The Cool School (60 page)

H
E
WOULD
go to the post office and stand in line. When it was his turn to go, he’d let the person behind him, the one second in line, go ahead first (ahead of him), he’d be first in line once again. As long as there was a line, he could be at the head of it, the next one to go.

Allowing those behind to go first was a way of testing his word against theirs. The performance was perfect, transparent, and if properly executed, undetectable. The appearance of politeness without budging an inch. Top dog without the bark. The absence of aggression in a position reserved for a breed apart. An enlightened master? Incredible! What could be better?

Fortunately, he was never perfect, at least when he tried, and on the second day he found himself standing alone just after lunch. When he was called he failed to move. When he was called again he stood firm and refused to step forward. Security was called and he was removed.

Offering himself as a scapegoat was one of the ways he liked to mock and criticize the tradition of romantic silence.

B
EING
HIP
has usually been associated with being new, being “with it,” onto something that’s in before it’s actually
in
, certainly onto something that’s in before it’s out.

The hipster has usually been associated with being a number, a hot card, something oddly independent, responsive to whatever circumstance he finds himself in, disaffiliated but sovereign to whatever turf he finds himself wise to. Impulsive and nomadic, he’s the one without any of the problems that underscore a sudden change, a white shark, so to speak, easily navigating his environment in a smooth and offhanded way.

For him his fashion is more habit than reflex, the cool for the most
part always put on, like a well-worn accessory, the play of it often supplemented with an affected and studied style.

Pretending to know anything like this is a terrible strain, but I’m afraid the manner of this thing, this sense of reserve, this type of definition and attitude, got to him early, got to him first through parents . . .
his
parents . . . and later, seconded by an older brother and sister in shifts!

The simultaneous pressures were not, he imagined, unlike spending time in a temporal inferno, a mendactic internment where he found himself being seriously fucked over.

Its anti-commercialism bore a striking resemblance to vows of voluntary poverty, an issue he thought truly emotionless and amoral, and fought hard to undermine.

But his parents and his brother and sister were obsessed by the concoctives of modern living. The canon of their convictions seemed sacred. Their laws, natural ones, instructive and unspoken . . . with rites of passage not to be shrugged off or meddled with.

Early on these conditions were breathed,
mentholated.
It was difficult to do otherwise, its rap was passed around the house like a container of shampoo. There wasn’t much one could do, it had always been there, it was there from the beginning, and he was helpless to its charge, being a kid, and impressionable and unformed.

Even after, when he was a teenager, the finer elements of its verse, especially its cynicism, came to be unconsciously absorbed. At times the “cool” seemed unapproachable, as if the particulars were ordained, and only those few who truly sacrificed on all occasions could discipline the gestures into posture.

But mostly, he found its instruction prehistoric, and in time he secretly subverted its registration from imprinting its mark permanently, knowing somehow its brand would burn deep into his hide, and telegraph a sign, the kind of sign they put on cattle and slaves.

It was for shit and it was hard to figure out, but those assholes had given up on the idea of being human, and everything they thought was theirs got hit on to do the same.

T
HEY
WERE
never sure why, when the names of the great ’50s artists were mentioned, Rod Serling’s name wasn’t included. To them it wasn’t a question of inclusion, or even nomination: Serling was by far the most entertaining of the bunch, and it seemed wrong that his work was not regarded with the respect they felt it deserved.

They hoped that it was just a misunderstanding, a question of time, that perhaps along with the other so-called “commercial” artists, the new producers might one day get a good dose of romanticism before the official fiction . . . what usually came to be called
history,
would be written.

T
HEY
WERE
always impressed by the photographs of Jackson Pollock, but didn’t particularly think much about his paintings, since painting was something they associated with a way to put things together that seemed to them pretty much taken care of.

They hung the photographs of Pollock right next to these new “personality” posters they just bought. These posters had just come out. They were black-and-white blowups . . . at least thirty by forty inches.

The photographs of Pollock were what they thought Pollock was about. And this kind of take wasn’t as much a position as an attitude, a feeling that an abstract painter, a TV star, a Hollywood celebrity, a president of a country, a baseball great, could easily mix together . . . and whatever measurements used to distinguish their value would be done away with . . .

I mean, it seemed to them that Pollock’s photographs looked pretty good next to Steve McQueen’s, next to JFK’s, next to Vince Edwards’, next to Jimmy Piersall’s, and so on . . .

T
HEY
WERE
used to seeing things cropped, with the scene or the image up close and filling up the whole frame . . . making whatever was there “larger than life” . . . making it a lot more than what it was supposed to be.

This particular way of looking at what was inside was nothing
new, and the effect of this experience was only questioned by those few who still couldn’t come to terms with the idea of substitute or surrogate relationships.

Sometimes they found themselves “falling for,” and thought maybe what was outside was as good as, or even better than, what was presented inside the crop. It happened, the trip-up did occasionally occur, but when it did, they were the first to admit to their foolish curiosity.

They should have known better, but after they had seen the commercial for the Bronx Zoo they said, “Let’s go! It looks incredible!”

There was no hesitation, and looking back it’s difficult to determine who to blame for that kind of absence of mind. The “fall” was pretty much like giving in to the temptation of a velvet well, and the “go for it” pitch of the entire advertising industry made sense, that Bud . . . that zoo for them.

Polar bears jumping and splashing in arctic waters. Gorillas swinging from cages and beating chests. The monorail safari train, and the promise of an Arabian night on a Bedouin camel. Bengal tigers prowling around in the open wilds. The tom-tom drama of the African jungle. One began to wonder if Johnny Shefield, the original boy in
Tarzan,
might be tied up somewhere in an unspeakable pygmy punishment machine.

As it turned out, of course, the only punishment was standing in lines with mobs of New York natives waiting patiently to see each attraction. Three to four deep, standing outside the houses of reptiles and birds and fish.

The safari train was filled with families and screaming babies. The elephants were swaying from side to side in neurotic replay. The only large gorilla refused to emerge from his little cement hut, knowing full well that dominance in
Planet of the Apes
was light-years away.

The tiger that had been so beautifully presented in the ad (a nice, tight head shot), was camouflaged and buried under leaves not less than a football field away!

The polar bear looked stuffed, and the lions were locked up. The rhinos moved around with about as much viciousness as a herd of contented cows.

Well, what could they say? An honest mistake? Nobody’s fault? Could’ve happened to anyone? Sure, of course . . . it happens. No hard feelings . . .

They still liked the ad. They still stopped and pointed to it, and joked about what came to mind when it came over the TV . . .

There . . . you see . . . you had to have been there to believe it. You gotta see it to believe it. You should’ve been there. There’s more to it than meets the eye. The naked eye. Ain’t nothing like the real thing. Can I get a witness? Show me, I’m from Missouri. Live.
It’s Saturday Night.
Wow, I could’ve had a
V-8
 . . .

R
ECENTLY
THERE
’
VE
been a lot of articles and talk about book burnings. Books, pamphlets, periodicals, pornography . . . fuel for the new bonfires. People burning
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
burning
Tom Jones,
too. The fear of Tom and Becky, and the fear of the other Tom, his genitals, mostly. The fear of his “equipment” moving slow and subtle, like a real enemy.

Last week when he bought the newspaper there was a
Pleasure Magazine
right next to the paper on the stand. On the cover of the magazine, right out there on the street, out in the open, was a picture of a naked girl with pink breasts, and three titles to articles inside, pasted up over the girl’s head.

The titles to the articles were
Ram It Up My Ass
,
Suck My Open Hole
, and
Huge Latex Rod.
They were printed in big, bold, bright yellow letters.

Suck My Open Hole.
It startled him. He remembers laughing and saying to himself,
come on
 . . .

He didn’t know what to think. His reaction was mixed. It took him by surprise. He didn’t particularly like what he saw. But he was fascinated by how extreme it was.

He really didn’t know what to do, you know? Stand still. Set the
fire. Wait. Walk away.
Buy it.
What are you supposed to do with that kind of take?

He thought it was kind of like saying to someone, okay, step over this line if you want to fight, and the someone does, and you step back and draw another line.

O
NE
OF
the things they liked about this place was a particular type of density. The kind of density tempered for the most part by diversity. The source of this fabric was hard to define, but getting to its ingredients was becoming a lot easier, and hopefully, the continued availability of these ingredients would make some conditions less restricted, and maybe even help establish workable redistributions to make things less conflicted and more even.

The best of this place has always been the variety, and, at least up until now, there had existed the possibility of choice; even though the catch to the possibility was mostly a promise.

The promise of diversity had in some ways existed literally, but mostly its existence was a notion, something that looked good on paper. The implications of choice as an availability in reality, of course, could spell disaster for those traditionally desiring, or already in, a position of power. A chicken in every pot was a political ploy, and in a real sense, had as much chance of becoming a reality as fingering a wish on a wishbone. And, up until now, the practice of such a spread happened only in various forms, and only then because they were affordable.

Anyway, they assumed such control was understood, and perhaps, with the tradition of power always shifting about, the fall-out from the technological competition would continue to be available and not become an elected or fixed or licensed privilege.

Access to information, as well as access to the software that sent and received the information, was a concern. The independent, the “mom and pop” brand of business, had suddenly reappeared, and in communications, of all places. Technology, unlike industry, had the enormous advantage of being domestically centered, and the
translationships being produced as a result of this access and location would, no doubt, redefine the idea of “home-made.”

The new cottage industry probably wouldn’t last, but who could say? People in power were always screwing up, and sometimes had a whole lot of trouble keeping a lid on the techy, the science nerd, the gadget man . . . the stranger with the thick glasses . . . making sure they didn’t slip away and turn outlaw.

H
E
LIKED
to think of himself as an audience, and located himself on the other side of what he and others did . . . looking back at it, either by himself or with a group, hoping to exchange an emotion that was once experienced only as an author . . . an exchange he willingly initiated for reasons he felt necessary . . . necessary because he knew if he didn’t make the switch from author to audience he could never say, “I second that emotion.”

Being the audience, or part of one, was for him a way to identify himself physically, and a way to perceive rather than affect . . . a way to share with others what might be described as a kind of impossible or promissory non-fiction. A way to see or realize what essentially was a surface with public image, a surface that was once speculative and ambitious, as something now referential and ordinary. Referential because the image’s authority existed outside his own touch, and ordinary because its frequency of appearance could be corroborated by persons other than himself.

“You don’t have to take my word for it,” he would say, as if defending against a cross-examination . . . “These pictures are more than available, and unless you’ve been living in an alley, inside an ash-can, wrapped up in a trash liner (with the cover closed), chances are better than even that you’ve seen them too.”

S
HE
ALWAYS
sounded like she actually knew what she was talking about. And this certainly wasn’t the kind of presumption he was interested in rediscovering right now. His deal was about almost knowing but not quite . . . preferring not to care to know the little
extra, even if he could . . . somehow knowing that that, too, wouldn’t be quite true anyway.