Cool

by rc.

There’s is a new kid in town, and he’s cool, but it’s a new cool, it’s a street cool. It’s not to be mistaken for a jive cool or a Miles Davis cool, a flower child reefer smoking Marvin Gaye. ...“what’s going on” kind of cool. Frank Sinatra and the Dorsey brothers wouldn't know it, Ella would pass it by, but it’s cool. It’s not a Sarah Vaughn kind of cool, no not Ray Charles uumm ah, baby whad- ah-say cool, but I am telling you it’s cool. Not Maya Angelo.......“give me a cool drink of water for I die”..kind a cool. or Cannonball Adderly. Picasso’s blue period, Elvis “love me tender” .Take five. You can make your own picks, but it ain't that kind of cool. It’s not a Summer afternoon driving the convertible, hair flying in the wind if you got that kind of hair, it’s not the Biker on a customized chrome chopper, ape handle bars rolling down the boulevard, or the dapper dude with smooth clothes and a funked up hat and sun glasses. Now sunglasses... that used to be cool.

But that’s not it. This is a new cool. It’s a City cool, in the street cool....It’s a hard full face glare, right up at you man kind-a- cool.
The red supped up car pulls right in beside you sharing a single lane, cause you don’t deserve to have a lane all to your self, the CD player is booming, the bass line sends discordant ripples through your nervous system, your stomach rattles in it’s cage, your muscles tremble out of control. The man behind the wheel looks at you, his head fixed, eyes moving like the vertical hold on an old TV with no picture. He knows he is cool, his companion, a pretty girl with dark hair and firm stand up breast pushing the limits of her T shirt. She looks longingly at him in anticipation of nothing in particular, and then at you. Cold grey eyes. Traffic is moving again, your are cruising....cool like. He steps on the gas trailed by a cough of blue exhaust, but he’s there again at the next light just ahead of you.

Just before you get there, another young woman this time with a child,steps off the side walk into fluid traffic, nothing is in her favor, not the lights, not the flow, nor the speed, but she is pushing a helpless dependent into a dizzying intersection. You press hard on the break, and the horn at the same time.....then with a heavy lumbering head she looks up, turning only slightly in your direction with out changing her pace or expression - looking at you a hard “dare you to hit me..muther fucker” ....that’s it. She knows she is cool. In fact she lives in the cool part of town next to the Dairy Queen the other side of the liquor store...so “she’s got to be cool”.

Her Brother Jamal, stands with his friend on the driver side of a car double parked in the right turn lane, every one knows Jamal is cool, so they just swerve in and around him with out warning while he stands unruffled talking with friends, probably about more cool stuff.

I tell you, these cat’s are cool. Now when I was a boy I too was cool, hanging out with friends talking about jazz, and steel pan, giggling girls, movies and growing up, and wondering what its like to be cool.

But this new kid, is not a kid at all, he is all grown up, he has children and Tommy Hilfiger under wear, and some of his children have children, and they are all cool, a cold hard cool, with eyes fixed threatening.... an uneasy cool. A cool that finds it’s groove in some unfamiliar place, a hostile place, un neighborly, with out compassion, but I can’t be sure. It may just be a hip cool that I am out of step with or have out grown , or too old to remember, or can’t get into cause.... I am not cool. But that’s cool.