by Mayte Garcia
During the “Most Beautiful Girl” days, after we’d become intimate but before we were engaged, Prince wrote to me:
Mayte,
’ve never wanted 2 know someone 4 the rest of my life… “ want to know u 4 the rest of my life!” ’ve never hated to see anyone cry before… “ hate 2 see u cry!”… U are a child of God—an angel, and worship you! thank him 4 u—always!… didn’t meet u by chance. don’t live day 2 day. try 2 see the future. It gives me hope. ’ve never wanted 2 talk about babies. “ want 2 talk about babies with u!” If u frown at me—u will frown at your babies. Beautiful people are a dime a dozen. Flesh. don’t want 2 watch them grow old. “ want 2 watch you grow old.” It’s my destiny. have no choice. only have u. Minneapolis is my home. brought u here 2 live with me. This is your destiny. Until u choose otherwise. And u will have 2 leave me, because I will never leave you.
will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u. will never leave u.
As he repeats these words over and over on the last page of the letter, his perfect handwriting becomes larger and wilder, as if he’s trying to write in the middle of an earthquake.
Toward the end of our marriage, I kept that letter among the things I treasured most. I needed those words of commitment and passion from him, and he was no longer able to speak them. One day, I saw him walk over to a girl and shake her hand. And I knew.
Let’s just be straight up about it: he had a lot of women, and a few of them were very important to him. He had little respect for certain girls, but they had their role in his life, and they used him as much as he used them. Welcome to rock and roll. The thing is, he could make any girl feel like a princess—for a moment, anyway. A perk of his creative genius, I suppose.
Prince did have tremendous respect for the women with whom he collaborated. Creative chemistry is a powerful thing. Romantic relationships were bound to grow out of some of those collaborations, and I think it made him genuinely sad when those relationships didn’t end well. As for me, I was his wife and the mother of his child. What we had was unique, and I cherish it. I bear no other women in his life any ill will. I worship Sheila E; she’s a golden goddess. It never occurred to me to be jealous of Apollonia because when she had her brief relationship with Prince, I was just a little kid. My feelings about Manuela are more complex, but she’s apologized. I said to her, “If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else.” But the pain is there.
There was a post-apocalyptic moment right after Prince’s death when we were all kind to one another, but it didn’t take long for the side-eyes and not-so-subtle digs to pop up on Facebook and Twitter. I deliberately do not engage with any of that. I’d rather be like Michelle Obama: when they go low, I go high. I never wanted to be part of that mix back in the day, and I certainly don’t want to be part of it now. When I hear one of his old flames say, “I feel like his widow,” I’m sad for her, because in so many ways that matter, I feel like he’s still with me.
seven
The last dress Madame Abla made for me before she died was a sheer coal-black gown with gold coins. Each coin was sewn on by hand and perfectly placed so they jingled with a soft, eerie music like distant wind chimes when I danced. When Prince saw it, he loved it so much, he had the wardrobe people call up Madame Abla. She sent them some extra coins, and they made a jacket for him in the exact same style. Usually when I arrived at work, I went in through the back, up the elevator, and through the kitchen to his office, so I was surprised when he told me to meet him in front of Paisley. I’d been feeling a little bummed because he hadn’t called me for a day or two. My heart turned over when I saw him open the door to give me a big hug, proudly wearing the jacket.
“Nice.” I jingled his sleeve.
He kissed me and said, “Yeah, I know. Some hot belly dancer was wearing a dress like this, so I had to have a matching jacket.”
Madame Abla’s dress can be seen in 3 Chains o’ Gold, an ambitious collection of music videos that come together in one film, directed by Randee St. Nicholas, Paris Patton, and Prince. The songs became the album, and the story about a great love affair between Prince and Egyptian Princess Mayte was spun off in a comic book. Woven through the film and its music are all the elements that occupied his mind in that moment: an enhanced form of storytelling that was operatic and held nothing back, the idea of one soul being born into the same circle again and again, his growing fascination with the sound and style of Egypt, and his growing fascination with me.
Before Prince was in love with me, he was in love with the idea that we’d known each other in previous lifetimes. He loved that I was completely open to that idea and willing to spend hours with him, imagining in rich detail the joys and heartbreaks, the births and deaths, and the ultimate meanings of our past lives. One result of all that was 3 Chains o’ Gold. Another result was everything that’s happened in my life since.
The basic plot of 3 Chains o’ Gold begins with the assassination of Mayte’s father. Convinced that only Prince can protect her and her three sacred chains of gold from the assassins, she searches him out and they fall in love. The epilogue ends with his rebirth “marking the beginning and ending of cycles of creation” and the announcement that from this time forward, his name will be the unpronounceable symbol , “for in the dawn, all will require no speakable name to differentiate the ineffable one that shall remain.”
I love the word ineffable—though I admit, I had to look it up—and the idea that for some things, there are no words. As I tell this story, I find myself falling back on words that can’t begin to express what certain moments have meant to me: Profound. Amazing. Beautiful. Love. These words are said so often, they’ve lost their power.
During this hypercreative era, Prince was searching for other forms of self-expression. A lot of that stuff in the vault at Paisley Park was created during this time. I never quite understood my role in all that until years later when I heard him tell someone, “Mayte made me more open. She makes it easier for me to talk to God.” Rolling Stone referred to it as “an existential time in Prince’s life,” because this is when he started actively questioning everything about the way the music industry interacted with artists. Ultimately these questions led him to change his name to the unpronounceable love symbol, but that didn’t happen overnight; it was a place he came to after a long, difficult soul search.
The footage you see in 3 Chains o’ Gold was shot over the course of almost two years, beginning with scenes Randee and I created together in Egypt in 1991 when I was fresh out of high school, and ending with the filming of “7” on an LA soundstage in 1993. Prince continued to work on the pieces during and between the Diamonds and Pearls Tour and the Act I and Act II tours the following year, which is a testament to his unbelievable stamina, because touring—how can I describe it? The most fun you could ever have while putting your entire body through a meat grinder? There were good times and bad.
When we set out on the Diamonds and Pearls Tour in April 1992, I was still well funded by my belly dancing money, but by the time we started Act I in March of 1993, I was broke and paying the rent on my empty apartment in Minnesota. What little money I had left I used to pay my phone bill, because Mama’s voice on the other end of the line was my life raft at times. Sometimes I splurged and got a salad or a basket of bread with Thousand Island dressing from room service. There were times I was hungry enough to sneak food from room service carts in the hotel hallway. I learned that tea with a lot of honey kept me sustained for a long time, especially when I put the whole honey bear into the bottom of the mug. That would be my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On show nights, I couldn’t eat anything before I danced, because I needed to feel light, but afterward, if there was still food on the crew’s craft servi
ce table, I’d quickly wrap up a little meal to go and stow it with my things above my seat on the bus, so it would be there when I came back ready to dig in. Like clockwork, Prince would call me just before we boarded. I’d get on his bus silently praying, Please, tell me we’re eating. I was reluctant to ask him to feed me after the pay-docking incident.
That summer, we were in Minnesota shooting some footage for a music video, and Prince asked me to decorate a video cassette cover that he wanted to use as a prop. I went to Michaels crafts and spent my last few dollars on beads and chains. I took them home and put the thing together, and then I sat there, looking at my empty refrigerator. My empty stomach. My empty bank account. I started crying, and I cried all the way to Paisley Park. It took every morsel of nerve I could scrape together, but shaking in my boots, I walked up to him and said, “I’m leaving.”
Prince was startled, because in the time we’d known each other, he’d seen me in pain, he’d seen me sick as a dog, he’d seen me frustrated and upset, but he had never seen me cry at work.
“What’s going on?” he asked, and I let him have it.
“I could be in Cairo right now, making a thousand bucks a night. Instead, I’m here, living on Triscuit crackers and water and spending money I don’t have to buy foo foo for you. I’m going home. And then I’m going to Cairo. Maybe later on, if you—”
“Hold up, hold up,” he said without raising his voice. “I don’t even know how much you make.”
“Three hundred a week,” I said. “And my rent is six hundred a month.”
He winced like I’d kicked him in the shins. “Let me make a call.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m that person who’s—”
“You’re not that person. Relax.” He got on the phone to the business office, and his voice was tight with irritation. “Can you tell me how much Mayte is making?” There was a pause while he listened to the person on the other line. “Okay. I need to see a list of what everyone else is making, too.”
The following week, my pay had been tripled. Daddy was proud of me for standing up about it, and I was glad to think that the net result was a significant pay raise for everyone. I knew Prince wasn’t being miserly; he had so many people doing so many things for him, it was impossible for him to know what was going on with all the people all the time. Sometimes an individual he cared about had to step up and say something, and people weren’t always willing to do that.
I felt like an idiot that I hadn’t said something eighteen months earlier, but I was glad I’d proven my worth as a dancer. Being Prince’s friend—or girlfriend—was not enough to keep you employed by him. I’d seen that during the Diamonds and Pearls Tour. After a week in Japan and three weeks in Australia, Carmen and her band joined the tour and opened for us in the Netherlands and Germany. They showed her video for “Go Go Dancer” before her set, and I thought the set was good, but the reviews weren’t what one dreams of, and Prince wasn’t happy with the audience reaction. As we were setting up for the first show at Earls Court in London, word went around that Carmen’s slot had been omitted. The Pasadenas and Shakespeare’s Sister replaced her the following week in Manchester and Glasgow. Indra and Trio Esperanza did a couple of shows in Paris. Other than that, the tour played out with no opener. Carmen went home, and at the end of the Diamonds and Pearls Tour, Lori and Robia were let go, too.
“Had to happen,” was all Prince said about it to me. “But I’m gonna ask Morris to join NPG.”
Morris, aka “Mr. Hayes,” had been around for a while. He replaced Jimmy Jam in The Time and was co-founder of the house band at Prince’s nightclub, Glam Slam, in Minneapolis. He’d been in Carmen’s band on the Diamonds and Pearls Tour, playing keyboards, including a bulky Wurlitzer that sounded like a whole orchestra in his hands. He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. Prince was always saying he should do comedy. Morris was one of Prince’s most durable musicians and a longtime friend who stayed with him for twenty years. He was grateful and kind, and I never heard him complain or backbite on anybody.
Over the years, Prince worked with a lot of different artists, and that constant evolution was part of the rare energy he created. I always operated on the assumption that my employment was seasonal, but I hoped my season would last awhile. And more than that, I hoped our friendship would survive whatever professional ups and downs fate had in store. Romantically, I wasn’t counting on anything. There was flirtation, but nothing below the belt. He kissed me one night when we were in Australia, and I let him know I didn’t hate that, but I had no desire to be part of the harem. I remember a big party in London where Carmen was wearing a super cool little outfit with these sexy great boots, and Lori told me, “I turned down that same outfit when Prince bought it for me. Now Carmen’s wearing it.” This took the “bitch stole my look” drama to a new level. Ain’t nobody got time for that, but my hormones were in high gear. When Prince sensed my frustration, he just said, “Good things come to those who wait.”
I was glad when Christmastime rolled around, and Paisley Park became the ghost town it had been the first time I saw it. This time I was one of the people going home for the holidays instead of a Nutcracker mouse tiptoeing in when no one was there but the Prince and the Christmas tree. Mama and Daddy were in Puerto Rico, so I went there, too. Prince went to Miami to get away from the cold, but after a few days, he called me and said, “I’m coming to Puerto Rico.”
“No, you’re not,” I laughed.
“No, really. I am.”
The idea of him rolling up in the ’hood where Grandma Mercedes lived was kind of ridiculous, but the following morning, there he was. It was so strange to hear the jangle-click of his boots on the tile floor where I’d danced to his music when I was a little girl. Somehow the sound made me feel even more at home there. He met my grandmother and all the relatives, chatted with my parents for a while, and then went to his hotel. I went over to hang out with him that evening and found him sitting on top of the piano in his hotel room, looking out over the ocean.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “These mosquitos are eating me alive.”
“They do that.” I climbed up and sat dancer style beside him, breathing the ocean breeze coming in through the open balcony doors.
“I’ve been sitting here thinking about it all day,” he said. “I’m going to change my name.”
“To what?”
He indicated the cover of the album we’d been working on.
“But… how do you pronounce that?” I asked.
“You don’t.”
“Ah. Okay.”
He smiled and touched my chin. “I bet you’re the only one who won’t try to talk me out of it.”
We sat on the piano lid talking as the sun went down and the stars came out over the ocean. Years later, in our wedding program, he wrote:
All alone, staring at the ocean, he implores the heavens 4 an answer—
“What is the symbol? What does it really mean?”
A voice says to him, “It’s your name.”
He told me he’d heard this voice before, when he was writing “Purple Rain,” and he knew not to question it. I asked him where he believed the voice came from. “Was it God or an angel or some part of the subconscious?”
“Maybe all those things,” he said. “Maybe the Holy Spirit. Maybe my own spirit.”
… sometimes freedom moves in mysterious ways and in the end it’s “whatever peanut butters your jelly.” Most understanding of all is Mayte—his true soulmate, who simply says with a smile, “ never called you Prince anyway.”
After the holidays, I went back to the Minnesota ice and snow, and we spent the rest of the winter making music videos. A lot of acts were doing live shows and direct-to-video compilations. Renting videos was still a thing then, and the market for music videos was hot. We were always filming bits and pieces, scenes and images that appealed to him even though he didn’t know how or even if they would ever fit together. Some were done on
location in Australia, Japan, and LA—running on a beach, holding hands at the zoo, that sort of thing—but most of the work was done on the huge soundstage at Paisley Park.
One day there was a big hydraulic lift with a glass chamber on the set. Prince kept changing wardrobe, going up and down in this elevator sort of thing with fog machines billowing all around it. None of us had a clue what he was doing, but he looked cool doing it, so we just went along. The song “7” had been produced the previous year, and the way 3 Chains o’ Gold was unfolding, it was a natural climax for the story. Warner Bros. was getting behind the production of this music video in a big way.
“Let’s put some money in it,” Prince said, which was more about energy and time and thought than it was about finances.
We shot “7” on a massive soundstage in LA. I wore my spectacular yellow Madame Abla outfit, which had been properly cleaned by this time, thank God. Both our costumes were reproduced in miniature for seven little boys and seven little girls who danced with us on an elaborate set that featured the model city of gold. (You can see Prince and me and our merry little group of mini-me dancers on the cover of the album.) Everything I can think of that I most love in this world was in that video: these beautiful children; Prince; the rich, Arabic-inspired music; belly dancing with my sword; rocking my beautiful dress; doves—oh! I got to kiss a dove! Where do you even go for dreams after you kiss a dove?
I loved that Prince played an acoustic guitar in this music video. It was so rare to see him playing an acoustic guitar on video or onstage. People expected to see him shredding a sparkly Stratocaster or one of his many custom-made guitars—his iconic Cloud guitars made by a luthier in Minnesota and the purple Love Symbol guitar made by a German craftsman. But when he was at home or in a hotel or on the tour bus, he often played an acoustic guitar like the one Jan played when we were kids. The sound was soft and organic in contrast to the urgent blare of an electric guitar.