Young Americans

Somehow I made it all the way to high school before really connecting with David Bowie's music.  Thanks to an Uncle a decade older than me I heard and knew a lot of 70's stadium rock gods, but never really Bowie.   Then someone left a a copy of Changes in my car in high school.  I might have actually worn it out.  It was the soundtrack for a lot of driving and for one alcohol and drug fueled graduation week at the beach.

I was not a popular kid in high school.  Not weird enough to be interesting and not pretty enough to be popular.  Mostly I was just invisible.  That week at the beach up there?  I was invited mostly because I had a car, not because I was a part of a big social group. I went anyway, kind of desperate to just get out of my mother's house and go.  Somewhere.  While other couples were finding slightly secluded spots to be alone, David Bowie was my date.  Hours in the car parked on the sand with the ocean and the stars and The Thin White Duke.



After high school I packed my car and drove to a University 3 hours from home.  It was not a great fit, after a semester I took off on a program to study antiquities in Greece.   Or to hang out on the beach.   University was not very different from high school, I was still shy, I was still invisible, I was still lonely.

 Greece was a revelation.  My body shape was an asset and  hair was exotic.  For the first time men noticed me on the street.  Men in bars wanted to talk to me.  Other travelers were interesting.  No one cared that I had never fit in. Everyone came from somewhere and everyone had a story to tell, baggage to unload, demons to exorcise.  I was not invisible there. I made  easy friends with other foreign students and with Greek locals.  In the time before mp.3 and electronically available music we had cassette tapes.  Three or Four each, varying genres played in  tour bus tape decks and through the scratchy built in speakers of our off brand Walkmans.  Tears for Fears, UB40, and Bowie.  Bowie got the most play  by far.  During one school break several of the Americans took off for an island a ferry's ride away from Athens.  We spent night after night in a Greek island discotheque.  Dancing with boys, dancing with each other. The bars had limited music so we would sometimes bring our own too. The bartender/DJ/bouncer would put our cassettes into the sketchy sound system, turn on the disco ball, pour the drinks, and then dance with us.  We were there so often ( and that cassette played so often) that the local Greek boys would break into Bowie's Young Americans every time we appeared.   I was having a fantastic time. Shedding all the things I thought were wrong with me, embracing this new self who could dance with boys and make friends. I had a theme song.

I know Young Americans is not about a lonely teenager finding herself, but for me it was.  It was the soundtrack for becoming more of myself.   Thanks for that David Bowie. Thanks for everything.