Lance Loud was dying and in need of a cat.
Tyler and I alone realized this. The only question left was: Where do two broke college students find a cat?
I was a freshman at Biola University. Since Biola requires students to be involved in a ministry, I chose the most uncomfortable one I could think of—working with AIDS patients. I met Lance in early September on my first day volunteering at the Carl Bean House, an AIDS hospice in South Central Los Angeles.
Lance was the first openly homosexual person on television. The first reality show—a ’70s documentary called An American Family—followed him and his family around for a series of weeks. On national television Lance shamelessly announced that he was gay. “I didn’t just come out of the closet,” he later said. “I shot out like an MK-80 missile.”
Everything about Lance was loud. Lance had been a writer, stripper, roadie, model, artist, rock star, band manager, television personality, and icon of gay culture. Andy Warhol was his friend and father figure. Lance toured with the Velvet Underground and started the punk-rock band the Mumps. He discovered and promoted outspoken gay musician Rufus Wainwright. His column appeared regularly in The Advocate, a gay magazine with a circulation of nearly 100,000. A recent PBS documentary, A Death in An American Family, chronicled Lance’s life and death (www.pbs.org/lanceloud).
We spent two afternoons a week together, yet I spent a month with him before learning he was famous. He was a dying gay celebrity, and I was a straight kid. We didn’t talk about church or politics during the four months I got to know him. We talked about art, writing, and faith.
Illegal Visitors
Before being hospitalized, Lance always had at least a dozen cats, all rescued from streets and shelters. The National Enquirer featured an article on Lance and his cats. They ran a photograph with Lance in his apartment, surrounded by cats. As his AIDS progressed, he had to give them up along with his apartment. It was late November and nearly three months into our friendship. Every week I told my friend Tyler new Lance stories. After hearing the stories, he said, “I need to meet Lance. He sounds amazing.”
We visited Lance together and listened to his stories about adopting cats. Tyler sat beaming, looking over at me, his eyes expectant. When we got into my truck to drive home, we looked at one another. I started, “We need to …” and Tyler finished, smiling, “… get Lance a cat.”
Tyler and I found two free kittens online that night. Though we only needed one cat, we couldn’t bear to separate the two. College dorms and AIDS hospices are unwelcoming to cats, but this was an afterthought. I didn’t have an opportunity to ask my roommate before bringing the kittens to live with us. I didn’t know that he hated cats.
For a week, Tyler and I harbored the kittens, which we named Hope and Lance the Cat. After several days they began using their Tupperware litter box, which they had previously only slept in. Their food dish was a cafeteria salad bowl.
Then I received a phone call that Lance was declining rapidly. Tyler and I left immediately and drove through downtown L.A. traffic to see him. Visiting Lance always meant facing traffic. While we drove and prayed, two restless black kittens explored my truck.
Lance was on oxygen. His hospice room had been converted to a study, gallery, and closet. Leather jackets and vintage shirts overflowed the closet and were draped over chairs and piled on the dresser. Framed photos and artwork covered walls and tables. He was as flamboyant in taste as personality. But Lance was wasting away—he lay, gasping, his stomach bloated, sweat dripping like an IV.
“I have a surprise for you, Lance,” I said, pulling Hope from a bed of towels in my backpack. Lance transformed from ghostly to radiant.
“I … I,” he said, “You brought a kitten.” Lesions covered his hands. He took the kitten from me, grinning like a child, his eyes flashing.
“There’s more, Lance,” I said. Lance gasped as Tyler pulled Lance the Cat from the bag. Hope curled in Lance’s cupped hands. Lance the Cat sprawled in the crevice between Lance’s knees. Both kittens rested, green eyes peering about the room. Lance looked from the cats to me, to Tyler, and back again.
His voice faint, he said, “This is so f—-ing thoughtful,” and coughed. “This is so f—-ing special.” He repeated it a half-dozen times.
Every day that week I loaded the kittens in a backpack, smuggled them to my truck, and drove for an hour to visit Lance. I reloaded the kittens into the backpack until we reached Lance’s room. The hospice staff said nothing—they only smiled and looked away.
The Man Watching
Though he was expected to die within days, Lance lived another month. I watched him deteriorate, his chest rasping and stomach swelling daily. Before he died I wrote and played a song for him. My song, “Requiem for Lance,” was adapted from the poem The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke. In the poem a man watches a storm approach from a distance, knowing that its arrival is imminent. He begins thinking of the “wrestlers of the Old Testament”—of Jacob’s struggling with the Lord. The poem and my song end with a realization that growth—and maybe even salvation—comes by defeat, by allowing ourselves to be conquered by the eternal.
“Are you sure you wrote this?” Lance asked, his eyes narrowing to make room for his grin.
“Yeah, I wrote it,” I said. “Well, the music at least—I stole most of the words.”
“I love your guitar playing. I want to hear it,” he said.
Lance often said he loved my guitar playing. I hope he was being honest. Moving a pile of magazines from the recliner and setting my guitar case on the end of his bed, I made room for myself. I played and sang the requiem for my friend. My whiney voice repeated the chorus:
And the far-off whispers things
I can’t love without a sister
I can’t bear without a friend
Lance cried. For the next week, he bragged about my song to most of his visitors.
I remember kneeling by his bed one of our last nights together, holding his hand, stroking his hair. I whispered prayers over my friend. It was near the end. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Sweat made his hands pasty. It was December 20, 2001. He died on December 22. The month of his death, Los Angeles Times Magazine, People, and LA Weekly carried articles on Lance. The Advocate printed a beautiful article by Lance on the process of dying with AIDS.
Before Lance Loud, I had never spent time with a gay man. Our lives had little in common besides a love for writing. But our friendship grew in his cluttered hospital room.
Though attracted to the person of Jesus, Lance was used to being hated by evangelicals. I was used to fearing homosexuals. I even grew up using the word gay to mean sucks. Maybe we both needed to be shown mercy. He told me of his days as an addict and prostitute. I told Lance about my ambitions—to be a writer and monk, and to work with poor children. He encouraged the first and last but tried to talk me out of becoming a monk.
Lance had no mirror in his room. A former model, he said he was scared of what would look back.
On November 1 of that year I wrote in my journal:
“Sure, he’s proud, and gay, and a liar of sorts, and scared, and dying—but he can see—see life and people and pissing into a bottle as the divine comedy and human tragedy that living is. That dying is.”
I remember his constant dropping of names, all of which were unfamiliar to me. I’d sit on the end of his bed or clear the heaps of books and papers from a chair. Important phone calls would interrupt our conversations—editors, musicians, the documentary producer. Lance would usually ask if he could call back when he was done visiting with his friend.
An Odd Movement of Grace
Though I was often told that Lance and some of the other AIDS patients, both gay and straight, had a crush on me, I realized that this attraction flowed from a simple hunger to be loved. I had met that hunger with the love of Christ, and though their brokenness kept them from receiving it as purely as it was offered, they received it nonetheless.
The concept of loving the sinner and hating the sin is difficult to practice. Distinguishing the sinners from their sin is not so simple. Had I told Lance that I hated his homosexuality but truly loved him, he would have likely asked, “Jonathan, what the hell does that mean?”
He once asked me, “Jonathan, why are you my friend?”
I thought for a moment. “Because I love you.”
“Are you going to save me?” he asked.
I smiled. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
His unspoken condition was that he be my friend, not my project. I don’t believe anyone wants to be a project. I wasn’t Lance’s friend because of his homosexuality or in spite of it. And this unexpected friendship brought healing to my own fear and prejudice toward gays.
Lance needed spiritual, not moral reform. Sickness had already kept him from being sexually or even romantically active. And such reform needed to come through divine grace rather than simple change in behavior.
Maybe too many evangelicals have faced homosexuality without coming face to face with homosexuals. Theology, morality, and politics have an essential place. But if these don’t make room for simple love and friendship with homosexuals, how will we be instruments of redemption? Gays will not be reached with the love of Jesus without being touched by loving Christians.
In Lance I encountered one of the most generous, warm, and hilarious individuals I have ever known. I didn’t forget my desire to see my friend’s salvation. I prayed for it often, though never with him. We talked often about faith and death and Jesus. He was skeptical of the church, though not harsh in his skepticism. I believed that salvation would likely have to come to Lance through some odd movement of grace—maybe even through kittens.
Matthew writes of Jesus telling his disciples: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me” (Matt. 10:40). Was the love Lance showed me directed in the end toward Jesus? I honestly don’t know. I know my love was given in the name of Jesus, and I know this love was received.
Lance Loud loved cats. He loved them all, especially unwanted ones. After a week, the kittens Tyler and I adopted were discovered and evicted from our dorm. I lived with them in my truck for 24 hours before we found a good home. It was cold that winter night—for Southern California at least—lying there in a sleeping bag with two cats curled against my body. I closed my eyes, smiled, and was soon laughing. It was worth it, I thought, picturing my friend. I remembered Lance Loud, a man made famous through blatant rebellion, cradling these kittens, giving and receiving love as best he knew how—grinning and cursing with joy.
Jonathan David Taylor is in his final undergraduate year at Biola University, where he is studying literature and creative writing. He lives in Orange County, California. Contact: jonathan_david_taylor@yahoo.com.
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Related Elsewhere:
More Christianity Today articles on ministry to homosexuals include:
Banning Gay Marriage Is Not The Answer | Legal actions aren’t loving if they’re all we do, says the author of Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would. (Sept. 01, 2004)
The Cure of Gay Souls | Pastoral care of gay people in our congregations cannot wait. (Aug. 23, 2004)
No Easy Victory | A plea from a Christian husband and father who, day by day, resists his homosexual desires. (March 08, 2002)
Ex-Gay Sheds the Mocking Quote Marks | The retiring head of Exodus says gay transformation ministries are more respected and effective than ever. (Jan. 07, 2002)
Ex-Gay Leader Disciplined for Gay Bar Visit | Exodus removes John Paulk as board chairman, places him on probationary status as member. (Oct. 6, 2000)
Walking in the Truth | Winning arguments at church conventions is not enough without compassion for homosexuals. (Sept. 4, 2000)
Building a Bridge | A gay journalist and evangelical pastor correct their mutual misperceptions. (July 13, 2000)
The Jerry We Never Knew | He hangs out with liberal pundits and gay activists. Is this the same Jerry Falwell who founded the Moral Majority? (May 2, 2000)
Sex and Saints | A new vocabulary for an oversexualized culture. (Apr. 3, 2000)
Building outreach and friendship with the homosexual community | What Jerry Falwell really said at the Anti-Violence Forum. (Nov. 5, 1999)
Just Saying ‘No’ Is Not Enough | How should Christians address homosexuality? (Oct. 4, 1999)
Who Killed Matthew Shepard? | Human nature being what it is, we can too easily cross the line between hating the sin and hating the sinner. (Dec. 7, 1998)
Revelation and Homosexual Experience | Can it be said of us that we surprise others by the sympathy and compassion we extend toward homosexuals? (Nov. 11, 1996)
Other articles on homosexuality are available in our Sexuality and Gender area.
Our sister publication, Leadership journal, has more articles on ministry to homosexuals:
Same-Sex Marriage: What Can I Say? | Four pastors discuss the pressures and opportunities of the current controversy. (Summer 2004)
The Not-So-Gay Lifestyle | Pastoral care for homosexuals who want out. (Winter 2004)
