Baby love
When Glitterboy became interested in music and started rebelling against his mother’s choice of clothes for him - too soft and hippy for his taste - the old black and white TV screen was filled for a dear thirty minutes a week with the most outrageously dressed drag queens, high on their platform boots, winking at the public and sticking their tongues out at the camera, screaming about some baby they loved or else a riot in the street. Go as wild as you possibly can was the message, and for all the gay reference in music and appearance these gods of filthy rock were never short of female attention. The boy just couldn’t keep his eyes off those clothes and he instantly realised he needed to dress like that, because a nice girl to hold hands with and kiss behind trees was certainly what he dreamt of. It was the year of glam and whoever at that moment happened to open their eyes to the world, boys and girls alike and not lured by older family members to The Beatles or Led Zeppelin, were forever hooked on the ostentatious over the top mentality that went for artistic music. Pretence was their aim and idleness their belief. Nothing would hold in 1973, nor ever since, as the logic went.
Dark orange
Glitterboy quickly picked up the action. Although playing an instrument never proved to be his thing, he reckoned he certainly could look like he knew how to pull a string or two. So he set out on collecting a wardrobe of the wildest shiny garment available in his town. He scanned obscure second hand shops and smelly flee markets for any item that would go, boots, rings, belts, silver pants and pointy shirts, and when he went to visit his mother’s younger sister in his country’s capital she brought him to a designer shop where he managed to steal a beautiful hand-printed purple leather jacket worth a worker’s monthly wage, he just took it when nobody noticed, so thrilling and eye-catching it took him a full week to dare it on. The boy had his hair cut above the ears but kept long in the neck, and he persuaded the hairdresser to dye it a dark orange, as was the ultimate fashion. A pack of Caballero cigarettes and pink sunglasses completed his look. There he was, thirteen years old and not even five feet tall, dressed for life as far as he himself was concerned.
Rising star
Glitterboy failed to attract many girls. He was so young and so small and as smart looking as he was he was simply too cute to be of interest. But he did catch the eye. People called him the Brit kid, because the whole glam thing was mostly an English phenomenon, and he wasn’t particularly fond of that description, but when the Saturday hand at the record store named him Glitterboy he was happy with that one and he started thinking of himself as such, his real name gladly forgotten. Glitterboy soon was a star in his hometown. Everybody knew him and although he got once beaten up for being different, many people were jealous of his style and taste.
I’m age
Glamrock ran out of fashion after Ziggy pulled the plug, but that wouldn’t stop the boy from being who he was. He hadn’t much choice in fact. Since his body refused to grow - he lagged well behind his class mates - he had to accept the circumstance he would be without a girlfriend for years to come, and because he knew he would never be able to steal another outrageously beautiful jacket like the one he had, he might as well be happy his physical limitations helped him stay true to his image. Glitterboy decided he had reached mother Earth at exactly the right time and he needn’t search for alternatives, because after having reached the summits of utter vanity things could only go downhill, couldn’t they?
Ever so slowly
Things did deteriorate indeed. No style was the new style, no future the new horizon, and anger the common denominator. People started making fun of the beautiful boy and bust ups with strangers became regular. Glitterboy tried not to care. He knew he was right, that it was so much better to live in mockery than in madness, and he started praying to his purple leather jacket it would fit him for the rest of his days. When people pray it usually means things have gone out of hand and Glitterboy was no exception to this rule. Ever so slowly but unmistakably his jacket became tight in shoulders and waist and his arms started sticking out of the sleeves. He was still very short for his age but no longer forever, it appeared. By hungering his muscles away he could evade the perception the jacket was never meant for him and rolling up the sleeves provided the perfect answer to his growing arm problems, but the question of his shoulders was not easily met. He seemed to become quite a broad young man and so when his praying wouldn’t help he did what had to be done. He stole a considerable sum from his mother’s purse and he went to the best tailor he could find and there he explained he wanted his jacket extended. Of course the tailor would never be able to find a piece of purple leather with the same wonderful hand print, but she promised to fit another well matching piece into the back, thus broadening the shoulders, and the problem of the sleeves could be met by adding some lovely lace cuffs. Perhaps at once the pants adjusted? Glitterboy agreed. It cost him a week in bed and the strong suspicion of his mother that he was responsible for the lacking money, but at least his future or rather his present was secured.
Living piece of time
Now that he became taller and his new sized jacket allowed him to regain some weight, he finally grew attractive to women. They smiled at him and he smiled back and when he had overcome his initial fears and began talking to them in the easy manner of a man who is proud of his choices, they all wanted him to take of that second skin of his. Throw it away, they said, sell it on the market, send it to Poland - the country of choice in that particular year. Glitterboy wouldn’t have it. He was more than just a body, he was a full size image and reminder of perhaps the only year pop culture had been truly senseless, and he told them so. They laughed at him, they said he must be queer or something and they went for one of those muscle pullers that all of a sudden were en vogue. Glitterboy couldn’t care too much. He had grown used to being alone and he was busy enough maintaining his state of mind, no mean feat with so many badly dressed people around and such horrible music on the radio. There were better moments, of course. He wasn’t the only one who had stayed at the apex of human development and at times a true artist, invariably sprung alive in that one magical year, disturbed the horrifying earnestness of it all with a good old freaky wild performance. But these were scanty highlights and most of the days Glitterboy lived in his own world, in the small flat he had found and that he had decorated with mirrors to perform his act as living piece of time while playing the same music over and over again, no public to admire him but bother.
Less
He got himself a job as a messenger for some worthless company, cruising the streets of his town on a motorbike delivering parcels and letters, raising eyebrows and causing laughs wherever he entered. His mother begged him to throw away his purple hand printed leather jacket with the extra piece and the lace cuffs because with that sharp mind of his he might find a better position when dressed like everybody else, but naturally he wouldn’t hear of it. And so he grew older, not much of a boy anymore and satisfied with his lonely place in a world that less and less belonged to him. Righteousness can easily stifle one’s deeper human needs.
Quit that job
Then one day, as he walked into some office with a carton box under his arm, the young woman at the reception wanted to know where he had found that gorgeous jacket. Glitterboy liked her smile and he told her how he had nicked it from the most expensive shop in the country at the tender age of thirteen and how he had worn it ever since, showing her the way it was enlarged for him when he against earlier odds threatened to grow out of it. The woman instantly fell in love with his looks and she asked him to take her out - she herself had a matching pair of clothes she had kept in her wardrobe for years, afraid to wear it in a world where chic had become the code of dress. The boy said yes and then he said why don’t you jump on the back of my bike, just quit that job of yours and come with me, and she, blinded by eternal beauty, agreed. Glitterboy left his job too, but he didn’t hand in his bike, because he needed it to set out on new adventures with Glamgirl behind him, her arms around his precious jacket, both utterly happy for as long as what little money they had would last.
Summer beach
They headed south and after a week reached the shores of the Mediterranean where they set up camp near a tourist resort frequented by new generations that were interested again in the carelessly vented shiny exaggeration which to them was the essence of life. Summer came and boy and girl were invited to beach parties where everybody was on drugs and they would perform the ultimate proof one could be forever young, time a concept they had long ago alienated from. The bike they sold for a price which would see them through the season, not needing much because they were mostly kept free.
Purple kiss
June and July were fairytale months but in August Glitterboy fell sick. All the drugs and lack of food and sleep had exhausted him. For two weeks he couldn’t get up and when he was able at last he had come to the conclusion his shiny days were over. He was as old as he really was, perhaps even older. He told Glamgirl he wouldn’t be the same again and that he had better go and when he saw the hunger in her eyes he said I know you aren’t ready yet, look me up one day if you like. He took off his purple leather jacket with the hand print and the cuffs and he gave it to her, take good care of it he said, and after a last kiss he walked away, got a ride to the highway and within 48 hours was back home. He found himself a job as a cleaner in a factory and he rented a tiny one room flat and when winter came he was just like so many men of his age, bored and tired most of the time. At weekends he would smoke some pot and play his favourite music, pretending to be always young once more. Glamgirl he never saw again but he wasn’t angry with the way things went, he simply wasn’t able to, he belonged to the luckiest harvest. I showed them, he told the mirror, I showed them as much as I could and I was right.
