Gold Bar, Broome Street

FROM SPIN MAGAZINE:

We pull up to the club. There's a crowd of about 50 people waiting to get in. Kravitz gets out of the car, and he's met immediately by a large black bouncer who has the physique of two washing machines stacked on top of each other. The bouncer leads as we bypass the line and make our way through the club. Men and women stare at Kravitz, and some reach for him, just to touch him. They look at me, wondering what a human fishhook is doing with Lenny Kravitz.

We make it to the back of the club, and there's a VIP setup of banquettes. A small group of people are standing and dancing in this area, and the bouncer introduces Kravitz to a fellow with a weakish chin. I realize that it's Zach Braff, but he must be a lesser VIP, because he doesn't get a seat at one of the banquettes, but Kravitz and I do.

We sit down, and the bouncer points out to Kravitz a loose-limbed, frat-boyish fellow dancing with an attractive blonde a few feet away. The bouncer recedes, as well as two stacked washing machines can recede, and Kravitz calls out to the frat boy, "John!" This John doesn't hear him, and so Kravitz repeats himself: "John!…John!…John!" By the last "John," the guy finally snaps out of his goofy dance and peers over. He comes and shakes Kravitz's hand and mine, smiles, and goes back to his blonde.

"Who's that?" I shout over the din.

"That's John Mayer," Kravitz shouts back.

I recognize the name and know that he's famous, but I'm not sure why. "Is he a musician?" I shout.

"Yeah, he's a great guitar player."

I look over at John Mayer and realize that the blonde he's dancing with is Cameron Diaz. She's doing a version of her Charlie's Angels ass wiggle.

"Do you drink tequila?" Kravitz inquires, opting now to scream into my ear. "Sure," I shout back into his, worried that my breath is probably as bad as Donald Sutherland's at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

"They have great truffle fries here," he shouts. "Want some of those?"

"I'm not against truffle fries," I scream, trying to let go of the death-breath paranoia. A pretty waitress is in front of Kravitz, and he orders tequila shots and fries.

I sniff the air -- it's loaded with perfume, emanating from the dozens and dozens of beautiful girls.

"It smells really good in here," I scream.

"Really?" Kravitz screams back.

"It's all the perfume from the pretty girls."

"You have a sensitive nose."

"I guess I do. Did you read the book Perfume?" I ask, referring to the German novel about a serial killer who's obsessed with scent and kills women to claim their odors.

"Yeah," he screams. "I loved it. But I didn't see the movie."

"That guy from Perfume would go crazy in here. He'd have so many pretty girls to kill."

Luckily -- after making a comment like that -- the tequila arrives, halting conversation, and Kravitz generously prepares a shot (with lime) for me. He raises his glass. I raise mine. We clink. We drink. More shots arrive. I'm drunk by the third one, and Cameron Diaz and John Mayer are in the banquette next to us. Two beautiful girls are dancing in front of Kravitz and me, like girls at a strip club, except that these girls are dancing for free. We drink again, and I toast: "To all your friends!"

There are now more girls dancing just for us, or rather, just for him, and two have sat down, one next to him and one next to me. We're squeezed in close and my knees are touching Lenny Kravitz's knees, as if we're old pals. I find this to be endearing -- he's a sweet guy being kind to a journalist with bad breath, bad teeth, bad hair, and bad debt.

"You like this place?" shouts Kravitz.

"I feel like I'm in Saudi Arabia!" I reply, happily. I'm no longer insecure, but I'm tipsy with a rock star in the kind of club I've never been to before, and Cameron Diaz is dancing again, and she's not even the prettiest girl around.

And the girls come and go -- models and actresses from Brazil, the Netherlands, Denmark, Russia, Japan, France, and New Jersey. Some of them sit and talk with Lenny, and if the girls come in pairs, then one of them talks to me. They'd rather be talking with Lenny, but I must be his friend, they reason, so I must have something to offer.

At some point, I meet a girl with a name that sounds like Samitra, and so I cry out, "Nice to meetcha, Samitra!" and Lenny laughs. Then a Russian girl is doing some kind of amazing belly dance really close to him, and her stomach is exposed, and her rear is a thing of beauty, and Lenny is dancing in his seat, and then she switches to me and is putting that rear right in front of my chin, and Lenny laughs again and says, "What's that look on your face?"

"It's my bachelor-party look," I scream. "Where I act like I'm really cool, but I'm really not! This girl is amazing!" She looks over her shoulder at me and smiles and keeps rotating her rear, mimicking the movements of the earth and the sun, all the things that spiral and are infinite, like the swirl of a beautiful girl's fingerprint on a martini glass which she puts down just before kissing you.

Lenny wrote about this bar on his new album in the song "Dancin' Til Dawn," and he got it just right:

"She takes her time as she approaches me / Then she gives me the sign as she moves her behind / That only God would design… / The night is young, GoldBar's the place to be."

So we sit there dancing in our seats, knees touching, the girls in front of us, and then I say, out of the blue, "By the way, I'm Jewish, too." It must be the tequila that makes me blurt that out, along with some insane wish to spend more nights like this with him, but Lenny takes it in stride and says, "That's cool. I'm half-Jewish." Which of course I know.

Then Lenny goes to the bathroom, and a blonde Danish model, who looks like Tiger Woods' wife, is sitting next to me, and we're watching Cameron Diaz dance with John Mayer.

"I wish I had the courage to ask her to dance," I scream.

"You should," screams the model.

"I can't," I scream. "You ask her to dance. She'll dance with you."

So the Danish model goes up to Cameron Diaz, and they're talking, and then the model points at me, and Cameron Diaz looks over, and I astrally project myself onto the ceiling, like I did when I was a kid during tense family moments. I mentally disappear for a few seconds, and then the model is sitting next to me, and I shout: "What did you say to her?"

"I told her that you wanted to dance with her, and she said she would. Why didn't you get up?"

"I astrally projected myself onto the ceiling."

"What?"

Then Lenny is back, and he says to me, "Give me some titles of books to read, man. I need some new books."

"Have you read Raymond Chandler?"

He shakes his head no.

"I thought maybe you were referencing him with your new song 'The Long and Sad Goodbye.' Chandler has a book called The Long Goodbye. I'll get you a copy. You'll love Chandler; he writes all about L.A. in the '40s and '50s."

"Cool," Lenny says.

The Danish model gets up, whispers in my ear, "I'm going to an after-hours bar. You and Lenny should come if you want. I'll be leaving in about ten minutes."

"Okay, I'll find you," I say. It's nearly 3:30 in the morning; we've been at the club for more than three hours.

A Brazilian girl starts dancing in front of Lenny, and then he says, "Let's get out of here. I've got to get some sleep."

And somehow, telepathically, the gigantic bouncer knows that Lenny wants to go, and he's leading us through the club, and then we're in the car, and Lenny tells the driver to take him home and then me. We get to Lenny's building, shake hands, and I say, "Thanks for a great time, and I'll see you tomorrow." I'm to formally interview him the next day, and he smiles good-bye, and then the door is slamming and the driver is taking me to Brooklyn, to my home, and I think about the Danish model and the after-hours club, but I've lost Lenny Kravitz, my access to power, and so as if I were a male Cinderella, it's time for me to leave the ball.

***