By David Keeps. Photographed by Francois Dischinger

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He drove back across the country to his parent's home in DC where his father simply asked him 'Was it worth it?' Though he couldn't quite explain it, Chris knew somehow that it was. Nevertheless he returned to Boulder, got a BA in history, and wound up at 23, living with his folks. Finding this more than a tad depressing, Meloni called a high school friend one day and followed him to New York, where they studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse. To support himself, he took the usual jobs available to a strapping six-footer. '’I was a bouncer, a bartender at Studio 54 in its third reincarnation, which was like being a rat on a sinking ship, and I worked at the Body Center, a gay gym."

It wasn’t Meloni’s first brush with homosexuals. When he was at Camp Whitehall, the summer between eight and ninth grade, Meloni knew this "very effeminate kid. I liked him, thought he was a kick. And his older brother was a counselor and I remember him saying, ‘Steven’s problem is he needs a father figure around so he’d act like a man, because I guess their dad had died or whatever. And even at that young age, I remember thinking, no, that’s not right."

In college, Meloni had a gay pursuer. "It was the first time a guy had ever said "you’ve got a great body’ to me," he says grinning. "The next thing you know, he’s asking me if I like gladiator movies." Around that time, Meloni, who’d gotten a little weary of the alpha-male competitions in the local bars, frequented a bisexual club, where he bumped into his admirer one night. "He followed me out to the parking lot, and I had to talk him down. He thought that maybe I was playing hard to get, ‘cause here I was in the bisexual bar, so I said I go where I want to go, but I don’t go there. So let’s be friends."

Fast-forward to that gym in New York City: "It really turned out to be a wonderful education to see the cast of characters within this small tribe," Meloni says. "From the flouncy, bouncy guys who were just going to parade their sexuality, to the kid from Kansas who always had this troubling feeling emanating from him, and one day we were just talking and I looked down and I see these jagged scars on his wrists, and it broke my heart. It was good to understand and also realize my inherent homophobia from where I’d come from, which was conservative northern Virginia, borderline rebel yell, redneck, Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynyrd territory."

Unless you count his first job, as a Flemish-speaking runner in a commercial for a Belgian hamburger chain, it took Meloni a while to hit his stride as an actor. In his first big TV appearance, he played an assassin who wore a ski cap over his face; they added insult to injury by overdubbing his voice. Meloni went on to do sitcoms that critics loved and networks cancelled, TV movies and miniseries, and small, thuggish roles in films. A few years ago it all kicked in. Meloni appeared on Homicide, seduced Kim Delaney on NYPD Blue, starred as stand-up comedian in the Indie film The Souler Opposite (which is soon to be released on video), and landed Oz, the Special Victims Unit. "It's such a cliché," he laughs, "but I started getting the jobs when I didn't give a fuck anymore."

A lunch date at some mozzarella store in Manhattan: On the wall, there's a photo of Meloni and the man who runs the place. But that doesn't cut any mustard. Although he proprietor greets Meloni warmly, like a true paesan, he still has to wait in line for his "sangwich." Wheeling his bicycle up to a nearby park, we sit on a beach. As he wolfs down prosciutto, arugula, and sundried tomatoes (hold the oil!) on focaccia, Chris asks, meat hanging from mouth, "Do you want a slab of this action?" No, but thanks for asking. So he gives me a Rollimilk (the Italian equivalent of a Devil Dog).

We eat and watch the pre-Easter parade of New Yorkers going about their Saturday. A skinny woman in a girl's dress and Pippi Longstocking hose passes in front of us, giggling to herself. Meloni narrows his eyes with concern. "That's a lot of sadness and a lot of beauty wrapped up in one package," he says. A Chinese man walks by. "That's Dr. Woo," says Chris. "He plays chess in the park." An aspiring writer-director, Meloni has written a film about chess players and drug dealers that is set in this very park.