did not impress me (obviously it did). So, I figure that I was being pretty obnoxious by this point, but that did not stop me from continuing to drink and drug.

Sometime during that night, after asking for the 10^th or 50^th time “When is Tom Cruise gonna be here?” I passed out on the sofa, which was probably a relief to everyone else in the room.

After I had been out for a while, I was roused from my stupor by a commotion in the room! My memory is hazy, but, what I remember is this guy walking through the room telling everyone “I’m Tom Cruise!” As he walked by I shook his hand, and he went into another room, closing the door behind him, and I fell back on sofa and was out again, until the next morning!

Now, it is possible, that this really was Tom Cruise the actor. I think he looked kind of like him, but I was seeing double at that point, so I am not really sure. It could also be that my friends were messing with me, which I would have deserved for being so obnoxiously drunk.

To this day, I do not know if I actually met Tom Cruise that night, but it does make for a good story!

Actually, there were many stories that came out of that summer, some even more embarrassing, and just as puzzling – as I spent much of that summer intoxicated!

All of these stories are reminders of why it is a good thing that I have not had a drink since 1989, and why I should not pick up another one, today!