“The Bone is the human equivalent of a sable coat,” Stanford says. Stanford has been bugging you a lot about the Bone lately. The phone rings and you pick it up and it’s Stanford. “Who’s sexier? The Bone or Keanu Reeves?” You sigh. And even though you sort of really don’t know who the Bone is and don’t really care, you say, “The Bone.”
Maybe it’s partly out of guilt. You know that you should know who he is: He’s that guy who was splashed—muscled, nearly naked—on that giant billboard in Times Square, and he was all over the buses. But you never go to Times Square and you don’t pay attention to buses, except when they’re about to hit you.
But Stanford keeps working on you. “The Bone and I were walking by his billboard the other day,” he says, “and the Bone wanted to get a piece of it to put in his apartment, like maybe his nose. But I told him he should take the bulge in his pants. That way, when women ask him how big he is, he can say fourteen feet.
“The Bone did the cutest thing today,” Stanford says. “He tried to take me out to dinner. He said, ‘Stanford, you’ve done so much for me, I want to do something for you.’ I said, ‘Don’t be silly,’ but you know, he is the only person who’s ever offered to take me out to dinner in my whole life. Can you believe anyone that beautiful is that nice?”
You agree to meet the Bone.
“YOU’RE GOING TO BE A STAR”
The first time you meet the Bone, at Bowery Bar with Stanford at his side, you want to hate him. He’s twenty-two. A model. Et cetera. You pretty much sense that he wants to hate you, too. Is he going to be really stupid? Besides, you don’t think sex symbols are ever really sexy in person. The last one you met reminded you of a worm. Literally.
But not this one. He’s not exactly what he appears to be.
“I have different personalities with different people,” he says.
Then you lose him in the crowd.
About two months later, you’re at that model’s birthday party at Barocco, and you run into the Bone. He’s standing across the room, leaning against the bar, and he’s smiling at you. He waves. You go over. He keeps hugging you, and photographers keep taking your picture. Then, you somehow end up sitting across the table from him. You and your friend are having this huge, never-ending, heated argument.
The Bone keeps leaning over and asking you if you’re okay. And you say yes, thinking he doesn’t understand that you and your friend always talk to each other that way.
Stanford, who knows everyone in Hollywood, sends the Bone out to L.A. to go on auditions for small parts in movies. He leaves Stanford a message. “Everyone’s talking about you,” he says. “You are so great. You’re going to be a star. Have I told you that enough times yet? You’re a star, you’re a star, you’re a star.”
Stanford is laughing. “He’s imitating me,” he says.
You and the Bone get drunk at Bowery Bar.
AN EASY “A”
The Bone lives in a tiny studio that has white everything: white curtains, white sheets, white comforter, white chaise. When you’re in the bathroom, you look to see if he uses special cosmetics. He doesn’t.
The Bone grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. His father was a teacher. His mother was the school nurse. In high school, the Bone didn’t hang out with the cool kids. He used to make straight A’s and tutor younger children after school. They all looked up to him.
The Bone never thought about becoming a model, but when he was in eighth grade, he was voted best-looking guy. He secretly wanted to do something exciting. Like being a detective. But he went to the University of Iowa and studied literature for two years. It was what his father wanted. One of his teachers was young and good-looking, and when he called the Bone in for a meeting, he sat next to him and put his hand on the Bone’s leg. He slid his hand up to the bulge in the Bone’s pants. “This could be an easy A for you,” he said. The Bone never went back to his class. Three months later, he dropped out of college.
Recently, someone’s been calling the Bone’s apartment and leaving messages that are only music. At first, he listened to the songs, because he kept thinking the music was going to stop and one of his friends would start talking. Now, he listens to the songs to see if there’s a clue. “I think it’s a man,” he says.
AN IOWA BOYHOOD
You’re lying on the bed with the Bone, like you’re both twelve (lying on your stomach and hanging your legs over the side), and you say, “Tell me a story.” He says, “The story I’m thinking about the most lately is my ex, ex-girlfriend.”
It was the summer of 1986 and the Bone was fourteen. It was one of those summer days in Iowa when the sky is clear and the corn in the fields is so green. And the whole summer, when you drive around in the car with your friends, you see the corn grow.
The Bone and his family went to the state fair. The Bone was walking through the livestock exhibit with his friend when he saw her. She was brushing a baby heifer, and he grabbed his friend’s arm and he said, “That’s going to be my wife!”
He didn’t see her again for a whole year. Then, one evening, he was at one of those youth dances that they have in small towns to keep the teens out of trouble, and she was there. He fooled around with her on Christmas Eve. “Then I got totally dumped,” he says. “It really hurt in a weird way.”
A year and a half later, when she decided she wanted him, he didn’t give in. “Even though I wanted to be with her so bad,” he says. “Then one day I gave in.”
The Bone went out with her on and off for a few years. She’s a computer programmer in Iowa City. But they still talk. Maybe he’ll marry her someday? He grins, and when he does, his nose wrinkles at the top. “I might,” he says. “I always think it’s such a beautiful story in my head. It blows my mind away.”
“The Bone is always saying that he could move back to Iowa and have kids and be a cop,” Stanford says.
“It’s
adorable, as long as he doesn’t really do it,” you say, then feel cynical for having said it.