A Treatise on 'Cool'

Over dinner about a week ago I got into a discussion with some friends about male-female relationships. This was in some ways a loaded talk as the group itself was made up of two couples and myself, the men in both units fully aware of the consequences that might result from any remarks they couldn't talk their way out of. As I remember the discussion some kind of way meandered into the subject of ass. As I've recently found myself converting from breast man to leg and ass man [Ladies of all types, this is not to be taken literally], the woman with the smallest ass in the room found her self-consciousness coming to the surface. "What about me?" she asked. I quickly explained that she had something far better than an ass of note. She's cool as shit. And that's far more important.

Now the naysayers out there might think that I was placating her. But this is far from the truth. As I'm at the point in my life where I'm confronting the reasons why I chose the women I chose in the past it gradually became clear that Freudian theory reigned supreme. My mother is an intelligent, dedicated, and God-fearing woman. But she is not cool. Not at all. But let me first define the adjective to which I am referring.

'Cool', in this particular context, refers to having a general understanding that the world does not revolve only around one person's wants and needs, that you had a life long before the two of you met and that life has certain obligations and responsibilities, duties that have to be constantly weighed and measured in correlation with time and effort and degrees of importance.

For me, 'Cool' means that she understands that boys will be boys, and that such activities as occasional flirting (for both parties), an annual visit to the strip club or the lack of desire for men to assist with things like shoe shopping and housewares are generally par for the course when dealing with men. She expects reciprocity and knows how to be reciprocal. She does not complain about hanging with the boys as long as you're willing to hang with the girls every once in a while. And she wants to know what you really want as opposed to only what you want that has some bearing or effect on her. I think that generally covers it.

I think you ladies out there would be rather surprised by how short the supply of cool girls in the world. Many men tend to fumble the ball when such a woman enters their sphere. They get scared and non-committal and shoot themselves in the foot imagining themselves as 007-type ladies men who either don't want to leave the game behind or don't want to stop being selfish enough to give their 50 percent. In terms of such fumbles I don't have a whole lot of sympathy.

I can say that I'm friends with more cool girls than I've had as lovers. By the way for the feminists out there who take issue with me saying 'girl', know that I very often refer to myself as a boy here and in other places. The women I've dated have been cool about some things, but the 50/50 thing became a problem at one point or the other. Or there were philosophical differences that spelled a game over on our day of reckoning.

And when I have met the cool ones they had almost always walled themselves into these situations with men who wanted everything but didn't want to give up anything. Maybe it's a thing about opposites attracting. Maybe it's a thing about timing and destiny. Or maybe the world is so fucked up that the majority of us have no clue of what true happiness is anymore.

I had an eleven year-old girl threaten to lie to her mother that I'd cursed in the classroom because I took away her bathroom privileges after she left class for 15 minutes without permission. Knowing that I would file a report the minute class was over, I spent the rest of the day seeking revenge by telling her all the things that she never wanted to hear me say. During a friendly game of Scrabble I kept up a continuous dialogue about how she used her friends to do her work for her, that she encouraged her little crew to vie for her attention, that despite all of her complaining and declarations of never coming back to class again and of the mother and father who always believed her over the teacher, she kept ending up in that same desk in front of me every day. She knew that everything I said was the truth as she said there frozen, looking straight ahead, her little minions watching as I took her apart piece by piece. I kind of reveled in it.

She left hating me. I left feeling only slightly vindicated that a pre-teen had even thought of putting my job in jeopardy. My boss laughed the whole thing off. She's knows the girl's shade level as well as I do.

There were times in my life where I considered giving myself to secondary education, becoming the 'cool' teacher who introduced books and movies and ideas that all the other dry and crusties never even touched. I would maybe write a book or two in my lifetime but it would be worth it to have an influence on young minds. Then I saw what the public system does to those kinds of teachers. And I saw what passes as parenting these days. Then I took this job and came to the conclusion that after this, any class I teach will be one that someone paid tuition for. Plain and simple. Out.