I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (20 page)

I want to wash their feet with my hair, ease their bloody wounds with Bactine and clean gauze, put them all to bed. They bring out the Virgin Mary in me. I love them, I love them all. I adore, admire and revere their faith, their endurance, their agonizing love for God. I respect the ritual, the silence, the ancient stoicism that owes much to the native Indian gods that once ruled these mountains, and the people who worshipped them, the mighty Mayans and Aztecs, possibly more than the conquistadors who brought this Version 5.0 of God to the Americas.

The point is, people love the God they love, and they are going to love Him the way they see fit. The spectacle of it is beautiful, poetic, happy, tragic, sad, tremendous and overwhelming, and it shows me, even though I think the Lord is truly phat and all that, that I don't do much for Him. Fuck the Easter bunny. This is the shit.

dog monastery

O
n a trip to Tibet some years ago, I visited an amazing monastery. Sacred art is commonplace on the rooftop of the world. The air may be thin, but the devotion is given even more weight because of the political oppression heaped upon it.

Everything smells of yak butter, much like the lobby of a multiplex movie theater, because it's used in every aspect of monastic life, from sustenance to tribute. Tea and candles are made from it, elaborately detailed sculptures are carved from it; it's the physical manifestation of God.

We were many miles outside the city of Lhasa. I carried a spray can of air with me everywhere, we could order oxygen from room service. To be short of breath constantly is to understand truly needy desire. Headaches from altitude sickness are debilitating, and we, the sea-level Westerners, took to our beds, or ventured out only briefly to shop, but you couldn't easily buy your air outside the grand hotel so inevitably we returned winded from walking and empty-handed.

When the group was acclimated enough for travel, we hired a driver, Dorje, a quiet, very tanned man who looked like a jack-o'-lantern when he laughed, partly because he was so orange and had so few teeth.

Dorje navigated the unpaved roads up to a tiny village at the fifteen-thousand-foot level. He was incredibly brave, and we sped
through the Himalayas at a terrifying clip. I don't remember the name of the place—it was impossible to pronounce—but it had a sinister feel to it. The streets were empty yet the shops were all open, selling plastic women's shoes on row after row of racks set outside, as if the sandals and pumps were alluring enough to pull you into the store.

I walked up the main street to the monastery, which was huge and ornate but covered in dust. I sought it out because the story was that this place was a special monastery for dogs. When wayward monks had been reincarnated and demoted from human life to that of a canine, they were welcome here. There were a few monks who looked after the monastery full-time, but it was the dogs who came there to worship.

Upon entering, I was handed a ball of dough made with flour and yak butter. Gentle dogs, all colors and sizes, slowly rising from meditation, would walk toward me and wait patiently for their offering. I would feed each dog monk a piece of dough, and each would bow in thanks, then retreat and allow the dog behind him to take his piece. Sometimes, a dog would lick my hand in gratitude, but mostly they were more concerned with returning to their individual, private conversations with the divine.

It was quiet, and the grounds around the temple were clean, even though under every awning there was a warm, furry swarm of puppies sleeping against the belly of yet another dog monk. When you walked by, they would look you in the eye, in sincere acknowledgment. "Yes, we are all here. Yes, we are all sharing this moment. Yes, we are all part of the eternal mystery of life." There was no barking, no fighting,
no nipping, no chewing up shoes or chasing cars. There were just dogs, of every hue and stripe, with cold, wet noses and sweetly sloping furry faces, sharing the wealth of mystical knowledge with scholars in saffron robes and shaved heads.

These were dogs that did not have the karma of household pets, or strays at the pound, but instead were seekers of ecumenical truth. Even though they were no longer human, they still yearned to know God, and they lived within the walls of this special house built just for them.

pilgrimage

I
went to go see David Bowie. Oh, it was sublime.

We missed the opening act but were just in time for "Rebel Rebel." This song is such an anthem, the perfect way to explode onto the stage, and, recalling the video, where he's the glam pirate in the red pants, filmed in kaleidoscopic swirling disco shots of Amsterdam, with his confidently curled lip, poised to hijack the world, I realize I have loved David Bowie for so long because he makes me feel okay that I am myself. I want to wear that same eyepatch and suspenders and long scarf. I long to strut like the dream of the stud that he is, and he makes me feel it's possible. He bounds out onto the stage, and my friend Ava says, "He is just . . . golden." His hair falls anime-like onto his forehead. I want to draw him, although I'm unable to hold a
pencil correctly, my warped fingers the reason for that handicap. We can see his glorious face perfectly from our impossibly good seats. There are many exacting and astute words for beauty, and then there is just this kind of ridiculous syrupy, girly idolatry that spews forth, which I wish I could contain but I just can't.

I know big words, good words, impressive words, that is my talent, my gift, my fortune, but I lose them when I talk about Bowie, and lots of people understand, because there is something about him that makes us lose our religion, our intellect, our wit and wisdom, because he is David Bowie, and that explains it all.

The crowd was bundled up against the cold with down vests and sleeping bags. People who attend outdoor events tend to spend a lot of money on Patagonia. The fog rolled in from the beach, and the amphitheater was as chilly as some chardonnay in a box that you'd rather not drink. We were prepared to pay homage to the master yet stay warm at the same time. My friends wore monster white fur coats, and I wore an emperor's gown I'd bought at the Chinese superstore on Broadway in L.A., along with polka-dot plastic hot pants and navy blue kneesocks emblazoned with white stars. To pull it all together, I wore my new belt, made out of real cobra, with the head and long tongue still attached. I'm afraid of it, and I think that it might still be alive, but it looks really good with this outfit so I don't care if it kills me.

The show is incredible, as it always is, as he always is. As an artist, David Bowie has been challenging the cultural definitions of gender, image, identity, sexuality, music, politics, beauty, fashion, fantasy,
originality—fucking everything. As an icon, he has been the most inspiring deity to hit the world since the beginning of time. He has no peer. No one compares. No one even comes close. Strangely, he swaggers onstage with a kind of youthful poppy quality that he had less of when he was the orange-haired androgynous fop king in the early '70s. He has grown younger, and a certain humility has overtaken his once formidable presence. It's an acquiescence to age, possibly, a modesty taken on only by the truly great who have nothing to lose in knocking the glossy veneer down a notch to show the truly human being that lives behind the Klaus Nomi confections, the makeup, the legend.

Throughout the set, there are many old classics, which always sound terrific and fresh, like nothing ever heard before or since, and then new songs that challenge his own catalog. It's insane how much of a religious experience a Bowie show can be, the way that he moves, the sound of his voice, his slim, youthful body in possession of the deepest and holiest range—it's a lonely, passionate plea, a sarcastic sneer, a sonic boom—all of it, everything.

There are special treats, like "Under Pressure," a duet with the righteous and luminous Gail Ann Dorsey, whose voice is pure Freddie Mercury, and whose mercurial talent makes the entire hillside shake in reverie. I love Bowie's voice on this song because it pleads with the gods of all things, not only in the lyrics but in the sadness of his soaring, and it makes for a kind of good cop/bad cop diptych: Gail (Freddie) raging to give love one more chance; David, all reasonableness and asking for mercy—this is our last dance, this is ourselves.
And "Quicksand," and the new songs from the
Reality
album, a new favorite being "The Loneliest Guy." It's almost too much to ask for, the ageless, timeless, faultless, flawless Bowie in a vocal storm of versatility, the heartbreaking nihilistic optimism of "Heroes," the fantastic noble androgynous machismo of "Suffragette City"—here, beneath the stars, where I used to love someone a long time ago surrounded by the night sky, and Mars is bright and blinking, like there's life up there.

Then the show is over, and it's time to go backstage.

It takes a few minutes to reach the inner sanctum, but soon we are cordially invited in.

Dawnne and Ava, my dates for the David Bowie show, had a hell of a time trying to get me to stay in the green room. It was scary, and I tried to look for an escape route. Terrified, crying already, trying to jump up on the tables, planning to slide my body out the window,
La Femme Nikita
style, I was there to meet the Great God of Rock, BOWIE—my nowhere-near-false-but-absolutely-real idol. The only wondrous, glorious, prolific, dangerous, legendary, iconic, impossibly beautiful star I had ever wanted/didn't want to meet, because what do you say to God? "Hello? How are you? How's the weather up there?"

Decades ago, when I first discovered Bowie on
Rock Show
, a half-hour venue on Sunday afternoons where they aired "DJ," "Look Back in Anger," "Ashes to Ashes"—before MTV, before music videos entered the landscape of American pop culture—his music made my
then terrible world seem survivable. I had bruises on my face from my parents' twenty-year domestic-marital war, where I served the entire time as a POW. Bowie's face seduced me with its asymmetrical perfection. How is it possible to have a face so lovely? Unbloodied, untouched by brutality—or so it seemed to me then.

There may have been sexual feelings, fleeting dreams that involved my lithe yet sensually unaware, undeveloped body. Bowie might be responsible for making me a light sleeper, since I developed the habit then—a girl in a shoddy, sadly sagging, smelly canopy bed—of oddly wanting to be a boy, but in a girly way. These complex thoughts swirled around my head, keeping sleep away, allowing only visions of the future. Was there a way to grow up to be David Bowie yet still be a girl? Would I ever meet him? Would I ever tell him how he shaped my life, my destiny? Would I have the courage to do it if I had the chance?

That little girl grew up well, despite the circumstances. She walks the earth with a heavy confidence, an irrepressible swagger and cadence, due to those nighttime reflections. There were sleepless nights filled with dreams, so many that have come true. I almost expect dreams to come true now. That's what dreams are for.

Today, I can meet the most famous of people. I can do shots of fine vodka with Mikhail Gorbachev; gossip with Hillary Clinton while she gets her mascara done; lie in bed for hours with too-numerous-to-name rock stars; listen to A-listers talk about themselves so much that if you change the subject it's almost as if they disappear, for, without
their celebrity, they cease to be interested in you and therefore cease to exist, leaving behind hostility and quiet rage, although their bodies haven't moved an inch.

But David Bowie is more than a celebrity, more than a star, more than an icon, more than anyone, anything, anywhere. Also, he is fucking cool. The coolest guy in the world. There is an intensity in the room that I can't figure out. I'm only trying to get out. I can't meet him. He means too much to me.

As I said, fame doesn't impress me, I've been in the game for two decades. But David Bowie is more than the "famewhatsyourname" of that elegant and eternally loved intergenerational hit song. It is almost embarrassing. I can't explain it, but maybe you would understand if I try.

If you took Beatlemania—the real deal, not the touring show but the insane, truly historical and hysterical Saint Vitus' dance of the teenagers, happening during and around the weeks John, Paul, George and Ringo came to America in 1964—and you boiled all those screams and tears and yearnings of countless girls trying to hide in laundry baskets and under room service carts and made it into a tincture, strong as plutonium, then injected yourself with it, mainlining all that admiration and love and fan club worship and ecclesiastical bliss—but remembering that it wasn't about the Beatles but about David Bowie—not that I don't absolutely love the Beatles, and have had life-changing moments with one or two, but I'll tell that story another time—then you might get an idea of how much of a freak I
am about the cat from Japan. If you felt in my veins what I felt right then, you would understand. You would make that the moment you would want to capture and hold in your heart forever, over the river, over the rainbow, into all of your next lifetimes, into heaven itself. Your future self would wake from dreams of this moment not knowing why, but forever and ever replaying itself into infinity.

David is looking at me, and smiling, stealing looks out of the corner of his eye. He is stunning. His beauty is relentless and alarming. Fresh from the concert hall's Byzantine corridors. I wonder if he uses the showers that are always available back there; I never do. I emerge from the bowels of the dressing rooms into the green room, where the fans wait in annoyed anticipation, and they are disappointed, me arriving all sweaty and with makeup running everywhere, friendly, yes, but too small for them to believe that it's actually me. When I meet people, I greet them quickly, so that I might leave quickly, and go to bed. I am no diva. I will sign every autograph I'm asked for, and I love anyone who will wait around to meet me, talk to me, but I can't imagine I'm really all that interesting, especially after hearing me talk about myself for a couple of hours.

But with Bowie, it's a different story. This time, I'm the fan. His biggest fan. My heart will burst out of my chest at any moment. His eyes dart toward me; there are other people to talk to but he keeps looking at me. Smiling. He is magnificent. Time hasn't changed him, not a bit, not at all. Tears are running down my face, and here it is, the moment that I will play over and over again until the day I die.