I used to be cool.
No, not the Fonzie, James Dean type of cool…………
black leather jacket, white tee shirt, slicked back hair, all the current
slang and that “ tude “
No motorcycle with chopped pipes and suicide
shifter.
Only a borrowed Honda 90cc with very noise taming baffles.
Nor the Clint Morrello type…………button down oxford shirt, kakhi pants,
wing tipped brown shoes, wire rimmed glasses and that “walk”.
No pretentiousness here, this was Clint and he was just cool.
Maybe there is a “cool” gene or DNA.
Some people just have it; he did and everyone knew it.
Others, like myself, worked and tried so hard.
The idea of being as close to black as possible the daily goal.
If you were black, you were preordained to “coolness” back in those days.
There was Beverly, that really foxy black cheerleader who liked me for whatever reason, and I liked her.
We would get together, of course on the sly,
she taught me how to really kiss.
I taught her, if she did not already know, the reality of her skin color……
I was tolerated in her living room,
she was not in mine.
To be cool, you just had to convince enough people and
reinforce the image everyday.
The “big lie”, I guess.
It was never a matter of the really cool people believing this.
They saw through the charade, because they knew what cool looked and
felt like.
No, it was just a matter of convincing enough people that you were cooler than they were…………
a coolness continuum, so to speak.
That perception had to be believed by self and others.
This gave you passage, not first class mind you, but still a ticket to
parties, desirable cliques, an excuse for not playing sports, and the attention of the second tier girls ( the first tier “hotties” knew better).
II
Being cool always took a lot of work.
It interfered with a great deal back then…….academics, sports,
self realization.
Remaining cool, since I seem to have never lost the desire, has taken even more work.
I mean, is it even possible to remain cool into your thirties and forties?
Perhaps.
Fifties, sixties, and seventies…….only in your mind and in your own eyes.
It, less and less, becomes a believable projection to self and others.
Attempts to remain cool become efforts to be seen as “in”, “hip”, or with the times.
Fashionable, open-minded, free thinking.
Perhaps an outlier, influencer, new age guru or mystic.
Even shabby chic would do.
Sixty years of doing all this, trying to keep up, to keep and maintain
that essential but fading self perception and projection………
simply exhausting.
I seem to struggle more and more fighting that self- image fatigue.
A losing battle, of course.
I mean, can you really be cool when bald…..
With a spare tire……
With white facial hair, wrinkly skin and aging marks?
The checklist seeming increases every day.
The writing is there on the wall, no longer in small weak print,
but billboard size, bold, italicized,
all there as reminders and reality checks.
I look more closely at the bottom footnote just above the baseboard in what appears to be print of increasing clarity.
It reads………NO ONE REALLY CARES AND YOU SHOULDN’T EITHER.
IT’S OVER…….END THE SELF-TORMENT……..RELAX…….BREATHE!