scrawled on a hotel napkin
Written By: Carlo Alfonso S. Sales
“Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.”
– True Romance, 1993
This Quentin Tarantino screenplay is a touchstone of the romance genre in the film maestro’s own twisted, glamorously homicidal way. “You’re so cool”—a drunken declaration of love. A backhanded sentiment for those other three words when you bite your tongue before all eight letters roll off it. An aestheticization of the violence and toxicity of two people intoxicated with one another.
In a parallel universe where love is the highest law, this is the kind of love all humans long for: all or nothing, against all odds, blind to the world on fire because my baby is cool as hell.
It’s a love that’s not about grand gestures, but about raw loyalty—lest sincerity betrays vulnerability. Words and actions are only matters of form; the substance of the feeling is something incorporeal, feral and uncontained, never falling squarely there within. It’s an ill-fated heist unfolding, a balaclava chafing, and a half-truth slipping: just enough to mean something, however ready you are to risk everything.
So here’s to that hushed, imperfect language, and to finding people worth the risk. The ones who can find us in a crowd, hold our gaze, and suddenly—we’re all that matters, even for a final fleeting moment before the world comes crashing down. Because maybe, in the end, that’s what true romance looks like: recognizing the chaos and choosing each other anyway.
This is our fatal flaw, echoed in a The 1975 song which, in turn, borrows from a quintessential 1923 tragedy when Daisy faltered to gaze into Gatsby’s eyes as she confessed: “Ah, you look so cool. You always look so cool.”
THE BARRISTER 