The Most Beautiful

by Mayte Garcia

  The driver took a right off the main road onto a long, curving trail. Later, when I lived in Minnesota and worked at Paisley, I used to ride my bike with my little dog Mia in a basket on the handlebars, cruising along without fear that a car might come around the bend. Eventually, neighborhoods started springing up around us, but back then, there was nothing but snow and woods until we came to a guardhouse and a pair of wide gates that slowly swung open for the limo.

  Prince’s house was repainted a different color on a regular basis, and a new car—whatever was latest and greatest, preferably a BMW—was custom painted to match it. Things would stay whatever flavor he was into for a year or two, and then the whole thing—his whole life, really—would undergo a change of wardrobe. The last week of December 1990, the first time I visited him at the house that would eventually be our home, the exterior was electric blue and rose-hip pink. Two years later, I arrived to find it canary yellow with purple accents. You can see the matching yellow and purple car in the “Sexy M.F.” video. When we were married, he had the place redone white and gold, and you can see the matching car in the “Betcha by Golly Wow!” video.

  When I lived in this house, I always came and went through the garage, but guests came and went via the big front door. Prince met me in the foyer with a smile and a hug and gave me the grand tour. The living room was woodsy and masculine with a heavy oak staircase and high-beamed ceilings like an upscale log cabin. I’d grown up in modest one-story houses and small military apartments, so to me at that time, it seemed very grand, but on the spectrum of rock star houses I’ve been in since then, Prince’s house in Chanhassen was very much a normal person’s house.

  In the living room, there was a lavender grand piano that looked warm and well played. Next to it was an enormous Christmas tree with all the typical decorations. In the dining room, linen-covered chairs were placed around a circular table. In the kitchen, the fridge was full of water bottles and meals made by a chef. Everything was in its place—a cookie jar on the counter, a selection of tea and honey bears in the cupboard, a supply of Tostitos that he always kept handy.

  Walking down the hallway, his boots made a particularly musical sound on the terra-cotta tiles. There were metal ornaments at the backs of the ankles—a combination of the symbols for male and female—and they jingled like spurs. The distinct sound of his footsteps became so familiar to me; I still hear it occasionally in my dreams.

  He took me to the guest room where I would be staying, and it was like the bedroom in Under the Cherry Moon—all champagne-colored silk and plush pillows, crystals, and white carpet—exactly what I had dreamed as a kid. I would be using the Jack-and-Jill bathroom between the guest room and his office, which was a serious workspace with a big, mirrored desk. It also had gold leaf and crystals and all the foo foo décor I’d seen in the hotels, along with the harlequins I’d seen in Purple Rain.

  We went up to his room, which I immediately recognized as the room re-created in the hotels where I’d visited him. It was windowless, but carefully lit in a tasteful, sensual way that could be adjusted for the occasion. There were no windows, so it could be dark during the day. On the heavy console headboard of the bed, there were candles, beads, and more harlequins. The thick carpet, huge bed, fireplace, veils, lava lamps, dandelion lamps—they all made it feel like a genie’s haven, so I found it strangely comforting to see that his bathroom was stocked with regular things like toothpaste and mouthwash, but not like a regular guy’s bathroom; he had Oil of Olay, fancy soaps, and distinctly feminine perfumes.

  He showed me the Wonderland that was his walk-in closet. All his clothes were organized by color, beginning with black and then brown, red, and an amazing array of purple, indigo, and blue. Coordinating shoes were lined up on the floor below, and by this time, I felt we knew each other well enough that I could let my curiosity lead the way.

  I chose a pair of black boots, and we both laughed when I had to forcibly jam my foot into one. No Cinderella here. His shoe was a tight fit for me, and I wore a women’s size 7. I was usually wearing flats, and most of his shoes had a generous heel, so I didn’t realize for a long time that at five feet four, I was actually two inches taller than him. Onstage, his presence loomed larger than life, and in person, he had such power and charm that he somehow occupied the room with a stature that was not small, as if he were bigger on the inside than he was on the outside. Then and now, I can’t imagine him being any taller. He was perfect, really. Exactly the right size to be himself.

  It was about stance more than height. Something in your spine is different when you wear heels. Whenever I go shopping with Jan or with girlfriends, I stand on my tiptoes. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying on; it’s going to look better. I dance barefoot, but I still dance on my toes, as if I’m wearing invisible heels. Prince was the same way; he always preferred to have a substantial heel to his shoe. He finally started wearing those fuzzy, flat Ugg boots that came into fashion a few years later, but even then he’d still get on his toes when he played guitar.

  Our last stop on the tour was downstairs, where there was a garden-level apartment with its own kitchen and bathroom, where people stayed sometimes. Mama stayed there once when I was having a hard time, but in general, guests were a fairly rare occurrence at Prince’s house, and only a bit less rare when it was a home we shared. The apartment was mainly occupied by a pool table and game room, and there was another grand piano. This space was the studio Prince worked in before Paisley Park was built, so all the doors were those heavy wooden studio doors, and some of the walls were still covered with soundproofing. This was where he and Susannah Melvoin, Wendy’s twin sister, wrote “Starfish and Coffee” together.

  At the time, I just thought the place was very cool. It didn’t occur to me until much later that he’d had a lot of women in that house before me. And after me. At least one during me. But that’s a matter for the sad woman sitting on the pier, not for the fresh-faced seventeen-year-old. See, people, this is the inconvenience of all lives existing at all times: we cross paths and trip over each other occasionally. I don’t know which self to follow, because so many memories—so many versions of myself—existed in this place at different times. I was both a child and a mother in this house, a beloved wife and an unwelcome ghost who haunted the place until he tore it down.

  Prince was sensitive to what these walls had witnessed. Maybe that was the reason for the habitual wardrobe change the house underwent—at least on the outside—every year or two. Right before we got married, he had the entire place revamped to welcome me home. He very carefully and consciously made it our home with lavender carpet that I loved and our entwined zodiac signs at the bottom of the stairs. Our family symbol—a combination of his symbol and the letter M combined—was mounted on the wall and inscribed on the sinks in the master bathroom. The drawer pulls and closet knobs were fancy gold Ms that formed a heart. All the furniture was new and reflected a home in which children and Christmas trees and dogs and family would be the natural next step. He spent a lot and paid great attention to detail. When he carried me over the threshold, slung over his shoulder caveman-style, it was like coming into a completely new house. A huge delivery of boxes arrived, and he was very excited to show me.

  “It’s our china,” he told me. It had been specially made with an imprint of his symbol combined with an M.

  It seemed rather overboard, but it was such a lovely gesture that I hated to point out, “But we never eat at home.”

  “We will,” he said. “I’ll make you some eggs.” And he did.

  After the grand tour, he asked if I wanted to eat. I was too overwhelmed to imagine eating, but I said, “Sure.”

  We went to the garage and got into a Jeep Cherokee with deeply tinted windows. I wasn’t usually one for tinted windows like this (driving his tinted-out BMW in LA not long after this, I hit a curb and flattened two tires), but he loved driving around in his car, knowing he could see out but no one could see in. It wasn’t exact
ly incognito; everyone in Chanhassen knew it was him, and he’d honk and wave. For a moment, they’d be startled—Hey, why is this car honking at me?—and then they’d realize it was him. Who else would be driving around a small Minnesota town in a turquoise or canary yellow BMW?

  Instead of going somewhere to eat, we drove around listening to Diamonds and Pearls, his first album with New Power Generation, and talking about the music. He took me to Lake Calhoun, which was frozen solid. I’d never seen people walking around on a lake like that. There was an arboretum near his house, so we went there and listened to the whole album again. He drove into Minneapolis to show me the city, which was all decked out with holiday decorations, and then we went back to Paisley Park.

  This was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, so the building was closed, and there was no one else there when he unlocked the door near the stairway that led to his office. We went to the main lobby, which felt like a cathedral, and visited the white doves, Majesty and Divinity.

  “Are they boys or girls?” I asked.

  “One of each,” he said. “I got them when we were building this place.”

  His office was like another whole house, and a lot like his office at home. He went there when it got late—or early—and he just needed to close his eyes for a little while before heading back into the studio. The skylights and stained-glass windows filled the place with natural light. The kitchen offered the standard fare: Tostitos, an assortment of Celestial Seasonings teas—mostly the spicy, cinnamon ones, Earl Grey, something with a tiger on the box—and plenty of honey in plastic bears.

  He showed me Studio A and Studio B, where music was recorded, and Studio C, which was like a dance studio. We went to the soundstage, where movies and music videos were filmed and tour performances rehearsed, a space taller and wider than any military airplane hangar I’d been in.

  “Wow. This is big,” I said, and my voice echoed somewhere in the dark high, high overhead.

  He didn’t work too much that trip, but I could tell he was having a hard time being away from it. I wandered around by myself, exploring for a while, paid another visit to the doves, and played with Paisley, the building cat who’d been there since Paisley Park opened. I went back to the studio to quietly observe as he continued to finesse the music we’d listened to in the car. The jet lag was starting to catch up with me, but I was only there for two days and didn’t want to nap away any of my time.

  I’d brought music and a belly dancing costume, because it was strange to me that he’d never actually seen me dance. (No, videotape is not the same.) Somewhere between my Wonder Woman turn and the final clang of the zills, I felt a shift in the energy of the performance. I’d always danced as an act of personal power, not seduction. This was the first time I was more focused on the person I was dancing for than I was on myself. The sensual undercurrent took me by surprise. I noticed when I stopped that he had taken a pillow from the sofa and was holding it in his lap.

  “You should go change,” he said.

  I went to bed fairly early and woke up in the Cherry Moon bed. We made pancakes, and we loafed around a little and then went to the movies. The Godfather III was playing, and he was very into the whole Godfather saga. He brought me up to speed on the way to the theater. “See, Michael Corleone meets this girl—half Greek, half Sicilian,” he told me. “And Apollonia is the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. He’s struck by what they call ‘The Thunderbolt’—meaning he immediately has this passion for this woman, this longing that only she can satisfy. So he marries her—she’s a virgin, and it’s a very big deal—and then she gets killed by a car bomb.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Yeah. And he remarries—Diane Keaton—but she ain’t no thunderbolt, and his hunger for revenge ends up destroying the whole family.”

  “So in Purple Rain—that’s why you called her Apollonia.”

  “Originally, I wanted Vanity to do it. She said she wanted a million dollars. I said that wasn’t possible, and she said, ‘Then I’m not in it.’ That was it. Broke my heart. I started watching audition tapes. No. No. No. Hell no. Then I get to this one. ‘Yes. She’s cool.’ Opening day we hid under the table at a hotel like little kids. Just got kind of freaked out.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It was such… magnitude. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “I was eleven when I saw it.”

  “Eleven.” He made a sound that was slightly pained. “She had to say it.”

  Our tickets had been purchased ahead of time, and we waited for the lights to go down before we crept to our seats. I was holding our bucket of popcorn in my lap, and as the previews were playing, he dumped a box of something into it.

  “Hey! What was that?” I whispered.

  “Goobers,” he whispered back.

  “What are Goobers?”

  “They’re chocolate-covered peanuts. Don’t tell me you never had Goobers.”

  “I’m a ballerina. My junk food vocabulary is limited to baklava and pancakes.”

  I scooped up a handful of popcorn with Goobers, and I have never looked back. To this day, when Gia and I go to the movies, I can’t help myself. I have to throw Goobers in the popcorn. I don’t dump in the whole box of Goobers like he always did, because all that sugar would send Gia bouncing off the walls, but I love how excited she gets when she discovers one.

  “Mama! You gave me a Goober!” She squeezes my arm in the dark, and I think of my dear friend and what it means to be hit by The Thunderbolt.

  See the man cry as the city condemns where he lives

  Memories die but the taxes he’ll still have 2 give…

  Within weeks of Prince’s death, the estate announced that Paisley Park would be open to the public as a tourist attraction, and just the other day, I read that Warner Bros. would be releasing the first of many recordings from Prince’s infamous “vault” at Paisley Park. This thing actually is a vault, like in a bank, filled with fully mastered music, most of which has never been heard outside the studio. I’m conflicted about this, because I’ve heard some of the music, and it’s amazing. It should be heard by the world. But during his lifetime, he fought so hard to keep it out of the corporate pipeline. He loved the evolving technology that would make it possible for him to sell music—or give it away—directly to fans.

  I understood the need to pay the enormous cost of upkeep on Paisley Park, but it bothered me, and I didn’t even know what that meant—the “estate.” Family, I suppose. Half-siblings. Omarr, whom I came to know over the years, and his sister Tyka, the first person he named when I asked him, “Who are the people you truly love?” But I’d mostly heard Prince speak of his coworkers as family—Sheila E, Morris Day, Wendy and Lisa, and his other bandmates—and I came to think of them as my own extended family as well.

    five

  The first time I went to prom, I went with a punker who wore a dress. You have to have some kind of weirdness to interest me. We weren’t dating, just friends. I think I may have loaned him my eyeliner. The last prom I went to, I went with my friend Papu, a big Hawaiian kid, who was very understanding about the fact that I could be there for only thirty minutes. Just long enough for us to have our picture taken. My parents were waiting outside to take me to a gig. Prince thought this was hilarious.

  That last year I lived in Germany, I was the go-to belly dancer in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, and Mainz. I had friends at school—mostly my chorus and drama people—but I was known as a good girl. I didn’t go to games or pep rallies. I didn’t even eat lunch at school, because I spent half the school day at the state theater, taking ballet classes that were counted as class hours, which allowed me to graduate a year early. All I wanted to do was dance in Cairo. Only my good friends Stephanie and Allison knew where I’d been over the holidays. I liked keeping a low profile about it. The letters and tapes were deeply personal. I didn’t like the idea of being questioned about it. I didn’t like the assumptio
ns I knew people would make.

  The night of the thirty-minute prom, I was also double booked to dance. The first gig was a slight departure from my usual belly dance/flamenco fusion. This was a full-on flamenco thing—a showcase for belly dancers supporting other belly dancers—which I’d agreed to do months earlier. By the time I realized that prom was that night and my professional certification exam was the next morning, advertising had gone out, and Mama was getting nervous about the time frame. I was the hardest working belly dancer in the show, and she was worried that I’d perform some underprepared dance and not look good for the belly dance community.

  She’d always had more of a Spanish flair, so she took an old costume of hers, altered it to fit me—a gorgeous red dress with a red bolero. I had studied and watched the dance but never got into the zapateo part of it, but I tried on the outfit the night before prom and loved it. I asked her to let me have the big Spanish peineta that women always wear with a huge flower and a manton, the lace Spanish shawl. The more stuff I asked for, the more nervous she got.

  “When are you planning to rehearse this?” she kept asking.

  “I’ve been visualizing it,” I said. “When I’m in bed and working on ballet and talking on the phone.”

  She did not find this comforting and was anxiously waiting in the car while I did the prom drive-by. On the way to the show, she and Daddy kept trying to talk to me, and I kept saying, “Please! Just be quiet and let me listen to this music. I have to memorize this drum solo.”

  I love a good drum solo, by the way. Nothing is choreographed, but when I know the drums, I have a basic plan. Nothing excites me more than a live drummer. Not knowing what the other person is going to do creates a tense energy between dancer and drummer, and I love that. I didn’t know it then, but this was exactly what would happen when I was onstage with Prince, particularly during his famous after-concert shows, when he’d leave a huge stadium performance and head for some small club where we would all jam our butts off for two hours or more. One night in London, he slayed an extended version of “Peach” for over half an hour while I danced around him like a Turkish darvesh on steroids. When it was over, he spiked his guitar like a football, grabbed my hand, strutted backstage, and just fell out flat, spread-eagled on the floor. He was in ecstasy.