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Well, well, well. Here? No, it can't have been here. It all looks different. There used to be a proper street, and cars, and garbage cans. Sooty brick walls. A few businesses that flattered themselves into believing they catered to a choice clientele, but what was choice then, a stone's throw from Soho?
And now, this: a pedestrian area. Upmarket bistros. Outdoor seating. Sushi, fusion, Italian bar and grill. Someone has thrown a billion pounds around, or more. Someone has bent and twisted the soul of the street beyond recognition.
He walks around uncertainly. Wait: he once stood here, in a phone booth. Fey and cocky, with the snotty come hither look of a London rent boy. Does that mean that none of it has come to pass? No apocalypse, nothing?
He can't quite remember, what was it? A meteorite, slamming into the planet? Earth making way for a hyperspace expressway? Five years, that's all they were supposed to get. Instead they got a sanitized pedestrian area with upmarket outdoor seating.
And whatever happened to the boogie?
+++
You should have seen him! Far out, man. Just… outta sight. An apparition, in the literal sense of the word. Not quite alien, but not from this world either. The love child of an outer space samurai sex god and a stick insect. Nobody knew where he'd come from, although some ventured he was from Bromley. You could say he… manifested. He had something to say, was the word, but he'd give it to us piecemeal, in the tiny little bits our quaaluded minds still could wrap around. And I figured, if the world's a goner anyway, why bother with anything but his sweet ass? Such was his promise of power and debauchery.
+++
He can't believe his eyes. Just a moment ago, he was a Byronesque dandy with long wavy hair, lounging on a velvet sofa like a 19th century coquette. Then he held his hand aloft to the heavens, his wrist limp like Adam's in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco, and something… sparked.
Now the thrill defies description: to have creation at your fingertips! Something comes into being from nothing, from ether. It's the pen that flies across paper, the sanguine, the coal, the crayon that forms light and shade and turns a white sheet into a stage. It's the chord progression no-one expects, the daring jump, the grating slide that people cannot un-hear. It's the jut of the hip, the dance step and the tension between muscle and bone that transforms a skinny guy from Brixton into an icon. The rush is exquisite.
His hair has become red and spiky, his eyebrows have disappeared. Effortlessly, his toes slip into high platforms. His thighs navigate the extra height with ease. Who is he now? The creature looking back at him? Now there's someone he'd like to get it on with. He'd go down on him, kneel and knead, lick and suck. Put your ray gun to my head. Now there's a barrel he'd like to look down. Or up, depending.
He smirks: meet Ziggy Stardust, babe.
+++
"Making love to his eagle?"
"Ego, not eagle."
"But eagle, man! Imagine making love to an actual eagle!"
"I'd rather not, please."
"Anyway. Eagle. Way I figure, the eagle is like, a symbol, know what I mean? Like, his soul taking wing or something? So cool. Like, soaring above him, them, the Spiders."
"It's ego, dude. Just: ego. What he means by that is that Ziggy became a self-centered arse with an inflated sense of his own importance. And that he just had to crash."
"But not before becoming the Leather Messiah!"
"The what?"
"A messiah clad in leather."
"Dude! What's wrong with your ears? It's leper messiah, the lyrics say leper messiah. Like, a pariah. The king of all the outcasts."
"And who says he ain't wearing black leather?"
"Nobody. But, but. Just listen to what Bowie actually sings! That's insane enough without your mangling it!"
"What do you mean, mangling it? Stop pissing on my parade, man! You're just not a proper fan."
+++
It's not the side-effects of the cocaine; the creature really is here, in his room. Idly wandering about, picking up knick-knacks and gadgets. Ziggy dabs a finger in golden eyeshadow, smears it down the wall. Then his attention is captured by the bottle of Schwarzkopf Georgette256/Cherry Red: "You're washed up," Ziggy says, looking back at him over his shoulder while squirting hair-dye into his palm and generously slathering the psychedelic print of the wallpaper with it.
"Am not." His head lolls on the backrest of the chair.
"I told you, it's not healthy. Where is our message of hope and liberation when you can't keep your nose clean and your head together? This world'll will go down, Davy."
Somewhere, a sordid honky-tonk piano plays: time must be running wild. "It won't," he yawns. "I made that up, actually. I made you up."
"Ah, but how wrong you are." Ziggy flicks through his stage wear, hanging from a wardrobe rail. "Mhh, nice-" he pulls out the short Yamamoto kimono, "-bet this brings out your legs."
What does he want, for fuck's sake? His brainchild has gone rogue.
"And now you ask yourself how to rope me back in. Well. You can't." Ziggy plants himself on his lap, face to face. "Let's call this… a timely intervention." His lips are dry and sweet as he kisses him. "You may thank me later," he whispers, sliding very close.
+++
"Young'uns come here all the time," a voice croaks behind his back. "Used to be more, though. Wearin' flashy stitches. You one of'em what is looking for old Heddon Street?"
He nods, pulls out a cigarette, but it snaps in two before he can light it. It's cold, his fingers are numb. He pulls out another one and shields it against his lapels while attempting to light it.
"'Ere, let me help you." The old guy obliges with a lighter where his matches fail. "'Ave I seen you 'before?"
"I doubt that." He attempts a smile but it hurts his face. The skin seems so tight across his hollow cheeks.
"You ever wonder wha'appen, to that Ziggy Stardust? My theory is, he went back to the stars." The vagrant squints at him.
"And why should he do that?"
But he does not receive an answer; the man shuffles off into the sodium haze. They're old lanterns, he notices, their yellow-orange sheen so much more benign than today's LED glare. Ziggy did not return to the stars, he knows; not yet. Soon, though.
"Gimme your hands," he mutters: let's be not alone.
Let's be wonderful.
.