Lucas Dunn
In January 1939, E.B. White wrote in Harper’s, “A writer should cultivate only what naturally absorbs his fancy, whether it be freedom or cinch bugs, and should write in the way that comes easy.” Lucas Dunn, contributing editor and writer for this publication who died from liver disease on June 12, 2024, was interested in everything. He wrote about food and drink creatively in nearly 80 articles for this publication, humorous takes on current events for others, lightly fictionalized autobiographical prose, and personal essays about film, music, and culture. He worked, as I imagine the best creatives do, by feel.
Lucas was born in 1983 in Midwest City, the second of three. He regularly painted his childhood as “feral,” but family describe him as a leader among his siblings with a deep thirst for knowledge and the brightest smile. At the library he would fill his arms with nonfiction books to satisfy what seemed to be an unending curiosity. He attended Mid-Del public schools, joining the gifted students program at Pleasant Hill Elementary. He drew regularly. He once portrayed Dark Chocolate, a Darth Vader equivalent, in his school’s Mel Brooks-esque send up of Star Wars. Lucas developed a love of music and film in middle and high school as he found what friends describe as his chosen family, a group maintained for over 20 years of meals, trips, and general hijinks. For over a decade, he lived with his partner, Jenny, and a string of lovable, scruffy cats with names like Mr. Holdypaws and Charlie Potato.
During much of Lucas’ childhood, his family were practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses, a belief whose tenets include restrictions on certain forms of celebrations, birthdays, and many holidays, which meant that from early on Lucas had a sense that he was separate from the world. On the outside looking in.
Lucas worked at various local establishments over the years, including as a server at Rib Crib and a fishmonger at Whole Foods (both while he was vegetarian), beverage director at Bar Arbolada, shucking oysters at The Drake, barback at the old Savings & Loan, and server during None-such’s first months, to name a few. The creativity and intricacy of high-end food and drink allowed him to obsessively inhabit its minutiae. But, it was the hospitality industry and its diverse and ambitious staff that won his heart. In 2013, Lucas became a frequent contributor for the local, digital food publication, Munch Magazine. His early writing was passionate, but his habit of turning in pieces multiple times the word limit earned him the need for a good editor. Lucas began writing regularly for The Lost Ogle in 2014 and this publication in 2015, its maiden year. Later, he was published in McSweeney’s (“Carlos Santana’s ‘Smooth,’ Featuring Rob Thomas and Charles Bukowski”) and Gabrielle Lang-holtz’s America: The Cookbook published by Phaidon, and maintained a presence writing for subscribers on Patreon and Substack. In May 2021, Lucas was asked to become contributing editor to this publication, working with our editorial team to shape the direction of our coverage and our internal guidelines. To identify and help writers he felt had promise was a role he cherished.
During the last few years of monthly editorial meetings, I or others might come to the table with a pitch fitting Lucas’ preferred subject matter, covering a new bar, restaurant, or oddity (he was partway through a trio of articles on high-end bars in local home goods stores, for example). Inevitably, he would vie to turn proposed coverage into a piece of first-person storytelling with only passing care given to objectivity, a la Charles Bukowski. Where one of us may have hoped for Lucas’ poetic talents to be applied impartially, he saw and wrote about the world through the lens he knew best and enjoyed most—his own. “What if we make it into a gonzo journalism piece where I just …” was his perennial refrain.
The creativity and intricacy of high-end food and drink allowed him to obsessively inhabit its minutiae. But, it was the hospitality industry and its diverse and ambitious staff that won his heart.
In several early meetings where I willfully practiced restrained but active listening in response to Lucas’ commentary and after which I cursed Lucas’ meanderings, I adopted White’s 1939 thesis. Lucas favored his skills and instinct, not my inflated sense of duty or, at times, meeting decorum. This was an invaluable lesson in management and elementary geometry. Trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is futile and, eventually, a waste of everyone’s time. Allowing Lucas to be Lucas meant our publication was imbued with his kindness, expertise, and humor. In short, making it worth reading.
Most notably, Lucas believed in people’s intrinsic value and interest, sometimes to a fault. In reflecting with his friends, many noted that Lucas kept company they found moderately objectionable at times. He often looked past people’s outward behavior to find the good in them. In late 2015, he wrote the inaugural item in his series “The Hand That Feeds You” for this publication, where he celebrated those who spent their lives not in the spotlight, but behind the scenes, sweating it out to provide for others, blemishes and all. A bucket list item, as he described it, was profiling Diagoberto Lopez, a Guatemalan dishwasher who had worked at Picasso Cafe in Paseo for 14 years. The series’ final entry, on Billy Parker, the long-time lead baker for the 7-Eleven gas station’s OKC locations who also just happened to have washed dishes across most of North America while hitchhiking, was penned two weeks before Lucas’ death.
In reflecting on his series and in talking with his friends and family, it struck me that Lucas was treating the subjects with the care he wished to receive from others, but also from himself. He had worked plenty of hospitality and food jobs, toiling at times. He was his own greatest critic. He was an outsider. He was an addict. Many were experiences he shared with the subjects profiled.
The resounding sentiment from those I spoke with was how completely Lucas experienced life. He thoroughly consumed and shared art and culture in an effort to make connections with and a more interesting world for others. “Just imagine your dopey, cool friend who was also brilliant,” one friend mused. “He had such a hunger for life,” said another. While there may be more Lucas wished he could have done, there is no question that he felt and lived deeply.
The resounding sentiment from those I spoke with was how completely Lucas experienced life. He thoroughly consumed and shared art and culture in an effort to make connections with and a more interesting world for others.
A strong force in his life, Lucas loved movies. “Film is not only an essential art, but a fabric to modern civilization,” he wrote on his first Substack post. His belief was that if you were entertained, it was a good movie. He manifested his belief into a weekly Monday movie night, Mondo Mondays at Uptown’s The Bunker Club. He and his comrade, Joan Blackwell, would screen what some would consider weird and often obscure B movies. He regularly referenced Mondo Mondays with pride and excitement.
Lucas wrote his last of over 300 entries on the movie review site Letterboxd less than a week before he passed. The recently revived 1979 post-apocalyptic epic Mad Max received four stars. Earlier that week he gave 1978’s Deathsport two stars with the humorous review, “In the future, if you touch a motorcycle it will explode, and there are also lasers that make horses disappear.”
Toward the end, Lucas knew something was amiss. In April 2024, he wrote the following on Patreon: “All my other senses are getting worse, I turned 40 last year, my vision is poor, allergies worse, must be a litany of other internal organ issues that I can’t address because I can’t afford medical insurance and am generally too stubborn for doctors … So it goes,” he wrote, echoing his oft-uttered Kurt Vonnegut refrain. Most had noticed his decline, but, many acknowledged, Lucas wasn’t ready for the cure.
As addictions often go, it wasn’t clear how completely it had affected his body until it was far too late. Lucas had increased his alcohol consumption pre-COVID but that wasn’t unique; the isolation and stress of the pandemic increased our collective intake severalfold. We all knew Lucas enjoyed a drink, but the true scale was not something he shared. He quit several times with the help of those around him. Of those we spoke with in the wake of his death, some wished they had addressed it more directly and most, rightly, knew how stubborn he could be and feared it would only serve to isolate their friend. His death was something Lucas considered regularly according to his public, personal writing. The connection between his history and his self-critique, and the means by which he addressed both, seemed clear.
Of Lucas’ last three pieces for this publication, two were delivered late and one not at all. Lucas intuited that our deadlines were created as much for my benefit as any production schedule and was frequently, lovably tardy: “Hey man! Sorry this was late, I was just working on this paragraph where …” He had come a long way since his first published work a decade earlier. He frequently turned in well-crafted prose that required only a touch of structural editing. In late May 2024, he mentioned that a stubborn cold impeded his progress and two weeks later, his final delivered piece lacked some of his poetic charm and smooth transitions, maybe a reflection of drafting as one’s body ceases to function.
In the end, there are echoes of a person. Sounds or visions arising like déjà vu. Lucas’ haunts were often located between downtown OKC and the Paseo neighborhood. He didn’t own a car and practiced what those living in larger urban cores perfect, walking. I’d serendipitously meet Lucas on his way to the downtown library or to the OKC Museum of Art for a movie or headed up to The Bunker Club for Mondo Monday. We’d share a few blocks of conversation about film or wave to each other if merely passing ships.
I still see Lucas. Every mid-height, lightly disheveled, bearded man walking in Mesta Park elicits a near-wave before my hand drops and my throat constricts slightly. I close my eyes firmly and brush the meat of my palm against them to remove the excess moisture.
So it goes.
If you or someone you know struggles with addiction, please contact a health provider. Services may be affordable. Providers may include The Recovery Center, NorthCare, Hope Community Services, Variety Care, and Alcoholics Anonymous among others. Although we know it is difficult, supportive friends and family are a resource. Please tell someone. The best among us will love and support you through your journey
