Star Man provided sound track to my sexual journey.
It’s the New Year, a time for reflection, resolutions and
renewal. It is also the month when many couples call it and march off to the
divorce courts. If you are one of them take a breath, and if it’s still
something you want to do then maybe you should.
‘I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it
won’t be boring!’ - David Bowie (on his 50th Birthday).
Bowie influenced my life in significant ways. His music and
his chameleon style gave me all sorts of confidence so I am so saddened by his
death. As I write this I have Sky News on in the background. They announced his
passing earlier and are now covering the greatness and death of my Star Man. He
is the genius who single handed defined my taste in music and men!
We all have those songs that take us back to those frothy
adolescent moments when we believed that no-one in the entire universe could
feel as much love as you. This was true love, deep, romantic, uncompromising
and everlasting! Nobody could understand.
And then it broke your heart and every relationship
thereafter has been tarnished and judged with those lessons. It is those
lessons than mess with what may be happening in your life right now.
As we get older and fall in love again, begin and end
relationships, I have no doubt that special songs play a part. We hear those
songs now and get transported back. For me it is inevitably a Bowie song that
is woven through the thread of my love life.
I remember playing ‘Sorrow’ and cutting my hair into Aladdin
Sane spikes after being publically humiliated by a boyfriend who named his car
after another girl. I have owned that album on Vinyl, cassette, CD and now
iTunes. I must own about 18 of his albums including the latest ‘Blackstar’
released last Friday on Bowie’s 69th Birthday. He died 2 days later.
But what does this have to do with sex and relationships? For me – absolutely
everything.
My first great love, (not the car idiot), the love by which
all others have been judged, really introduced me to Bowie’s music. We were at
university and I loved him from the minute I saw him. It took a couple of weeks
to get a date after which we were inseparable for 3 years. He left university a
year before me and I thought I’d die from longing. We remained close and now 30
years on we are both heartbroken at the death of a man who ruled our world. I
am filled with ‘what if’s?’
I remember the mixed tape he made me with the obscure works
I had never heard. He sang ‘The laughing gnome’ to me. I remember laughing at
the song and his voice and I was happy. We were in love.
We experimented with sex, it was as vanilla as it could
possibly get and many years later we would meet up in hotel rooms and play with
sex in less vanilla ways. These experiences shaped and peaked my sexual
curiosity and sent me on this journey I share with you. We were listening to
Bowie.
I listened to Bowie when I said goodbye to him when he
immigrated. I remember the album, it was Space Oddity. I wondered ‘Can you hear
me Major Tom?’
After my divorce the very first act of independence and defiance
was to fly to Australia to see Bowie perform live in Sydney. I played hard,
danced on bars, lay on the beach topless and all the while listened to Bowie. I
still have the T-Shirt.
I have also heard him perform in Melbourne and Birmingham;
very special friends attending phoned me from the stadium and let me listen for
a short while.
His music helped me discover my soul. I have loved, hated
and longed listening to his music. He gave me permission to challenge
perceptions and dare to be different. His death has made me reflect on the all
the what if’s. If I’d tried harder, if I’d demanded more respect, if I’d tried
to understand a little more, if I’d loved less, would it all have been
different?
So before you call it quits and march off to the divorce
court ask yourself whether you really have tried your best. Not in the quick
fix kind of way because ‘This is not America’. If you have, then go ahead
because as the great man once said, ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is
just to love, and be loved in return.'
RIP my David Bowie, I will look for you in the stars.
