“I’m hip”

by David Benjamin

“I copped a gig at Minton’s and one night Alfred Lions came in to dig us. He said we gassed him, but we were too far out for the people …”    — Babs Gonzalez

MADISON, Wis. — Since “woke” horned its way into the vernacular a few years ago, I’ve struggled to fathom what the word actually means and to whom it accurately refers. No one I know, in this liberal island among a vast sea of “red” (remember when reds were Communists?) counties, has ever uttered this unseemly syllable. Ever.

Since it popped up, “woke” has evolved into a subtly racist slur beloved of militant conservatives. Legislators in “red” (remember when this was the obligatory prefix to “China”?) states are immortalizing the word in the titles of bills—in caps, with numerous periods. 

“The ‘Stop W.O.K.E Act”. Really, Gov?”

I doubt that anyone aroused at the chimera of “wokeness” can define it any better than either me or Ron De Santis. My best stab is that “woke” is a mutation, abbreviation or corruption of the ungainly construction, “politically correct,” which is, of course, another nebulous artifact of our unilateral right-wing culture war.

If there exists a faction who might be comfortable bearing the “woke” label, I would nominate the millennial subgroup of trend-hopping dilettantes and bourgeois poseurs who’ve come to be known as “hipsters.” 

But here’s another term that poses a lexical dilemma. 

Sometime in the Fifties, a pathologically uncool author, Jack Kerouac, ruined the reputation of hipsters. Since then, it’s almost impossible to find anyone with a legitimate right to wear the fedora, I mean, really, Cab Calloway was a hipster, as was the immortal Babs Gonzalez. Bobby Darin. Sammy Davis, Jr. Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper? Absolutely hipster. Bo Diddley’s first band: Ellas McDaniel and the Hipsters. Of course, the guy who set the bar and broke the mold for classic hipsterism was Edd “Kookie” Byrnes in “77 Sunset Sunset Strip.” After Kookie, any wouldbe hipster, e.g., “The Fonz,” was reduced to parody. 

The word “hipster,” as anyone who’s noncubistic digs, derives from “hip,” which started out as “hep” in 1912 (recorded first by author H. Lewis in Apaches of New York). “Hep” gave birth to the lyrical designation, “hepcat,” which could only apply to a dude who’s puttin’ on the style, gator. I mean, cool.

Of course, the whole point of being hip—dating all the way back to flappers, zoot suits, Bix, Satchmo and Mezz—was not to say so, or even try. Any overt effort to appear cool is the comic definition of square. Cubic, man. 

There are few aural experiences more satisfying—and endlessly repeatable—than listening to Blossom Dearie, in her ironic, baby-doll soprano, as she croons Dave Frishberg’s snatch of jazz satire, “I’m Hip.”

“… I dig, I’m in step/ When it was hip to be hep, I was hep/ I don’t blow but I’m a fan/ Look at me swing, ring a ding ding/ I even call my girlfriend ‘Man,’ I’m so hip…”

This send-up, of course, is the confession of a clueless clyde, a clown from Straightsville, a shmo from Kokomo, a goon from Saskatoon. If a real hipster caught him finger-poppin’ to the band, he’d go, “Man, put an egg on your shoe and beat it.”

The argot of true classic cool has infiltrated our language more than our present-day faux hipsters realize. Terms like “all shook up,” “clip joint,” “fleabag,” “flimflam,” “grifter,” “heebie-jeebies,” “lush,” “putdown,” “Q.T.,” “shiv,” “shimmy,” “shill,” “stand-up guy,” “trash talk” and “wise guy” (dating back to Damon Runyon) all bubbled up from the hepcat underworld.

The only guy I’ve ever known who still converses in original Hipsterspeak is a Paris busker named Rene Miller, who plays a murderistic belly fiddle and channels Tampa Red. Rene, without strain or pretense, never says “man” (except as a form of address), but rather, “cat” (as in “That Cat is High”). A dame in Rene’s patois is never a woman. She could be a “frail,” “jane,” “muffin,” “mouse,” “cupcake,” “tomato,” “peach,” “chicken dinner,” “palomino,” “a slinky piece of homework” or, if a mite too young for hey-hey, “jailbait,” or “San Quentin quail.” 

Yes, there are more words in Hipsterspeak for gals than guys. It’s a sexist tongue. Likewise, a cat like Rene wouldn’t call his noggin his head, but, rather, “fusebox.” And for various other body parts: “dogs,” “edisons,” “kisser,” “enamel,” flippers” and “pins.” True to the code, Hipster has a veritable lexicon for a jane’s shape, among the least profane are, “headlights,” “gams,” “puss,” “ski jumps,” “Himalayas,” “south view,” “bread pan,” and “yas-yas-yas.” 

The heartbreak of Hipsterspeak is, of course, that even a throwback like Rene has no one with whom to jive. It’s a lingo deader than the Latin I recited, as a St. Mary’s altar boy, at 8 o’clock Mass. Today, it’s just as opaque as Esperanto, or—in Hipsterese—“tight as a vault with a busted timelock.” 

Fortunately, there’s an archivist of hip, Max Décharné, who has assembled a lexicon of the lost language of the urban demimonde, Straight from the Fridge, Dad: A Dictionary of Hipster Slang. From its pages, it’s possible to construct a lively dialog that unfolds at a juke joint just off the main stem in Kicksville.

Chillin’ at the bar is a duked-out lounge lizard. A whistle-bait kitten’s hangin’ near, in a heat-seeking scarlet gown, doing her iceberg act. Past the bar, there’s a thrush warbling onion ballads with a piano man dustin’ the elephant teeth, a be-bop sideman beatin’ the bells, and a gone fiddler wiggin’ on a groan box. 

The dude, who’s in a bluesy groove, bellyaches to himself, “Man, tomorrow’s a drag,” just as a a half-hipped palooka strolls in and eyeballs the scene. He says, “Greetings, gate, let’s dissipate.”

The dude figures the cat for either a square from Delaware or a cake cutter playing dumb. “Press the bricks, rube,” he says.

The hick, who’s down on spinach but dryer than a cork leg, tries flattery, praising the dude’s duds. “You are a shape in a drape, man.”

The dude cracks a smile. Patting his conk, he replies, “Fried, dried and swept to the side, gator.”

Down to his last fin, the fungus can’t cop nothin’ but panther piss. But he orders up and scans the twist. Giving her the moose-eye and sliding her way, he goes, “What’s the agenda, Brenda?”

His line does a Brodie, so the square, hot in the zipper from just scoping the nymph, comes again. “How ‘bout you and me oil our ankles?” he tries. “Nothin’ braces me up like a drag across the slag with hag.”

The hot number finally raises her lamps and cancels his Christmas. “Reel in your tongue. You’re getting your shirt wet,” she says. “Somebody should sew a button on your face.”

“You heard the broad. Dissolve, man,” adds the dude, flashing his heater. “Go pick yourself an orchid.”

The luckless hick throws back his coffin varnish, coughs up his geets and dangles. He says, “So long, Jack. Plant ya now and dig ya later.”

“Not if I spot ya first,” says the dude, who gloms the opening to cop a sneak at the fine-as-wine babe in red, whose chassis is a gasser, everything plus.

“You’re loaded with enough to pass around,” he says. “Baby, you got the Himalayas knocked into a sombrero.”

At which she gives him the seven veils look, crosses her gams and digs for gold. “You’re my habit, rabbit,” she goes. “You got any happy money on ya?”

Listen up, toots. This is jass that’s way woke. Ya dig?