Cool

 

            I remember, vaguely, that when I was about twelve years old I wanted to be “cool.” The word is a bit slippery to define, but in my case, I used it to refer to an alternative to the really popular classmates – football players, cheerleaders, etc. (My brother pretty much ruled that venue – one of the “Cool Guys.”) No, I came up with an alternative version: outside-the-mainstream “coolness.” My version included my ambition to succeed in three cool roles:

 

Hockey Goalie. To this day, I don’t know why I aspired to that role, especially since this was before face masks. I was a goaltender in high school and then at Amherst College, and I was somewhat successful, even though I often felt like an imposter. There was stress. My college roommates described some of my nightmares, and years later, in a dream I made a kick save that landed me on the floor next to my bed – to Kim’s puzzled amusement. Maybe it was the mask I finally got – it made me both anonymous and distinctive. When wearing the mask, I was someone else, and that was cool. I was both visible and invisible, and not fully human.

 

Jazz Drummer. I listened to a lot of jazz, mostly on the radio and my dad’s Dixieland albums, and I was always impressed by the jazz drummers – who drove the band and made things happen. So, I somehow talked my parents into getting me drum lessons. I was never very good, never in a group in high school other than the Marching Band. But when I went to college I lied at an audition and said I had played in a band, and since I was the only drummer who showed up, I got the job. Fortunately, we had some real musicians. Our group played a mix of jazz standards and early rock music. I did learn to play cool Brazilian bossa nova, and I had one gig with a blind guitar player who thought I was Black. (Cool!) When I moved to Ann Arbor to teach high school, I played with a group that was, like my college combo, good enough to hide my weaknesses. We played at a restaurant/bar on Thursday nights, and I count those gigs as some of the happiest moments of my life. I was semi-invisible, my goal being to make the other guys in the band sound better, deflecting attention from me. The only problem with the gig was that the late Thursday nights made teaching on Friday morning rather difficult. Something like: “Here’s an essay topic for you to write. While you are writing, I’ll just rest my head on my desk.” What is really cool is that I can say I was a rock and jazz drummer without having to demonstrate.

 

Poet. Not sure how this goal was planted. Maybe it was a consequence of some early reading of Walt Whitman and William Blake. (Thank you, Mr. Hayes – my English teacher.) What was cool about this role was that it was (and is) something different – not the daily me who takes out the trash and pays the electric bill. I wrote very little poetry while in high school and none while in college. When I started teaching, a colleague, Andy Carrigan, and I would exchange poems regularly – many of them written at faculty meetings. I self-published two books of poetry and did a few readings in Ann Arbor. I enjoyed identifying as a poet. And in the poems I would create a voice, a persona who is not-really-me, who is sensitive and open with his feelings, unlike my Real Self whose lid is screwed on pretty tight. “Poet” is another cool mask.

 

            What do all three of these have in common? Masks. It’s cool to create a new identity (though this may be a sign of mental illness). But I’m cool with that.

 

            Kim asked me what mask I am wearing now. Geezer with old jokes and stories? Husband?