Bobby and Ben have a painful romantic friendship that is both reciprocal and unrequited. Their relationship takes detours into places of euphoria and heartbreak, and the only thing that never changes is the cinema.

  In the fall of last year, I found myself in Tenth Avenue’s 192 Books, chatting with a stranger. The man (whose enviable green coat had temporarily distracted me from his visage) was thumbing through a copy of Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Medi…