Field notes on cool
A private club, the Heathers, and an awkward serenade
I’ll never forget Johnny. We met at a lounge on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. A place with beige circular couches, wafting translucent curtains and cedar wood, a DJ spinning in a nook on a suspended second floor.
I’m in my twenties, leaning on a long mahogany bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention.
I don't notice the tall, jaw-dropping guy with James Dean hair, in a leather jacket and white V-neck revealing the right amount of chest hair, until he slides next to me at the bar.
He puts his arm around my shoulder with easy familiarity, like we’re long-lost lovers reunited.
“Hi,” he says, with a Colgate smile and a wink.
He calls over the bartender and says, “We’ll have two Jack and Cokes.”
He turns to me, dark blue eyes burning a hole in my soul, and says, “I’m Johnny.”
I slide my hand into his and say, “I’m Pia.”
He kisses the top of my hand, which I follow with a curtsy.
We skip the awkward stranger phase and go straight to smitten lovers.
Maybe we met in another life, or we’re really good at getting into character. Either way, we click into place like Legos.
Unfortunately, Johnny and I didn’t last.
On what I didn’t realize would be our final date at his apartment, he plays his guitar, sings songs he wrote, stares into my eyes, then down at his strings. After the fourth song, it starts to feel uncomfortable. What am I supposed to do with my face?
The one-woman concert finally ends, and we make our way to his bedroom, getting lost in a wanting that feels like love. Our bodies collide, my bra expertly removed, our limbs pretzel.
He stops suddenly, sits up, and puts his hand on his chest.
I pull the sheet up around me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I just…I can’t make love to you. Because I know I’ll fall in love. And I can’t have anything or anyone get in the way of my music. I’m going to become a famous musician, and I have to focus on that, no matter what the cost. You know?”
Sincerity oozes out of his pores.
My brows furrow.
“Ah. Okay.”
And that, my friends, was the end of that.
Johnny was so committed to the myth of his own cool that he robbed us of orgasms that might have brought us closer to God.
I can relate. The idea of cool has done more harm than cock-block.
As a kid who changed schools every couple of years, I developed a tuning fork for the cool crowd. Whether Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club or the Heathers, the idea of cool started to cement in my young psyche. I even practiced Claire’s dance in the mirror. Fitting in, becoming one of them, was a kind of safety.
It meant frictionless entry into inhospitable territory: the classroom.
In boarding school, I worked hard, pennies in loafers, salmon Lacoste shirts, INXS on repeat, to make the “right” friends, and not be seen as the scholarship kid, a step above a townie. Getting a lift to school from Alistair, a tall, lean, Archie look-alike, a sophomore on the football team, and his Mom was a good start. In the throes of his cool generosity, he offered to give me, a mere freshman, kissing pointers in secret, my lips sliced by his braces.
When I moved to Montreal, I traded preppy Ralph Lauren for a black Nike tracksuit, Tiffany for Black Sheep, and slipped into what I perceived as the popular crew.
This is a dead giveaway: slipped into.
I wore costumes that emulated what was defined as cool. I didn’t realize I was blocking my own discovery of coolness. I closed myself off from people who were legit cool, the ones who didn’t try to belong in any group, popular or not.
This search for coolness by proxy continued into adulthood.
I was drawn to edgy, artistic, emotionally unavailable men. We swam in the shallow end of the pool, refusing to do handstands underwater, resting our elbows on the pool’s edge, sunglasses on our noses, smirking at people playing Marco Polo, pulling on a joint in black bathing suits.
When I worked as a copywriter at an agency, coolness was measured by ideas, clients, the agency itself, and the number of awards you won.
Whether in high school or the agency world, I was never cool enough.
Because I was chasing a moving target, hoping cool would rub off and leave me smelling like Ponyboy, a niche Scottish perfume of steamed wood, rhubarb, and pink lotus.
And I had been for years. Already lonely in a nomadic, chaotic childhood, I was afraid to be alone, stuck in the back of the room with no chemistry partner, dandruff falling like snow.
It was easier and safer to follow other people’s idea of cool than to develop my own.
Until it wasn't.
Fuck cool.
Cool stops us from creating.
It makes us pre-judge our work, often as we’re creating it, as not cool enough. Stops us right in our tracks. Makes us wonder, “What if this is bland and boring?” It makes us forget that we need to start cooking, then we can add salt, allspice, Herbes de Provence, or turmeric. The cool barometer keeps us hungry, judging ourselves against Julia Child or Anthony Bourdain, shrugging and thinking, “Why bother?”
Cool keeps us out of rooms.
Closes the gold tasseled curtains. Locks the door. Folded arms across a bouncer’s chest in front of a VIP room. We internalize the idea that we’re not cool or good enough to enter. And once we do, because of course we can, there’s a new level of cool to reach. To which I say, thanks, but no thanks, I won’t be having what she’s having.
I’ll be ordering all types — people from all walks of life. I’ll be selective, choosing who to have in my corner based on a shared frequency, whether they’re in Balenciaga or Zara.
I’m writing this from the Soho House, a private members’ club I just joined. I’m taking in the burgundy paisley and ecru wallpaper, olive curtains that open to a floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the canal. Solange is playing. MacBooks open on marble tables. I get the irony.
It’s a great place to practice a new cool, sitting on a wine-colored velvet chair, drinking a matcha latte because I love the grassy taste, and holding my own. Not entering the comparison or camouflage game, but taking space in the skin I’m in.
Is there anything cooler than being who you are, not who the world says you should be?
I’m inviting you (and me) to tell our own story about cool. I’m calling it being kind, open, genuine, and giving a profound shit about what we’re doing or creating.
There’s no room you can’t enter. You choose which doors you fling open and bring your energy into. You get to design your own taste based on what you’re drawn to, whether that’s profane Italian-made espresso cups and vases, messy, flawed protagonists, Japanese listening bars, dancing to Taylor Swift, boba tea (a party in the mouth), or mullets.
My coaching supervisor once told me I should wear my shirt backwards in a coaching session. Perplexed, I asked, “Why?” The 60-something veteran coach responded, “To show you’re imperfect too.”
I must have been buttoned up in the recorded session.
I’m going to deconstruct the facade of coolness by recording myself dancing. Not a tightly choreographed routine in a carefully curated outfit, tennis headbands, and a fur coat with a white tank, but free-styling based on how my body responds to the music in whatever I happen to be wearing.
During Covid, my friend Konstanze and I ping-ponged dance videos, usually unintentionally funny, via a WhatsApp channel called “Body Talk.” I tried to revive it, asking if she wanted to do this publicly. Hard no. She didn’t want to be exposed and judged.
But maybe cringe is the new cool.
Because it’s real, it’s fun, it’s your art.
Give me loud guttural laughter, Hawaiian shirts, and spontaneous hugs over the polished, curated, performative any day.
Let’s be cringe.
Show me how you dance in the kitchen.
That takes a lot more courage.
Keep creating,
