That Famous Dead Girl: A Bowie Sighting (Part One)

by Sharon Nichols, January 26, 2007

Hiya, Peeps,

Having a midlife crisis? There's no need to climb atop a rooftop with a rifle and blow your neighbors the fug away! There's a more constructive way to channel your aging adult frustrations: Pump iron! Last summer, instead of strangling a certain someone, I joined the gym. Weight-resistance training is punk rawk! Check out Linda Hamilton loading a rifle circa 1991 and be illuminated.

I surprised myself by going back to the same gym I'd quit years earlier, the one in which I was hijacked by a demon-possessed treadmill. That belt sped up on me for no reason, I say, no reason at all! And I was going, oh, like a mad bastard by the time I went splat against the wall like a big stain, like something out of "Bugs Bunny." Fine, laugh. But let me tell you something, that wall hurt like a mother.

I tell a friend that I've bravely joined again. She says, "Oh, I hear David Bowie goes to that gym."
Haaaaa... lleeeeeeee... lujah! Thank you, Lord, baby Jesus, Great Spirit, Seth, the gnomes, whatever. Shiny!

Bowie. Ziggy. Aladdin Sane. The Thin White Duke. Leaving his butt sweat—I mean stardust!—on my Nautilus. So, exactly how tacky would it be to approach him at the lat press for an interview, I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10? What's the worst that could happen? He could say no. He could see me in boxer shorts. He could bludgeon me to death with a dumbbell. That'd be a pretty cool way to die, actually. I wouldn't get to appreciate it, sure. But I'd be that famous dead girl in the Bowie trial and that's wicked awesome.

Several times I espy Madame Bowie, supermodel Iman, on the outer-thigh machine. I tell another friend I've seen Lady Ziggy. "That's not her," she says. "Why would Iman go to a gym? She prolly has her own gym! They just bought a mountain! Bowie does not go to a public gym with sweaty people."

Er, maybe the dude's 60 now and he just wants to be normal? It could happen!

Tweaks,
Runly!

(Stay tuned for part two in which Runly plays "I Spy" with a Starman's calves!)

A one-time cog in the corporate music machine and staff writer for the Woodstock Times art section, Sharon Nichols served as music editor at Chronogram for five years. Having released several volumes of poetry through her own Origin of Souls publishing, she is a part-time DJ and dreams of opening a nightclub in the Hudson Valley called Factory22.