I spent a good chunk of my holiday on the back porch with my cheezy Kyocera Candid 2 reading In Search of My Creator. I found myself all over the pages she’s written, but most especially I found the voice of someone going through what I spent so much time being tortured by in my early recovery. I called him IFX. She calls him TDH. I haven’t asked but I assume from her writing that it means ‘totally, devastatingly handsome.’ IFX was. And while I’m thrilled, thrilled that I’m over him and happy that we are able to be friends now, I am secretly thrilled that at least once in my life I had a devastatingly handsome boyfriend. Even if I was 16 years older than him, he was straight, only ever actually hugged me once and that was only because he was asleep and didn’t know and I kept him around by keeping drugs around. Whatever. Apparently I thought it was worth it, right.
But “In Search” is so bravely honest about this one particular point and says it in such a refreshing way that, contrary to my normal editorial policy for this blog, I just have to share it with you.
“I was all over that shit. Love me, think I’m great, blah blah. He was so not into it, and the whole time I thought, ‘he must think I’m so fucking cool.’
Now really, Joe didn’t marry Brenda, he married Rhoda. And guess what, she was the friend, and the show wasn’t working and it wasn’t as good as Mary so even though they tried to make her a Mary they couldn’t, and Joe & Rhoda got a divorce and then Valerie Harper did nothing. For a long ass time. And I LOVE HER. But you can see my point.”
I have never in my life been cool. I have always wanted to be cool. I prayed for cool to rub off on me.
To my searching friend I want to say, Happy Thanksgiving, darling. Welcome to the sequel. I hear in this part the George Clooney character turns out to be a serial killer and the Janeane Garafalo character marries the kindest, most decent, and astonishingly handsome mechanic in the lower east side. (just like Donna Karan.)
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“Cool” is a paradox.
Because those that truly are cool, are separate, apart. It is that very quality of uniqueness/aloofness that makes cool-ness.
But those that want to BE cool, are wanting to JOIN cool, which, by definition, is impossible.
It’s another iteration of irony. Like, surrender to get to sanity.
To achieve cool, you can’t care about getting there.
Hmmmmm.
-DeeK
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I hate it when you’re right.
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Cool is not a reality, but a perception agreed upon by the majority. Everyone might agree that the good-looking masculine guy who wears black and sunglasses and smokes Dunhills and doesn’t say much in High School is cool, but for all we know that guy is painfully insecure and miserable. So what does it matter if everyone thinks he’s cool? Never made anyone really happy. Works in 8th grade for a while, but that’s about it.
And sorry to rain on your parade, but your relationship with IFX, BY YOUR OWN DESCRIPTION OF IT, doesn’t sound like any definition of boyfriend I’ve ever heard. Ergo, you never “had” a handsome boyfriend, just a gorgeous guy in your life you were infatuated with. Not the same thing.
That’s the bad news. The good news is you can’t lose anything you never really had in the first place, ergo, you never lost that handsome boyfriend either. That was a great comfort to me with my own IFX. Years later, I can’t believe how crazy I made myself about my so-cool someone who USED me so completely for drugs and my skills with bondage, and never remembered my birthday once in 5 years, and only wrote me once in prison. He was not only never my boyfriend, he wasn’t much of a friend at all. And he’s still out there, still thinking he’ll put the meth down any day now. Not so cool now. (Never was, either. It was all my perception.)
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