Lance

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A buddy of mine came by Saturday to pick up his dog. We had been watching him for the week while he and his wife went to Texas for a Thanksgiving with his in-laws. I had figgered on a quick turnaround, grab the dog and go. but poor old Hellfire (yes that is his name) Was telling me how he spent the week with a whole slew of folks who dont drink. His wife is 7.5 months along with their son and the rest of her family isnt drinking. So I am standing there in the garage, still in my sleeping gear and he says, ever so pitifully "C'mon Mike, drink a beer with me. No one would drink with me there." Well the sun was just barely squinting over the yardarm, so what the hell. A friend was in need. I had to help him out.
So we were sitting there comfortable in lawnchairs in my shop. Heaters cutting the chill. We were just generally yarn spinning. And HellFire is a man of many yarns. And he spins a good warm sweater when he gets rolling. Always a pleasure to trade stories with him.
Then during a lapse in conversation, Hellfire notes, "Well it has been about a year since Lance died"
Oh shit. Lance. I hadnt thought about him in a while. Nor had I seen him in a long time before that. I am sort of glad I didnt see him in his last days.
before my beloved and I got married, we lived much closer to downtown. When we started dating she was working at an all night cafe and I was a doorman and fixture at a bar many people frequented in the area. Crazy days. We dont get down there much nowadays. In fact our and my attendance at that particular bar fell off precipitously after we moved. And nowadays, few people remember me or us. Such is the half-life of bar-fame.
But for that fifteen years or so that I was regularly moving around in that area, Labce was a fixture. Now at first glance Lance was readily marked as a lost case. He was literally stick thin and gawkish. He had no teeth at all for most of the time I knew him, but he didnt seem all that old. Just hard life. And he was obviously mentally or emotionally damaged. He not only spoke with periodic coherence, but he would also laugh a high pitched cackle at inappropriate moments. But the thing that stuck out the most was his autistic motions. He would sit at a counter or bar for hours, rocking back and forth with one hand rhythmically moving. He regularly got sent packing because someone thought he was whacking off under the counter. Yes it looked just like that. And the more excited he got, the more exaggerated his motions became.
But that was just how Lance came across to tourists and those who didnt know him well. Lance would wander and make his rounds. He would drop in to see a favorite waitress when she moved to a new establishment, usually to get sent packing because of the whacking off thing.
The thins about old Lance was..that he was always, without fail, friendly and happy. He never gave anyone trouble when they sent him away. And if a place became a regular stop for him, he would bring gifts. Pencils. key chains. Stuff he found or bought at a dollar store somewhere. He would ernestly present them and then beam with glee when someone accepted them. My wife, he liked to favor with keys. Random keys he found. He could never say what they went to. Just a key. He probably gave her the key to his own apartment more than once. My buddy Hellfire was given chemical hand warmers. "Here. You are on that bike a lot. It's cold. you need these"
gentrification in the area had an impact on Lance. More and more places would let him hang around. Customers would find him distracting, sitting there rocking and smiling. So he made his regular home at the bar I worked the door at. I wouldnt say Lance and I became friends, but he did become a boon drinking companion. he was good at that. He seemed to sense when it was time to just sit and enjoy a quiet beer and when his steady stream of mind-bending non-sequitor was a welcome distraction. His low voice darting off in random directions like someone rapidly changing channels on a television.
Lance was game for anything social. I think that was his thing. He would cheerfully sit down for a beer or go out to an alley to smoke a crack pipe. I dont think he needed or really wanted it. Hell he was on an ever changing grocery list of prescribed meds. His internal chemical makeup was such a stew that crack or meth was laughed off and sent packing in humiliation. But he did that stuff. I think it was more to be social and be with people than anything else.
At the bar he was welcome. As the doorman he would sometimes be a bellweather for assholes. If someone had a freakout about his rocking and pantomimed jerking off or if they made fun of it, they would be told to deal with it or hit the bricks. The owner came in one time and saw him. He grabbed the bartender and told him to throw Lance out. The bartender pointed out that Lance was one of his best customers. No tab ever. He refused to take free coffee refills. Lance paid for every cup. The owner changed his mind. Another time Lance sat down next to an absolute stunning woman. High class type. He looked right at her and started telling his tales. His non-sequitor wandering punctuated by high-pitched onomatopoeia. She finally turned to him and said reall snotty like "I have no idea what the hell you are talking about." and Lance, without missing a beat drew up his skinny chest and intoned "That's because it is complete gibberish, madam"
I mentioned he was always happy. No matter how addled he became from the meds, drugs and booze. No matter how twisted his synapses became, he was a happy fellow. I heard of only one time where he got angry. Someone made the grave mistake of grabbing one of the waitresses. Now Shayla was a little firecracker. She could take care of herself. She had been running down tab-dodgers for some time, often dragging them back like a pint-sized Souxsie Soux schoolteacher dealing with schoolboy, complete with ear-pinching come-along. But this dude grabbed Shayla pretty rough and Lance went apeshit. It took three of the beefier regulars to untangle his skinny body from the jerk.
This afternoon visit with Hellfire brought up some things I had not known. I knew Lance was on some sort of assistance. I figured relatives or something. As it turns out, Lance had often noted that he had been on the cover of Life magazine, a picture taken when he was in Vietnam. I had not even known he was a vet. We never did figure out what was up with him; whether it was Tourette's, Schizophrenia, a combination or if he just had his own unique entry in the DSM-IV. Now the thought was that he had been subjected to experiments, chemicals or something like that. My personal thought is that he just experience some things that broke his mind very badly. But whatever it was that caused him to be lost in the twisted hallways of his mind, those places werent dark. He had brightened those corridors with windows and flowers; a cheerful, if chaotic place.
Eventually the docs told him he had to give up drinking or smoking or he was going to be dead in a year. he chose to give up drinking. The word went out to all the people who worked in the local places: No more drinks for Lance. He passed away two weeks later anyhow. When he did, some folks tried to find out if he had a memorial or something. Thats when they learned that no one was claiming his body. He had no known relatives. No sisters. No brothers. no cousins. No one.
The folks at that bar I went to, the regulars of his home, most of whom are half his age or less all pooled funds and paid to have Lance cremated and claimed his ashes. Another of the regulars had an urn made.
Lance now sits in his urn, high above the bar. Still smiling. Still cackling. Still jerking.
When I think of him now, a year after his passing, I think: That happy lunatic had something going we could all learn from. He took the dog's advice. Be happy with simple things. All the dog wants is food, affection and to lick his balls. All Lance wanted was a beverage and people moving around him.