“I KNOW I’M NEUROTIC”
You and the Bone are hungry, so you go to Bagels “R” Us at six in the evening on a Sunday. Two female cops sit in the corner smoking. People are wearing dirty sweat clothes. The Bone eats half of your ham and cheese sandwich. “I could eat four of these sandwiches,” he says, “but I won’t. If I eat a hamburger, I feel so guilty afterward.”
The Bone cares about the way he looks. “I change my clothes about five times a day,” he says. “Who doesn’t look in the mirror about a hundred times before they go out? I go back and forth between the two mirrors in my apartment like I’m going to look different in each one. It’s like, yeah, I look good in this mirror, let me see if I look as good in the other. Doesn’t everyone do that?”
“Sometimes I get so distracted,” the Bone says. “My thoughts get so scattered in my head. It’s jumbled and it doesn’t make sense.”
“What’s distracting you now?” you ask.
“Your nose.”
“Thanks a lot. I hate my nose.”
“I hate my nose, too,” he says. “It’s too big. But I think it depends on my hair. The other day Stanford said, ‘I like your hair like that. It’s full. It makes your nose look smaller.’” You both crack up.
Back on the street, the Bone nudges you. “They spelled puppies wrong,” he says. You look. A man in overalls is standing next to a giant gray mastiff and holding a cardboard sign that says, PUPPYS FOR SALE.
“Huh?” the man says. There’s a dirty red and white truck parked behind him.
“Puppies. You spelled it wrong,” the Bone says.
The man looks at the sign and grins.
“Hey, they’re selling the same puppies up the street for two hundred dollars instead of two thousand,” the Bone says, and the man laughs.
Later, you’re sitting on the edge of the bed with your head in your hands staring at the Bone, who’s lying on the bed with one hand in the waistband of his jeans.
“One minute, I could be walking down the street totally cool, and the next minute I’m depressed for no reason,” he says. “I know I’m neurotic. I see it. I feel it. I’m self-analytical, self-critical, self-conscious. I’m very aware of everything I say.”
Then the Bone says, “Before I say something, I say it in my head first, so it doesn’t come out wrong.”
“Doesn’t that kind of seem like a waste of time?” you ask.
“It only takes a second.”
He pauses. “If I’m out, and a stranger comes up to me and asks me if I’m a model, I say, ‘No, I’m a student.’”
“And?”
The Bone laughs. “They lose interest,” he says, looking at you like he can’t believe you didn’t know that.
Stanford calls you up. “The Bone left me the cutest message,” he says. And he plays it. “Stannie, did you die? Are you dead? You must be dead because you’re not answering your phone. [Laughing.] Call me later.”
“IVANA TRUMP’S BUTLER?”
You like hanging out with the Bone in his apartment. It reminds you of when you were sixteen, in your own small town in Connecticut, and you used to hang out with this guy who was really beautiful and you’d smoke pot and your parents would think you were off riding your horse. They’d never know the truth.
You look out his window at the sunlight on the backs of tatty little brownstones. “I’ve wanted to have kids ever since I was a kid,” the Bone says. “It’s my dream.”
But that was before. Before all this stuff happened to the Bone. Before now.
A couple of weeks ago, the Bone got offered a second lead in an ensemble movie starring all the cool young Hollywood actors. He went to a party and accidentally ended up going home with one of the other actors’ girlfriends, a new supermodel. The actor threatened to kill the Bone and the supermodel, and she and the Bone temporarily fled the city. Only Stanford knows where they are. Stanford calls and says he’s been on the phone constantly. Hard Copy offered the Bone money to appear, and Stanford said to them, “Who do you think he is—Ivana Trump’s butler?”
The Bone says, “I just don’t believe the bullshit. It’s still me. I haven’t changed. People are always telling me, Don’t ever change. What am I going to change into? An egomaniac? A prick? An asshole? I know myself really well. What do I want to change into?”
“Why are you laughing?” he asks.
“I’m not laughing,” you say. “I’m crying.”