| Who'll Love Aladdin Sane |
| Written by Alexandra Ford |
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A memoir on David Bowie. First place winner in the prose category.
I remember sitting cross-legged on the mismatched wool carpet in my parents’ old living room, glued to the television, fascinated by the skinny blond man twirling crystals in his gloved hands. I watched the smooth juggling motion, the way his glam-mullet blew away from his face in wisps of platinum and blue. I watched his lips curve over his perfectly crooked teeth and blushed at the unforgiving tightness of his pants. And I heard the soft rasp of his oh-so-British voice crooning over the reflective crystal. I think my stomach fell through the floor at the sight of him bursting onto the screen, but shortly thereafter, my mom came in, flipped off the television, and told me that one phrase every child loathes to hear—“Bedtime, sweetheart!” I stalked the TV Guide for the next two weeks, waiting for him to reappear on the Disney Channel; and when he did, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I was only eleven, but that was the year I learned that boys, especially that emaciated rock-star figure in a bad wig and too much makeup, might not be as unattractive and cootie-full as I had previously imagined. I watched his name flash across the screen in the end credits of Labyrinth and etched the words into my memory. That very evening, I begged my dad to take me to the record store—I wanted the soundtrack to that movie, and I would scan the shelves until I found that name. What I didn’t expect to stumble across was almost an entire row with black typewriter letters stamped on white plastic, dedicated to him. David Bowie. * * * He was born David Jones on January 8th, 1947, two days after me and almost 39 years earlier. He was born, blue-eyed and probably already eager for fame, in Brixton, England, one of the shadier suburbs of London, but later moved to Kent—where Mick Jagger and the immortal Keith Richards found each other in their youth. The Rolling Stones were already an underground sensation around the city when David started high school; all the cool kids knew about them, and I don’t doubt that David paid attention to their growing fame. I wonder if he knew, then, that he’d chase after the skirts of women who Mick had already frequented, or that not so many years later, his first wife would find him in bed with the legendary big-lipped rock star, himself—naked and waiting for a hot cup of coffee and some breakfast. Back to the schoolyard. When David was fifteen, he got in a fight with his friend, George Underwood, over George’s girlfriend. He punched David hard in the eye with a heavily-ringed fist. And now, when you look closely at Bowie’s face, you’ll notice the difference between his eyes—his left eye is permanently dilated and gives off the glow of a different color, green or brown depending on the ambient light. * * * I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa coming for you * * * Freshman year of college at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, move-in day, I walked with my dad to the poster sale in the Student Union. I flipped page after page of the soggy, makeshift cardboard books, looking for something to make my little cinderblock cell a bit more exciting. And, for me, nothing would make my walls radiate like a good photograph of David Bowie and his Husky eyes. I found two Bowie posters—the Labyrinth movie poster and the Ziggy Stardust album poster (artwork by that eye-punching hooligan, George Underwood). But only the Labyrinth poster showcased those eyes. It was the fantasy shot—Bowie perched in royal, villainous leather above the beautiful damsel, the make-believe monsters, and the Escher-inspired maze and castle. The Ziggy image was an illustration of the London-reality, a dark painting of the rainy city at night—glistening streets and reflective rearview mirrors under the glow of the K. West Hotel, and David perched like Captain Morgan with his guitar slung artfully over his shoulder, eyes in shadow. Ziggy went up over my desk, surrounded by poems by Thomas Lux, Pablo Neruda, and myself. Jareth (Labyrinth’s Goblin King) had yet to find a spot when my dad checked his watch, put down the box of rainbow thumbtacks, and smiled. “It’s getting late. I’ve got a long drive tomorrow morning. You gonna be alright if I leave, babe?” “Yeah, Dad, I think I can manage,” I smiled back. “Well, good luck, Gator.” He gave me a hug and walked towards the door as if he didn’t want to leave his daughter in this hedonistic palace of eighteen-year-olds on their own for the first time. “Love ya.” “Love you too, Dad.”
Once he left, and my roommate got back from sending her parents off, I turned towards the poster curled and limp on the linoleum. “There’s no where to put it, is there?” I asked. My roommate, a socially awkward, puritanical patriot, scanned the room with a scowl on her face. Her half of the room was plastered in red, white, and blue stars. Her sheets were striped like the American Flag, her desk was covered in Americana, even the t-shirt on her back—navy blue with “September 11th, 2001—Never Forget,” scrawled on the front, screamed the caricature of small town conservatism. “Next to your bed?” I had the top bunk and there wasn’t enough room for me to sit up straight without smacking my head on the dusty foam ceiling tiles, let alone the space for a poster. “Fuck it, I’m putting it on the ceiling.” “Isn’t that a bit creepy?” She rubbed her arm and squinted her eyes again as I leapt off my bunk and dug into my drawer for duct tape. I grabbed the pack of rainbow thumbtacks my dad had dropped and set to work applying David Bowie directly above my pillow. Not as creepy as only prizing possessions if they’re red, white, or blue. She pulled out a Pepsi bottle filled with clear liquid. “Want some rum?” she asked. I shook my head and curled up in my covers, under the starry eyes of Mr. Bowie. Ok, maybe it is a little awkward. * * * Spy, spy, pretty girl * * * David’s first wife, Angela Bowie, recalled an evening in the backseat of a limo with David after the Minneapolis news at six in 1974 declared that an alien spacecraft had landed somewhere in Michigan. I can imagine the muddle—news anchors trying not to cause widespread panic, fuzzy photographs of UFOs on the television screen, thousands of Americans with their eyes open towards the sky, waiting. The eleven o’clock news came on, and I’m sure those waiting faces—curious or terrified—sat a little closer to their console TVs. But the viewers were told that “the prime-time news crew had perpetrated an irresponsible and inexcusable hoax, and had therefore been dismissed from their jobs. No UFOs had landed; no aliens were in custody, dead or alive; the United States Air Force had positively not engaged or intercepted any craft whatsoever in the skies above Michigan; and that, officially and absolutely, was that” (from Angela Bowie’s Backstage Passes). She talked about David, his face pressed against the eyepiece of the telescope that was set up through the sun-roof of the limousine, peering into the night sky for more signs of alien activity. He was fascinated by otherworldly beings; Angela implied that he wasn’t awed by aliens in a scholarly way, but “like a vampire.” He wanted to be an alien, be seen as a figure resembling his alien/Icarus-character in the movie Man who Fell to Earth, inspired by Bowie—written and directed by Nicolas Roeg. * * * I’ve never had a thing for aliens like Bowie. But last summer, the Discovery Channel came to my home county—Bucks County, PA—to examine a fast-growing series of UFO sightings in the area. I was home for the summer, balancing volunteer work at a castle and working at a winery on weekends. The first sighting came early in the summer, I don’t remember exactly when. My mom, an avid worrier, called it the Oxford Valley Mall sighting—people in the mall parking lot saw strange lights moving in the sky. That didn’t shake me much. There was probably a perfectly normal explanation for it. And besides, that was a full half of an hour from home. The second publicized sighting happened down the street from my house. A woman and her teenaged daughter were pulling into their driveway when they glanced up at their neighbors’ house. A strange, triangular shaped aircraft was hovering above the suburban, probably picket-fenced yard. And it made no noise as it continued to hover, its anterior lights forming a radiant blue “V.” She watched it from her neatly paved driveway, next to, I imagine, her oversized SUV, until it soared over trees in the distance and zigzagged into the night sky. The woman refuses to believe in aliens—she maintains that whatever that craft was, it must have been a new, unreleased project from the US Military. But, if that were the case, why would it be flying low over the manicured lawns of suburban Philadelphia—twenty miles from a closed-down Naval Air Base? I admit this sighting made me nervous to walk my dog in the dark. Every starry night for the rest of the summer, I stepped out into my yard humming “Hallo Space Boy” with my little dog on his leash and tried to stick as close to the house as possible. I gazed up at the sky, waiting to see something move and block the stars overhead. I thought maybe it was the cocaine Bowie used in the seventies that made him anxious for alien life. But after last summer, I wonder. I don’t exactly believe in aliens, but it would’ve been nice to have a Bowie-sized telescope protruding from the skylight in my living room, a signal flag to clear the air of space invaders. * * * And you'll believe you're loving the alien * * * I stumbled through a bookstore a few years ago and doubled back when I saw that film tucked neatly on a little display with other strange old movies. So I bought it for an over-priced thirty dollars, went home, and popped it into my DVD player. The Man Who Fell to Earth was weird like a lot of 1970’s movies are weird—it was trying too hard to be artistic. It kept referencing Bruegel’s painting of the fall of Icarus, only, obviously, Icarus was no longer just a demigod with melted wax wings, he was David Bowie/Thomas Newton the alien and selling his planet’s science in order to find the money to get home to his alien family. And, like too many movies from the 1970’s, there is an inordinate display of nudity—unshaved college girls mounting a younger, full-frontally exposed Rip Torn, and even a scene where both David Bowie and Rip Torn are swinging their man parts around ladies. Now, I’m not going to lie—while I was mostly disturbed by that low-budget porno feel, there was also a small part of me that was in awe of that rock star package. Though, looking back on his tight pants in the Labyrinth, I shouldn’t have been surprised. To think that I fell asleep under his paper-thin gaze for the first semester of my college career without knowing that there were copies of him exposing himself on camera floating in vintage bookstores around the world. * * * It’s been four years since the first time I woke up underneath David Bowie, but even for the other ninety-some days of that debaucherous semester, it never lost its charm. I would drink, almost every evening, with friends all over campus. We’d move from dorm to dorm, then to the lodges where fraternities always had free liquor for the freshmen ladies. And eventually, after eating the grapefruits out of the buckets of jungle juice, we’d head home—occasionally in the arms of another inebriated college student, to continue our evening in a more private setting and to sleep off our hangovers. Some nights I’d bring her home, a girl who I’d make out with for frat-made Jell-o shots and spoon with when we didn’t feel like sleeping alone. The first night she followed me home, our arms wrapped around each other, we stumbled into my room, trying not to wake my red, white, and blue roommate. But, in the fashion of inexperienced drunks, we managed to crash into the sink, the trash can, and my desk before climbing up into my rickety metal bunk. She whispered something in my ear about eyes on the ceiling, then curled up in the crook of my bare elbow and fell asleep. I buried my nose in the flowing spread of her hair on my pillow and closed my eyes. “Oh, God!” I jerked awake at 6 in the morning to the harsh sound of her shout and fell out of the bed, five feet onto the carpet below. “Ow.” “Oh my God, are you okay?” She leaned over the edge of the bed and her dark hair fell over her shoulders and framed her face. “I’m fine,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “Why do you have a poster of David Bowie right above your head?” “There was nowhere else to put it.” “Oh. Sorry.” After a while, she became accustomed to waking up under David Bowie too—we’d lay there and giggle at the thought of sleeping underneath an androgynous, bisexual rock star.
But the boys I brought home responded quite differently. I remember one particular boy who used to steal my bed for naps while I was in class. I overslept one Wednesday morning and woke up to the creak of someone climbing up the bunk. “Jordan?” I mumbled, scooting towards the wall to give him room. He kissed me gently on the cheek and said nothing; he just laid there next to me, staring into David Bowie’s mismatched eyes. He reached his arms under the covers and put his hand on my waist. I could feel the uncertainty in his fingers as they inched higher. “Fuck,” he said softly. “What?” “How am I supposed to touch you with him staring at me like that?” * * * I think my dad would have been proud of David Bowie that day, for keeping strange hands off his daughter. He bought me tickets back in high school for Bowie’s Philadelphia stop on his Reality Tour, but only, I think, because he knew there was no stopping my adoration for the man and his music. My dad always made it clear that he was not a fan of Bowie. Sure, he enjoyed The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, but who didn’t? He called Bowie a sellout for being the “Pop Culture Chameleon.” David Bowie changed his sound so many times, and always in tune with musical trends. It was as if Bowie had a premonitory sense for the musical world—or maybe it was just that he was a musician caught up in the movements of that world. Either way, for me, his is the only music I can listen to for hours on end—none of it sounds the same. You can listen to his growth from his Ziggy Stardust persona, the skinny man in women’s clothing fresh on the music scene; to his move into Aladdin Sane, the man he evolved into when “Ziggy [went] to America,” and found fame and drugs; to his transformation into the Thin White Duke, the emotionless, cocaine-addicted superstar. I think the reason my dad really wasn’t comfortable with Mr. Bowie was because the man was unabashedly flamboyant, promiscuous, and drugged-out. But that was the Bowie of the past. The Bowie of 2004 was a family man—out of the spotlight, married to his supermodel second wife, Imam, and raising his children away from the paparazzi and red carpets. This new Bowie is an off-the-radar rock star who stopped doing drugs and stopped making Top 40 hits. But that didn’t stop him from putting on a show that left me feeling high for days—not just because of the middle-aged stoners behind us baking our whole section of the stadium. It was like he knew there was a wildly passionate fan sitting somewhere in that stadium who’s favorite song in the whole world was “Life on Mars,” a song Bowie hadn’t sung live on a main concert tour since the 1970’s. The guitarist played an opening riff to a song off his new album, and Bowie missed his entrance. He mumbled something that sounded like, “Fuck it, I want to play something else. Here’s a song I haven’t played in a long, long time.” He whispered to the other men on stage, turned back to the audience, and smiled. I think my stomach almost fell through the floor when that piano burst to life. I closed my eyes and imagined that skinny blond man staring straight at me, through the tens of thousands of fans in the audience, with his blue and brown mismatched eyes that said, “I know.” * * * * * * We sat on the floor, my friend Chris and I, cross-legged, drunk, and stoned. We’d been listening to Bowie’s music for hours, each sharing our favorite songs and singing along—he sang melody, I sang a dissonant harmony. We leaned back against his desk and stared up at the swirling white light of his lamp, fluorescent and bright against the dark walls and ceiling. And the track changed to “Starman,” and we just sat there, stoned enough to think that we were part of the music, that the room was the music, the blaring light, the radio that perched on his dresser. And we sang: Didn't know what time it was the lights were low
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