influenced by the idea of ‘cool’. The cast of seductively cool figures includes:

Humphrey Bogart Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marcello Mastroianni,

James Bond, Bob Dylan, Ryan

Gosling and Benedict Cumberbatch The cool man doesn’t try too hard, you don’t see

them floundering about in a panic – but they succeed anyway. They are physically confident,

they can scale a mountain or saunter down a deserted street in the middle of the night;

if they have to kill someone they will do it neatly with minimal fuss; they don’t

worry, they are self-contained and sure of themselves; their trousers are always a perfect

fit; they express themselves briefly – but their words are always to the point; they’re

not meek in the face of authority; but they don’t crave power themselves: they are independent.

The essential characteristic of the cool man is an aura of invulnerability, well handled:

without any showing off or bragging. When the house is on fire, the cool man doesn’t

scream or call the fire brigade; ‘temperature’s rising, baby’, he quips to his current girlfriend

as she emerges from the shower. Then he casually puts out the blaze himself. When the waiter

spills a cocktail over him, the cool man doesn’t get flustered; he removes his jacket and looks

even better in his shirt. When his boss is being difficult, the cool man smiles ironically:

he can walk away from the job at any moment. This is what, as a man, one is supposed to

be like. For decades some of the most astute and creative minds have devoted themselves

to making this notion of masculinity attractive – it’s been portrayed as enviable, seductive

to women, and well-dressed. And the image has worked: it’s what you need to be a real

man. And – perhaps daily – this model of manhood tortures us with the gap between

its ideals – and our reality. THE WARM MAN But there’s another – more realistic and

more important – vision of what a good man is like that’s (comparatively) been given

very much less attention and creative encouragement. This is the very opposite of the cool man,

what we call: the warm man. The warm man does not put out many fires by himself. He hasn’t

killed anyone either. He is, instead, very much alive to his own anxiety. He would drop

the gun and would tell you quite candidly he had done so. What is distinctive, and admirable,

is his relationship to this anxiety. He is aware of it, honest about it, funny with it

– and yet not overwhelmed by it. The warm man has a good sense of how demented and fragile

we all are. So he goes out of his way to reassure, to be forgiving and to be gentle. He has tried

very hard, at times, to get things to work out better for himself but it frequently hasn’t

worked. The warm man has known many sorrows: he has done stupid things, he has lost people

he loved, he has made daft decisions. His weaknesses have made him immensely generous

to others. When the waiter spills the cocktail, the warm hero laughs (he has spilled a few

himself) and leaves a generous tip if he can. When he forgets someone’s name (which he

does quite often) the warm hero is ashamed but frank and says – sincerely – ‘I’m

really sorry, and very embarrassed, but it’s slipped my mind… forgive me, help me out…’

. When they’ve messed up at work, the warm person admits it, feels sorry, openly apologises

and explains as best he can what actually went wrong and how he might be put it right

in future. The essence of the warm man is vulnerability well-handled; he is conscious

of his flaws and failings but uses this knowledge to become interestingly humorous and a rich

source of sympathy for the secret troubles of every life he encounters.

Ideally, one day, it

will be as desirable to be called warm as it currently is to be labelled ‘cool’;

there will be lists of the 40 warmest men under 40; boys will come home from school

and complain to their mothers: ‘I can’t do it, I can’t, I don’t know how to be

warm’; girls at fashionable bars will take mental notes of where the warm guys are sitting;

and in the secret soul of every man there will be a quiet, steady yearning to be as

warm as they possibly can.

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