A Little Piece of Austin Has Died

If you're not from Austin, I can understand not having heard of Leslie. If you are from Austin--or at least lived here for the last 10 years or so--you've been under a rock if you don't know who Leslie Cochran was. Was. He died this morning at 1 AM. He was just a year older than I.

Leslie was one of the weirder things about a city that prides itself on being weird (much less so than 29 years ago when I moved here).

To read about Leslie (you can Google him...there's lots out there, so I won't be redundant here), one gets the notion that he was mentally ill...crazy...his cheese slipped off his cracker...but I don't know. To look into his eyes...



(c) Austin American-Statesmen 2000

...those aren't the eyes of a crazy man.  Somehow, I think Leslie had the best laugh of all. He lived out those wacky fantasies we all shove into some dusty shoe box at the back of our closet (not that I really want to walk about in a thong and not much else) while enjoying the reactions and adoration of the "freaked out normals." He made enough to live on and did what he wanted to do, when and how it suited him. Society, of course, will label someone like Leslie as mentally ill, or at best nonconformist, simply because he didn't fit the simple, round, 9-to-5 hole.

It's not a life for everyone. And, of course, we need doctors, lawyers, beauticians, mechanics, musicians, and politicians...okay, so we don't really need politicians, but you get my drift. The world works the way it does because everyone fills a niche. Leslie filled a niche, too. He provided entertainment, a topic of conversation, a distraction, a reminder to not take life so bloody seriously all the time. The thing that made Leslie weird was not his supposed insanity, but his chosen avocation. Just another wacked-out homeless dude is not that weird, to tell you the truth; every city has a gazillion of them. As the article points out, Leslie did not have to be homeless, and often wasn't. He could have held down a regular job, too, I'm guessing.  If choices make us who we are (Professor Dumbledore said so), then so do our lack of choices. So much of my life has taken place on auto-pilot, doing whatever the path of least resistance led me to rather than where my heart would have rather been.

So...stuck in a dead-end job, doing crap you'd rather not...or being free to wear a thong in public and run for mayor in silver fuck-me shoes...when you're a guy...and yet still getting by. Makes me wonder who was the more successful....

Farewell Leslie, fair winds and following seas.