She’s a high-energy lady. Tiny and rapid transfer ideas; switches back and forth between personal and business. Quits cigarettes on Sundays. Different-looking (different in a cool way, not in a like, you know–) people create urgency in her to find out if they’re ‘known.’ If already ‘known,’ she breezes over to me (I feel special) and embellishes her nerves.
“How is the cool way to talk to them, I don’t wanna be like BLah!”
My role is protege. I assume that’s what they’re doing to me, I am chosen. I was invited to a beach party transplanted below the gutted industrial buildings awaiting their very own Transplants and refurbishing for the exodus.
They’re always working on getting the highways are getting wider here. I always said it was a Training Wheels City. If you can’t do it here, you really weren’t helped at all by your folks. I pretty much didn’t make it here. I was helped by my folks. But then I got a lot more help. Enough to where I can go out and chokehold a new opportunity like being cool peoples’ protege.
I feel compelled to give the right answer. Hindsight, I dunno if she were actually asking me how to talk to cool people. I think she literally talks to cool people all day. But I don’t know that. Because maybe she is testing me to see how effective I am at talking to cool people. I always talk to them, since I have been cool. Maybe she needs my input since I see her getting notably less sneaky about refilling beers from the tap; since it’s her Transplanted Beach Party and she’s no longer going behind the tap trailers to hide that she’s smoking the final cigs before she quits on Sunday.
I admire her… even if she doesn’t actually admire me. I’ll live in the headspace where she does admire me though. She said something about too bad I don’t drink because I would — .
No kill. It doesn’t hit me in anyway. I’m salivating more over her cigarettes and hiding for no reason. That’s cool. I love the quit every Sunday thing, that’s fun. She is savant. Every time she wonders into the dark where the gutted buildings await their refurbishing, I move steadily in the opposite direction over the tiny playground stones they used to emulate sand.
I feel relief from the thousandth bathroom break I’ve taken to make room for more soda waters. So many soda waters. I think about how I quit smoking like a year ago a couple days earlier. Lotta people say that’s cool. I agree, plus it smells and it’s always getting more expensive and–.
Don’t you think it kinda fucks us over a little if you don’t smoke? We could probably make even more leighway as protege if we smoked. She offered us smokes and its like, you quit so if you smoked one for work then it wouldn’t matter. You’d go back to not smoking, and your car still won’t stink and honestly, cigs don’t even fuckin’–
I remember there’s powdered caffeine in my pocket in the form of one of those Crystal Light packets, just some brand of energy drink. I toss that into the porta potty hole reminiscing super-quick about cocaine. I think about how I’m an alcoholic-addict hanging out at this Transplant Beach Party where I could relapse but I’m not gonna obviously because I make it look cool and also because I have so much work to do here as the protege.
If I use, there’s no way I can protege. I’m very new in recovery, but I am newer in protege. This is what I fixate on:
This is cool. And dangerous. This is dangerous that I do these things, but it is cool that I can.
So long as I ask for that permission like, ‘can I do this?’ I’m pretty sure that is the loophole God gives to artists or socialites. I’m not choosing this, I’m an artist. I’ve been cool too, and cool with no drink no drugs for way long — long like more than a year. PLUS I’m no longer people who almost couldn’t cut it in Training Wheels City. Now I am the protege of the Transplant Beach Party Lady.
I sanitize my hands and exit casually.
‘Dude…’ I’m thinking: with cool people I know how they want to be talked to. I can answer her, even if she wasn’t really an ask maybe it is. I have an answer. So, when I am the cool person in question, somebody coming up to me should say they like that I am where they also are and why I should know them. They never seem to do that, they talk about a lot of stuff but it’s never short and sweet. Could this be because I have never been the cool person in question? I do see how it might be true seeing as I never have been treated exactly how a really high-level, high-priority cool person gets treated: the right way; the way I know how to talk to cool people. But there’s no proof of me not being cool. I’m just telling you it’s undocumented when — not if I became cool.
So, I tell her –to tell the ‘known’ guy, I said “Say: Hey wassup. I’m Transplanted Beach Party Lady & I’m really happy you’re here. This is my Transplanted Beach Party.”
She looks, tilts her head slightly forward to highlight one raised eyebrow and smiles a handshake into my stomach. It’s absolutely perfect. I am the protege. This is gonna be huge for our relationship. She wonders off, maybe toward a famous person.
All social interactions are a + b = c. One of my earliest cool art friends in high school said that. I wonder quite a bit if that’s actually a nail on the head moment. It was really cool; I know that.
Being cool will make it so people consider how they might most-effectively strike up a conversation with you. I think. Well, I know, now; having had an awakening and traversing these early tests to be protege to the Transplanted Beach Party Lady. She’s cooler than even she’s letting on, maybe that’s just a bit of what I can plan on learning from her as I absorb the ‘vibe.’
Earlier today — this same Saturday before Transplanted Beach Party Lady said she’ll quit cigs–Transplanted Beach Party Lady was telling me how before the pandy she was an introvert. Once we were let back outside, she promised a local celebrity/regular a free beverage for every time he introduced her to a new person (cool person or otherwise).
She told me, “I used to not value this place. But if you want to do anything here, you need to get uncomfortable… There’s a ton of cool people here.”
The most simple, most obvious shit sometimes, ya know? Most days in my many careers, short-lived due to the same fireable offense, I knew Training Wheels City was a nobody, nowhere type of spot. Was Uncool. They don’t do anything here. And the artists here aren’t like the community of artists in Going Fast No Hands or the scene in Doing Tricks. I tried to develop the scene. I go to art. But I found nobody’s cool enough to vibe with my art. So I just hung out with people who were actually cool and did my art. We stuck together, sometimes two or three or all four of us. We waited for folks to get cool or see what we were doing was cool, but they never figured it out.
I ended up doing quite a bit of art on my own. Nobody ever saw.
I walk out and get another soda, I don’t see her so I just do a cool, standing still kinda sway dance just away from the dance floor.
Dancing alone is often a toss up whether ‘cool’ or not. Depends on the ‘vibe.’
Transplanted Beach Party Lady grabbed me, needing me to pour one of the acts a drink! He insisted he didn’t need that, that his Ryder being fulfilled was enough, but Transplant Beach Party Lady is way cool — thus vetoing the Artists’ initial cool behavior in not needing anything.
I felt special for knowing how to mix this Rum and Coke, though I’ve frowned upon such a simple everyday drink historically; today this is for a really cool reason. I am the protege. She sees something in me, and I am pulling through. I guess can see how the people before me stumbled at this work. It’s high pressure to be on point. Maintaining the behavior, the ‘vibe.’ Plus, if you’re me, and in this you basically get to be me, you are also working all the angles to not smoke cigs — though it may always look cool and serve a greater purpose for the whole, an impact to career and opportunity and honestly you see your Boys’ smoke one or two after we’ve played a show…it’s like, you kicked the actual stuff what is smoking a cigarette even really gonna –
I am so addict. And right now, we need to be addicted to protege-type endeavors. And we are.
I am vibing to the music. Transplanted Beach Party Lady comes up to me – I always can see her coming up to me she’s got this gigantic puffer jacket on but the rest of her is so small, it’s charming and cute and she makes it work in a cool way, I admire that — she comes up to me and says, “Wassup, you just vibin here?” I tell her yeah and that I’m taking notes.
She notes a couple more ‘known’ folks. I actually do think I’ve heard of them before… though I’m actually not sure what she said just now in general. But they’re cool, assuming I’ve heard of them. Or not.
I imagine I’ve seen most of these people. Like, I know their faces from them coming into my work or they’re around my side of town (it’s just a different ‘vibe,’ it’s ‘chill’) but I don’t know their names or what they look like or if I’ve ever seen them. That’s cool though, I look forward to meeting them.
…Again.
I have seen quite a few of these faces around a kitchen table with a plate at 4 AM somewhere just outside of downtown in my early 20’s. I look so healthy now that I’m different-looking. They probably don’t recognize. Or maybe they’ve since stopped ending up in those types of places and they do recognize so they don’t wanna flirt with disaster which is cool, I get it. But they got the wrong idea, I’m cool now also. Just not in the way we expected to be. Nor in the way that they expect us to be!
Transplanted Beach Party Lady’s husband comes stands by her for a time and I feel like I shouldn’t go over there. It’s cool, I’m literally here to protege. And I’m doing it really well, so there’s no weird thing worth thinking about. She maybe does this all the time and that lightly drives him a little nuts but he maybe knows he’s being silly and she’s just zoomin’ around and networking and it has nothing to do with me. Besides protege-type work, which earlier she said she was talking about the nice conversation we had way earlier on this Saturday the day before she’s gonna quit cigarettes again… I wonder if that’ll make her feel less cool. I quit all kinds of crap recently, and by default that has to be cool.
I am still here. You Stayed Longer Than You Planned to Stay, Why Are You Still Here?
I saw the husband floating back toward the bar (as an opening to approach again) and thanked Transplant Beach Party Lady for everything. She hugs me and insists that if I keep coming back to her world like she does to mine, all kinds of things will start happening.
Are they cool things? I hope that they may be cool things.
pseudo lou 