Undressed With Someplace to Go : Marky Mark Meets His Public at Book Signing, Briefly Speaking

It’s underwear night at Book Soup.

Unsuspecting store patrons are casting nervous glances at a young man stalking the narrow aisles looking a little anxious himself and wearing nothing but an immodest pair of Calvin Klein briefs under his brown overcoat. On any other night this might be cause for a flasher alert, but this Sunday evening it’s a matter of course: The literary hot spot of West Hollywood is about to host an autograph session for Marky Mark, a rapper-cum-advertising-icon far better recognized by his briefs than his bookishness.

Outside, where hundreds of better-dressed fans have queued up, a defining collision of sensibilities is about to occur. In the direct path of Book Soup’s front door, a half-dozen men are taking photos of each other in front of the store’s Valentine-shaped Marky Mark window display, each poser in turn pulling his pants down and grabbing his Calvins-clad crotch for the camera.

Michael Jackson would be proud. No, make that terrified.

Just as the last one has his hand in, uh, place, a would-be shopper of the unwary female variety--having presumably come in innocent search of the new James Ellroy novel or Elle or whatever--nearly walks right into the offendee and stops at a dead halt a few scary inches from him. Time seems to stand still: Him, frozen, pants down, in perpetual self-touch; her, fossilized in abject horror.

Finally she darts around him and in through the front door, the men cracking up behind her. The guys working the security detail inside look at each other, as if saying: This didn’t happen at the Martin Amis signing, did it?

There’s a certain diversity among the growing line of devotees clutching their “Marky Mark” photo books, but two types are predominant among the crowd: Teen-something Latino girls and thirty-ish white males.

It’s an incongruous demographic mix few, if any, other pop stars can claim. But few if any others can claim his perfectly sculptured body. You could apply the old blues dictum “The men don’t know, but the little girls understand” if it weren’t clear that so many men do understand. Why do gays like him so? “Look at that ,” answers Richard Noble--the guy wearing the brown coat and briefs--opening the photo book to a random page, as if what were there would inspire objective lust in any onlooker.

It also doesn’t hurt that avowed heterosexual Mark has expressed tolerance and even allowed that he doesn’t mind having a gay following. Those concessions may not sound like that tremendous an overture to the gay community, but with most other teen-idol types too protective of their masculine orthodoxy to even entertain welcoming such a fandom, it’s enough.

“He’s doing important things,” says Noble, a member of the gay activist group Coronation L.A., citing Mark’s Sunday night appearance at an AIDS benefit at the Arena club in lieu of his canceled show at the Palladium. “I can feel his heart. And he’s gorgeous and he’s got a beautiful body. I just wanted to come in my Calvin Kleins and show my support.” No pun intended.

So, in any case, the $15 softcover book of photos by famed rock shutterbug Lynn Goldsmith may represent the medium Mark was born for. Unless, of course, it’s the (widely stolen) Calvin Klein bus-stop poster; hundreds of sheets of glass in public-transit shelters have died for his pecs.

Mark and Goldsmith finally arrive through the back door and take their places behind Book Soup’s rear counter. “We can’t sign CDs. This is a book signing, baby,” Marky’s bodyguard, Boom, says to one girl.

But the rule doesn’t hold long. Mark ends up putting his penmanship over his own crotch on plenty of those stolen Klein posters. Goldsmith curiously queries the owners about where they got ‘em, but no one will admit to busting up a bus stop to get one; Marky’s pecs could conceivably sag before the statute of limitations runs out.

One girl asks Mark to put a signature on two sealed condoms. He obliges the request of another in a push-up bra to autograph her prominent bosom. None of these requests get the slightest rise out of the nonplussed, supposedly introverted star, who rarely makes eye contact--let alone speaks--with any of the fans whisking by.

Almost to a one, the fans are armed with cameras. They all want his picture, but why do so few of them bother to even try to talk to him? Perhaps it’s because they’ve read he’s shy and want to be respectful. Maybe they think they’re in the presence of royalty: One doesn’t speak until spoken to. Or perhaps this is just the impersonal future of iconography, that words count for zip and the Polaroid evidence of human contact stands in for the reality.

There are so many bashful sheep in this herd that you can feel the people behind the counter (excepting implacably quiet Marky himself) starting to root for the spunkier ones. After one autograph, a girl comes through the line six times in different disguises, to everyone’s amusement and her recurring ejection.

When Noble--better known as the underwear guy--gets his turn, there’s a moment of tension as he dramatically strips off his coat, moving to get up on the counter alongside Mark. “Where’s your clothes? My man ain’t got no clothes on!” booms Boom, not sure whether to laugh or beware a dangerous crackpot. Against his will, Noble is hustled out the back door, calling out to Marky as he goes, “You dedicated your book to your (private parts)! Well, I’m dedicated to mine too! Whassup?”

Shock gives way to bemusement. “A little 100-pound guy just tried to beat up on a 6-foot, 300-pound bodyguard!” marvels tour manager Miguel Melendez.

“That woke me up!” allows an incredulous Boom.

So grateful are Boom and Melendez for the laugh the underwear man has given them amid this fawning parade of fandom that they don’t mind when he comes through the line again, too. They relent and let him have his picture taken with Marky. In his Calvins.

But--the bookstore still having some sanctity--not on the counter.