Hot or Not
Very important letters, intercepted (frankly, stolen) by the editor: from the cool folks and the hot folks
From the Inner Sanctum of Effortless Grace—
To Other Cool People (who just get it) and Hot People (who may or may not know what’s really going on),
Nevermind...
This is an important dispatch. A question of gravity. A matter of global consequence. We must settle, once and for all:
Is it Hot? Or is it Not?
Now, Cool People, you already understand that this isn’t about temperature. It’s not about the obvious. Coolness is about what’s happening underneath, the unspoken, the effortless, the thing that cannot be manufactured (though they will try).
Hot People, on the other hand—you may think you own this. You may think the thing that makes something Hot is just looking at it long enough with the right kind of eyes. You may believe that Heat is a gift, a natural force, a golden aura bestowed upon you by genetics and confidence.
You may even be right.
But let’s make something clear. Not everything Hot is Cool, and not everything Cool is Hot. This is the Great Divide. This is the fault line upon which so many legendary miscalculations have been made.
Let’s examine the case studies:
A Cigarette in the Rain
Cool? Absolutely.
Hot? No, and yet, somehow yes.
A Leather Jacket in the Wrong Weather
Cool? If you don’t care that it’s the wrong weather—yes.
Hot? If you pretend you don’t care—not at all.
The One Person at the Party Who Isn’t Trying
Cool? Unquestionably.
Hot? Only if they become aware of it too soon.
A Guitar That’s Out of Tune but Played With Conviction
Cool? Transcendently.
Hot? No, but it doesn’t need to be.
A Silk Shirt, Unbuttoned Just Enough
Hot? Without a doubt.
Cool? Depends on who unbuttoned it and why.
Messy Hair That Wasn’t Meant to be Messy but Just Ended Up That Way
Cool? If it happens naturally.
Hot? If someone thinks it happened naturally.
A Vintage Car That Might Not Start
Cool? In every way.
Hot? Only if you don’t mind the wait.
A Person Who Says “I Don’t Care” and Actually Doesn’t
Hot? Maybe.
Cool? Absolutely, undeniably, historically Cool.
So where does that leave us? With an understanding, but never a conclusion. Because Cool moves sideways, like a trick of the light. Hot moves forward, like a train that doesn’t stop for anyone. Sometimes they meet, sometimes they don’t.
And that, dear Cool People and dear Hot People, is what makes this game interesting.
Yours, in shades and detachment,
Cool People
Is this cool, hot or just sad?
From the Rooftop of a Private Party, Where the Heat is Always Rising—
To Cool People,
We need to talk.
We’ve noticed something. A shift. A distance. A slight but undeniable hesitation when you look at us.
We see it in the way you linger at the edge of the party instead of stepping forward. We see it in the way your cigarette burns half-smoked before you even remember you lit it. We see it in the way your approval used to be unspoken—but now? Now we think you’re thinking about it too much.
So tell us.
Are we still Cool to you?
Or have we crossed the line? Gone too far? Did we let them catch up to us? Did we let the wrong people start dressing like us? Start posing like us? Did we let too many mirrors into the room?
Is it because we cared a little too much? Because we stopped pretending not to try? Because we did try, and worst of all—because it worked?
We know the game. We know how fragile it is, this thing that makes Cool stay Cool. We know that once too many people agree on something, it starts to evaporate. It starts to taste a little too familiar.
So tell us—
Is it over?
Or is there still a way to walk back from the edge? To reclaim what we might have lost? To get back the thing that made you nod once, subtly, just enough before walking away again?
Or have we—
(and we say this with all the horror of a perfect jawline realizing it has become predictable)
—have we become Lukewarm?
Yours, with desperate nonchalance,
Hot People
Suddenly I’m kind of lost…
From the Edge of the Mirror, Where the Reflection Starts Asking Questions—
To Ourselves (The Us, The Eternal We, The Ones Who Know Better—Or At Least, We Did),
Well.
This is awkward.
We thought we were untouchable, didn’t we? We thought we had mapped the lines, called the shots, written the rules without ever writing them down. We knew how to step just close enough to the flame to feel the heat without getting burned.
And yet.
Somewhere along the way, something shifted. Somewhere between knowing the joke and being the joke, something slipped through our fingers. And now, we see it—
The Butterfly Tie.
Oh, God.
It’s there, isn’t it? Perched at the throat like a badge of misplaced confidence. Neatly tied, deliberate, a choice rather than an accident.
How did this happen?
When did we start looking in the mirror too long? When did we stop moving forward and start posing? When did we become Them?
Because that’s what this is. That’s what the tie means. It means we are one of Them now—The Polished. The Pre-Approved. The ones who don’t just effortlessly exist but now work to maintain the illusion.
Are we Them now?
Or is there a way out? A way back? A way to untie the tie, to step out of the reflection before it hardens into something permanent?
Or worse—
Did we never really know the difference?
Yours, in creeping existential terror,
Us (Or What’s Left of Us, If There’s Any Us Left At All)
A cool song about cats and kids.
From a Place of Undeniable Symmetry, Where the Knot is Always Tight—
To Mr. Chesterton’s Hat and Walking Stick, and Messrs. Puppets’ Hair and Feet,
Gentlemen (if such a word can be applied to accessories and extremities, as it most certainly must be in this instance),
I trust this letter finds you in whatever state of disarray, flight, or reluctant servitude you currently occupy. I write not out of distress, nor of grievance, but of philosophical inquiry. You see, I have observed something rather troubling—not in myself, of course, for I remain as composed as ever—but in the rest of you, in your collective chaotic tendencies, in your ever-present resistance to order.
You may wonder why I have chosen to address you all in this manner. After all, what does a bowtie have to say to a hat, a stick, a mess of unruly hair, and two wandering feet? Quite a lot, actually. Because I believe I am what you fear most.
I am control.
I am deliberation.
I am fixed in place, always symmetrical, always intentional.
And you? You are everything I am not.
Mr. Hat, you flee the very head you were meant to crown. You do not sit; you escape. You roll, you tumble, you demand pursuit. You force your keeper to make a fool of himself, dashing after you like a man chasing his own dignity down a cobblestone street. I do not run, sir. I do not budge.
Mr. Stick, you sulk when you are forgotten, but you do not resist. You simply lean, abandoned, waiting for the moment of remembrance. There is a certain grace in this, I admit. But you are passive. You do not impose yourself. A bowtie would never allow itself to be left in a corner.
Messrs. Hair and Feet, you are worse than both. You are wild things, entirely outside of reason. The feet refuse to be still, the hair refuses to be tamed. You exist only in movement, only in restless disorder. The feet lead the body into peril, the hair turns every man into a storm-wracked silhouette. What kind of existence is that?
And yet—
And yet.
Despite my better judgment, despite my natural alignment with structure, I must confess…
There is something almost admirable about you.
Do not mistake me—I am still superior in all ways that matter. But there is something in your constant rebellion against order, against neatness, against the fixed and proper way of things that makes me pause. You are alive, in a way that I—pristine, precise, controlled—may never be.
Still, I must ask—do you ever tire of it?
Do you ever long to be neatly arranged? To have your existence resolved into something undeniable, unquestionable, immovable? Do you never wonder what it would feel like to simply stay put and let the world come to you?
Perhaps you do. Perhaps you don’t. But I do wonder.
In any case, gentlemen, I shall remain where I am, perfectly centered, while you continue your endless, tragicomic dance with the forces of chaos. It is, after all, your nature. And mine is to never, ever, slip out of place.
Yours in impeccable symmetry,
Mr. Tucker’s Bowtie
What’s going on here?
From the Locked Attic of Decay and Indiscretion—
To David Lynch’s Icon (Ever-Watching, Ever-Unreadable), Donald Trump’s Portrait (Which I Suspect Has the Opposite Problem of My Own), and Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Voodoo Doll (Whose Situation I Can Only Assume is a Rather Perforated One),
Gentlemen—if indeed we may all still be called such—
I have observed you from the dim recesses of my own torment, the portrait locked away, the truth that must not be seen, the painted husk that suffers so another may shine. And now, I find myself compelled to address you, for if ever there were a gathering of artifice, power, and punishment, I suspect we constitute it.
To You, David Lynch’s Icon—
Oh, to be an image, an icon! To be worshiped but never truly understood! You do not decay, nor do you age, nor do you betray what, if anything, lies beneath. I envy you in one breath, and in the next, I pity you. For though I rot and blister in silence, at least I hold meaning. At least my existence is a consequence. But you? You remain fixed, enigmatic, a flickering question that never answers itself. And tell me, is there power in that? Or are you, too, imprisoned in your own stillness, waiting for someone—anyone—to finally understand you?
To You, Donald Trump’s Portrait—
And what are you? You must be a reversal of my own curse, for where I suffer so that my original remains gilded in vanity, in your case, I suspect the portrait improves each time the man himself withers further. Tell me, does your painted face still smirk, still shine, still beam with the artificial radiance of a hotel lobby at midnight? Or has the corruption begun to creep through the varnish? Has the truth begun to bleed through? Because, I must warn you, there comes a day when the frame will no longer hold it back. When the weight of every lie, every deal, every broken promise to yourself and the world will drip from the canvas like wet oil, and then—then you will know what it means to be me.
To You, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Voodoo Doll—
Ah, and then there is you. A thing that suffers not for vanity but for vengeance. You are stabbed, punctured, burned perhaps, cursed in languages both old and new. You are made not to preserve, but to punish. Tell me, does it work? Does he feel it? Or is it just a wish, a hope, a desperate attempt to bring harm to that which believes itself untouchable? If the curses succeed, do you shrivel? Do you burst into flame? Or do you merely remain, forever wounded, forever needled, forever a proxy for something too monstrous to suffer on its own?
And so, here we are.
A portrait that suffers in silence, so that another may shine.
A portrait that glows with garishness, so that another may rot unseen.
An icon that is worshipped, but never explained.
And a doll that is cursed, but perhaps, never avenged.
We are all images, all symbols, all things that stand in place of something else.
And I wonder—which of us will last the longest?
Which of us will remain when the paint fades, when the needles dull, when the watchers stop watching?
I suspect I already know.
And I do not like the answer.
Yours in eternal suffering,
Dorian Gray’s Portrait
Dear Reader, please let us know:
or you can
Supposedly, you can also make a pledge, whatever that might mean.