One Year Later - Ziggy in the Subway

So Dave has been gone a year (when i started this) and i've spent many hours over that past year thinking about what Dave has taught me and thinking about what Dave has made me think about, because over the last year i've listened to Blackstar a lot, it's a brilliant record without the juxtaposition of his death but with it i've argued to anyone who'd listen that combined with the visual images it's nothing short of a work of high art in the highest order, i don't give a fuck what anyone says... but enough of this staid academic shit let's get on with the story here...

Many moons ago i attended Podunk U. in the backwoods of western Pennysltucky, it's the kind of place where the local residents are stuck in a time warp, like modern day Indiana (sorry Kurt), to put it mildly they are not the most open-minded of folks... it was also a shit state uni commuter campus with a good portion of the student body shuffling off to Pittsburgh or Cleveland or the surrounding areas while us hardcores with nowhere to go and nothing to do would somehow get fucked up on anything and everything that came our way and wander from shit house to shit apartment until we passed out on the floor sometime long after the three shitty town bars had closed...

And so it came to pass one fine Saturday afternoon that i ingested a rather large amount of hallucinogens, i was on my own and wandering when i stopped by a friend's place, the apartment of two girls i knew, one the good Doctor's lady friend and the other a chubby girl with flaming red curly hair who i'd occasionally screw just because i'd occasionally screw anyone who asked me at the time, and so i walked up the steps and knocked and smoked some grass and had a beer and oddly enough was hungry and asked what they had to eat? of course they ran down the usual shit poor college students have and i checked my pockets and realized i had enough for a sub and then the drugs kicked some more and i forgot about the sub for a minute and as i walked around the apartment i picked up a Ziggy Stardust wig, well maybe not the officially licensed version but close enough and soon i had it on and was looking in the mirror and giggling and Shag, the curly red haired girl, started laughing and said wait, let me put some make-up on you, and then we both laughed and i sat down...

Now don't get the idea that i had a lightening bolt drawn onto my face or anything, it was much simpler than that, mainly it was some silver eye shadow and eyeliner, some mascara, some lipstick and the orange Ziggy wig, all the kinds of shit that could get a red-blooded American boy's ass kicked in a small town... and so Shag applied the make-up and her breasts were rubbing against me and i pondered the chance of fucking later and i finished a beer and she finished painting my face and then i remembered i wanted a sandwich and so off to Subway we went, a mere 5 or 6 blocks of the 8 or 9 that roughly made up my own private Idaho...

There are those occasions (or all) under the influence of acid when you feel as if nothing can harm you, or what Chavez y Chavez called the spirit world for all you Young Guns aficionados, and so i walked through the gloaming in search of my sandwich with Shag and another lost weekender named Harry, it was one of those cool but humid spring nights and by the time i got to Subway the drugs were in full swing and i ordered my food oblivious to the looks of consternation and confusion of the poor townies working the counter (there seemed to be an unwritten rule of not hiring college students in the little town) i ordered and sat in the window while Shag and Harry laughed at the passersby doing double takes at the tall guy in a Ziggy Stardust wig and wearing make up serenely eating his sub and watching a light show only he could see...

It was a fine time and we finished our dinner and walked back through town to the big pink house and up the three flights of steps to the top floor apartment where Shag lived, Saturday nights were a vast wasteland, even more so if you were not yet legal drinking age, but somehow we had procured more beer and a couple joints, we opened the windows and turned on the stereo and played records and tapes and watched shit movies on a VCR and when the time came Harry made his gracious exit and so i began to grab my stuff to go as well when a hand grabbed mine for a moment, i sat back down, i had taken off the wig long before but had forgotten about the make-up, Shag lit up the last half joint and we smoked and kissed and then she led me into her bedroom where we did the requisite giggling and nibbling and fucking...

It was in the wee hours when i donned Shag's big pink bathrobe and made my way to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea, Shag sprawled out naked in her bed and snoring lightly, i sat in the window and looked out over the sleepy little town and drank tea as the acid wound it's way down, i sat there for a couple of hours through the deep black night and into the lightening dusk and listened to the sounds and then i crept back to Shag's room and got dressed and crept slowly to the door, made my way down the steps in the chilly dawn air and walked the couple blocks back to my place, just a boy who keeps swinging, a boy trying to work it out...