Time, She Will Be Your Living End (David Bowie Fanfiction)

The Man Who Sold The World

The night after that, we shared the bed. Though we didn't acknowledge each other.

After that brief conversation which ended bitterly (mostly my fault) we didn't speak. David simply nodded and put on some music. He quickly left and spent the rest of the day in the studio, with all of the inhabitants of Haddon Hall and others, meaning I was alone with nothing to do.

I managed to get through as much of his record collection as possible and failed to even reach halfway. Then I went to bed. David's bed. I tried to sleep, but instead I tossed and turned waiting for him.

When he got in I turned around in bed and looked up to let him know I was awake. But nothing... he looked back at me with empty eyes and slid into bed, his back facing me.

For weeks it was like that: Wake up, small conversation, breakfast, studio, hours by myself, return, silence or maybe a quick conversation whether it was just with David or with him and a few others, then sleep - facing away from each other.

I was considering leaving, but it would only make this worse. So when he was out I went back to my apartment, let Johnny know where I was and how things were, grab some clothes and other belongings and return to the horridly silent Haddon Hall.

David was so stressed with the album, and management, it's no wonder things were like that for so long. Pitt was fired and he got a new manager, Tony DeFries. It was made even more complicated when Visconti threatened to leave if David went with DeFries.

The journalists and press left after a few days, they didn't  put anything about David and I in the paper and sent me back the photograph they stole, along with its negative.

After some live performances, one even televised, and completing the album, The Man Who Sold The World of course, things seemed to get better. David suggested that we should get away together, up in Scotland. He seemed to forget about what I said quite quickly.

So much had happened and time felt like it was nothing.

I stayed between Haddon Hall and my apartment for a while, for the whole of August I stayed at mine while David was away (most of the time up north, every now and then in Kensington) doing some work, gigs, recruiting musicians, or the album, I don't know what it was all about.

When he came back, at the beginning of September I sold my apartment and moved all of my things into David's flat in Haddon Hall. We didn't discuss whether 'there was something between us' any further - it's for the best.

People were coming and going from Haddon Hall. Woody, Rodger the Lodger, Mick, Tony - they would float between living somewhere else and the house. It got quite overwhelmingly crowded at some points and then empty when they left, but they returned after not too long.

With an advance of £5000 from a new publishing deal and my old apartment, David brought a new Michael Fish dress. It was a gorgeous blue. He often danced around the house in it, but never went outside in it. He wanted to, but he didn't feel confident enough.

For a while we saw life through rose tinted lenses, but things quickly changed.

David became paranoid, even more than when he was writing and recording for the album. He was emotionally cold and distant, often wanting to be isolated from the rest of us. He would spend days by himself. His hair grew longer, the beginnings of a beard bloomed and the seasons changed. It seemed as though he had aged about five years within just a few months.

David was no longer David, none of us knew why and he couldn't explain it either.

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6th of November, 1970