Just for One Day by Niyati Evers


“How come David Bowie has one blue and one brown eye?”

 

+++

Mid July is the time when even in a country like Holland, the sun feels warm on your skin. Everyone in Amsterdam leaves their winter caves to celebrate the fact that the sun still exists, and that she’s come back to visit us, here in the far reaches of the Northern Hemisphere. Everywhere around us, on all the terraces of the Amsterdam cafes, guys in shorts and girls in mini skirts, holding their glasses of sparkling wine and their pints of Belgian beer, standing tall with their long white legs and their blonde hair and their high-heeled shoes, their bodies close, huddled together, their high-pitched voices screeching through the air.

In the midst of all those bodies high on summer heat, there we were, our group of four, walking back home after the Shabbat service we attended at our local Shul. Dad and Auntie Ruth and David and I. Dad and Auntie Ruth a few meters ahead of us, David and I lagging behind so they wouldn’t be able to hear us talk. It wasn’t often that Auntie Ruth and David came to visit us at our house after Shul, just the two of them, but today was different, because my uncle Ben, Auntie Ruthie’s husband, was away on a business trip and all the other kids had already left for Jewish summer camp, so it was just David and Auntie Ruth, home alone.

David was a bit older than me, just two years, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re at that time in your life where your face breaks out in red pimples and your limbs start growing faster than the rest of your body and your chest is growing little boobs and you suddenly pee blood for seven days a month, two years in age difference can be a lot. David had a chin full of stubble and tiny white heads, his dark black hair a greasy paste on his forehead. There was even hair growing on his temples, and he spoke with the kind of hoarse, squeaky voice we call in Holland, talking with a beard in your throat.

Maybe it was because they shared the same name. But whatever the reason, my cousin David loved David Bowie. Love is an understatement. My cousin David was crazy mad, obsessive, head-over-heels in love with David Bowie.

Every day of the week, except for Shabbat of course, David walked around with this old dilapidated Walkman stuck in his trouser pocket, headphones on top of his head, bouncing up and down to his favorite David Bowie songs. From the way the muscles in his face moved around, you could tell what song he was listening to in any given moment.

The frown in his forehead, the way his eyebrows furrowed together, his mouth and his eyes wide open like he was making some important announcement, and you could bet on it, he was listening to "Ground Control to Major Tom."

When David’s brown eyes turned even darker and he got that intense broody expression on his face, both pleading and fierce, and his black hair was flying all around his head and he pushed his lips outward with every second word, you could be sure of it. The song playing on his Walkman sang, We can be heroes, just for one day.

Whenever I visited David, you could find us sitting side by side on his bed in his tiny room, surrounded by David Bowie posters, a pile of neatly stacked David Bowie records on his desk next to his homework of the day. Wherever you sat in the room, from every angle, David Bowie’s blue and brown eyes were staring back at you.

It was the one thing David and I could not stop talking about.

The mystery of David Bowie’s eyes. How come David Bowie has one blue and one brown eye? As usual, it was the topic of our conversation on that Saturday afternoon in mid July.

Because it was Shabbat and you’re not allowed to carry stuff in your pocket on Shabbat, or listen to music, let alone play songs created by a gentile, David wasn’t wearing his usual headphones. On that hot mid-summer day, David was in his long black trousers and his satin white shirt, the one he only wore on Shabbat. The cream-colored tassels of his tzitzit, the prayer cloth he wore underneath his clothes, bouncing up and down his hips with every step. Me in my long dark blue skirt and my white blouse, the outfit I had to wear when I went to Shul because the skirt covered my knees and the blouse covered my elbows and everybody knows, when you go to Shul, it’s improper for a girl after her bat mitzvah to show her knees or elbows. Ahead of us, in the distance, a glimmer of dad’s green velvet yarmulke and Auntie Ruth’s dark brown wig.

“Maybe it’s a gentile thing,” David said, using the more polite term for what most of us called “goyim,”or non-Jews.

By now, the hot July sun was getting to both of us. David’s satin white shirt was covered in big blotches of sweat and my long-sleeve blouse was starting to stick to my skin. Way ahead of us, dad and Auntie Ruth were having one of their animated discussions, judging from the way his green yarmulke and her brown wig were moving closer together and farther apart with every few steps they took.

Meanwhile, I was contemplating David’s hypothesis of the cause of David Bowie’s two different eyes. I knew David Bowie wasn’t Jewish, but that still didn’t explain to me why his one eye was blue and his other eye brown. Gentiles might be different from us Jews, but from what I’d seen so far from the world around me -- even now, on this hot July day when everyone was out on the streets, showing it all -- none of the gentiles standing on street corners having a beer or a glass of sparkling wine had two different colored eyes.

It was as if David had read my mind. “They don’t have our kinds of rules or laws you know,” he said.

I didn’t want to appear stupid so I looked over at David and said “mmm…,” which I thought was the right kind of answer because it could mean anything, but at least it didn’t make it seem like I had no idea what David meant. Lucky for me, David took my “mmm…” as a kind of permission to continue his theory, which was exactly what I had hoped for.

“They can do it, you know,” David said, his voice real low, the way he spoke when he wanted to be sure no one could hear us because what he was about to reveal was top secret and for my ears only.

“Do what?” I said.

David slowed his pace, came to a standstill. Drops of sweat running down the hairs on his temples as he brought his mouth real close to my face, his voice a whisper in my ear.

“They can do it,” he said, spraying a tiny blast of spit into my ear with the word it. “I mean they do it,” he said again, this time spitting into my ear when he said the word do.

“All the time,” David said. “With anyone. For as long as they want, wherever they want and with however many people they want to do it with.”

It was as if someone switched on a light bulb in my head. And in my groin. The place between my legs I was slowly getting to know. That dark, wet, vibrant place that came alive for the first time about two years ago, when my best friend Rachel shared her secret book with me, called Velvet Desires. Velvet Desires was about a man called Howard the Hunk and his mistress, Isabella with the bulging boobs. It was a picture book that showed Isabella, lying stark naked, stretched out on a king-size bed, while Howard lay on top of her and put his penis inside the hole between her legs. That’s how they did it.

A world of Howards and Isabellas. That was the picture in my head. Doing the thing they were doing in Rachel’s book. But for real this time, not just in a storybook. Everywhere in the world, there were Howards and Isabellas, right now, lying on top of each other, naked, pushing penises into holes, sticking their tongues into each others’ mouths, clawing fingers into flesh, tearing and biting and panting and groaning and moaning and screaming oh god, oh god, just like Howard and Isabella did.

The world of gentiles.

The world that wasn’t us.

I wasn’t sure which world I liked better, theirs or ours, but whichever it was, it still did not explain why David Bowie’s mother, even if she had slept with a thousand men, gave birth to a son with two different colored eyes. I glanced over at David, and from the dark sparkle in his eyes, the grin that was spreading all over his face, I knew he had the answer.

“Of course,” David said, “how could I have missed this!” He quick turned around so he stood in front of me, looking right at me, not saying another word.

Typical David. The kind of game he loved to play with me, showing me who’s the older and wiser one, telling me he knows the answer but not giving it to me. Testing me to see if I can come up with the answer, knowing of course that there was no way I could.

I was just playing at his own game when I came up with this silly idea, just to show I wasn’t all stupid and naïve.

“Maybe David Bowie’s mother was in a triad,” I said. “I mean, maybe she did it with two men at the same time, and one man had brown eyes and one man had blue eyes and then they both put their sperm inside her and both sperms swam into her womb and they all mixed together and that’s how David Bowie ended up with two different colored eyes.”

David took a step back, held out his arms and put his hands on my shoulders, which was actually not allowed, because I was 14 years old at the time, which meant I was way past my bat mitzvah, and therefore it was the same as if David was touching a grown woman, and David was very religious, even more than me.

Lucky for us, dad and Auntie Ruth were way ahead of us and neither of them turned around. Because if they had seen us, standing so close together, the black of David’s hair stuck to his temples, the trickles of sweat running down his cheeks, his hands touching my shoulders, they might think David was trying to kiss me, which was even more forbidden, because we were not a couple and not married. And for sure, in any other circumstance, David wouldn’t have put both his hands on my shoulders and given me this long, deep, warm stare as if, just for a moment, I was David Bowie himself and David was declaring his unwavering and eternal love to me.

“Brilliant,” David said, with the squeaky beard in his throat voice, his hands squeezing into my shoulders, the black of his eyes the same deep dark as when he had his Walkman on his head, jiving away to the lyrics of his all-time hero.

“That’s it, Little Lion,” he said, using my childhood nickname, the name that my dad had called me ever since I was a young kid. “That’s the answer. You got it!”

His hands locked on my shoulders, his satin sweat-stained shirt clinging to his chest, his dark eyes in mine, to the tune of his favorite song of all, David sang the words to me.

“You are my hero, just for today.”

+ + +

Big fan of Bowie? You might also like to watch the video from his most recent single "Blackstar," which can be viewed as part of Songs of the Week #39, here.

+ + +


Niyati Evers grew up in Amsterdam, where she also spent her early student years, always wearing her second-hand black fur coat, a Charlie Chaplin hat, a copy of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil clutched under her arm, and a red anarchist star pinned to the collar of her coat. Her late twenties she spent in ashrams in India, where she tried to gain enlightenment through having a third eye orgasm, something she never managed to attain. She moved to Cape Town, South Africa in 1998, just after the end of Apartheid, where she stayed for 14 years. She currently lives in Portland and is honored to be a part of Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writing community.

Matty Byloos

Matty Byloos is Co-Publisher and a Contributing Editor for NAILED. He was born 7 days after his older twin brother, Kevin Byloos. He is the author of 2 books, including the novel in stories, ROPE ('14 SDP), and the collection of short stories, Don't Smell the Floss ('09 Write Bloody Books).

Previous
Previous

Ashes to Ashes

Next
Next

In This Body: Titleless Sexuality