Tom DeLonge's Intern

Chapter 4: Less Interning, More Tom

     Quite a few months passed, and every day it was almost like I was becoming less of a graphic designer and more of Tom's personal assistant. We had grown kind of close, not in a romantic way - but in a way that we could almost be considered friends. I got to know more about his personal life which he was always really low-key about and I learned that he never really got to spend much time with his wife, because she was always gone on business and he was always away on tour with blink. They were recently married, and at that time they were just shy of their two year mark. From what I was able to gather from my brief interactions with Tom, their marriage was sort of on and off, and he was really bothered by that fact. It almost seemed like he was disappointed in himself for being a bad husband. I felt bad for him sometimes because of how much he beat himself up over it. I could only speculate at that time of course, as I was careful not to get too involved in his personal life due to the possibility of conflicting with his business interests. The last thing I wanted was to wedge a dagger in the side ventures that appeared to bring him joy.

     I hadn't seen much of Mark since my interview for the internship. It made me wonder about the status of Mark and Tom and whether or not he was even part of the company anymore at that point. Whenever I'd mention Mark, I would be met with a look of disinterest from Tom and he would occasionally roll his eyes, so eventually, I stopped asking. I noticed that Tom's personality had shifted as the year progressed, but I was hesitant to ask him what was going on. We just weren't that close yet, though I wanted us to be.

     Macbeth was growing in popularity, despite the fact that Tom was seemingly going through a rough patch in his personal life. The Macbeth team had been hard at work promoting the shoes and merchandise everywhere from small shows around the area to big concerts that rolled through town. Tom was able to use his status to get into different venues around the Southern California area. I was obligated as a crew member to wear the shoes at the very least, which were comfortable and looked good. I even bought some from my brother who was dying for some new shoes as well as Tom's autograph. I simply had Tom sign the shoe box I ended up giving my brother. He was ecstatic about the gift.

     As for me in terms of my internship, I had contributed a majority of my ideas to the designers and some of them were even published and worked into the shoe designs. I knew that I had impressed both my co-workers and the management, and I was trying my very best to land myself a job position at Macbeth eventually. It was a nice confidence boost to my insecure and introverted self. At that point I only had a month left until my internship was over, which I was sad about, but at the same time, I had to work hard to secure a job. Working hard was something I had always done because I always felt like my anxiety made me work harder and harder. I knew nothing else but to give it my all at any job I had worked, sometimes to a fault.

     I walked into Tom's office at the end of the hall one afternoon after all of the other employees had left. I always did this; I knew Tom appreciated the fact that I stayed late to help clean up and it also made me look like I was going above and beyond for the Macbeth company. Tom hadn't hired any cleanup crews or anything like that, so clean workers were all he really had to help keep the shop organized. Anyways, I sat down on the swivel chair in front of the desk that was littered with papers, shoes, pencils and guitar picks. Tom wasn't in the room yet, I was sure he was outside on the back balcony talking on the phone or something to that effect. I began looking around on the desk out of curiosity and found some lyrics scribbled on the side of one of those giant monthly calendars along with pictures of UFO's he must have sketched out of boredom. The most interesting thing I found was a sheet of paper that looked like a printed out e-mail between Tom and his wife Jennifer. The only thing I caught was a glimpse of a sentence that said "I haven't been completely honest with you when going on these business leaves."