The Most Beautiful

by Mayte Garcia

  I touched her elbow and said, “I’m fine.” She saw the steady confidence in my eyes and took comfort in it. She could see that I wasn’t scared or unsure; I was there to hang out with the man, artist to artist. If you were going to connect with someone in a professional capacity, you would invite them to get together at either your home or your office, and when you’re on tour, your hotel room is both these things. I knew she’d have my back if anything went strange, but I was equally certain that’s not why I was there. Having sized things up to her satisfaction, Mama hugged me and headed home with Jan.

  It was after midnight by this time, and I hadn’t eaten all day, but I was wired with adrenalin and wide awake.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” he kept asking. “Water? Tea? Something to eat?”

  I couldn’t imagine eating in that scenario, or possibly ever again, but the third or fourth time he asked, it occurred to me that maybe he wanted to eat something and didn’t want to be rude by eating in front of me, so I said, “Sure. Thanks.” He left me sitting alone in the bedroom and came back a few minutes later with a bowl of freshly popped popcorn, which he munched on while we sat cross-legged on the floor with pillows and watched the videotapes I’d brought.

  One of the duties of the foo foo master was to set up a big black roadie case that held all kinds of audio visual equipment—a TV, VCRs, cassette and CD players, etc.—that Prince would need for reviewing performance tapes, watching movies, and working on one thing or another. I was relieved to see that it was outfitted with American equipment and electrical hookups; I’d had a moment of panic in the car, wondering if he’d be able to play my American tapes in a German hotel room. I set my stack of tapes on top of the roadie case: the long version of the rough cut I’d done for him, a talent show from school, a few random restaurant gigs, and other appearances.

  He graciously watched them all, asking a thousand questions: What are those arm bands made of? Where’d your dad get those drums? When did you learn how to drop back so slow? How do you roll your belly like that? He was particularly interested in my journeys to Egypt, so I told him all about Madame Abla and Mohammed Ali Street in Cairo. As we worked through the stack of tapes, traveling backward in time, I told him about George Abdo and Amir and the dressed-to-the-nines ladies of Frauentag.

  “How long have you been doing this dance?” he asked.

  “Since I was three. When I was eight, I was on That’s Incredible! The world’s youngest professional belly dancer.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes! Way! Here—I brought the tape.” Mama would have been proud.

  He fed the tape into the VCR. When it got to the bit about “the mystical, magical Princess Mayte,” he paused it and looked at me in surprise.

  “Wait. Your name is Princess Mayte?”

  “Yeah… it was.”

  “Why did you change it?”

  “Because I’m not a princess.”

  “Yes, you are.” He stated this as a simple fact, looking me straight in the eye, and I suddenly felt a flush of pride mixed with genuine sadness that I’d somehow let that go.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I felt stupid.”

  “You are! I mean, that’s a cool name.”

  I laughed and took a few kernels of popcorn in my hand, not sure if the proper response was “thank you” or something else. He watched the rest of the tape while I sat there thinking how surrealistic the whole thing was.

  “Do you do any other type of dance?” he asked.

  I brought out some ballet tapes and a recent happening, which to this day I laugh about. My high school had put on a talent show, and I was known as the dancer, so the chorus class asked me to choreograph a number to Prince’s “Batdance” from the soundtrack of Tim Burton’s 1989 version of Batman. I have to laugh now, because this thing was so bad, but I was very proud of my choreography, and he was extremely sweet about it. When it was over, I ejected the tape and went back to my wheelhouse, the pieces I was most proud of, the pieces I knew would get me another contract in Cairo.

  It was closing in on four in the morning—pretty late-night, even for those of us on Germany time—and I was starting to feel bleary-eyed.

  “Maybe we could hang out again tomorrow,” he said, and I said we could.

  Before the bodyguard took me down to a waiting Mercedes, I called home and told Daddy, who was waiting up for me, that I was on my way. I rode home on cloud nine, replaying the whole incredible day and night over and over in my head. Daddy was dozing on the couch when I walked in, but he sat up and rubbed his eyes, ready to hear all the details, including the plan for returning to Frankfurt in a matter of hours. I hated to sacrifice any of the day to sleeping. I knew that the next day, my new friend would go to Sweden and then on to the rest of the world and eventually home to the States, and this strange, wonderful moment would be over.

  After I’d slept for a few hours, a car came and took me back to the hotel, and when I arrived at the suite, Prince called from the other room, “I’ll be out soon.”

  “Okay…”

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do in the meantime. I would have been happy to sit there among the foo foo, but a very nice gentleman introduced himself as Earl and told me he was going to do my hair.

  “Okay…”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Earl looked like he knew what he was doing. As he sectioned my curly hair and blow-dried it straight, I sat upright and still, wondering if this was an audition or just something to keep me occupied while I waited. Did he not like my hair? Straightened shiny black, it did look a lot longer and thicker. Looking at myself in the mirror, I did feel a bit like an Egyptian princess. Cleopatra without the bangs.

  As Earl finished my sleek new style, Prince came in and said, “Wow. You look pretty.”

  “I love it.” I couldn’t stop touching it, and I didn’t even freak out when Prince took a turn. It was so smooth and silky. “I don’t ever want to wash it.”

  He laughed and said, “Well, it’s different.”

  Our conversation picked up right where it had left off the night before. It always did over the years. Life was so easy and comfortable when he was next to me. The anticipation of seeing him was stressful, but when we were together, it was like we’d been friends for ages. We watched a videotape of the Mannheim performance, and then he showed me raw footage and rough cuts for the “Thieves in the Temple” video, so it was my turn to ask a thousand questions: Was that supposed to happen? Who did the choreography on this part? Have you taken ballet? How did you come up with that insane move at the end?

  “Oh, that move’s from James Brown,” he said. He told me a story about going to a James Brown concert when he was a little kid, and he was like a little kid when he told it, excited and on his feet, laughing and demonstrating. “In the middle of the show, my stepdad boosts me up onstage. He put me up there, I was all slide—kick—and the kick always goes to the splits. It was tight. I danced so hard. And then a bodyguard came and hauled me off.”

  I laughed at the idea of his stepdad hoisting him onto the stage. Mama had basically done the same thing to get me into this room. Watching his footwork up close, I noticed that his shoes were specially made with a steel bar between the heel and sole to keep the bottom from breaking. I’d been wondering how it was possible for him to do some of the things he’d done onstage without breaking an ankle or two, and I was curious to know what it felt like to dance with heels like that, but I was too shy to ask him if I could try one on.

  It was so refreshing to be a part of this conversation about the art and business of performing—a serious conversation about creating art out of music and movement—with someone who was a master in multiple crafts and had defied all reasonable expectations to achieve a level of success most performers don’t bother dreaming about. He treated me like a fellow artist, which made me feel incredibly special and proud, but every time I repeated something like, “This is so great, I can’t believe how gr
eat this is,” he’d laugh this infectious laugh that came from somewhere deep inside.

  Before I left, he told me I should make another tape of myself dancing.

  “If I have time,” I said. “I have a lot booked before school starts. Restaurants and parties and stuff.”

  “Send me that. The restaurant stuff.”

  “Okay.” I knew Daddy would be rolling tape anyway. “But where do I send it?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  I went home, not fully believing I’d hear from him again, but the next day he called, and again the conversation continued without a seam. He told me about Sweden and the new music he was working on in his head.

  “I’ll send it to you,” he said. “Let me know what you think. And send me another dance tape.”

  Years later, Prince’s friend and collaborator Randee St. Nicholas told me that he called her one night and asked her to come over to his place right away. It was two in the morning, but the predawn hours were always a particularly creative time for him, so this wasn’t out of the ordinary. Randee arrived at his home, and they sat together on his bed, watching the belly dancing videotapes I’d left with him.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  She said, “This is the one you’re going to marry.”

  “No, no, no. She’s jailbait,” he said, genuinely surprised. “I’m talking about the dancing. What do you think of the dancing?”

  Over the following months, he and I fell into an easygoing dialogue that covered every conceivable topic. The tone ranged from silly to spiritual. He welcomed the opportunity to educate me on the music that meant the most to him—James Brown, The Staple Singers, Chaka Khan, Sly and the Family Stone—and in turn, I taught him about ballet and Middle Eastern folkloric tradition. We laughed a lot and told each other our stories. He didn’t call me every day, but we spoke on the phone several times most weeks. It was rare for more than a couple of days to go by without a call, and I regularly received cassette tapes in the mail, along with letters and drawings, many of which I still have.

  The ones I don’t have—those were destroyed years later. They were burned, along with everything that was mine or that reminded him of me or of our son. In some sad, painful moment, he had it all burned, as if fire could cauterize this deep wound he couldn’t close. I wasn’t there to witness it, and I can’t bear to think about it now. I’d rather think about that summer when I was sixteen. The warm, white popcorn in the palm of my hand. The veiled doorways and lava lamps. The sound of his laughter and the sudden certainty that I had, and had always had, the soul of a princess.

    four

  August 12, 1990

  Dearest Arabia,

  Rather than not send u a letter, I opted 4 using this strange stationary instead. Please 4give me. Thank u 4 the present from the restaurant. I have fun watching it. U’re so pretty. It cheers me up if someone tries 2 ruin my day. Many do.

  Today is Monday. It is now 5:15. I’m lying on a very big bed in a room about the size of the one in Frankfurt. One never knows what one is gonna encounter in life, does one? Thank u 4 coming into my world. U seem so kind and unaffected by this heartless planet we live on…

  This letter makes me laugh, remembering how he tried to make that Arabia thing stick, even though I kept saying, “Sorry, Charlie. Not gonna happen.”

  It felt weird to call him Prince, so I never did. There was, in my mind, a disconnect between the icon I’d seen onstage in Barcelona and Mannheim and the funny, soft-spoken person I’d come to know. I confided in him things that I’d been afraid to speak out loud to any of my friends, simply because their lives were so different from mine. He confided in me things that I will never share with anyone. It’s no use trying to explain the connection that existed between us. People will draw conclusions based on their own belief systems: cynics will be cynical, romantics will be romantic, people who believe in fate as a river will see how its current carried us along. I honestly didn’t overthink it at the time. I simply allowed it to be.

  The “strange stationary” [sic] he refers to was a regular sheet of notepaper, which would have been completely normal to anyone else in the world, but Prince had an affinity for fancy notepaper—embossed and flowery with scalloped edges and elegantly lined envelopes—designed to resemble his grandmother’s notepaper.

  I cherish these letters Prince wrote to me during the first few months of our strange and wonderful dialogue. I’ve kept them all these years in a photo album along with ticket stubs, press clippings, and other memorabilia. I look at them and see two kindred spirits who instantly recognized each other. It’s clear in his letters that our ongoing conversation was an oasis for him—U seem so kind and unaffected by this heartless planet—a sanctuary unspoiled by sexual tension or the politics of sucking up. For me, this relationship was the opportunity to step out of my ordinary world into a rarified existence in which life itself is a work of art. It had never occurred to me that each shoe and rock and handwritten letter is an opportunity to express yourself—or it’s just one more of a million little things that don’t. It’s up to you. But why would you choose to create a life from a pile of little things that don’t actively matter to you?

  This was an amazing moment in the music industry—almost as pivotal as the moment we’re in now. Music videos had gained traction, making megastars of certain people, including Prince, who had a stellar sense of style on top of his music. The MTV of the early 1980s was full of random concert footage, slightly cheesy record company demos, and a whole lot of experimentation. The MTV of the 1990s had gotten a lot more sophisticated. The audience had been trained to expect visuals that were just as good as sound when it came to production values. This was Prince’s world when I entered it. I wanted to learn all about this technical part of the music business, and he loved teaching me about it. Something I learned about him in the subsequent years was that work was his way of dealing with whatever was wrong or painful or disappointing in his life. He made art—musical, theatrical, and visual. He lost himself in the act of creation. That’s something we had in common, so I never questioned it. I was thrilled to follow him down the creative rabbit hole. In that moment, all that mattered was the soaring sense of happiness I felt every time I received a letter from him. The more out-of-this-world it was, the better I liked it.

  … If u like and if it’s ok by Nellie, maybe we could fly away 2 Jupiter. I hear the food is good there. If not, u can cook. But only as a last resort. Don’t bring any clothes—only your dancing costumes. During the day u can wear my clothes. We can go swimming in their ocean 2. They say all water there is pink. Imagine that. All water in Stockholm are tears. I miss u. So I cry giraffe tears.

  Gilbert just called. I missed the last flight so I’ll send this off tomorrow. I’ll call U anyway 2night. I can’t wait 2 hear U.

  Love & ,

  Prince

  After Germany, the Nude Tour continued to Sweden. Prince called me from Stockholm and said, “I’m playing Switzerland this week. Do you and your mom want to come?”

  “Absolutely!” My heart was already out the door.

  Ten minutes later, his security person called and told me our tickets would be waiting for us at the airport. Jan and I had been bumped up to first class a few times when we were flying as unaccompanied minors, but this was my first actual first-class ticket—and with a Mercedes waiting to pick me up at baggage claim. Once again, the bodyguard greeted us in the lobby. Mama and I waited for a while, and then a note arrived. It was written in pencil on a sheet torn from a spiral notebook, which was unusual for him. It said:

  Hi! don’t look so good cuz I’m sick, but I’ll get dressed and come get u in a little while. If u 2 need anything, please let one of my guys know and they will fix u up. So happy u are here O.K. safe & sound.

  P

  A little while later, he called and spoke with Mama. He apologized for the wait and asked her how the flight was, and they made small talk for fifteen or twenty minutes, and t
hen she handed me the phone. He said he still wasn’t feeling well, so rather than come out to see us, he just wanted me to come in for a while. He asked if that was all right with Mama, and Mama wasn’t going to stand in my way, that was for sure.

  When I went into his room, he was sitting on one end of a big sofa, listening to music. The suite looked almost identical to the room in Frankfurt, thanks to the foo foo master’s magic touch. He was as put together as he had been the first time I saw him—meticulously trimmed beard, flawless skin, perfect eyeliner—but he did seem a bit subdued. Something was off from his usual vibrant energy.

  I sat cross-legged (“dancer style”) at the other end of the sofa, and he said, “I have a confession to make. I’ve been having Gilbert call you because I don’t know how to pronounce your name. I didn’t want to say it until I could say it correctly.”

  I was so touched by that. People almost never know how to pronounce my name, and most of them either stomp right on in and say it wrong without caring, or they avoid it like it’s a swear word. This was particularly upsetting to me when I started school in first grade, having no idea that my name was any different from Jan’s. I came home upset because my teacher kept calling me “Garcia,” while she called the rest of the children by their first names. This didn’t sit well with Mama. I was one of very few Latin children in the class, and she wasn’t about to put up with anything that smelled like discrimination. She went over to the school the next morning and told the teacher, “Unless you’re going to call all the other children by their last names, I suggest you learn how to pronounce my daughter’s name. I won’t have her singled out.” Then she schooled my teacher on how to say it, and I was used to explaining it the same way.

  “Say ‘my telephone,’” I said, “but stop before ‘–lephone.’ Like Myyyyyy. Teeeelephone. My. Te—! Mayte.”

  “Mayte.” He pronounced it carefully and correctly. He practiced it a few times, and from then on, he was the first one to step in and correct anyone—including Herb Ritts—who mispronounced it. I always loved that.