This is a short story that I wrote for a print magazine produced by fashion concept store KONCEPT 45. The store hosted an event in celebration of David Bowie's life and art, and the magazine was handed out to the guests.
An Intimate Hero
Some might say I have led a double life for the past 50
years. And maybe I have.
I have spent my real life with the love of my life. With
the one I most heartily love, admire and cherish.
But, you…
I only had but one taste of you; one strong mindbending,
wrecking, mesmerizing taste that my young
virgin heart couldn’t digest. It took me the longest time
to move on from it; to regain control from the strongest
feeling this taste made me feel.
The double life started many years after, when I
met with you in a swirly dream. You took my hand
and we ran around some strange unfamiliar house,
and laughed, and kissed, and talked and hugged
and sniffed around, excited and joyful like kids. The
forgotten taste woke up and hit me with a pang. It took
my breath away, in this dream.
I fought for air when I woke up. The strangest feeling.
The most intimate feeling. The sweetest tiny hidden
barbed gem.
Long story short: it kept happening - this dreamed up
meeting, this cloudy passionate connection, this spicy
tasty drug - it kept happening in my sleep again and
again for the next fifty years.
And all those years, I loved my true real love with the
purest love there is.
And all those years I cherished these intimate night
meetings of ours.
I protected them from the guns of reality flying over
our heads by the wall of that strange house. And we
kissed as though nothing could fall. We were lovers
and that was a fact and the shame was on the other
side.
You were my hero.
My intimate hero.
And you were nothing.
I built you up almost from scratch, from that one taste.
You gave me a brick and I drew a castle from it.
You were my hero just for one day.
But I turned it into a lifetime of memories.