Lenny Kravitz Is a Virgin (Again)

Photographed for Spin by Cass Bird

It's around midnight, and I'm in the lobby of a loft building in SoHo, waiting for Lenny Kravitz, and I'm feeling savagely insecure. We're to go to a nightclub, GoldBar, and in my mind, I'm doing that old high-school composition thing, compare and contrast, and the subjects are Kravitz and yours truly.

We're both 43, but he's a multimillionaire and I have no money in the bank, though I do have a nice amount of debt. He's famously handsome, the Brad Pitt of rock'n'roll, and has been married to Lisa Bonet and linked to Nicole Kidman and Naomi Campbell, among others. I'm bald, and my false front tooth has turned brown from coffee. He's sold millions of records singing about love -- his new album is called It Is Time for a Love Revolution. I'm primarily known, and not well at that, for penning self-hating essays, the most famous of which is "I Shit My Pants in the South of France."

Then I remember something crucial: I read several old interviews and profiles of Lenny Kravitz, and it was reported more than once that he stands only five-foots-even. I'm six-foot, when I don't affect the posture of a fishhook, which is most of the time, but if I can remember to stand up straight, I'll tower over him! I may be ugly and poor, but at least I'll be taller than Lenny Kravitz, and that's got to give me some advantage. Though why I feel the need for any kind of advantage and can't just meet him as a fellow human being, I don't know. Perhaps because we're not meeting as human beings: We're meeting as a Rock Star and One More Annoying Journalist.

The elevator opens, and he is striding toward me, with a pigeon-toed gait, holding a glowing iPhone. He's got a bulky, muscular upper torso and thin legs. I stand, and we shake hands, and he's taller than me! Is he wearing lifts? I wonder. I look at his black boots and don't think there could be lifts in them. So it's simply my low self-esteem asserting itself once more and distorting reality. Whenever I see photos of myself with others, I'm often shocked to observe that I'm far taller than whomever I'm with, especially when my experience, at the time of the photo, was that I was smaller.

"There's supposed to be a car outside for us," he says. He's wearing black jeans, a black sweater, and a thick winter hat. I follow him out into the November night.

"It's really nice to meet you," I say, like a girl in an etiquette book. He nods his head, looks at his iPhone.

A Lincoln Town Car pulls up. Kravitz tells the driver where to go—GoldBar is only three blocks away.

"We could walk," says Kravitz, "but since we have the car…"

We sit in silence a moment, and then I say, "Congratulations on the new album --" and then I freeze, struck by my own dullness, but my brain reassembles. "It's a really beautiful album," I continue. "I especially love 'I Love the Rain.' "

"Thanks, man," he says, smiling.