DASH AT THE MARK HOTEL

"Why is it that all these unattractive guys have all these ideas about what they're going to do for you?" asked Teesie.

"Most men come across as very arrogant," said Shiloh. She had skin the color of toasted almonds and long, straight black hair and huge black eyes. She was wearing a tank top and a long swirling skirt. "It's just too much for me. I finally found one guy who wasn't, but he's in India right now. I didn't feel intimidated by him. He didn't try to touch or feel me."

"There are two types of guys," said Camilla. "They're either slimeballs who are just out to get laid, or else they're in love with you instantly. It's pathetic."

"What kind of guys fall in love instantly?" Kitty wondered.

"Oh, you know," said Camilla. "Scotty. Capote Duncan. Dash Peters." Capote Duncan was the thirtysomething Southern writer

who was always out with beautiful young girls. Dash Peters was a well-known Hollywood agent who was frequently in New York, also a squire of P.Y.T.'s. Both had also dated and broken the hearts of women who were in their thirties and usually pretty accomplished at something besides looking good.

"I dated Dash Peters, too," Teesie said. She touched the back of her short, dark hair. "He kept trying to get me to spend the night with him at the Mark Hotel. He sent me baskets of flowers, all white ones. He was begging me to come over and take a sauna with him. Then he wanted me to go with him to some stupid party in the Hamptons, but I wouldn't."

"I met him in the South of France," said Camilla. Sometimes Camilla spoke in a weird, fake European accent, and she was using it now.

"Did he buy you anything?" Teesie asked, trying to be casual.

"Not really," Camilla said. She motioned to the waiter. "Can you please bring me another frozen margarita?" she asked. "This one isn't cold enough." She looked back at TPA C'O "w* c-™— rA i—1.

"Clothing, or accessories?"

"Clothing," Camilla said. "I already have too many Chanel bags. They bore me."

There was silence for a moment, and then Shiloh spoke up.

"I hardly ever go out anymore. I can't take it. I've become very spiritual." A thin piece of rawhide hung from her neck, twisted around a small crystal. What had finally done her in was an encounter with a famous movie actor in his early thirties who had seen her photo in a magazine and tracked down her agency. They passed on his number, and because she had just seen him in a movie and thought he was cute, she called him. He invited her to spend two weeks with him at his house in Los Angeles. Then he came to New York, and he started to get weird. He refused to go out, except to strip clubs, where he tried to get girls to do special things to him for free, "because he was famous," Shiloh said.

Kitty put her elbows on the table. "A couple of years ago, I said, T've been screwed over too many times. So I decided to take a guy's virginity and then leave him. I was bad, but on the other hand, he was twenty-one, which is probably too old to be a virgin, so he deserved it. I was as sweet as could be, and then I never talked to him again. It doesn't matter how pretty you are. If you can create who the guy wants you to be, you can get him."

"If a guy says to me, T hke fishnets and red lipstick, I see it as accessorizing," said Teesie.

"If Hubert was a girl, he'd be the trashiest girl you've ever seen," said Kitty. "I said, 'Yes, I'll wear short skirts, but I'm going to wear underwear underneath. One time, I had to totally get him back. He kept harassing me and harassing me to sleep with him and another woman. Finally, I have this friend who's gay? George? And we kiss sometimes, but it's like kids? So I said, 'Honey, George is coming over and he's going to spend the night. Hubert was like, 'Where is he going to sleep? I said, 'Oh, I thought he'd sleep in the bed with us. And you're going to play receiver. He totally freaked out. I

because it's what I want. Well," she said, ordering another margarita. "It had to be done. Now we're on a level that's equal."

"HELLO, KITTY"

"Older guys are gross," said Camilla. "I won't go out with them anymore. A couple of years ago, I realized, why do I need to go out with these ugly, rich old men, when I can go out with gorgeous, rich young guys? Plus, these old guys don't really understand you. No matter how much they think they do. They're another generation."

"I don't think older guys are so bad," Kitty said. "Of course, when Hubert first called me up and said he wanted to go out with me, I was like, 'How old are you and how much hair do you have left on your head? He really had to woo me. The first time he came to pick me up, I walked out with dirty hair and no makeup. It was like, If you want me so much, get a look at the real me. And after that, the first time I spent the night with him, the next morning I woke up, and he had a bouquet of my favorite flowers in every room. He found out who my favorite author was, and he bought all the books. On the mirror, he wrote in shaving cream, 'Hello, Kitty. "

The women squealed. "That is so adorable," Teesie said. "I love men."

"I love men too, but sometimes I need a break from them," Shiloh said.

"Hubert loves it when I mess up," said Kitty. "He loves it when I buy too many clothes, and I can't pay the bill. He loves to step in and take care of everything.

"Men are needy, and we're the goddesses that give to them," Kitty said triumphantly. She was well into her second margarita. "On the other hand, men are. . bigger. Larger. They're comfort."

"They give you something that women can't," Shiloh said, nodding. "A man should provide for his girlfriend."

"Hubert makes me feel really safe. He's allowing me to have the childhood I never had," said Kitty. "I don't buy this whole feminist idea. Men have a need to be dominant—let them. Embrace your femininity.

"I think men can be complicated, but I always know there's another one out there if this one doesn't work out," said Teesie. "Men are not high maintenance."

"It's other women who are really the problem," said Camilla.

"At the risk of sounding obnoxious, being beautiful is such a power, you can get whatever you want," said Kitty. "And other women know that and don't hke you, especially older women. They think you're invading their territory."

"For a lot of women, when they reach thirty, they start to realize their age," said Camilla. "Men have given women this stigma. Obviously, a woman who looks like Christie Brinkley is not going to have a problem."

"But they get mean," said Kitty. "They make comments. Women just assume that I'm an idiot. That I don't know anything. That I'm stupid. That I'm with Hubert for his money. You get spiteful and wear an even shorter skirt and more makeup."

"Nobody bothers to ask. They just assume," said Teesie.

"Women are so envious in general," said Shiloh. "It doesn't have anything to do with their age. It's disgusting. They see an attractive girl, and they give attitude. It's so sad and shocking. It's so telling of

where women are in their hves. They're so insecure and unhappy about where they are, they can't stand it if it seems hke another woman has it better.

"That's why most of my friends are men." The three other women looked around the table and nodded.

What about sex? someone asked.

"I tell every guy they have the biggest thing I've ever seen," said Kitty. The women laughed nervously. Kitty slurped up the last bit of her margarita through a straw. "It's survival," she said.

14. Portrait of a Bulgy Underwear Model: The Bone Pops Out of His Giant Billboard

A door opens at the top of the stairs and the Bone, an underwear model and budding actor, stands silhouetted in the doorway of his apartment. One arm is up and he's leaning against the doorframe and his dark brown hair is falling in his face and he's laughing as he watches you trudge breathless up the stairs.

"You're always on the go," he says, like all he wants to do is lie around in bed all day. You remember what his friend, screenwriter Stanford Blatch, keeps telling you: "The Bone looks like he travels with his own lighting director." And then it's too much: You have to look away.

"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.

"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."

Stanford says, "Have you ever noticed how the Bone has no scent whatsoever?"

15. He Loves His Little Mouse, but He Won't Take Her Home to Mom

This is a story about a dirty little secret in the dating world. Almost everybody's been there—on one side or the other.

Two men were sitting at the Princeton Club having drinks. It was late afternoon. Both men were in their early thirties and had once been pretty-boy preppies. They were now losing their looks, and both had an extra twelve pounds around their middles that they

couldn't lose. They'd gone to college together and had moved to New York after graduation. They were good friends; they had the kind of friendship that tends to be unusual for men. They could actually talk about things. Like diets that didn't work. And women.

Walden had just been made partner in a corporate law firm and had recently gotten engaged to a dermatologist. Stephen had been in a relationship for three years. He was a producer on a network magazine show.

Walden's fiancee was out of town at a collagen convention. On his own, Walden always got lonely. It reminded him of a time when he had really been lonely, for months on end that seemed to drag into years. And it always brought him

around to the same memory, of the woman who had made him feel better, and of what he'd done to her.

Walden met her at a party filled with very pretty people. This being Manhattan, she was nicely dressed in a short black dress that showed off breasts that were on the large side. But she had a modest face. Beautiful long black hair, though. Ringlets. "They always have one great feature," Walden said, and took a sip of his martini.

There was something about this girl, Libby. She was sitting on a couch by herself, and she didn't seem uncomfortable. Another girl came by, a pretty girl, and she leaned down and whispered something in Libby's ear, and Libby laughed. But she didn't get up. Walden was standing by the side of the couch, drinking beer out of the bottle. He was thinking about which pretty girl to approach, looking for openings. Libby caught his eye and smiled. She looked friendly. He sat down, figuring it was a momentary oasis.

He kept thinking that he was going to get up and approach one of the pretty girls, but he didn't. Libby had gone to Columbia undergrad, Harvard grad school. She talked to him about law. She told him about her childhood, growing up with four sisters in North Carolina. She was twenty-four and had a grant to make a documentary. She leaned forward and removed a hair from his sweater. "Mine," she said, and laughed. They talked for a long time. He finished a second beer.

"Do you want to come over to my place?" she asked.

He did. He figured he knew what was going to happen. They'd have sex for one night, he'd go home the next day and forget about it. Like most men in New York, he made up his mind about a woman right away. Put her in a category— one-night stand, potential girlfriend, hot two-week fling. Back then, he was sleeping with plenty of women, and eventually there would be tearful scenes in his lobby and sometimes worse.

Libby was definitely a one-night stand. She wasn't pretty enough to date, to be seen in public with.

"But what does that mean, really?" Stephen interrupted.

"I just thought she was ugher than me," Walden said.

When they got to Libby's apartment—a basic two-bedroom in a high-rise on Third Avenue that she shared with her cousin—she opened the refrigerator and took out a beer. When she bent over in the refrigerator light, he saw that she was a httle on the heavy side.

She turned around and unscrewed the cap and handed the bottle to him. "I just want you to know," she said. "I really want to have sex with you."

A pretty girl wouldn't have said that, he thought, as he put down his beer and began undressing her. He bit her neck and pulled down the top of her bra without unhooking it. He peeled off her pantyhose. She wasn't wearing underwear. They went into the bedroom.

"I found myself very uninhibited," Walden said. "Because she wasn't pretty. The stakes were lower, the emotion higher. There wasn't any pressure because I knew I couldn't date her." He fell asleep with his arms around her.

"The next morning," Walden said, "I woke up and I felt at ease. Very relaxed. I'd been feeling tormented for some time, and, with Libby, I suddenly felt peaceful. It was the first honest emotional connection I'd had in a while. So I immediately panicked and had to leave."

He walked home with his hands in his pockets. It was winter and he'd left his gloves at her place.

"It's always winter when these things happen," Stephen said.

"ACTUAL FRIENDS"

Walden didn't see her again for a few months. He went back to his torment. If she was better-looking, he would have gone out with her. Instead, he waited two months, then he called her for lunch. He'd been fantasizing about her. They had lunch, and then they blew off the afternoon and went back to her place and had sex. They began seeing each other a

couple of times a week. They lived in the same neighborhood; they'd go to local places for dinner or she'd cook. "I found it incredibly easy to talk about my emotions," Walden said. "I could cry in front of her. I told her my deepest sexual fantasies and we'd act them out. We talked about having a threesome with one of her friends.

"She'd tell me her fantasies, which were tremendously elaborate," Walden continued. "She asked me to spank her. She had secrets, but she was incredibly practical. I've always wondered if it was because she wasn't datable that she'd constructed this complicated inner life. You know, if you're not in the beauty Olympics, you can become a very interesting person."

In the meantime, Libby was being pursued by, in Walden's words, "some shlumpy guy." Walden didn't feel threatened.

He met all her friends but wouldn't introduce her to his. He never spent a whole weekend with her—or even a whole day. They never went to a party together. "I didn't want her to get the wrong idea," he said.

But she never protested, never made demands. One time she asked him if the reason he kept her hidden was because she wasn't pretty enough. "I lied and said no," Walden said. "You know, if I closed my eyes, there was no way she didn't satisfy me in every way."

Walden ordered another drink. "She used to make me wonder if I felt ugly inside, and that was the bond."

"Well, every man secretly hates pretty girls because they're the ones who rejected him in high school," Stephen said. He had a similar story.

Ellen's grandfather was famous in TV. A real big deal. Stephen met her at a work party. They'd both gone outside on the balcony to smoke cigarettes and started talking. She was funny. A real firecracker, a wiseacre. She was dating somebody else. After that,

she and Stephen would run into each other at work events.

"We became actual friends," said Stephen, "which for me is rare with women. I had no sexual designs on her. I could go out with her and shoot the shit hke a guy. She could talk about movies, Letterman, she knew TV—and most women don't understand TV. If you try to talk about TV with a pretty girl, her eyes glaze over."

They went to the movies, but "just as friends." She might have been secretly angling for him; but if she was, Stephen didn't notice. They'd talk about their relationships. Their dissatisfactions. Stephen was seeing someone who had gone to Europe for three months, and he was writing her forced, unenthusiastic letters.

One afternoon, they were having lunch, when Ellen began describing a recent sexual encounter with her boyfriend. She had given him a hand job using Vaseline. Stephen suddenly popped a woody. "I began to see her as a sexual being," he said. "The thing about these girls who aren't beauties—they have to put sex on the table. They can't nuance it."

Ellen broke up with her boyfriend, and Stephen began dating lots of women. He would tell Ellen about these women. One night they were at a restaurant, having dinner, and Ellen leaned over and gave him a tongue kiss in his ear that got him thumping his foot.

They went to her place and had sex. "It was great," Stephen said. "I performed, on an objective basis, better than I had with other women. I was going back for seconds and thirds. I was giving her the forty-five-minute fuck." The «relationship» progressed from there. They would watch TV in bed and then have sex with the TV on. "A pretty woman would never let you have the TV on during sex," Stephen said. "But it's relaxing somehow, with the TV on. You're not the focus. Women hke Ellen allow you to be yourself."

Stephen admitted that from Ellen's point of view, their relationship probably wasn't so great. "During the six months we went out, well, we had probably gone to more movies

back when we were friends. Our dates became the worst kind of dates—takeout food and videos. I felt tremendously guilty. I felt shallow. She wasn't quite up to snuff in the looks department, and I felt shallow for thinking of her looks. She was a great girl."

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1062