Bowie In An Elevator
One of my few brushes-with-famous-people was with David Bowie.
It was the second week of September, 1983, and he was playing at the Coliseum in Vancouver. I’d just started at UBC, and was drinking rather a lot, as was my wont. One night there was a mixer at Place Vanier with free booze, and me and a friend of mine who I’d graduated with and who was also a freshman at UBC took great advantage of the freebies (white wine, for some bizarre reason, as I recall, something I’d never really gotten inebriated on before).
It was pouring rain that evening, as usual, and when the mixer shut down, I was, in young wonderchicken style, just getting geared up. But being underage, finding more booze was going to be a challenge, so we decided to make the trek across campus to Gage Towers to find her older brother, the theory being that he could hook us up with some more grog.
As we passed in front of the computer science buildings, I got it into my head to do the Gene Kelly routine from Singing in the Rain, and sing and splash and swoop around the light poles a bit. Predictably, my blood-alcohol content rendered my swooping a little less graceful than it should have been, and I ended up breaking my ankle.
Next morning, I woke up in my dorm room in my clothes with a monumental wine hangover and a somewhat hazy recollection of the night before. Reeking, disoriented, with a throbbing right ankle that felt about the size of my head. My mother, who was visiting Vancouver to see I’d settled in, and her sister, who’d come to visit with my mom, were knocking on the door. I can’t say they were all that surprised. At least Mitzi — yes, my friend’s name was Mitzi — wasn’t there in the bed with me, too.
We went to the campus hospital, I got strapped up and given a pair of crutches, and we went to the Bayshore Hotel, where they were staying, for breakfast. I was feeling about as physically bad as an 18-year-old can.
The elevator stopped on our way up to my mom and aunt’s room. I could smell myself, and it wasn’t pretty. I was staring at the carpet, swaying, sweating, and trying desperately not to throw up, but noticed more or less in my peripheral vision two very large black-suited men and one much smaller blond man get on.
We got off on my mom’s floor, and as we did, I realized that the little fellow was David Bowie. The realization took long enough to percolate through my hungover brain that all I had time for was a double-take, wobbling on my crutches, enough to turn and meet his eyes and smile, and get a smile back.
I believe that he was a nice fellow because of that smile, ’cause man, if I’d had to stand in an elevator with my sodden, reeking self that morning, I’d have been rejoicing the moment I got off.
This first, memorable experience of my university career turned out to be emblematic of the next 5 years. UBC was a lot of fun.