The Most Beautiful

by Mayte Garcia

  “No, no. She has a crush on me,” he said. He was so good at this. One could easily take a very cynical view of the way he was with women, but for the most part, you gotta admit, the women weren’t complaining.

  It was a one-time hang with Carmen. I didn’t see much of her after that. She was sent off on tour to promote her album, even though the reviews weren’t great. Something I eventually learned: Prince’s top girlfriend was always in Minneapolis. When you came to Minneapolis, you were the girl on her way in. When you left Minneapolis, you were the girl on her way out.

  This would have been a valuable piece of information for me to keep in my own hip pocket.

  My first show with Prince was at the Tokyo Dome in April 1992. I was incredibly grateful and excited to be part of it. Before the show started, I peeked out at the Jumbotron. Playing on a continuous loop were ads for Carmen Electra’s forthcoming album and Prince’s single “Sweet Baby,” then the symbol that would later become his name landed on the screen, followed by “Introducing Mayte,” with footage of me walking in Cairo.

  Before every performance of New Power Generation—or any version of Prince that I was around—we all gathered in his dressing room to pray. No matter what else was happening, we came together and joined hands. He’d ask for God’s hand on us, that He would give us strength and send angels to protect us from injury, that the Holy Spirit would lift up the music, that the audience would be blessed and happy and safe from harm. It was a powerful ritual, centering, and we never took the stage without it.

  The Tokyo Dome was filled almost to capacity—an audience of forty-eight thousand—and the torrent of energy that came from the crowd made me feel like a fork in a light socket. I’d spent two-thirds of my life onstage, but this was a whole new level of performance high. The show started with a stirring rendition of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and ended with “Peter Gunn” and visited some of his hugest hits along the way. For two hours, Prince sang, danced, shredded guitars, and played the piano, when he wasn’t dancing on top of it or leaping off it to land in splits. He knew how to read the crowd, and he gave everything, which made all of us want to give everything right along with him.

  I started the show out of sight below the huge love symbol set piece that rose up in the air to reveal me standing there in my belly dancing outfit made by Madame Abla. Wardrobe made Prince a yellow and purple outfit to match it. Both were gorgeous one-of-a-kind creations, but his could be dry cleaned. Because of the hand beading on mine, it required special care. So they both got progressively more shopworn, but mine was getting seriously ripe as the tour went on.

  One night as we headed for the stage, he said, “Getting sick of that outfit yet?”

  “It could walk out there on its own,” I said. “I could be taking a nap.”

  He laughed and nudged me, elbow to elbow. “You’re funny.”

  Every night, I’d feel a rush of adrenalin as the giant symbol set piece lifted up over me and the roar of the crowd hit me like a hurricane. I danced to “Thunder,” and then I dodged offstage for a quick change to a chiffon dress with ballerina tights and pointe shoes while the roadies whipped down a piece of Marley flooring for me to dance on. I danced to “Diamonds and Pearls” and then I had forty-five minutes to change again, touch up my makeup, drink some water, and get back onstage for “Cream.”

  We were in Japan for a week, and while we were there, we filmed “The Continental” music video, which has footage from the Cairo trip with Randee along with live concert footage from the Tokyo Dome, some B-roll shot on the bullet train in Japan, and a whole lot of bedroom footage I had nothing to do with. Many of his music videos came together in this sort of collage, which is why we never questioned dressing up or standing on a bridge or riding around on a carousel. I don’t think he knew himself when a lot of these images might come in handy; he just knew they would. If you watch the “Sweet Baby” video, you see me walking around Minneapolis, riding a camel across the desert in front of the Great Pyramids, and goofing around on a carousel with Prince, but it all makes sense somehow in the story of a girl going out into the world to find herself.

  After Tokyo, we went to Australia and did fourteen shows in twenty days. We had a two-week break and then hit Europe—Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, England, Scotland, back to Germany and the Netherlands, and then France. Somewhere after Brisbane, they all started to blur together, and I started getting the standard tour jokes about not knowing what city you’re in or even what day it is. The tour manager would usually remind Prince before he went out onstage, but every once in a while, he’d say something like, “You look so fine, Copenhagen!” and the tour manager would be in the background yelling, “Ghent! We’re in Ghent!”

  Touring at that level requires tremendous endurance, speed. The one thing that kept us going was the music. We’d look at each other, and we’d be in the zone. That all went out the window when we got offstage two hours later, dizzy from hunger and dehydration. My head was reeling. What just happened? How long did we perform? We’d stumble back onto the bus and wait to see if there was an aftershow, which would mean another two hours onstage.

  We could tell there was going to be an aftershow if the sound people rented extra equipment, because the equipment from the show would have to be boxed up immediately and sent on to the next city. Extra equipment meant we were gearing up for a second shift. Sometimes we all went along to these aftershows. Sometimes he just wanted me to come and dance while he played guitar. Sometimes he’d go by himself, and I’d get the call at five in the morning to come over and see what he did. We’d sit with our feet up, munching popcorn and watching the videotape on the roadie case like we did when I was sixteen. We’d fall asleep at seven or eight and wake up a few hours later to do it all again.

  There wasn’t much downtime. We’d travel, get to the hotel, head to the stadium, go to a dressing room—always a familiar place, thanks to the foo foo elves—then do the show, do the aftershow, crash for a few hours, and travel again. Huge eighteen-wheelers hauled the set and gear. There were three buses: one for crew, one for the band, and one for Prince. I was officially on board the band bus, but I often traveled with Prince. It was comfortable and easy when we were together, but the fact that we were close put some distance between me and the rest of the band. When the tour started, the dancers were already there, doing this whole thing that he created and everyone liked. When it was clear that I was not leaving, people started questioning why I was there. I was questioning it myself!

  As the tour headed across Europe, the German producer at that little record label in Frankfurt (toooo dramatic, remember?), caught wind of the fact that little ol’ Mayte was now onstage with Prince, and they quickly released the single I’d made when I was fifteen. They didn’t ask my permission, and they certainly didn’t send me any money. I didn’t even know about it until some members of the band got hold of it and started playing it in the hotel hallway one night, singing along at top volume.

  “Too dramatic! I don’t know why; it’s just the way that I am!”

  Hilarious. I couldn’t deny it.

  Less amusing was the fact that I was now touring with the biggest rock star in the world, my first single was out there getting airplay, and the janitor at the record label made more money than I did.

  One morning in Australia, I went for pancakes with a male band member. Back at the hotel, I saw I’d missed several calls from Prince.

  “Where have you been?” he asked when he finally got hold of me.

  “Eating some pancakes.”

  “With a guy?”

  “No, just—”

  “With who?”

  I told him.

  “That sounds like a guy.”

  “Yeah, but not like—wait a minute.”

  I didn’t understand what he was getting at. I wasn’t his girlfriend, and even if I was… But that didn’t matter. He was displeased, and people around him, including me, wanted him to be pleased. I could see
this poor guy sweating like there was a hammer over his head, even though he’d done nothing wrong. Not surprisingly, no one wanted to hang out with me or even talk to me after that.

  The hotels were booked on the ABC system: Artist (something swank with a presidential suite), Band (something less swank but still upscale), Crew (something budget conscious and close to the venue). I stayed in the same hotel as the band, but Prince would call me sometimes to come and hang out with him. I’d go over to the Artist hotel and watch movies and talk and laugh and make him laugh until I was tired, and then I’d ask one of his security people to take me back to the Band hotel.

  One night as I was on my way back to my room (I won’t even pretend to know what city we were in), I passed a room where the door was ajar, and some of the people from the band were inside talking and laughing. I stood still, close to the wall, listening to the jumbled bits and pieces of the conversation.

  What’s this belly dance thing he’s got going on? Why is she here?

  I couldn’t tell who was saying what in the mix of male and female voices, but I could tell they were talking about me. I suddenly felt profoundly stupid with my Wonder Woman turn and my ballet work ethic. When the music is my music, I’m dancing it, but there was very little of my music in this show. I was in only two or three numbers. He had me here so I wouldn’t go to Cairo. And somehow I was the last person to know it. He kept talking to me about “7,” saying, “I’m already there, but I have to do this.”

  … and I was like, oh my God, she stuffs her bra!

  My jaw dropped. Seriously? Diamond and Pearl turn out to be middle school mean girls? They were laughing at me. And sadly, I didn’t have my sword handy.

  “Mayte…” One of the horn players passed by on the way to his room. I walked quickly toward my room, and he hurried along with me. “What up? Why are you crying?”

  “I just heard what everyone’s been saying about me.”

  “No. They didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Yeah, right.” I went into my room and shut the door.

  Prince called me a little while later, and he could tell I was upset. I didn’t volunteer the story right away, but he nudged for it in a way that made me feel like I was gossiping with a girlfriend rather than ratting out my coworkers.

  “What exactly did they say?” he asked. I was embarrassed and didn’t want to tell him, but he said, “Don’t make me fish for it. Just tell me.”

  “They said… they said I stuffed my bra.”

  He cracked up laughing. “So?”

  “Yeah. Hilarious. Because I didn’t get tortured enough in sixth grade.”

  “Are you laughing or crying right now?”

  “Both.”

  “Stop crying,” he said. “They know their time is limited. I’ve moved on.”

  Not long after that, while I was still trying to make sense of what I was to him and where I fit in, he wrote to me:

  Our souls are the same. But our flesh is different. If we trip on things—material and worldly—then we will always trip on these things. One of the main reasons love and worship u is because u don’t have a history. And what’s more beautiful is that u don’t desire one. can’t begin 2 tell you how many women are jealous of u because they know u’re a virgin. They don’t want u around because they feel less than u. Their souls aren’t advanced enough 2 know that deep inside—beneath their ‘history’—we are all the same. Anytime someone ‘tripped’ on your presence was because of jealousy or fear. U had something they wanted. And whenever u ‘tripped’ with them—that’s when u were unhappy.

  My relationship with Prince during the Diamonds and Pearls Tour quickly became a lot more stressful than the giggling phone calls we shared while I was living in Germany, living on my own terms and making bank as a belly dancer.

  Understandably, he wanted everyone to look the way they did in rehearsal. That was the vision, and it needed to stay that way throughout the tour—as you would expect in any touring show. Costumes have to fit the same way at the end as they did at the beginning, which was easy for him because he was working up a sweat for 100 minutes plus the aftershow several times a week. I started to feel subtle changes in my body, because I’d stopped taking hours of ballet every day and danced only a few numbers in the show. I had access to a gym, but I never went, because my cell phone was useless in Australia and Japan, so I was glued to the hotel room phone waiting for him to call me. I was still in good form, but without the daily workout, I had to activate ballerina diet mode, eating leaves while Prince ordered fettuccini Alfredo and ate it standing up.

  My makeup artist at that time had a fixation with whipped cream and soda and cookies, which she kept next to her station. Prince never walked into makeup—ever—because he had his own setup in his dressing room, but one night while I was getting my makeup done, there he was. Everyone was silently freaking out, standing very straight, trying to be cool. He had come in to see me, but the look on his face changed as he approached the station where I was sitting.

  He eyed the whipped cream and said, “Is that yours?”

  I would not have ratted this girl out, but to her credit, she stepped up and said, “No, no, no. That’s mine, sir.”

  He looked at me skeptically.

  “I’m not eating it,” I said.

  He left without saying anything else. Twenty minutes later, the tour accountant came in and said, “I’m so sorry. I’m embarrassed to say this, but I have to dock your pay this week.”

  I don’t remember if I was even able to form the word “What?”

  “I know. I can’t believe it,” he said. “In twenty years, I’ve never been asked to do this, but… it’s not my call.”

  I went back to the dressing room I shared with Lori and Robia, raging and crying. “I’m not going to let him humiliate me like that! I’m not putting up with it!”

  They seemed shocked, but not because my pay was being docked; I think they were appalled that any girl would talk smack about Prince. As word got around, I did get some sympathy from Rosie, but everyone else kept their distance. I had no money to call Mama, and this made me feel even farther from home.

  The ballerina in me took control. I pulled myself together and went out and did “Thunder” and “Diamonds and Pearls” and then went back to the dressing room for a moment alone while the girls were dancing onstage. I put on my next costume and went to the side stage, out of sight from the crowd, and danced there for the rest of the show. Sometimes I did ballet barre, sometimes belly dancing. I’d look over once in a while and catch him watching me. He’d smile. I ignored him, thinking, I hate you right now.

  I hadn’t eaten a decent meal in three days, but I was dancing, and I was dancing for myself, which felt good. This became my regular workout night after night, and it didn’t take long for my body to regain its rock-hard, quarter-flipping tone. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was the best thing I could have done to train for what lay ahead. It took a few days for me to get over the humiliation, and he was wise enough to give me some space. The next time he called me to come to his room and hang out, he was fishing to see if I was upset about it.

  “Did the accountant talk to you?” he asked.

  I said something like, “Yep. Don’t worry about it.”

  I wasn’t about to argue with him, but I swore to myself that I would never let him or anyone else ever make me feel that way about my body again.

  The funny thing is, later on when I was pregnant, I gained eighty pounds, growing more gigantic by the day, because I was being careful about exercise and retaining a lot of water. My husband never said a word about my body except to tell me, “You’re beautiful.”

  The tour ended, and we all went our separate ways. Another hazard of the touring life: proximity burn. We were ready to take a break from all that togetherness. Prince went back to Paisley Park. I went to visit my parents, and when I returned to Minnesota, someone from administration called me into the office and told me, “Now that
the tour is over, you’ll be taking over the rent on the apartment.”

  This floored me. I was still making $300 a week, and between the phone bills and body makeup—not to mention frivolous expenditures like food, utilities, transportation, and taxes—my healthy stash of dancing money had dwindled to almost nothing. For the first time since I was eight years old, I had no money.

  “Come home,” said Mama. “You can still go to Cairo.”

  “The thing is…” I didn’t know how to explain this thing that was evolving between my dear friend and me.

  My employer, I had to keep reminding myself.

  We weren’t exactly dating during the tour; we went out almost every night with forty-eight thousand other people. But we had become more than friends. There was gossip and crosstalk about it, partly because he came into a rehearsal one day when Carmen was there, and he shook my hand. Prince didn’t shake hands with people, and he hated it when people tried to shake hands with him. He couldn’t afford to collect germs and get sick, but more important, his hands were his instruments. He felt naturally protective of them. Everyone in Prince’s inner circle knew this, so when he offered me his hand, it meant he felt the need to touch me, and the rumors started rumbling.

  He never volunteered any information about where things stood with the other women in his life, and I didn’t ask. There was a sort of shorthand: If a girl had a bodyguard, that meant, Don’t talk to her. Don’t look at her. She’s mine. So Carmen had a bodyguard before the tour. And now suddenly I had a bodyguard, too. I didn’t press him for answers, but I didn’t jump into bed with him, either. We did more than shake hands, but there was a line neither of us was ready to cross.

  Sexual chemistry was a huge part of Prince’s creative force, and it was a place he’d retreated to at the most painful moments in his life. I understand what he meant when he talked about a person’s “history,” and I’m glad that mine began with him. I wish his had ended with me—and he did try, I think—but that didn’t happen. Making peace with what did happen is an ongoing process.