My Separation From Cindy Crawford

from Vogue

My relationship with Cindy Crawford was not a long one, but while it lasted, we were very close. Maybe it wasn't the deepest of relationships — Cindy is deep, I'm not — but it was close. Perhaps too close. Maybe we meant too much to each other. You know how these things are.

I was staying at a friend's place and Cindy — I call her Cindy — lived in the same building. As it happened, I spent a terrific amount of time in the elevator that week. No sooner would I get to the ground floor and through the lobby than I'd remember something I'd forgotten upstairs and have to get back in the elevator and go get it and come back down again. Sometimes I'd remember something else I had to go back and get. I had a lot on my mind at the time.

It was tropical in Manhattan than month, and only the brave dared venture out before the sun was on the wane. My friend Theresa and I cabbed over from her place late Sunday afternoon, stopping off at the deli for some beer and juice and some of that potato salad you ladle into those plastic containers. And Cindy was there, radiant, over by the cracker and cookie section. It would be ungentlemanly of me to to speak of her purchases; let it suffice to say that nothing she bought had the least bit of a percentage of butterfat. That figure and that complexion may be God-given, but she attends to a healthy diet just the same. I find that so admirable.

It has been my experience that not all models are as fabulous-looking in person as they appear in photos. In person, Cindy is a goddess. I think I can speak objectively here, because this was before Cindy and I were truly close. Unequivocally, she is a goddess. She takes a lousy photograph comparatively. She looks a lot better in real life.

At last, with a heavy heart and a cold six-pack, I left the deli. Theresa, not always as good a friend as she might be, was sort of dragging me by the elbow. Trudging down the block toward the apartment, a block that seemed a thousand miles, fumbling and fumbling with keys to a doorway to happiness that could never be mine, I wept silently, inwardly, tearlessly. "Takes you forever just to open a simple door, doesn't it?" inquired Theresa.

Then it happened. Cindy was there. She had followed me! I held the door; she held the elevator for me. Theresa got in too. At first, none of us said a word. The silence was eminent, profound. It was bosky.

No one in all the rest of our species looks as good in a gray t-shirt as Cindy Crawford. Cindy Crawford was who those t-shirt inventor guys had in mind when they invented the t-shirt. She was sweating. I was sweating. We were both sweating. I guess Theresa was probably sweating, too. I didn't notice.

We didn't have much to say to one another then, Cindy and I. How could we? What is there to say at such times, arms full of groceries? "Would you push the button for the fifth floor for me?" Words only interfere with life, force powerful feelings into tiny categories. What Cindy and I had to say to each other was larger than words, and quieter too.

That little mole thing, by the way, is as cute as can be.