The Man in the Tights

It was without a doubt the ‘thing’ happening in his tight trousers that started it all. This was the moment I realised I was ‘for’ the penis and I was four years old.

David Bowie’s Goblin King stared at me from the screen, all hair, make-up, bad English teeth, an oh-so-pretty face and that bulge and he awoke in my four-year-old self the knowledge that men were ‘other’ and here was a man more other than most.

I fell in love, instantly.

Now, at this age I was still to be found regularly sharing a bath with my brother and sister. So I had seen ‘boy bits’ before. I have no memory of my brothers ‘thing’, thankfully. It played no part in my head as a source of interest.

So what was so remarkable and memorable about this one? What was it about that grey bulge that made me sit up and realise that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina? Well one, it’s a man in tights and like everything David Bowie did, it wasn’t de-rigour, it wasn’t what everyone did: strut around in tights and try and seduce a fifteen / sixteen year old girl. Imagine any other rock star getting away with the obvious sexual tension that Bowie radiated towards Connelly’s character? Go on imagine it, who else could have got away with that?

But more importantly it was the confidence with which the package was displayed. It’s not actually remarkable in shall we say stature? Bang on ordinary package going on there I’d say. But a man who needs no stuffing - David Beckham I am looking at you - to walk around in tights is a man who knows well what he needs to do with his ‘instrument’ to get a girl or boy begging for more. And four-year-old Hannah knew this instinctively.

The thing is the penis alone is not such a remarkable object. Have you ever found yourself trying to remember what someone’s penis looked like? Try as you might, the shape and colour and general oddity of the last one you saw is all you can see. I mean, yes men, we remember the ‘general’ size, the shape if you have a weird curve or something and if you’ve an interesting colour well that might stay in the memory, but the actual thing, hard to remember.

Not so if you are David Bowie. David Bowie has a thing that no woman or man can forget. Tell me that it isn’t the first thing you think about when you think of the film Labyrinth. Tell me that and I will call you a liar. Obviously the hair, but that is second, don’t lie, it is.

When I think about David Bowie’s penis, which I do at least once a week, I like to imagine it was gold and shaped like a unicorns horn whilst at the same time was the kind of penis with the ability to mould itself to whatever shape or size your lady or boy parts needed it to be, I bet it would never ever dream of ‘finishing’ before you did.

This was the penis that started it all.

For some his music started it all, for others it was the fact he taught them they could be different; there are a million reasons to love David Bowie as we are all discovering again but for me and I suspect all children born in the eighties, David Bowie was our sexual awakening.

For us he started the journey towards that grey bulge, he gave us the knowledge that some men know what they are doing with that there ‘instrument’ and if you want to find them, look for the strangest looking guy in the room. Don’t be fooled by skinny jeans, these no longer make a man David Bowie, they mean he lives in East London or wants to or will do or does in his head, a place David Bowie would never dream of living.

He taught us that we need only bother with those ‘things’ if they are attached to remarkable men and that only a remarkable man truly knows the power of the sword between his legs. And dammit, he broke the ‘grey tights’ mould as he did so.