by Mayte Garcia
Getting into my costume for the showcase, I trusted the drums to take me where I needed to go, but I was worried about a strained muscle in my foot. One of the male Egyptian belly dancers saw me backstage trying to stretch my feet by stepping on a bottle and asked me what was wrong.
“I’ve been preparing for a ballet exam,” I told him, “doing a lot en pointe.”
He said, “I’m Ali. I’m a massage therapist. Let me take a look at it. Maybe I can help.”
At first I said no, because I never liked to be touched like that, especially by a man. Even now, a friend will try to gift me a massage—not happening. (But thank you!) In this case, I was desperate, so I sat down, and he took my foot between his hands. Within minutes, the pain was gone. I don’t know what he did, but I’ve never forgotten the experience. It was such a relief, and as the pain disappeared, a fresh infusion of energy replaced the tension I’d been feeling. I finished preparing, putting my hair up and drawing a bold curl on my face. Mama took one look and was more scared than ever, but I laughed and told her, “Go sit down already. It’ll be fine.”
The moment that music kicked in, I was lost in that energy, and a passion that can’t be choreographed took over my body. There was a moment when I caught my mother’s eye just as I did a deep backbend and released that updo she was worried about, letting my long hair flow down as I came up. I smiled, because her face was priceless—complete awe at what she was seeing. To this day, she says it’s her favorite performance of mine. People loved it and wanted to know who’d choreographed it. I had to tell them, “No one. And I couldn’t repeat it if my life depended on it.” It was something that came out in that moment and only that moment. If I tried to replicate it, it would never be the same.
But there was no time to revel in it. I had to get to my regular gig at a local restaurant. After that, I went home exhausted and ate a huge plate of spaghetti, knowing I’d need the carbs to get through the exam the next day.
Along with about fifty other girls in tutus and pointe shoes, I registered for a master class, which was grueling but doable because my ballet teacher was strict and had prepared me well. I warmed up and waited my turn to perform my classical piece. When I finally walked into the room, I had to laugh. It was exactly like Flashdance, right down to the long table of grim-looking judges and an old-school turntable off to the side. I put a cassette into the tape player instead, but my finger was trembling just like the girl’s was in the movie when I pushed Play.
After I danced, I waited outside with the rest of the girls, expecting someone to come out and tell us to either leave or prepare for the next round. Instead, someone came out and said a list had been posted. Everyone was either really good or really bad. You either had your certificate or you were out. While everyone was freaking out around me, surging for the list, I sat there thinking about the years of stress fractures and no pizza or brownies or going-out nights. I had sacrificed a lot to be a ballerina. Now, for the first time in my life, I was getting scared, because a lot of girls who’d sacrificed and slaved for the same goal were seeing that their best wasn’t good enough, and it was heartbreaking.
As the group thinned, I made my way forward and saw my name on a sheet of paper. Congratulations, it said in German, you have passed. No need to do the rest of the segments as the judges could see through your classical routine that you have all the technical work to perform any of them. Best of luck. Please allow a few days for your certificate. I drove home on cloud nine and ate a cookie to celebrate. When my dad pulled up in the driveway, I ran out and jumped into his arms like a four-year-old. He and Mama were so happy for me. They’d sacrificed for this, too. The certification would keep me in Germany as a professional dancer if I wanted that, but I knew I could make better money in Cairo, and when I was done with Cairo, I’d be able to go anywhere in the world and teach. The dancer’s diet is sort of symbolic: As a ballerina, I’d be killing my hunger with tomato juice and coffee, carrots in my pockets at all times, in order to stay stick thin. As a belly dancer, I’d be making bank and eating baklava, trying to maintain an extra fifteen pounds. No brainer.
Prince called that night, and I told him the whole saga.
“This is big,” I told him. “Now I can go anywhere as a dancer. I can do anything.”
I’d filmed myself practicing all three components of the exam, and unlike the German judges, he wanted to see them all, plus the magical flamenco moment and everything else I was doing. He loved the classical and belly dance best. The music he was sending me was more and more in sync with the rhythm I could dance to, and I started seeing the classical dance moves he was instinctively doing onstage. Entrechat quatre—a classical ballet term meaning “interweaving” or “braiding”—is when a dancer jumps up, exchanging feet quickly, front back front back. When I noticed him doing that, I said, “Hey, that’s ballet! Where did you get that?”
“Baryshnikov,” he shrugged. No big deal.
Before graduation, I made a short trip over to the States to visit Jan at the University of Maryland. She was in her element, soaking up college life, hanging out with a nice crowd, and working as a DJ and standup comic. But I knew this wasn’t for me. I didn’t even bother taking my SATs. In May 1991, I graduated from high school, seventeen going on thirty. I was a lot more grown up than many adults I’ve known in my life. I’d been running my own business in a pretty big way for several years, traveled all over the world, and studied my craft with diligence and self-discipline. I had done a lot, seen a lot, and been through some pretty intense life experiences.
Legally, however, I was still a minor. Prince seemed to operate on a plane of existence where age didn’t matter. He always said he didn’t count birthdays because he didn’t count days at all, and then he’d add with a sly smile, “That’s why I look the same as I did ten years ago.” His legal team was not so existential about it. Prince wanted me near, but since I was just seventeen and a half, they drew up a power of attorney document, making Prince my legal guardian for six months. After that, I’d be eighteen, a legal adult. Meanwhile, the document with my father’s signature allowed me to travel by myself to LA and Minnesota, work on film and recording projects, and participate in performances at all hours of the day or night. The agreement was pretty open as to what these projects and performances might be, but Prince got on the phone with Daddy and told him, “She’ll be safe. You can trust me.”
“I know where to find you,” said Daddy, and he wasn’t completely kidding, but he and Mama had faith in my ability to keep my head on straight. They knew that the opportunity to work with Prince could be a game changer for my career.
I was completely oblivious to all this at the time. This document came as a complete surprise to me just a few weeks ago. Blew my mind a little, to be honest. But maybe it does explain, in part, how protective Prince was in those days. He was careful not to get my hopes up or encourage any expectations on my part. The first time he flew me to LA, he’d mentioned he was doing a music video for “Diamonds and Pearls,” but I thought I was just going to be there to hang out like we usually did. That was exciting enough for me. As I flew into LAX from Germany, I remembered flying in for That’s Incredible!, seeing the Hollywood sign for the first time, knowing with that hazy sixth sense, I’ll be back.
Prince’s security people met me at the airport and said, “Hey, Martha.”
“What? Why are you calling me Martha?”
“You’re Martha George,” they told me. “He wants you on this video, but if they find out you’re seventeen, you can’t do it. Your dad said it’s okay, but there’s a union thing and paperwork, so… you’re Martha.”
Okay, I figured. I can rock Martha.
The “Diamonds and Pearls” music video was an elaborate vision that cost a bundle and was being directed by Rebecca Blake, who also directed “Kiss” and “Cream” for Prince. (She’d also done a few music videos with my old heartthrob Luis Miguel.) When I presented myself to her, she said the polite but dismiss
ive things directors say to you at a cattle-call audition you’re not nailing. Later Prince told me what she’d said to him: “I don’t think she’s sexy enough. I don’t think she’s got that thing.”
Hard to hear. But good to know.
“I cannot believe she doesn’t see what I see,” he said, “but… okay.”
He trusted her judgment, and I can’t argue with the final results. The music video is a thing of beauty with gorgeous locations, grand pianos, dancers, musicians, children, bubbles, a chase scene—it was a huge, huge production. I was pretty crushed not to be a part of it, but I took it like a professional. It was still thrilling to be in LA, visiting Prince at his house and helping him make breakfast the next morning.
He asked about my parents, and I said, “They broke up again. Sort of.”
“How do you sort of break up with your wife?”
“They’re still living together, but they’re both seeing other people.”
“Huh-oh. That don’t work.”
“They love each other, but together—I don’t know. It’s a strange relationship. I keep saying, ‘Would you guys please, please break up?’ I think they’re waiting until I leave home, but I can’t take the fighting. It’s just like when I was a little kid. Arguments and jealousy and… just that lack of respect for each other.”
He squeezed my hand. “My parents were like that, too.”
He slid eggs off the griddle onto our plates, and while we ate, he told me a bit about his own battlefield childhood. He told me that when he was around seven years old, his mother came home from a shopping trip one day with her shirt inside out, because she’d been trying on clothes and was in a hurry to get home. His father jumped to the conclusion that she’d been out cheating on him and went ballistic. As he was telling me about the violent scene that unfolded, I could see how deeply it still affected him. You see some allusions to it in Purple Rain. You see the house where he grew up witnessing a more vicious—and sometimes violent—version of what I grew up with, but not everything you see in the movie is literally autobiographical. His father didn’t have a gun, and his parents split when he was a little boy. His mother remarried, and Prince went to live with his father, but that didn’t last long. He was basically on his own when he was twelve.
This was the first of many conversations we had about his father over the years. Before we were married, I asked him, “Will I ever get to meet your dad?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We had a falling out.”
“About money?” I guessed, because if there was one thing that caused friction between my dad and me, it was money.
But Prince said, “No, it was about music. He kept sending me cassette tapes just pounding on the piano and maybe after an hour, he finally hits three beautiful notes, but I gotta listen to a whole tape of that pounding for these three notes? I think he lost it.”
At the end of the day, we both loved our parents and saw them for the beautifully flawed people they were. The best we could do was try to understand life from their perspective and be grateful for what they gave us.
“My mom grew up without any affection,” I said, “so she’s not a very affectionate person, but she’s smart and witty and incredibly strong, and she has a strong faith. Daddy’s the opposite: emotional, an atheist—which I don’t get at all. I’m like, ‘How can you think that? Don’t tell me you haven’t seen any miracles in your life.’ It’s a soul thing. We have these deep discussions, and he goes with me to almost all my gigs. He’s my best buddy, but sometimes—I mean, would you believe he brought his girlfriend along to a Frankfurt gig when I was fifteen? We’re on our way, and he stops off to pick her up, and I’m like, ‘She’s coming? Excuse me?’”
“Ah, nah.” He cringed. “That’s not right. There’s a thing called discretion, man. There’s a thing called savoir faire.”
“I made her sit in the back. And he had to pay for her drinks.”
Prince really cracked up laughing then, and it felt like a win when I was able to really crack him up. He loved to make other people laugh and embraced a good laugh when it was available to him. And this rental house in LA had a good kitchen for laughing. Just the right amount of reverb off the tile backsplash and big windows. We shared many mornings like this in various houses he rented in LA. During the years when we were a couple, every once in a while, when it got unbearably cold in Minnesota, too cold for the good people and the bad, he’d prod me awake and say, “Let’s go to LA.” California seemed to be full of light and air, and breakfast together felt like the safe haven of love and pancakes neither of us had when we were children.
Prince hated that I was bummed out about not getting cast in the “Diamonds and Pearls” video, so he took me shopping on Melrose Avenue, which back then was a cool street where you could get all the up-and-coming designers. Prior to that day, my only experience of shopping was at the mall: part utilitarian, part social function.
“Trust me,” he said, “you don’t want to go to the mall with me. Last time I went to a mall, I took half the people with me. Not good. There’s screaming and craziness. People get hurt.”
His idea of shopping was a “fast and plenty” approach. We drove down Melrose in the limo, and at each place, either a bodyguard would go in first to prepare the store for Prince’s arrival or Prince, who was faster than anybody else, would bolt in and out before the people inside knew what was happening. So I followed suit. No time to check price tags. Just scope out the coolest clothes, grab whatever we want, and hand it to his security on our way out.
“Do you like this dress?” he’d ask me, holding up something I wouldn’t wear in a million years. My day-to-day clothes were mostly leggings with oversize shirts and maybe a jacket. But wanting to be a team player, I’d say, “I don’t know. I think so?” He’d smile and hand it to the security guy. When I really did like something, I didn’t have to say a word. All I had to do was smile and he’d hand it over. We laughed at the crazy stuff—bondage bras and leather—but it was a little early for that sort of thing.
There would come a time later on when I would lead these expeditions on my own—and Prince would usually end up wearing the clothes I bought for myself. When I was in the band, Melrose was my go-to place for short skirts, tiny tops, cool boots, and punky sweaters. It was the King’s Road of Los Angeles. I became the shopper because when he wasn’t wearing custom clothes, he wanted to wear a jacket or stylized pants, and the best styles (and sizes) for him were usually found in the women’s department. I got used to buying suits, knowing that he was going to take them for himself and put in shoulder pads or dude them up in some way. He’s the only man in the world who was really able to make that work—and work well.
He walked through one shop after another, scooping things off racks—dresses, skirts, sweaters, jackets, and sneakers so I could play basketball with him—and people followed behind us, paying for everything.
“It reminded me of that shopping scene in Pretty Woman,” I told Jan.
As the limo pulled away from the hotel, taking me back to the airport, I looked over my shoulder crying. Another Pretty Woman moment. I felt like that every time I left him, like I was leaving my other half. It was so comfortable to be around him. He could be incredibly funny and had the capacity for such tenderness. He could also be mean, I soon discovered—but so could I, so even that was weirdly okay with me. It made him human, and he seemed to like and respect me more when I checked him on it. He had more than enough women putting him on a pedestal. He needed someone who wasn’t afraid to tell him the truth and work hard and play hard. I couldn’t beat him at basketball, but I could lift him up, and my legs were so strong, I could get a wrestling lock on him and make him say “uncle.”
I started making frequent trips to Paisley Park. We recorded “The Max,” “Blue Light,” and “When God Created Woman” all in one marathon session. I hung out on the soundstage watching the Diamonds and Pearls Tour show coming together. I sat dancer style on a long black so
fa in the studio, watching and listening to him work, doing my best not to nod off. When I was in Germany, he called almost every day, and I continued sending him videos. Lisa Bonet was directing a video for him, and after she also declined to cast me, he wrote:
MAYTE!
What a kickin’ tape! Ballet is cool, but when u dance like that… ! Thank u. keep all your tapes in a little secret section in my house. Only know where they are.
Believe it or not, Lisa thought u were 2 pretty 4 the part in the video. The girl she picked is tall and strange-looking with short hair. Such is life. But ’m sure we’ll work 2gether on something. miss u 2 & hope 2 see u soon!
That summer, I saw the movie City Slickers and fell in love with Billy Crystal’s rescued calf, Norman. I announced to my dad and everyone else, “I’m not eating beef ever again. I’m going to be a vegetarian.”
“What if I make beef?” said Daddy.
“Make it. I’m not eating it.”
I felt myself taking ownership of my life in big and small ways. When it came time for my regular visit to Madame Abla, I told Prince, “I think I’ll stay in Cairo for three months or so. I need to gain some weight and improve my Arabic and get my next contract hooked up.”
“Wait a second,” he said. “You’re going to Egypt? Can I send a film crew with you?”