Uncool and (trying to be) proud

I never thought I'd lose sleep over whether I was cool. For one, I've never really cared whether people perceived me as such. Smart? That, I wanted. Fun? Yes. Witty, charming, strangely irresistible? Yeah, all those would be nice.

But "cool," which seemed such an amorphous adjective, bestowed casually and so often as to be deprived of true meaning, was never an attribute to top my list of aspire-to's.

Last night, however, "cool" got into my head. As we drifted to sleep, the SLG and I somehow got onto the topic, leading me to ask, innocently, I thought, "So, am I cool?"

I was thinking, "Of course he'll say I'm cool — I'm the original Supreme Love Goddess!" I was therefore shocked when he replied simply: "No."

Suddenly, I felt betrayed. "I'm not? Why not?"

"I don't know, you just aren't."

"You mean I'm not even a little cool?"

"No."

"But—"

"Babe, I know you. You're adorable, but you're not cool."

And then, as if nothing were amiss, the traitor at my side flipped his off-switch and lay there, breathing heavily, twitching in his sleep-throes, apparently unburdened by the fact that he had just proclaimed me completely uncool.

In the darkness, I pondered. Is this true? And why do I care? For so long, I'd looked mockingly upon those who even aspired to coolness. "Such a waste of time," I thought. "Silly people, rendering themselves uncool simply in the act of chasing of it."

And yet, my mind flitted to an e-mail I received from a friend, probably a couple of years ago, in which he said something to the effect of, "You know, you're a cool chick."

I remember being floored and writing back in protest, as I was wont to do when on the receiving end of a compliment. But he wrote again, refuting my statements with what he said was evidence of my coolness: I lived in exciting cities, I traveled frequently, I knew about arts and culture and high technology, I loved music and danced and did cocktails ... frequently.

If only I were rich and skinny and had a bungalow in Capri, I could have been part of a shiny Vanity Fair photo spread, I was so cool.

Hearing all that was strangely comforting. In my own insecure head, I was still uncool, geeky, not even geek-chic. But in the eyes of some (er, okay, one), I was cool and then some.

And this was the thought that filled my head as I finally fell asleep.

But my dreams betrayed a deeper neuroticism.

As I slept, I was bombarded with imagined scenarios of my uncoolness. The ultimate affront came in this one part of the dream when I was in a hip vintage clothing shop. I wore a funky black skirt, a tank top, a sweater. I felt at home, at first. But then, as I browsed the racks, the shop guy, in a snotty, hipper-than-thou way, proclaimed, "You know, you might be more comfortable at JCPenney."

Gasp! I woke up.

JCPenney? Which part of my brain did that come from? I haven't been inside a JCPenney since I was, oh, 8 years old. When was the last time I even saw a JCPenney? Holy christ.

Apparently, in addition to being more neurotic about coolness than I ever realized I was, now I was also harboring serious anxiety about my wardrobe.

Then, I realized, wait — this is getting out of hand. Remember:

You are a geek, and you are okay with that. In fact, you revel in it, and, having witnessed this revelry, that is probably what the SLG meant:

You are not cool, but you are a geek, and your geek is the equivalent of your cool, chic or not, and the thing to remember is that it's allllll good.

At least, I hope that's what he meant.