love me, fear me, do as i say and i will be your slave.
my family was big on jim henson. so when labyrinth came out on video, we all huddled up together on my aunt's gigantic sectional couch for a much anticipated viewing. from the moment i saw david bowie come on screen, in all his big hair and tight pants glory, i was hooked. nevermind the riding crop he's casually tapping against his tall, black boots or the way his crotch is blatantly on display throughout most of the movie or the dance scene (oh, you know the one).
plus, if you really want to know how cool someone is? just go up to them, say, "you remind me of the babe!" and see how they react. trust me on this.
There were few models for bisexuality when I was a kid. Or, more accurately, there were essentially none. “Bisexual” was a weird word for “gay,” which was itself a word for “weird.”
Then along came a curious moment in pop music—a vogue for bisexuality that presaged the later “lesbian chic” of the nineties. It came about as glam, punk and art music began to vie with the popularity of mainstream pop, particularly in Great Britain in the mid-seventies.
The idea of claiming bisexuality seems to have come about as Marc Bolan and David Bowie tussled for attention. Each let it leak that sure, they were bi, what of it? It caught headlines, so Rod Stewart, Elton John and Mick Jagger, among others, played along, dropping hints they would neither confirm nor deny. Later, as social conservatism held sway, most would back away from any previous claim to sex with men. Even Sir Elton took a bride.
I was too young to take much note of the vogue. At any rate, our town’s pop radio stations kept the needle stuck on Southern rock and heavy metal, so I scarcely knew of Bowie or Bolan.
I began to stay up later on weekends, watching television when my parents went to sleep. In those days before cable television, I was exposed to the low-budget theatrics of amateur wrestling, Hammer horror films and David Bowie. I saw Ziggy Stardust on the Midnight Special and stared wide-eyed and afraid.
A few years later, at age sixteen, I caught Bowie performing three songs on Saturday Night Live. He was immobile during “The Man Who Sold The World,” encased in a costume that might have been designed by Sonia Delaunay. By contrast to his bizarre background singers, Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias, Bowie looked practically human.
He came back for “TVC 1 5” in the uniform of a Chinese stewardess. For “Boys Keep Swinging,” he was transformed into a marionette. In the video for “Boys Keep Swinging,” which I saw on Midnight Special, he reserved a shocking revelation for the denouement.
I didn’t have any idea about what to do with Bowie. I filed his persona under “weird art” and tried to learn the words to his songs as fast as I could. I wasn’t going to hear them anywhere else.
A few years later, “The Man Who Sold the World” would switch on a light bulb in my jumbled sexuality.
Shemale Yum
Guba
Grooby Archives
Rope Lover
