PHIL

Phil is a great friend. We met in ninth grade. When I moved to New York in 1989 I moved in with him. We shared a studio apartment. It was a classic tenement: seven flight walk-up, the bathub was in the kitchen, the toilet was in the hallway in a closet. Phil slept on a foldout futon and I slept two feet away on a fold up chair we called the Blue Guy. We continued to live together with various roommates in a number of different apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan throughout the nineties. When I bought my own place, I moved two blocks from Phil. We’ve worked together on commercials and his film Junebug.

When I found out I had cancer Phil was there to support me. He’s been closely involved in every decision I’ve made about my treatment. Since he’s so smart, he’s able to explain medical things that the doctors are unclear about. Phil’s goofy. He flirts with the nurses and makes the time at chemotherapy fly by. He’s been to all my big sessions, which are the hardest, sitting for hours on end. Even though he’s the busiest guy I know, he’s found a way to make his schedule work so he can sit in a room with me while chemicals get pumped into my veins. Or arrange arrange for David Kilgour to play at my recent birthday party. Or sit with me in the hospital while recovering from surgery watching American Idol. I picture Hollywood bigshots furious that they can’t get in touch with him because he’s sitting in a hospital room with me cracking jokes, even though it hurts my stitches.

He’s the best friend a guy could ask for. I love him.