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What’s In A Name?
A good friend will bail you out of jail, especially if it’s at a reasonable hour and if your offense isn’t likely to involve either one of you in a sordid newspaper account of the whole affair; but your best friend will be the one sitting in the cell next to you, staring blankly out into space, saying 'That was freaking awesome!'
Thomas Louise Huggins (“Hugs” to most people who’d seen him more than once) was just such a dude. I didn’t grow up with Tommy, but I wish I had, he’d have been a handy guy to have around when it came time to start throwing hands in the parking lot, assuming, of course, he was sober enough to find his way outside the bar. As fate would have it, a similar altercation immediately preceded our current fate, although a barroom was not (this time) involved.
“Tommy, why did your folks name you Louise?” I had my knees folded up against my chest, arms wrapped around them; the bench in the cell was too hard to lie down on. We had some time to kill, we weren’t going anywhere until such time as some stodgy old fart tapped his gavel and sealed our fate… might just as well talk, it didn’t look like either of us would be doing much sleeping.
“Well, it’s quite elementary, actually. My mother took one look at me and she wasn’t sure what sex I was, so she covered her bet with one of each.”
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him. “Makes sense… but why didn’t she unfold your diaper a little and have a gander?” Two can play this game.
“What makes you think she didn’t?”
He slugged me on the arm and both of us chuckled and snorted, causing several other guests in the holding cell to threaten our lives.
When we regained our composure, I pressed him on the subject. “I’d always suspected you were a eunuch… that would explain why you haven’t been laid in the ten years I’ve known you.”
“Yea… well, we all have our crosses to bear. I can live without the money.”
Now I looked at him, my face contorted and scrunched into a questioning grimace. “Huh? What’s money got to do with it?”
Tommy shot me a look. “Oh… laid… Hell’s bells, Bubba, I thought you said paid.”
Again, the snickers… it was going to be a long night.
“Come on, Hugs, there has to be a reason… did you even have parents? I’m beginning to wonder if you didn’t escape from the circus or something. Judging from your smell, I’m about ninety per cent sure you were raised by goats!”
As usual, he totally ignored my attempts to impugn his character. “Didn’t like that version, eh? Well, let me try again…”
I could virtually hear the wheels turning inside his head… and was that smoke I smelled?
“I was born a poor, black child…” His voice trailed off at the end; an epic was sure to follow.
“Stop right there! Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Steve Martin, The Jerk, 1979. Just exactly whom do you think you’re talking to, here? I’m a man of letters, for Chris’sake!”
Now the grin… “I can’t slip nothin’ past you, can I, Bubs… mind like a steel trap. Okay, if you must know, my mother was Puerto Rican and when they came around to her room and asked her what she wanted to name her precious, beautiful new son, she said, ‘Thomas Luis’… and, the nurse, being a gringo and all, thought she said ‘Louise’. She didn’t have the money to go to court and change it later, our family being so poor.”
I sat and stared at the Nordic features and blue eyes of my tormentor. “Again with the 'poor Puerto Rican' crap, huh? Hugs, I have it on good authority that you were raised in Newport Beach... are you absolutely positive that’s the story you’re going with?”
After a pregnant pause, “Uhhh… it’s my mother’s maiden name?”
“Go to sleep, Tommy…” Bozo...
Bob Church © August 31,2002
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