March 1997
s m u g
three dollar bill
by Jessamin Swearingen

Modern Love

In honor of David Bowie's 50th birthday I'll dismiss any crabbiness about his born again heterosexuality to revel in what he's done for rock's imagination. Long before his 1980's reemergence as the preppie white man on "Let's Dance," before he began his descent into his more asexual, cyber dominated persona he achieved sexual tolerance when people clamored for revolution. Then in the initial AIDS scare of the 1980s gay and bisexual men scrambled to reinvent themselves as safe heterosexuals, and Bowie changed his tune. Gone was the room full of invented personae used to maneuver through the media's tricky channels, and in was a dapper, elegant business man who realized sexuality and business no longer mixed. It was during the mid-80s that Bowie promised in Rolling Stone that he was "straight," and continued down the path towards marriage, focusing his music and image on the sonic and conceptual rather sexual.

He seemed to ignore his past, telling audiences he wouldn't play his back catalog, but that was merely business. David Bowie was and still is a beacon for the starry-eyed dreamers who feel shunned by the guy gets girl idiom of heterosexist rock, and for his pocket of rock's sexual history I am eternally grateful. When David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust he offered an alternative to the earth bound trappings of the day to day to create the ultimate idol. A fantastic if not fatalistic offering, but one that made a highly sexual commodity out of a bisexual Martian. A dream come true if you didn't follow rock's heterosexual blue print. Ziggy left as quickly as he came, and wreaked havoc on the little girls and boys alike.

Bowie invented a different sexuality for a generation coming of age fresh off the heels of the "sexual revolution." When Ziggy first landed on earth, gays in rock were left out of the equation or turned into something more scary than sexual. Ziggy pulled the wings off the urban addicts and monsters of Lou Reed's "Sister Ray," and replaced them with angels who believed in "Soul Love." Best of all, there was nothing foofy about this Martian or his prayer to the "church of manlove," it was daring and lustful. It made homosexuality powerful in an era previously dominated by low life caricatures and mockeries of feminity, no one had been as embraceable as Ziggy. In his "church of manlove" affection and admiration weren't masked with the hostility so typical of rock. His Martian status freed him and spoke of his "Soul Love," and Bowie achieved a first person narrative for both genders with a character strangely appealing to any orientation.

No other rocker has so openly declared their homo or bisexuality and still received such admiration from critics. With the Ziggy persona Bowie wove the previous era's rock'n'roll folklore into a narrative that allowed Ziggy's bisexuality to seem natural, evolved, even omniscient. He sang to everyone when he promised we were "wonderful," and "you're not alone." He became the new ideal, a more flexible hybrid of rock's desires and motives.

Today David Bowie is more obvious about his business tactics, and middle aged gay men are probably not marketable to the record buying public so how he defines himself sexually is irrelevant. With Bowie I'm willing to be a glass is half full type. He has given rock fans a character in rock mythology who empathizes with his listener regardless of who they sleep with.

jessamin@smug.com

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