(Author’s Note: Two of
the characters who appear in this piece, Billy Martin and Lou Reed, previously
appeared in this piece, with Martin also appearing here. Another character who appears in both pieces
needs no introduction.)
Scene: a bedroom in a Manhattan apartment, sparsely
furnished, yet elegant. An elderly man
lies on a bed, gaunt, medicated, his eyes are different colors with one
permanently dilated pupil: David Bowie.
He is surrounded by his wife, Iman, and his children. He has been suffering from cancer for well
over a year and is near death. His
medications have him fading in and out of consciousness, lucid one moment, mind
wandering the next. David coughs harshly
and grabs his side.
Iman: David …
David … what can we do?
David: Catch the
paper boy …
Iman: What?
David: Things
don’t really change …
Iman: What do you
mean?
David: Standing
in the rain …
Iman: Yes, it’s
raining out.
David: But I
never wave bye bye.
An orange thunderbolt crashes through the bedroom window and
strikes David directly on the forehead.
He feels electrified, alive for the first time in months, yet notices
his family around him quietly weeping, unaware of this violent
transformation. Lightning flashes,
another thunderbolt, and everything goes black.
David snaps awake on a toilet, where he had been
dozing. White leather jump suit around
his ankles. He notices his legs are
fleshy and enormous, at least 40 lbs. heavier than the trim figure he’s
maintained his entire life. “Man,” he thinks,
“the side effects of the medications are having some troubling effects on my
body.” He’s holding a paperback book about The Shroud of Turin. He notices
the large white leather belt on the floor, with a massive gold buckle and the
letters “TCB” engraved on it. He’s
wearing a white cape. He reaches up to
scratch his brow and feels glasses on his face.
Just then he pulls his head up to see himself in a small
mirror on the restroom’s door: black hair swept into a pompadour, jowly,
puffed-out cheeks, massive mutton-chop sideburns, wearing a bulky pair of
gold-framed sun glasses. He gasps.
David: Oh my
God. I’m dreaming that I’m Elvis
Presley. The doctor said the morphine
could cause mild hallucinations, but not even in the Hollywood hills in 1975 …
He notices his voice is several octaves lower, thick and
husky, inflected with a mild southern accent.
“Why am I talking in this fake Southern accent” David Bowie asks
himself. David knows his Elvis Presley
history and can recognize he’s not in the palatial bathroom of Graceland where
he died. This is a common rest room of
the kind he’d seen countless times in divey night clubs and bars he played in
the 60’s. David stands to pull up his
jump suit, and his enormous hairy belly protrudes, much to his shock.
David: Oh dear, I
can’t see my penis.
This especially startles him as he could normally see his
ankles while standing upright. He
squeezes into his skin-tight white leather jump suit and bangs through the door
into a men’s room. Two young men in jeans,
flannel shirts and baseball hats advertising farm machinery are using the
urinals and snicker when they see him.
David: Excuse me,
fellows, but what day is this?
Guy in CAT hat
(employing a fake cockney accent): Why, it’s Christmas Day, sir.
David: Christmas? That was just a few weeks ago.
Guy in John Deere hat:
Monday, December 25th, 1989.
“1989?!” David Bowie asks himself incredulously, “I must be
dreaming. It’s the drugs. It’s January 2016. I’m on my death bed. Just go with it. I’ve had stranger visions.”
David: I know
this is a dumb question, but where am I?
Guy in CAT hat:
Binghamton, New York. Morey’s
Restaurant.
Guy in John Deere hat:
I don’t know, King, you might want to ask Dr. Nick about his dosage levels
these days.
Both men zip up and exit the men’s room without washing
their hands. As they do, a wiry
middle-aged man in a white t-shirt and pants enters, wearing horn-rim glasses
and a hairnet. Two small horns poke out
from his hairnet, as do two small black hooves from the bottom of his
pants. A faint smell of sulfur
accompanies him.
David: That
smell. It wasn’t me!
Satan: It’s me, Mr.
Bowie, I’m that smell!
David: Who are
you? How do you know my name? I’m David Bowie. Not Elvis!
Satan: I know, I
know, I put you here. To everyone else,
I’m Danny Bolinski, dishwasher and bus boy at Morey’s Restaurant in Binghamton,
New York. It’s part of my rehab program
to do this kind of work after a hard stint in Attica for armed robbery. But do you know who I really am?
David: I haven’t
a clue.
Satan: I’m
Satan! This is hell. Your hell.
The hell I’ve created for you.
David: Do you mean
I’ve died? And gone to hell?
Satan: Yes,
unfortunately, sorry to break the news.
Satan has a bottle of Windex and a roll of Bounty. He starts to spray down the men’s room
mirrors and wipe them clean.
David: I don’t
believe in heaven or hell.
Satan: Doesn’t
matter. Heaven or hell believes in you.
David: Do I really
deserve to go to hell?
Satan pauses from his window cleaning to look at himself in
the mirror.
Satan: Do you
know how often I hear that?
David: I would
imagine it’s a cliché for you, but all very new to me. Why am I in hell?
Satan: Well,
you’re a borderline case, Mr. Bowie. Not
an evil person by any means. But not
godly either. You engaged in a lot of
questionable morality over the course of decades.
David: So I was a
bit decadent in the 70’s and 80’s.
Satan: A
bit? You did enough blow to kill an army
of demons! You philandered constantly. You were routinely dishonest. You worshipped money while pretending it
didn’t matter to you, but as you know, cocaine, mansions and private jets
aren’t free. Like most celebrities who end
up down here, you believed your wealth and creativity imbued you with a higher
moral power than mere mortals, but lived a life that wasn’t anywhere near this
utopian vision of yourself. It’s a trick
I’m allowed to play on the powerful and wealthy, and it usually works.
David: Really, I
changed when I got married again. Sure,
the drugs, I never gave those up completely.
But no affairs. I became a good
husband and a good father. I lived as
humbly as I could, given my rock-star trappings.
Satan: And for
all those things, I salute you. Everyone
tries, at some point, to right the ship.
It’s a very human quality I highly admire. I wished it had worked for
you. But in the end … not enough. You should understand, Mr. Bowie, I don’t’
make the rules, I only follow them.
David: Doesn’t my
music count for anything? I helped so
many millions of people get through life, if only in that small way.
Satan: That you
did. I’m a fan! Station
to Station is my favorite album of yours, I love to play it on my iPod when
I’m kicking heads on the frozen lake. Again,
Mr. Bowie, I don’t make the rules.
David: So you’re
saying God judged me unfit for heaven.
Satan: That’s
right. I’m only cleaning windows. (Satan goes back to spritzing Windex on the
mirrors.)
David: So, what
is this hell?
Satan: Your hell
is to be an Elvis impersonator on an endless tour of small-town restaurants and
bars all over America. Today,
Binghamton; tomorrow, Scranton. We have
you booked for Allentown on New Year’s Eve.
David: At the
Stabler Arena?
Satan (laughing):
Oh, hell no! Remember, you’re an Elvis
impersonator now, not David Bowie. No, I
believe the venue name there is Chuckles Sports Bar.
David: Bloody
hell. Come on, Satan.
Satan: This is
hell! Sorry that I’m good at my
job. You’ll travel in a 1976 yellow
Hornet Stations wagon, with your suitcase full of jump suits and hair-care
products. And your boom box with karaoke
versions of the music you’ll sing to. Your
weekly stipend will be just enough to book you into Red Roof Inns all along the
interstates and opt for the “all you can eat” salad bar at local Ponderosa
Steak Houses.
David (sighing);
… man who fell to earth … and then some.
Satan: Yes,
you’ve fallen well past earth, my friend.
Trust me, Mr. Bowie, in the grand scheme of hell, this would be a pretty
distant circle. It gets worse. Much worse.
David: Try me.
Satan. I’ve been saving a spot for Mick Jagger as background
vocalist for Debbie Gibson on a permanent tour of suburban shopping malls and
theme parks. Would you prefer that?
David: All right,
I get it.
Satan: Good.
You’re on in two minutes. Oh, one
other thing.
David: What’s
that?Satan: You’ll be performing Elvis-style versions of David Bowie songs. It’s your act: The Return of the Fat White Duke. Stage is to the left of the men’s room, just before the pickled-egg station. See you soon!
Satan’s hooves clatter on the men’s room tile. David Bowie sighs like Twig the wonder kid. He thought of his old lead guitarist, Mick Ronson, who had passed away so long ago, and wondered if he had been lucky enough to go to heaven, or what his version of hell was had he not. Probably playing lead guitar for The Osmond Brothers. He resigned himself to his fate. After all, he was a professional who had found himself in many strange and impossible situations over the years. So this was hell. But this was also what he did and manageable in that sense. David struck a karate pose in the mirror and waved circles with the index finger of his raised right hand. “I can do this, “ he thinks, “I’ve done much worse things for money.”
It’s late afternoon on Christmas Day in Binghamton, New York,
1989. Which is to say the bar is
severely under-populated. There are the
two younger men drinking at a table by the door. It has been a brutally cold December. Ice lines the window sills, looking out on a
blustery street with patches of ice from recent light snow. Rob the bartender sits next to Satan, reading
a newspaper, while Satan washes dirty beer glasses. There are two older men at the end of the
bar, both visibly inebriated. One is
William Reedy, who owns two bars near the baseball stadium in Detroit. Because of baseball and his irascible
personality, he is good friends with the man slumping next to him: former New
York Yankees manager Billy Martin.
Martin now owns a farm a few miles outside of Binghamton. Both are getting hammered at Morey’s to
celebrate the holiday.
Satan walks over to the boombox cassette player situated on
a card table by the pickled-egg station
and turns it on. He walks over to the
microphone on the small stage, taps it to make sure it’s working, then hustles
back behind the bar, where Rob the bartender is fully engrossed in his
newspaper. The opening strains of Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” echo over the
empty bar.
Billy Martin:
What the fuck is going on?
Rob the Bartender:
Christmas Day entertainment. An Elvis
impersonator who does David Bowie songs.
Billy Martin belches.
Billy Martin:
David Bowie? Isn’t that the pansy who
did “Little Drummer Boy” with Bing Crosby?
Rob the Bartender:
That’s right.
William Reedy: Candy-ass
rock stars. You need to get Denny McLain playing organ in here!
Billy Martin:
Denny McLain playing organ and Nancy Sinatra singing, topless!
William Reedy:
That’s the ticket. Rob, another round of
boilermakers for me and my friend here.
As Rob pours out the whisky shots, David Bowie emerges from
the men’s room in his Fat Elvis persona.
He has his cape spread wide, slowly striding, head held high, as if The
King himself is entering his grand hall.
The two young men by the door explode in laughter. “Also Sprach Zarathustra” reaches its
crescendo, followed by a few seconds of silence. A Wurlitzer-sounding samba beat begins,
followed by a Casio synthesizer playing slow minor chords. David Bowie instinctively touches the
microphone as if it was a rose.
David: Ladiesandgentlementhankyouverymuch. Welcome to Morey’s Restaurant here in
beautiful downtown Binghamton on the day of our Lord’s birth, the blessed baby
Jesus. I’m the Fat White Duke, and I
have returned. I bring to you the King's interpretation of the songs of one David Boo-ey.
David Bowie tilts his head back and extends his right arm as
if to gently point the way to the men’s room
David (singing): It’s
a god awful small affair, to the girl with the mousy hair.
He is singing “Life on Mars” from his Hunky Dory album as never before.
He likes this new voice, so much thicker and fuller than his own. “Even when he was a bloated mess, The King
still had a great voice,” Bowie thinks, “even if this hell, I’m going to give
this everything I got.” William Reedy moves
over to the pickled-egg station to pick out two eggs for him and Martin. He stares at the Elvis impersonator, too
intimidated to heckle him, too drunk to kick his ass.
Just then a motorcycle pulls up in front of Morey’s
Restaurant, a shocking site on a frigid winter’s day. The two young men crane their necks to look
out the window. The driver takes off his
visored helmet. It is Lou Reed, in a
black leather jacket and jeans.
Guy in CAT hat: Holy
shit. That’s Lou Reed.
Reed climbs off his motorcycle and comes through the door in
a rush of cold air. He looks at the two
young men.
Guy in John Deere hat:
Hey, man, don’t settle for walkin’!
Lou Reed (just
loud enough to be heard): Fuck yourselves.
He walks past the men, observes Reedy and Martin at the bar
and takes a long look at Satan who is now polishing the Budweiser and Miller
taps. Satan stops polishing the taps and
grimaces when he sees Reed staring at him.
David (singing): It’s
on America’s tortured brow. That Mickey
Mouse has grown up a cow.
Midline, Bowie realizes that Lou Reed has walked into the
restaurant and is standing 10 feet in front of him, which breaks his
concentration. He stops singing, the
Wurlitzer samba and piano chords going on without him. Reed clicks his fingers, and the boombox
switches off, leaving only the sound of a buzzing microphone.
Guy in CAT hat
(whispering to his friend): He’s just like the Fonz.
Lou: Hi, David,
it’s me.
David knows his physical appearance is that of a severely
overweight Elvis impersonator, and thus knows whoever this is, assuming it is
Lou Reed, is part of his hell.
Billy Martin: Son
of a bitch. That accent. Don’t tell me. You’re a Jew.
And you were raised in Brooklyn but grew up on Long Island.
Billy Martin turns to look at Lou Reed.
Lou: That’s
right, how did you know that?
William Reedy:
Buddy, don’t you know the greatest manager the New York Yankees ever had? Don’t you know Billy Martin when you see him?
Billy Martin sits stoically on his barstool, wavering a bit,
dull-eyed, but seems to be waiting for Lou Reed to bow in his presence.
Lou: You and I
are going to meet again one day in heaven.
Billy Martin
(laughing): Buddy, I can tell you right now.
I aint going to heaven, even if I wanted to!
Lou: You won’t
want to. Mr. Steinbrenner will be
managing heaven, and he’s going to trade Mother Teresa to the devil so you can go
up there and take over St. Peter’s job.
William Reedy and Billy Martin burst out laughing, both
knowing they are minutes away from black-out drunk, and this insanity is
somehow part of their inebriation.
Billy Martin:
Buddy, I’ll be playing poker in hell with Steinbrenner, Satan and Richard Nixon
long before that happens.
Lou: That’s
right. You will.
Rob the Bartender pulls the baseball bat from underneath the
bar.
Billy Martin: Do
you want me to sign that?
Rob the Bartender:
Look, mister, it’s Christmas Day and you’re acting crazy. We don’t want no trouble here. All this bullshit about heaven and Satan.
Lou: He’s standing
right next to you.
Rob the Bartender:
What. Danny Bolinski? Dude, I hired him last week when the lady
from the halfway house asked if I had work for an ex-con to wash dishes. That’s not Satan!
Satan glances over at Rob the Bartender. The light and intensity of his gaze makes Rob
the Bartender drop the bat as Satan telepathically tells him, “I am Satan. And I know you’re having an affair with the K
Mart manager’s wife. Which is the only
thing I like about you.” Rob the
Bartender sits down, visibly shaken.
Satan: Last time
I saw you, you were wearing a captain’s hat and covered in other people’s
blood.
Lou: I was hoping
to never see you again, but you know how the after life is, like any other downtown
scene. Let’s sit down and have a drink,
we need to talk about my friend, David.
Even though both men had lived in New York City mere blocks
from each other, Lou Reed and David Bowie had not really been friends since the
early 1970’s, when Bowie produced his Transformer
album in London. Neither had many real
friends as fame made each feel isolated and distrustful. Lou Reed motions for David Bowie to come sit
with him and Satan at the bar a few feet down from Billy Martin and William
Reedy.
Lou: Is either of
you sober enough to drive?
William Reedy: I
am!
Reedy blurts this out like an eager school kid who doesn’t
know the right answer but is trying hard to impress the teacher. He holds up the keys to Billy Martin’s pickup
truck that was parked outside next to the motorcycle and jingles them.
Satan: They’re
both so drunk they can barely walk. But
let them go. It’s part of God’s master
plan.
Lou: God has a
pretty strange sense of humor, don’t you think?
Satan: Hey, I’m
ruling in hell, he’s not that bad a guy.
Let them go. And Rob, why don’t
you take your lunch break now? I hear K
Mart is having a Blue Light Special.
I’ll be here when you get back.
Billy Martin and William Reedy stumble to their feet, heads
wobbly on their necks. Martin has
trouble finding the arm hole on his wool-lined denim jacket, but eventually
snakes his arm through the hole and grabs the barstool to balance himself. He puts on his Yankees hat, askew like a
rapper.
Billy Martin:
This place just got too weird for its own good.
I’m getting the fuck out of here.
Who are you?
Lou: I’m an
angel. Mr. Steinbrenner sent me.
Billy Martin breaks into a grin and snickers as he sloppily
tries to button his jacket.
Billy Martin:
Fuck you, man. Just … fuck … you … wise
guy. That’s all I gotta’ say.
William Reedy grabs Billy Martin under his arm and heaves
him towards the door, both men swaying like trees in a gale-force wind. They somehow make it to Martin’s pickup, kick
over the engine and lurch into drive just as the sun is starting to set. Rob the Bartender shuffles out behind them,
visibly shaken, not looking back. This
whole time, David Bowie is dumb-founded, not sure what is going on since he had
been pulled out of his performance mid-song.
Lou: And why
don’t you two get lost? I saw Jimmy Stewart on the bridge on the way in. Why
don’t you go help him jump off.
Even if he hadn’t been an angel, something about Lou Reed’s
presence is so charismatically negative and off-putting that they know to
leave, not even with their winter coats.
The next day, this whole scenario will be just another crystal meth
vision told to their similarly drug-addled friends at the factory.
Satan: Mr. Bowie,
come sit at the bar. What’ll you
have? It’s on me.
David: Jack
Daniels and Coke would be nice.
Satan: And you,
Mr. Reed?
Lou: Naw, I
stopped around 1983. Just mineral water.
Satan: In
Binghamton, New York in 1989?
Lou: You’re
Satan. Make it happen.
Satan: All right.
Satan cracked open a bottle of Rolling Rock for himself and
poured out drinks for Bowie and Reed.
Lou: David, I
never thanked you properly. You
saved my life back in 1972. I was living
with my parents back in Long Island, working in my dad’s office, completely
lost. For all the people who loved The
Velvet Underground decades later, no one gave a shit about us in 1970. My first solo album tanked. RCA had me in six-figure debt. I was on the verge of suicide when you called
and asked if you could help me out.
Satan: He’s
right. I had Mr. Reed on my early
warning docket, December 1971.
David: Well, you
helped me, too. Working with you and Jimmy
gave me rock credentials I didn’t have before.
Everything in my life that went right was a two-way street.
Satan: You really
knew how to manipulate people to get what you wanted. That’s an admirable quality in hell.
Lou: It works pretty
well in heaven, too, especially with George Steinbrenner running things.
Satan: So why did
he send you here?
Lou: A reverse
charge. You didn’t get it wrong. David Bowie was supposed to go to hell. All I got was an order from Mr. Steinbrenner to
get on my motorcycle, drive out to Binghamton, pick up David Bowie, who will be
playing a club in the guise of an Elvis impersonator, and drive him back to
heaven.
Satan: He offered
no rationale for this decision?
Lou: You should
understand, Satan, I don’t make the rules, I only follow them. I didn’t make a federal case out of it. All Mr. Steinbrenner did was shrug and say,
“Somebody up there likes him.”
Satan: So, even
in the after-life, David Bowie doesn’t lift a finger, and the gates of heaven swing
open for him. Just because …
Lou: Tell me
about it. I had to do that eternal TV
variety special with Toni Tennille for about 50 years before I broke down. David, you’ve had a charmed after-life.
David: Oh, charm
is everything. I never would have gone
anywhere without it.
Satan now has his hooves up on the bar, realizing that he
wouldn’t have to work this assignment as hard.
Lou: I must
admit. This is a pretty novel vision of
hell.
Satan: Oh, thank
you. Damned celebrities make my job a
pleasure. They allow me to realize my
full creative potential. The key to enjoying
the after-life is that you should really love what you do.
Lou: All I do now
is ride my bike, play my guitar and listen to doo-wop. All I ever wanted.
David: Wouldn’t hell be fun in some sense? Mounds of writhing, naked people having sex in pits. Bonfires.
People screaming in pain and ecstasy.
Like a rock festival when you think about it. In all those paintings it looks like the
demons are having a blast, poking lost souls with tridents. Someone’s having fun in hell.
Satan: Lot of
people are having fun in hell, but only after a few centuries of their
prescribed misery. Hell is just a
spiritual bank where you pay your debt on an installment plan. And as you could see with your visions, not
brimstone and flames, more mental anguish, boredom and dull repetition, doing
something you can’t stand for centuries.
But you make it that far, we have the demon training program, and like
any other employer, we offer competitive wage and benefit packages. What all the paintings and books never get
across is that hell isn’t chaotic and violent.
It’s as calculating and shrewd as any record-label executive who paid artists
like Bo Diddley with a Cadillac when they deserved millions of dollars. (You could ask them as they’re all down
here.) Once you get out of the pit I’ve
made for you, there’s plenty of sex, wild times, drugs, drinking to excess with
no repercussions. There are a lot of
fun, intelligent people down here who simply didn’t measure up to God’s moral standards. You should picture long-term hell as a cross
between a therapy session and an orgy circa 1978 at Studio 54.
David: I had
quite a few nights like that at Studio 54. But I can’t remember anything about them.
Satan: Just like
now. Once Mr. Reed takes you away on his
motorcycle, you’ll only remember this day vaguely, but not really sense the
despair that would strangle your soul had you re-enacted this scene a few
thousand times. By the way, Mr. Reed,
you are aware of the Separation Clause?
Lou: Yeah. Mr.
Steinbrenner said that you would be granted one wish before I could get on the bike
and take David to heaven.
Satan: And it’s
always a good wish. I’m not going to
make either of you eat urinal cakes or anything unpleasant like that. It’s generally a wish that plays to your
strengths so I can send you on your way in a positive light.
Satan pulls two acoustic guitars from behind the bar and places
them in front of Lou Reed and David Bowie.
Satan: Mr. Bowie,
I told you that Station to Station is
my favorite album of yours. Mr. Reed,
you might recall that I’m inordinately fond of your work. Street
Hassle is my favorite albums of yours.
Roughly 40 minutes per album. I wish
that both of you sit here and play those albums for me in their entireties. I don’t care if you’re still an Elvis impersonator,
Mr. Bowie, actually that makes it more interesting for me.
David Bowie and Lou Reed look at other, then shrug. Satan walks over and picks out two pickled
eggs from the bluish, vinegar-laden jar.
The liquid bubbles as his hand enters.
He goes back to the bar, kicks his hooves up again and cracks open
another bottle of Rolling Rock as Bowie and Reed start playing.
David (still as
Elvis, singing): The return of the thin white duke, throwing darts in lovers’
eyes …
Satan smiles blissfully, as he does through their entire
performance. Afterwards, he shakes hands
with Reed and Bowie and wishes them well, inviting them to come back any time
they please. The streets are dark, quiet
and windswept as they exit Maury’s Restaurant.
David: Lou, I’m
the size of a house. Must weigh about 18
stone. Are you sure we can make it to
heaven on the back of that thing?
Lou: Sure. I got hit by a truck on Route 80 the other
day, and it was just like a video game.
I got up, brushed myself off, got back on the bike and kept on riding.
David: We’re
going to freeze our asses off on a night like this.
Lou: Mr. Steinbrenner told me that if I took 81
south, we’d cross through heaven’s gates at the Pennsylvania border. That’s about 10 miles from here, not far
at all.
David: We’re not
going to come across Billy Martin on the road, do you think?
Lou: No. Fenton is about 10 miles northwest of
here. And he’s already left the building, if you know what I mean.
Lou Reed hands David Bowie a gold-painted football helmet with no face mask. And so they ride,
Bowie’s white cape flapping in the wind, the few cars they pass honking their
horns at the sight of a bloated Elvis impersonator on the back of a motorcycle
on a freezing Christmas night. A few
miles down the road, an elderly bearded man in a flowing white robe pretends to
hitch-hike on the Pennsylvania side, wearing a
pair of Sennheiser headphones, on which “TVC15” is playing.
