cool chris

ever since freshmen year of college, there has been a certain persona that has haunted me from afar.  the embodiment of this persona changed as the years went by, but still i was haunted by its real and constant presence.  when my friends first noticed it, they aptly named it "cool chris" because we didn't knew the real guy's name, not like it mattered.  cool chris would become a fixture in my life.  he was at times hipper, more artsy, more atheletic, more successful, more popular with the ladies, or more liked by his peers.  at all times he was cooler.  

here is the list of cool chris's that have tortured me these past five years.  i may be suppressing others in my subconscious, so feel free to remind me of any latent cool chris's.

The Precursor to Cool Chris:

i officially met pete in my sophomore year in an electronic music class, but he began to haunt me long before then.  on several occasions as a freshmen, random strangers would come up to me and begin a friendly conversation.  we would talk about this or that, and i thought maybe i was making a new friend.  but at some point in the convo, i'd realize that this person has no idea who i am and must be mistaking me for someone else.  sometimes it was a reference to that awesome party we supposedly went to last weekend.  sometimes it was the "seeya later, pete!" at the end of the convo... in which case i couldn't correct their mistake.  

"so what are you doing this weekend"  

"umm...  just hanging out, the usual."

"haha yea right.  u crazy pete.  later!"

"??????"

as i mentioned, i finally met pete in my electronic music class.  i told him a few of those stories and he laughed, saying that a friend of his mentioned a lookalike on campus... except he didn't have any stories about how my friends would randomly approach him by mistake, leading me to believe i had significantly less friends than he did.  anyway, he was a business major and he produced music on the side for local MCs in the atlanta area.  some of the compositions he made in that class were sick.  

the reason he is the precursor to cool chris and not the first cool chris is not because he wasn't cooler than me, because he was.  it's because he began to haunt me before the name was invented.  that, my friends, happened towards the end of freshman year...

The Original Cool Chris:

his real name was jimmy but that hardly mattered.  to me and my hallmates, he was and always will be Cool Chris.  he was tall and skinny and of course asian.  he had long flowing locks and skinny ass jeans.  he embodied the look i was going for, and he did it effortlessly.  he was some sort of creative arts major, i think drawing.  he was an artist with mystique; moody, brooding and unpredictable.

he lived in the hall next door but we didn't cross paths until second semester freshmen year.  actually, he probably doesn't realize we crossed paths, and he probably has no idea who i am...  but anyway, i met a cute girl in my biology lab.  she was short and asian and had some life in her voice.  bio lab ended pretty late, so we walked back to the dorms together a few times.  she wanted to be a doctor and was stressed about grades.  she seemed charming, warm and secretly hip.  what i didn't know was that she was dating someone...  someone by the name of Cool Chris.  

my friends knew i had the hots for her, so they did some recon for me.  they saw her hanging around with this taller, hipper version of me and reported back that she probably has a boyfriend, and that i have no chance.  he simply beat me at all my strengths and we shared the same weaknesses... that we were both brooding and skinny and awkward.

glimmers of hope came to life when i heard stories that their relationship was dwindling.  i heard he smashed his roommate's phone for answering a call during a movie or something....  anyway, instead of manning up and "shaking the tree until the golden apple falls down" as one friend puts it, i wrote a song about how she's probably in an abusive relationship.  my fans know it as song 21.1:

why i can't date cool chris's girlfriend, or song 21.1

Three wisps of your hair in the wind

Press against your cheek

The soft sunrays delight in finding

Golden fields of harvest wheat

Two eyes now rise to see

Impressions of a fading dream

Of fields untouched by other men

And warmer rays by softer suns

Of golden rays by golden suns

A breath of air through my lungs

Push against my heart

Stripped and naked to the core

Beaten weak onto the floor

You love him like a lover’s chore

You never walk out of the door

Your warmth is my regret

That dreams of old could die

My impressions of what could have been

Of old stories untold

The Return of Cool Chris:

on leaving atlanta, i thought i could recreate myself and form a fuller, more confident version of me.  chris 2.2 perhaps.  gone were the days of crippling insecurity and misplaced priorities.  old ghosts, and great memories, would stay in the past.  but as it goes, there are no second acts in life... and Cool Chris is here to stay.

so there's this girl i think is cute.  like the original Cool Chris's gf (who by the way, was referred to as just that for several years) she seems smart and hip.  sometimes i see her at the cafe i study at.  i think one day my glance caught her eye and since then she's made it a point to bring her boyfriend with her whenever she comes.  i thought he was a goofy motherfucker when i first saw him, but that only made it worse when they started making out.  maybe they just started dating and are crazy about each other, but it was pretty gratuitous.  i'd like not to think it was him doing it to spite me, to remind me of who the Cool chris really is. 

if i compared this new cool chris to me at my prime, when i actually had some semblance of a life, there would be no contest.  but i think he's returned to remind me from what heights i have fallen, that this asian, who isn't even skinny and hip, has outdone me in the girl department.  because of that, i recognize him as that old ghost, the same guy who had more friends than me, the guy who had the girl i only hoped i could have.  the Return of Cool Chris.  though maybe he never left.  maybe he never will.

the return of cool chris, or mishka's cafe 1.3

hallowed be the open seat or table

or occupied in half so as to share.

porcelain left waiting does beleaguer

to claim the open space she might offer

and hope that one, that solely i recover.

common grounds invite to all awaken

and oil for the erudite to burn.

behind the clink of coffee mugs and glasses,

the gentle whir of muffled words 

like soft blades spinning as a fan above

or quiet whispers beckoning to join.

on empty days there are no reasons, thus

on nights when orange lights glow warm 

and patrons pour in

empty hopes take longer to remember, that 

her lips have touched the claim atop her table

and in return an impasse comes to claim her.