by Michael K. White
At first all I heard were rumors. Someone told me that Snuggy Latka had died, and if that wasn’t shocking enough, apparently he died in jail. When I heard this my first reaction was the instant and insistent urge to piss. Like all of a sudden I couldn’t hold it. In a way it felt like a tribute.
Later, when the story emerged, I thought it represented Snuggy pretty well. I was told that it was a cold winter day and that Snuggy Latka had been walking along downtown on Fourth Street when a cop car pulled up alongside him and asked him where he was going. Snuggy refused to answer, and the cop asked him why he was walking in the cold without a coat. All he had on was a T-shirt and jeans. Snuggy again refused to answer or to stop walking, so the cop trailed after him. He asked again why he was walking in the cold with no coat. Then he yelled at Snuggy to stop. At that, Snuggy turned around and told the cop that he had a constitutional right to walk in the cold without a coat. He cited the First Amendment, then he spat at the cop and hit him in the face. Later, in jail, Snuggy was found hanging dead from the ceiling of his cell. He had tied the legs of his jeans around his neck.
He was twenty-three.
Snuggy’s real name was Jim Latka, but no one called him Jim. I have no idea how he got the name Snuggy, since it did not fit him in any single way. If anyone on the planet was less Snuggy than Snuggy, they had yet to appear. In the meantime he would have to do. I went to school with him; he was a year ahead of me. Snuggy was a wrestling star, state champion, undefeated. He was feared throughout South High. Talk was that he was crazy, that when he wrestled he would go nuts and that’s how he won. People gave him a wide berth when he came toward them.
Snuggy was small, but he was built like a monkey, with long arms and a thick body. His legs were bowed and powerful. His face was open, with a tiny, upturned nose, and on top of his neckless head was a dome of tight, curly hair. The scary thing about Snuggy sightings, though, was the way his eyes were always wide and unblinking, as if he were looking for prey. It gave him the aura of something artificial and unfeeling. Something crazy.
My encounters with Snuggy Latka were very rare. Besides flattening me against the lockers when he strode past with his wrestling crew in their letterman jackets, he only acknowledged my existence once. It was outside the gym, and he stomped out of the locker room, sweaty and wild eyed. He saw me standing there, looked right into my eyes, and lifted his head ever so slightly in greeting. Then he bent over and took the longest drink of water from a water fountain that I ever saw.
A year later, on a warm May night, I drove to the public library. I loved going there at night, browsing the stacks, and finding whatever took my face at that moment. When I had a stack of books, I would check out and go home. This night was all about the JFK assassination. There were plenty of books about it, and I was going to spend the summer digging into it.
I walked outside in the warm night air, carrying my books. It smelled of lilacs and rain, green and brown. A small breeze blew through the skinny trees planted along the front of the library. Summer was coming. The sky was full of rushing black clouds that obscured then uncovered a bright full moon. I got to my car and threw the books into the back seat when I heard someone calling my name.
“Hey! Hey Mike!”
I turned around to see none other than Snuggy Latka himself walking toward me and smiling.
“Hey,” I said back as he reached me and leaned against my car.
“This your car? Nice. 65 Chevy Impala. 327. Four door. Nice.”
Snuggy approved. I relaxed.
“Hey, I got a twelve pack of Olympia in my car. I’ll go get it.”
He scampered off before I could reply. Since this was my teenage beer-drinking period, I was not adverse to drinking a couple beers with the feared Snuggy Latka, state wrestling champion, undefeated.
He returned with the beer, nice and warm, and we got into my car.
“I’d say we could go to my car, but it’s full of stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Ah, you know. Tables and skateboards and a hunting jacket or two. Hey, you know when you eat a peanut, a whole peanut, and you crack it in half in your mouth? There’s that tiny little nugget at the bottom that held the two parts together? That’s the best part of the peanut.”
We drank our beers.
“You afraid of me?”
Snuggy was looking at me now, with the wide eyes that didn’t blink.
“Not at the moment,” I said.
Snuggy busted out laughing, spitting out some beer. “So, you’re supposed to be smart, right?”
I didn’t know how to answer this but finally decided on: “Yeah.”
Snuggy nodded thoughtfully. “You ever hear of Buck Minister Fuller?” He looked at me sideways, almost shyly.
“I’ve heard the name.”
“He’s like a visionary. A genius. You know those domes? They’re made out of triangles? He invented them.”
“Like the ones on playgrounds? That kids play on?”
Snuggy was annoyed. “Well, yeah, but he makes great big ones. Like buildings. Because they’re so structurally sound. He is an engineer, but he’s also a philosopher. Do you know what he said? He said, ‘You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.’”
“Wow.”
“You’re dam right.” Snuggy looked around, draining his second beer. “What books did you get?”
I explained my Kennedy assassination plans for the summer, and he nodded sagely.
“I read them books. I’m not convinced. Reality is only what we believe. Reality is totally subjective. It differs from one person to the next. We base reality on what we perceive and believe, not what is really there. Like UFOs. I mean, how do we know what aliens are like? They could be microscopic for all we know. We’re so conceited we think everything is to our own scale. The earth could be teeming with aliens, and we’re too stupid to recognize them. Like ants. They build cities, have a whole society, and we barely notice them unless they’re in the house.”
We talked on, drinking beer after beer. I was astonished at the breadth of Snuggy Latka’s knowledge and the ease with which he put things together. I could see that his mind was all about making connections, and he did it flawlessly. There was something beautiful about the symmetry of it, but there was also something false about it. Making the connections was not how things worked in nature. Making those connections was always an afterthought. I watched him as he went on about science fiction and Carl Sagan and Pontiac GTOs. He seemed totally at ease, and he put me at ease. I asked him if he liked the Marx Brothers.
He shrugged. “I prefer the Three Stooges. Humor is a complicated thing. I’m not sure I get it. I mean, it’s funny when someone falls down, but I never understood why wordplay was funny.”
“For me it’s a sanctuary. An escape.”
Snuggy drained his beer. “Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind. I forget who said that.”
The beers were having two effects by now. We were definitely slurring our words, and we were definitely dealing with rapidly filling bladders.
“I gotta piss.” Snuggy opened the car door and awkwardly stood up. He pulled down his pants around his ankles like a toddler and let fly in the parking lot, with people walking in and out of the library. I envied him his lack of self-consciousness, because although I too had to piss badly, I could never in a million years do that. As he finished, Snuggy got back into the car and cracked open the last can of Olympia, a beer I have never drunk since that night.
“Want to hear my favorite joke?” Snuggy Latka asked me. I was now reaching a state of agony with my bladder, and, thinking he would tell the joke, pound the beer, and leave, I said yes.
“It’s called ‘Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls.’ Okay, so there’s this guy, and he gets married, and they have a son. So the son is going to start school, kindygarden. So this guy, the dad, takes the son aside and says, ‘Son, if you do well and get straight As, at the end of the year I’ll give you anything you want. Deal?’ The son says yeah. So he goes to school, and he makes straight As, and at the end of the year the father says, ‘Okay, son, you made straight As, what do you want?’ The son looks at him and says, ‘I want Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls.’ Okay, so the father gives him the Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls. Next year the father gives him the same speech. Same thing. End of year, the son brings home a spotless report card. The father asks what he wants. Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls. This goes on all through elementary school. Every year same thing. Straight As. Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls. Boy starts middle school, and the father thinks, okay, now he’ll ne normal and ask for normal stuff. But no. Same thing. Sixth grade. Perfect grades. Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls. Same for seventh then eighth grade. Straight As. Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls. The father asks him why all he wants is Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls when he could have a stereo or any album he wants, but the son says he just wants Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls. The father decides not to make an issue of it. Okay, so now comes high school. Same thing. Same fucking thing. Every year, straight As. Perfect record. He’s offered scholarships left and right. Finally he’s a senior. He’s going to graduate with honors. He’s the valedictorian. His picture’s in the paper. His father takes him aside for a talk. ‘Son,’ he says, ‘you got to tell me why all these years all you ever wanted was Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls.’ The son grins and says, ‘Dad, I’ll tell you after graduation. I’ve been waiting for this moment.’ They hug. On the way to graduation, the son gets into a horrible car wreck. He’s not going to make it. The father rushes to the hospital to be with his son as he dies. They’re holding hands on his deathbed. ‘Son, son,’ the father sobs. ‘Please, you have to tell me, why, why, did you want the Pink Polka-Dot Ping-Pong Balls?’ ‘Okay,’ the son says. ‘I’ll tell you.’ Then he dies.”
By now the crickets and cicadas were out, and they filled the night with their scratchy music. Snuggy looked out the window; then he opened the door of my 65 Impala and walked away into the night without another word. I drove home desperately. My whole body was in pain, clenched sphincter and full bladder jostling. Every red light was an agony. When I finally got home and to the toilet, it felt like it would never end. My bladder was never the same after that night, and neither was my definition of a joke. I had found the path to my refuge, and the knowledge of it kept me warm in those cold winters in front of me, like a good heavy coat.