What can you tell us about Lucas in HS, and the final event that made you cut him off?
Thanks for the warm welcome. I was honestly a little worried about what kind of reaction I would get, but the more I read through the pages of this thread, the more I realized that everybody here saw that Lucas was (at best) an untrustworthy narrator to his own story. There's clearly a pattern that he has, and so many of you have nailed his routine. He'll immediately blame other people for all of his problems and then act as if they are the worst people in the world, despite all of his problems being brought upon by himself. Was I the perfect friend? Probably not. This was more than 20 years ago and we were barely adults. That said, I do want to add some context to the story and also correct a few things that I've seen come up a few times.
One thing you probably should know is that I haven't really kept up with Lucas' present day antics. I learned a while back about the Starbucks thing (YIKES!!!) and found his YouTube channel, but I only watched a handful of videos before realizing that he was in a real bad state. I'm still close friends with one of his brothers (the 3rd grade school teacher, not Shawn), who also cut Lucas out of his life a long time ago. While Seth was down for the weekend, I asked if he thought his brothers would get vaccinated, and he mentioned that Shawn (right-wing conspiracy theorist) definitely wouldn't and he thought Lucas was hospitalized again for doing something creepy in a park. We decided to look it up to see if Lucas has posted anything recently, and that's when we discovered Cyael's three-part "comprehensive" series. I watched it wondering if I would come up, but he avoided all of the early stuff. That led me down a path of googling my name in connection to Lucas, and that brought me to this extremely long (and horrifying) thread.
Here's the thing you need to know about my time with Lucas as a roommate: He wasn't diagnosed with bi-polar until after I kicked him out. Looking back on it now, the signs were all there, but we just thought he was incredibly immature.
I met Lucas through Ocean Breeze, which was the high school newspaper at Aberdeen High School (Weatherwax, if you want to get technical). I've always had a thing for writing (it has been my full-time profession for most of my adult life), so I ended up being the Ocean Breeze editor in chief for most of my time at the school. Lucas was a Sophomore when I was a Senior, though he is only one year younger than me. He was a relatively shy teenager who was really bad at talking to people, but I put in the work to get to know him and see a good person in there. You have to understand, he didn't act like this when he was 16 or 17. He was shy and reserved, but also liked to laugh and was usually up for doing whatever my friend group was into doing (video games, movies, etc.), so it just seemed like he enjoyed tagging along.
When it came time for me to move out of my parent's house, I decided to move to Olympia with my then-girlfriend Michelle, which was one of those high school sweet heart relationships that was doomed to fail. At that point, Lucas had burned the bridges with both sets of parents and was sleeping in his car with as much Miller High Life as he could convince people to buy him. There's a whole story about how he got his license taken away and how he nearly died from alcohol poisoning on his first day of working at Subway, but we'll save that for another time. Unable to drive and effectively homeless, I felt bad for him. I figured that all he really needed was a stable home and help from friends. So, we got a two-bedroom apartment in Olympia and the three of us moved in together.
This worked out as anticipated for the first few months. We all had jobs, including Lucas, who was able to get hired on without a problem at the nearby McDonalds. Little did Michelle and I know, but this was going to be our first sign that something was seriously wrong. One day, while Michelle was driving around looking for a different job, she noticed Lucas walking the streets when he was supposed to be working at McDonalds. She pulled over and confronted him about it, and discovered, much to her surprise, that he had been fired a week ago, and that he was leaving the apartment to "pretend" to go to work because he didn't want us to know that he was unemployed. But wouldn't we find out when he didn't have rent money? As he told us when we confronted him about this, he hadn't thought that far ahead.
My relationship with Michelle was already starting to fracture at this time. There's no reason to get into that, since it's really just the usual young love bullshit that most people go through when they are around that age. She moves out, still-unemployeed Lucas stays. Why? Because I knew he didn't have any other prospects, didn't have a job and wasn't in a place where he could live on his own. I was making enough at the time to pay full rent and his parents were pitching in every so often because they felt bad that I was paying for everything. But you have to understand, this went on for months. Probably half a year. He refused to look for a job and just sitting at home scamming people on the internet. We kept getting weird letters from people, including one where somebody sent pubic hair with a letter addressed to Lucas that read: "You are a cunt!" This confused me, but I eventually learned that he was tricking people into sending him money for rare Beanie Babies and other stuff he definitely didn't have.
For me, the final straw was when I found out that his Mom had given him $100 to give to me, but instead what he did was buy a lot of fast food (that he mostly thew away) and purchase a Wizards cap, because at that time he was calling himself "The Wizard." He proceeded to cut up his brand-new hat, to the point where there was a big hole in the middle of it. This was the point where I knew I had to send him packing. I've seen a lot of people on this thread mention that I moved to a different apartment, but that's not true. I remained in the same apartment and kicked him out. His mom agreed to take him in and told me that he would eventually pay the back rent.
It was at this point when Lucas was officially diagnosed with bi-polar. It made perfect sense.
In a lot of ways, this was good news. Yes, it sucks that a friend has been diagnosed with a mental health problem, but he was getting the help he needed. Things were starting to look good. He got a big check from the government for social security or something and he used that to pay off what he owed me. He was going to move to an assisted living apartment complex, where he had friends and would need to take his medication. And let me tell you, the medication helped. Sure, he was a little slower (mentally) and kind of in a daze here and there, but he was able to live on his own, keep friends, look for love and all the other normal things.
I largely stayed in his life for those first few years. He and I would talk a lot over instant messenger and he would often come over to watch movies and play games with me. I considered him a close friend. He also liked hanging out with my other friends, like Patrick. (Side note: Lucas claimed in his insane autobiography rant that I called Patrick gay behind his back, but you have to understand that Patrick IS gay. He's married to a man. I was not saying that as an insult or bad friend or anything, as Lucas later tried to spin it.) I tried to get Lucas involved in a lot of the things I was doing, especially the early stuff involving my website Defunct Games and my early writing career. He's featured in some of the earliest articles and audio shows I was toying around with at the time. He liked when he had things to do and felt part of the group.
This goes on for a few years. He lives in that assisted living apartment in Tumwater for a while and takes his medication. And then, out of the blue, he decides not to take his meds. He realizes that the caretakers can't legally force him to, so he stops. Cold turkey. If there's a line in the sand in this story, it's right here. His mood, outlook and demeanor changed entirely. This was the beginning of the end.
Suddenly, the good-natured Lucas I knew changed to somebody who was stand-offish and kind of mean. He also started acting incredibly erratic, in some truly troubling ways. He would take in homeless girls (not women, but underage girls) under the guise of being helpful and nice. This worried me, because one of the times I went over there, I noticed that he had gotten them really drunk and high, to the point where they were basically comatose on his couch. Obviously, this sent up a lot of red flags, and I warned him that this looks REALLY bad. I worried that Lucas might be taking advantage of them, and I was not okay with that. Not at all. I was not going to be in his orbit if that was going on. It was a deal-breaker for me.
As it turns out, his other friends agreed with me and started to peel off. He also got in trouble with the apartment complex for letting homeless girls stay with him. This is when Lucas started to lash out at me and everyone. I would still talk to him over instant messenger, but our conversations were not fun anymore and clearly he had turned a dark corner.
And that's when he got the idea to move to California.
Obviously, that never happened, but he did decide to sell all of his belongings. He hauled all of his stuff down to the apartment's parking lot and tried to sell it. But nobody was buying. I mean, it's an assisted living apartment complex, none of these people had money. And all his stuff was junk. He basically didn't sell anything. So what did he decide to do? Not wanting to haul it back up those stairs, he lit all of his stuff on fire and left it in the parking lot, burning.
For me, this was the final straw. The Lucas I knew and liked might as well have burned in that fire, because what was left was a different person I did not want to be around. I only went to his apartment one more time after that. It was completely empty, with a big pile of garbage in the corner. I sat in a lawn chair as he berated me for being a terrible friend for not buying any of his junk. I told him then and there that I was done. If he wasn't going to get back on the medication, then I didn't want to be around him. I was worried about what he might do.
I didn't hear much from Lucas for a good two or three years. I'm pretty sure he moved back in with his mom and step-dad at this point.
And then one day, out of the blue, Lucas contacts me. He apologizes for how he acted and wants to know if I want to have a few drinks. We meet up and we share a bottle of rum, talking about the old times. He had a girlfriend, he told me, and life is pretty good. He's living at another halfway house sort of place and had real aspirations for what he wanted to do in life. He had also lost a ton of weight. Sensing a change, I invited him over a few times and integrated him back into the friend group. For a few weeks, it genuinely felt like I got my old friend back. But alas, this would not last.
Lucas was not taking his medication. He was lying to us. He knew that if he acted calm and kind of passive, he would fool us into thinking that he was on meds. It only took a few weeks before his true colors came out. One day when he was over, he exploded at me when I told him that I was agnostic and not atheist. For whatever reason, this really bothered Lucas. He started shouting and pushing me, so I showed him the door and told him to never come back. He continued ranting at me over instant messenger, and that's when I told him that I would never speak to him ever again.
I have not spoken to him sense.
For years, he would call me and email me hundreds of times a day, leave threatening notes on my door and car, etc. I got a restraining order on him, which he broke over and over again. It got to the point where his harassment was just part of my day. And then, over time, it slowed down. It would stop for a few months, and then start right back up. It was clear that he was spending his entire days thinking about me and angry at how I wronged him.
The sad fact is that I'll still get text messages from random numbers, and I always know it's him. He'll mock me for driving a car, my politics (despite me backing the same guy as him), joke about my love life (which he knows literally nothing about), and so on so forth. I block it and brush it off, but it's clear that he's still dwelling on that stuff. I suspect that he would still be calling me hundreds of times a day, if not for the fact that he's too busy responding to people online who mock him and make comprehensive videos about him. So ... thank you?
I know this ended up being really long, but there's no way to tell the story without going through everything. There are still a lot of stories and moments in his life that I left out, but those can way for another post. I also have some of his old writing from the Ocean Breeze days, including one article I guarantee you'll do a spit-take when you read. I'm going to end it with that tease. Thanks for listening. It actually felt good to let all of that out. That has been bottled up for a long time.
www.defunctgames.com
