Ruthless, Worthless, and Clueless......ch 2... Dude looks like a lady.

Some people are born crazy, and I dont mean clinically depressed or a little bi polar, I mean bat shit crazy. Dave would fall under that category. I wasn't close friends with Dave, I dated his sister, knew people he knew, we crossed paths and that's it. Dave was an opportunistic thief, dope dealer, forger, whatever. If he saw a way to slide in , turn a buck, get out, then that's what he did. In some circles, this type of non specific criminal is called a sneak thief or a shit heel, I have no idea why, but Ive used that term myself. Just consider criminal slang a form of Yiddish for felons. Anyway, the guy was a shit heel, but a mostly harmless one, or so everyone thought.

The first sign that Dave was more than a little crazy was when he shot his wife, a school teacher, paralyzed her from the waist down. The thing is he claimed it was an accident, and his wife said the same. The story goes that he is in the kitchen cleaning a pistol, a semi auto 9mm, the gun goes off, twice, hits the wife, twice. Later his sister told me that it wasn't an accident, who knows?

Now might be a good time to mention that Dave had a drug problem, a meth problem to be exact. Meth can take an already wacky person and turn them in to a walking cartoon, one of those really violent cartoons from the 30's. He would go on long binges, steal shit from his sister and mother, a real nice piece of work, our Davey. Every now and again the sister would tell me he was "back on that shit", this proclamation usually followed by a story about him stealing something from someone. I stayed clear of her family in general and her brother especially, so I had never witnessed his finer moments first hand. All of that changed one morning when I get a call from the sister, blubbering about Dave stealing her car and would I take her to go get it. He was holed up in a hotel off 71 near Grandview. I said Id take her, but I wasn't getting involved, other than to make sure he didn't chloroform her and eat her face.

The sister told me that Dave was bugged out and in what he referred to as Ninja Mode. The way she explained it to me, was that Dave would get all crazy from too many sleepless nights of happy dust. The lack of sleep, his already unstable state of mind, and copious amounts of dope had Dave convinced that "They" were looking for or following him. "They", being the cops I suppose. Having heard her describe what ninja mode meant, I knew what to expect when Dave opened the door, and I wasn't disappointed. Dave was kind of fat, balding, had a perpetual blue shadow always on his face. He was one of those guys that look like they need a shave five minutes after shaving. He reminded me of a balding Barney rubble, but fat. So Dave opens the door, in a dress. Yes, you heard me right , a dress. and not just any dress, he had on one of those grandma sundress/house dress things.

Before you jump to conclusions, thinking maybe the guy gets off dressing like Aunt Bea, that just isn't the case here. He dressed like that because he believed whoever was looking for him wouldn't recognize him as the drag equivalent of an 80 year old Russian woman. While I highly doubt anyone was after him, I'm sure in his drug addled mind it was all too real, and his response was not only logical, but crafty to boot. So there he stood in the doorway of his hotel room, sheepishly grinning as he handed his sister her car keys. a 6 foot tall, 220 pound, bald headed , generic, grandma. It was both frightening and breath taking in its weirdness.

About a month or so after the hotel incident, Dave pulled a feat that was the epitome of insanity. He painted the front of his house, black, flat black. He lived on a dead end street on the east edge of Independence. Trees lined both sides of his house so all you could see from the street at night, was the front of the house. Dave painted it black so you couldn't see it at night. Makes perfect sense, if the cops cant see the house, they wont find him. Ive never ceased to be amazed when confronted by the thought process of dope fiends. Dave was an extreme case to be sure, but the people I have known who boarded the crazy meth train, have all ended up brain damaged to one degree or another.

I'm not sure what ever became of Dave, I stopped seeing his sister a few months after the house painting incident. I imagine he either ended up dead, in jail, or the nut house. It's been 15 years or better, he probably is dead. I can only imagine what the casual reader must think when I start describing or writing about some of the people Ive known or encountered. Believe me if I hadn't seen some of it with my own eyes, Id have trouble swallowing it as well. Most people live normal lives, in normal neighborhoods. The closest they come to calling someone crazy, is when they talk about the old hippie neighbor , who bought one of those ugly ass Pontiac Aztec SUV's, or the funny looking Goth kids that hang out at the house across the street. In other words, most people are more normal and less odd than you might first think, at least compared to some of the real crazy's that occupy the under belly of society, that most never encounter or come in contact with.