Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

Bowie. Maybe. The paunchy Hispanic traffic cop
writing up your Suburban for an expired meter?
Bowie.
My next thought was, “He looks well.” I had been,
like many Bowie-ists, worried about what a post–
heart surgery David Bowie would mean, as if
detecting something odd in his eternally sharp,
vivid and handsome facial features, a sag or a puff,
would surely have been a source of internal crisis
for us as well. I felt the same way after David
Letterman’s surgery and eventual return to latenight
television.
David Bowie wore a cream-colored sport jacket
and a gray shirt. Nobody else on the street seemed
to recognize him. Maybe if he was a few blocks up
in Chelsea, or down in Soho. But East Tenth Street
is pretty neutral, especially during a weekday
afternoon.
“What’s going on in his head? Right now?” I
wondered as I retreated a few paces and allowed
myself a shred of fan-boy excitement after realizing
I could safely observe him. Nobody was watching
me watch David Bowie. “What is he thinking? That
man, who wrote ‘Quicksand.’ That person right there
who screamed, ‘I—I will be king! And you—you will
be queeeen!’ at the climax of ‘Heroes,’ which has
given me gooseflesh for decades without fail,
despite its being used in advertisements and
covered by the Wallflowers? Well, I know what he’s
thinking, don’t I? He’s thinking, ‘Cab. I need a cab.
Why won’t any of these cabs stop for me?’” So