A Man Among Girls: Adam Driver
A.P.C. Coat, J.Crew Button Down, A.P.C. Sweater, Simon Miller Jeans
I first met Driver, 30, at the photo shoot, by the snack table, where we small-talked for a couple minutes. He’d requested only a turkey sandwich. At 6’3” he towered over the dozen or so other people in the room, but in a polite, bashful way. He asked me where I was from and where in Brooklyn I lived, so I told him, and because I’d already known where he was from and where he lived (born in San Diego, raised in Indiana, and has lived for three years in Brooklyn Heights), I asked him about an upcoming movie-related trip to Italy I’d just read that he’d be taking. He told me, but as soon as he finished, he laughed apologetically and said, “I just bored myself with that story.” Then he asked me if I’d gone home for the holidays. I told him I had. “Was it good?” he asked. Before I could answer, he got pulled away to have his hair and makeup done for the next part of the shoot. But as he walked away, he turned around, began to walk backward and repeated, “Was it good?” He was smiling, again apologetically. “Yes, it was.” I laughed.
(Wait, no, the first time we met was actually a half-hour before that, when he’d taken a break from the photo shoot to come over and say hello and was carrying this metal… staff or something that he’d been posing with, and while saying hello, a piece of metal came off into his finger, but when he noticed, he just pulled it out—NBD!—and kind of laughed and playfully responded to some tetanus jokes. That’s so Adam [Sackler] of him, I thought. He also held doors open, held elevators, and was otherwise unfailingly polite.)
So, I’m just gonna go stream-of-consciousness on what it is I think is so appealing about him, in this particular cultural moment. It’s something to do with masculinity. Rawness. Unfussiness. And, this is maybe a little too out there, but I think there’s something to it: there’s something about the way his back curves. Yeah, his back. Primal, masculine, huge. Something about it seems to say, “I’m sorry I’m so huge!” which is both tender and really hot? It’s this back curl. You see it in Girls when he’s bending down, to kiss people or to fuck them, or to pick up wood for his carpentry or whatever it is—this guileless hunching in his back, like he’s an ogre bending down to cradle something. As if to say I don’t care about the shape my own huge strong body makes as long as I can take care of this tiny thing I’m picking up or leaning down to access, be it woman or building material. It’s almost an apologetic back curl. I think it’s because at a time when a lot of other guys on TV and in movies are too pretty, people who look like and seem like men, not boys, are appealing. Someone big and strong who might be able to protect you or hunt you food.
Which is why the real-life stint in the Marines fits so satisfyingly with this concept of his fictional TV character. (He served for two years and eight months before being medically discharged after a biking accident.) It’s a little ridiculous, but it’s a welcome difference from all the actors who play tough guys on TV or in movies but are then reported in gossip columns as staying out all night or being photographed in ridiculous fedoras or otherwise dandyish duds. I dunno. It’s funny when people say he’s unconventionally attractive, because he seems pretty regularly attractive to me. Although I also wonder what he’d look like with different hair.
