Jack Kukoda

My sophomore year of college, we used to call one of our roommates “Sneak Attack.” His real name was Ben Barnett, but we called him “Sneak Attack.” I don’t remember why we starting calling Ben that, but if anyone asked, we would say it was because he would try to rape us in the middle of the night. It was completely untrue. He never tried to rape us at night, or during the day, for that matter. The point is, Ben was very good-natured about the fact that his so-called friends were spreading rumors that he was a serial roommate raper.

The reason I’m telling you this is to better illustrate what a nice fellow Ben was compared to the rest of his roommates, who were, myself included, total assholes. Ben was the only one in our room who didn’t smoke. When the common room got too smoky for him, he would retreat to his bedroom for relief. But when he did that, the rest of us would follow him into his tiny bedroom and smoke cigarettes while crowded around his little desk. Then we would ask Ben questions like, “Don’t you love the delicious smell of tobacco smoke?”

Not an actual rapist.

But I think the worst thing Ben had to put up with was when I covered his entire bed in coins. On that night, I was about to go to the deli to buy some cigarettes, but didn’t have any money. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself. “My roommate and supposed friend, Ben, has a giant cup of change in his bedroom. I’ll just borrow a few dollars from him.”

I went into Ben’s room and dug through his change cup. I couldn’t find any quarters at first, so I poured some of the change out onto Ben’s bed, thinking that the quarters were hidden beneath all the nickels and pennies. I was wrong. Still no quarters. I poured some more change out, this time spreading it around so I could better identify any potential quarters. Nothing. I poured out some more change, then more, then more, until I had emptied the entire cup onto Ben’s bed. I found maybe two quarters in that giant novelty cup full of coins. I’m pretty sure that this pissed me off and that was my motivation for what I did next, but I can’t be certain because it happened about 6 years ago. What I am certain of, is that instead of putting the coins back into the cup and replacing it on Ben’s nightstand, I thought it would be funny to spread the coins across his entire bed, which is what I did.

Ben came home later that night at around 2am. He had been at a party and was looking forward to passing out in his own bed. I can’t imagine the confustion he must have felt when he climbed into his bed to discover that the softness of his sheets had been replaced by the cold, hard jingling of change. Not to mention that smell that coins have. Ben told me later that he tried to pick up every coin one by one, then got too tired and just swept it all onto the floor and went to sleep. I have no idea why he didn’t beat the hell out of me the next day. He was certainly capable of it, and I definitely could have used a good ass-kicking.

Anyway, I remembered that story recently, so, there you go. And I wanted everyone to know what a good guy Ben is. Even though he does eat his own pubes.