The Cool Kid

February 18

There's always a cool kid.

I don't mean a popular kid, necessarily. I don't even mean a suave kid. I mean cool.

Maybe he's a little older than you. He smokes cigarettes before anyone else does. He cuts class in junior high when you're too pussy to even think of doing so. By the time you take your first furtive sip of a wine cooler, he already knows whether he prefers Wild Turkey to Jim Beam. He does crazy shit on his bicycle; he makes ramps out of stuff he steals from the yards of strangers. Maybe he was in a mental hospital at some point; you're not clear on the details. He plays baseball with the mailboxes of people he doesn't like. He screams at bitchy teachers and makes them shut up. He has a seat reserved in the principal's office. He gets a car, and maybe it's a piece of shit, but it's better than the nothing you have. He gets laid on a regular basis before you've even kissed a girl. He's the first guy you know who's in a band. Your mother doesn't want you hanging around with him. You look up to him. He's fearless. He'll do anything. You wonder if you'll ever be cool enough to hang out with him.

If you're unlucky, he's a cavalier asshole.

If you're lucky, he's a good guy. He's loyal to his friends. He's got your back. He'll stomp anyone who messes with you, and do it with style.

I was lucky-- my epitome of coolness was a good guy. The teachers would disagree (hell, my mom would disagree), but I knew him, and I know. I wasn't cool enough to hang out with him, but he let me do so anyway. In addition to all the qualities above, he's funny. He has a sense of humor and comic timing that some performers practice for years to develop. He's the master of the devastating comeback, and he has a deadpan style that I've been imitating for years. He's smart, too, though since he rarely bothered to take tests or do the gruntwork in class the people in authority didn't realize it (though if he ever took an I.Q. test I rather imagine the teacher's would've stared in bug-eyed shock at his scores). He has a mind sharper than a ceramic knife with a fractal blade and a wit like razorwire. He's one of the best drummers I've ever known (and I've known a couple of good ones).

He is my Neal Cassady.

His name is Eric Collins.

Today, I found out he has a web site. I found it in the course of one of my ego-stroking online searches for my own name. Back on like the 35th page of links, where the "Tim Pratt"s mentioned are invariably electrical engineers or underground music reviewers, I saw a mention of my name in conjunction with the words "Night Vision." Night Vision was a semi-regular newsletterish thing I did in Junior High and high school back when I deluded myself into thinking I could be full-on funny. It contained social satire, lots of television satire (I used to stay up all night watching television as "research"), and some out-and-out randomness. Eric contributed to a segment called "Philosophical Moments"-- which is now the name of his web site.

His site is not like mine, so simple that a slightly technophilic monk might have made it, but is instead a complex, elegant, beautifully designed site full of outrageous, surreal, vicious, funny, angry, cynical, joyful stuff.

Collins. Wow. I haven't talked to him in years. We lost touch in the latter part of high school, I guess. I worried that he didn't much like me any more after some nastiness involving me and his best friend Tony. See, Tony was dating a certain beautiful blonde, a woman commonly referred to here on Tropism as Amily. Amily broke up with Tony... and the next day I went out with her.

They would have broken up anyway. But I was supposed to be Tony's friend, and I really should have waited until the corpse of their relationship was a bit colder. Dating Amily so soon after their break up is one of the big regrets of my life; me and Tony never got past that, we were never the same, and I lost touch with him completely. Tony and Eric had been best friends since childhood, and, well... as I said above, the good kind of cool kid is fiercely loyal. Eric never said anything to me directly, but I got the feeling he was Not Happy with me over that whole mess-- especially since Tony believed (incorrectly) that me and Amily had been seeing each other behind his back for a while before the break up. I've always been vaguely uneasy, thinking of Eric-- because he is an individual of almost mythic stature in the landscape of my youth, and I hate to think that he thinks ill of me.

I don't know how he feels. I sent him e-mail today when I found his site, and I hope I hear back from him. I didn't even know he'd gotten married until I saw his site-- I hate that I've fallen so totally out of touch with him.

Good memories, today, and few bad ones, but on the whole I'm glad they got stirred up.

Collins was the first badass I ever knew.

Here's to the first cool kid in your life-- assuming that, like me, you were lucky, and got one of the good ones.

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