Iron Fist

Saturday night found Niels and I at Ground Kontrol, enjoying some beer with our pinball. We hadn’t planned on doing much more for the evening than just what we were doing, but as I brought my fist down on the cover of Pirates of the Caribbean yet again I suddenly remembered that one of my coworkers had mentioned that his band was playing at the Someday Lounge, right around the corner from us. “Niels,” I said, slamming my hip into the pinball console, “rock show?”

“Sure. Where?”

“Just around the corner. This guy that works on my floor is in Bombs Into You and they’re playing at the Someday in about twenty minutes.”

Niels finished the rest of his PBR and set it down on a nearby table. “Let’s do it.”

We left the arcade and walked around the block in search of the venue. My buddy Nate had described its location but I hadn’t been to this particular club for a show yet. After we paid our covers and strolled in, I took in the decor and the clientele and realized that this was a far swankier place than I had anticipated.

Something you should know about me: I am not exactly cool. I’m at least mildly entertaining and fun to hang out with, but you wouldn’t mistake me for ‘cool’. I don’t have any piercings or tattoos; I don’t play bass guitar. I have a boring office job. I don’t ride a motorcycle. I know a half dozen programming languages. I read a ton of books, but never anything trendy, the majority of it science-fiction with a smattering of history and physics and Eastern philosophy thrown in. I sure don’t shop at Abercrombie, or any of the dozens of super-hip local clothing stores for which Portland is so well known. I am definitely NOT a hipster.

So it surprised me when, having just ordered a drink at the bar, a blonde in a stretchy sweater called out, “Hey! I like your shirt!”

“Thanks,” I said, a little surprised.

“Is it that Mafia line of clothing that just came out, by-” and she named a designer I’d never heard of before.

Now, I was wearing my Cosa Nostra Pizza T-shirt. It’s not some trendy new brand. It’s a nod to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a novel set in a near-future world where, among other startling changes to the American cultural landscape, the Mafia have gotten into the high-speed pizza delivery business. Wearing this shirt made me more than a little nerdy.

As I saw it, I had two possible courses of action: I could lie and go along with the young lady’s assumption, that I was sporting some cutting edge threads, and spend some time convincing her of my innate hipness; or, I could go with the truth and ‘fess up that I am, in fact, kind of a geek.

Embrace it! said a little voice inside of me. Embrace your inner anti-cool!

So I did.

“It’s actually a fictional restaurant. From a cyberpunk novel.” The bartender brought out my drink then. Grinning, I raised my glass to her and winked. “Cheers!” And then I walked up towards the stage to await the opening band. It turns out one of the fringe benefits of embracing your lack of coolness is that you end up not really caring whether or not some club girls in a trendy bar approve of you or not.

‘Cool.’ Pfeh. Who needs it?

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