David Bowie was my first concert.
I was 16 years old. My girlfriend at the time, Candice, was an angry blonde with a gigantic pear-shaped ass and a tendency to pick fights with older guys, assuming that I would then step in and defend her honor, because of course she did.
My father was going to drive us to the show, but two weeks prior he took his own life, so my step-mother drove us instead. The ride to the show was awkward. Candice and my step-mother didn’t get along very well.
Nobody got along with Candice, really.
But those two especially didn’t get along because my step-mother was racist, and Candice was Russian. (You had to be there.)
We got pretty stoned before the show. I had a great weed hookup and we took full advantage. The opening act was a little hazy. I don’t remember what they were called, but they played really long organ-based songs and I think they may have sung about dragons. It was pretty awful. At one point, a stoned pair of hippies screwed in front of everyone. That was also awful, because they were unshowered and filthy and her bush was thicker than the fog left behind after a Bill Cosby cocktail.
Bowie, however, was pure magic. This was in his transvestite days. I’ve always had a real thing for transvestites. You know how they are men who are dressed like women? Yeah, it’s amazing. He opened the set with some song about a space alien, but all I could think of was that beneath all that makeup was a dude. I was fascinated by this. I wondered if he tucked his pee pee back or just wore boxers?
Meanwhile, Candice was starting to get loud. REALLY loud. She always did when she smoked pot. I hated that about her. I got quiet when I toked up. She didn’t. She wanted to fight people. I have no idea why we were together. It’s not like the sex was good. There was no sex. That didn’t happen for me until I was 31, and it cost me $300, a stolen credit card, and three penicillin shots.
So Candice starts talking trash about this group of dude bros who has, for reasons I’m still unclear on, come to the show in full frat boy football player duuude regalia. I’m talking varsity letter jackets and combs in their pockets and all that shit.
Naturally, her relentless assault eventually got turned on me, because I’m the guy so of course it did. I was in no position to fight them. I was only 4′ 10″ when I was 16 and weighed in at a robust 76 pounds. I couldn’t fight them. Best I could do was to try and talk my way out of it.
Too bad about all that weed, though. My mouth and my head just couldn’t come to an agreement about what words to say. The result was something that sounded like a garbage disposal trying to speak German, then slowed down to grandma driving speeds.
When the leader of the dudes bros, a snotty blonde American stereotype if ever there was one, took his first swing at me, all I could do was stagger backward to avoid it. Stabbing him in the testicles with my little glass pipe a moment later wasn’t a conscious decision, it just happened.
Pulling his testes out from his scrotal sack, however, was.
At this point, Bowie was playing that song about flying into outer space. I can remember it like it was yesterday, because the countdown part was playing as I waved Dude Bro’s testes at his friends. “7 … 6 … 5 … 4 …”
They were screaming something at me but I don’t recall what it was, because Candice was yelling in my ear and Bowie was counting down in the other and Dude Bro’s testes felt like warm, unshelled oysters in my hand. The crowd seemed into it, and then security arrived and ruined the whole thing.
Bowie finished his set while I sat in the security area waiting for police to arrive. I was hit with some charges, but since I was underage they have since disappeared and nobody will ever know about them and nobody ever will, because you don’t just TELL people about things like this. You keep them secret.
I don’t know how Candice got home because I haven’t talked to her since. She didn’t think that testes thing was cool and wouldn’t return my calls, not even once in four and a half years of trying. I saw on Facebook that she’s now a professional wrestler who briefly dabbled in pegging porn. Good for her. Maybe one day I’ll see her on www.hdpornvideo.xxx and I’ll be able to say “that girl, pegging that man… that’s my ex”. There’s one for the grandkids.
As for me, I’ve been a Bowie fan ever since.
