Mom let me stay home from school that day, and we listened to The Blue Album and many others as she shared her obsession with the band in their early days. She told me of the huge political fights she would often have with my father when her social awareness began to take a very severe and left bent, away from mainstream beliefs including my fathers. But always in line with The Beatles. We secretly laughed at Dad being hopelessly “square”; he more than fit the image of the international investigative branch of our national police force. He was, for lack of a better word, the “spy” husband to my feminist, Joan Baez listening, stage actress mother. We laughed again at that unlikely coupling, and when she shared the milestone moments of her life, she referenced each with a song. Thirty six years later, I remember both the moments and the songs which helped define her.

When I took Frisky for his afternoon walk, I stopped at the mall and bought Strawberry Jelly Beans, and a card. Before heading out to swim practice, I put both on the counter; a simple message inside the card.

Mom, thanks for today. Strawberry Fields Forever. Allan.

In September of 2010, when my uncle gave the eulogy at Mom’s funeral, I was surprised to hear him tell that story. Apparently it had been one her favorite memories of our times together.

When I woke today to the news that David Bowie had died, I was numb, and it was December 1980 all over again. I was emotional, with a strange and overwhelming urge to tell Mom what an artist had meant to me. Around the important moments in my life, and about the songs that anchored them, providing unique and tangible meaning. I sat at my desk for what seemed like a very long time, listening to songs integral to my becoming a young man, and the awkward, tentative steps necessary in coming of age, and coming out and accepting myself as gay.

June 1981

I am thirteen, on a blind, double date with Holly, a girl from another school who is the friend of a swimming team mate.

Let’s just say it is not going well.

After meeting her for the first time, she excuses herself, and from another room I hear her say that she didn’t expect to be dating a metal mouth. My braces are a month old. And evidently my hair is another problem. It doesn’t move! Probably a result of the hour trying to brush out the curls. An epic failure that resulted in a large head of dry, frizzy hair.

We arrive at a theater to see what several years from now will become a cult favorite. Christiane F: Portrait Of A Teenage Prostitute and Drug Addict, a rather stark German subtitled drama. I am sitting beside Holly, who is speaking to me with one or two clipped words at the most, punctuated with eye rolls and dramatic sighs. I pretend to read the stupid theater calendar and really just want to die. It is not until halfway through the film, during the much hyped concert scene, when he makes his cameo appearance do I actually take a serious appraisal of David Bowie.

The awareness seems to fall out of the sky … Shit, he’s hot! And though I have heard Heroes before, it was just another song until now. Maybe it’s seeing this image of everything seventh grade boys are never encouraged to become, possessing such talent and embodying that kind of confidence. Maybe it was just different. Whatever it was, sitting in that theater I listen to Heroes (even though he is singing in German) and Changes like I am hearing them for the first time, and something just clicks. Though I won’t be able to name it for several years, I have allowed for the possibility that I could be more than a frizzy haired thirteen year old boy with braces that some pretentious girl named Holly who pronounces everything like it’s a question is mortified to be on a date with. When she asks me for popcorn, I tell her to get it herself, I’m enjoying the movie.

December 1984

I am at a high school dance with my group of grade 11 friends. We are a solid group, and that has helped me come out of my shell into something of an extrovert. Captain of the junior swim team, my braces are history, and the hair is not frizzy anymore, it has thankfully grown into wavy; the perfect texture for my new clean lined haircut with the severe left side-part, otherwise known as David Bowie hair. I will wear that style for another year and a half, until I grow sick of tossing my head to the left attempting to look cool removing the hair from my eyes.

As Modern Love by David Bowie blasts into the gymnasium we all take to the dance floor with the staple eighties repetitive dance move that Molly Ringwald perfected in The Breakfast Club. I smile at Bridget, the new girl from the UK who people think I have been dating for a month and a half, though we are really just good friends. What people don’t know won’t hurt them.

Or me.

What I have not told anyone is I would like to be dating Darren, the senior swim team star who will smile and high five me before the dance ends, suggesting as it always does to meet him at his car where we will drive downtown, find a parking spot and make out for hours.

May 1995

Mickey’s on La Cienega in West Hollywood is my regular Friday night haunt. Tonight it is packed. I moved here two years ago for paramedic training at UCLA, recently deciding to stay for another year and finish my MA in community health. Settling in on a free space at the DJ wall, Sean moves in and encircles my waist with both arms, then leans in for a kiss. That was fast, I think. We have just come from dinner. Our first, and one that resulted from a blind date. Blue eyes and a dimple in the center of his chin cause me to disregard anything as silly as first date protocols. I lean in, meeting his lips. I have no idea how long we have been otherwise occupied when the DJ takes an obvious turn and I hear the beginning of a familiar fast paced classic from what seems like a lifetime ago.

“Modern Love? Is this eighties night or something?” Sean asks, clearly not overly thrilled with the retro vibe. I laugh, and recall a similar night over ten years ago; a wretched blind date where I watched a subtitled, morose German movie. With an equally morose companion. It was also the night I discovered Bowie.

I smile when Sean pulls me back to his chest and we resume where we left off. Yet I am feeling oddly emotional, an incongruity of both relief and pride that I have allowed myself the potential to be more than a nervous seventh grader with shiny braces and bad hair, on a bad date with a snobby girl. Of course I don’t know it now, but for the next several weeks my iPod will be playing Bowie more than usual.

April, 2003

As the credits for Dogville, the new Lars Van Trier film begin, the stark, visceral images of a depression era America contrasted with later images of lower class poverty and racial unrest powerfully appear on the screen, set to a background refrain of of David Bowies Young Americans. Through the vocal commands of Bowie and the songs narrative resonance, one is confronted with several gritty snapshots of disenfranchisement. These are soul crushing stories of despair, exhaustion, and all manner of unmitigated pain. Innate, base responses become essential, and give way to a slow yet embodied awareness that any notion of redemption exists always just a little beyond reach.

Contextually, it is a cruel, but much needed punch in the gut to anyone having the privilege to sit in this theater, and I stay in my seat until well after the credits end. I will consider that moment many times, for years to come. It is not an exaggeration to say that experience changed me in some profound ways; expanding my ability to access compassion and empathy, and through a critical reconsideration of how I attempt to understand difference.

I watched that video again today after hearing the news, and I am truly sorry he is gone. An immense talent, an elegant gentleman, he was an extraordinary human being that will be missed greatly.

Rest In Peace, David Bowie.