by Mayte Garcia
“The acoustic guitar is my favorite,” I told him. “I like that little squeaking sound when you slide your fingers up and down the neck. It’s so personal.”
Between takes, he played it for the children. We spent half their union-allowed time laughing and monkeying around with them. Prince got a huge kick out of seeing me with those kids. The director rolled film on a lot of that and recently sent me some of the unedited footage: Prince watching me dance with the little boys and girls, taking my hand, leading them toward the golden city. He’s looking at me in a way he had never looked at me before.
“There’s so much love there,” she said. “You can see it.”
And I do see it. We look like a happy family. There’s lightness in the way he walks away at the end, after he’s let go of all his crap and slain these seven selves who didn’t know how to be with us.
… words of compassion words of peace…
I can’t explain it, but we changed during that shoot. There was a moment when I looked at him with tears in my eyes. All I could say was, “This is everything I love.” He hugged me close, and then we went on with the job at hand, but something was different.
One of the last shots we did was a close-up of his face close to my stomach as I did hip-work and abdominal undulations. The director called it, and we were getting ready to go home. Prince leaned in to my ear and said, “I think it’s time.”
“What do you mean?” I said, like an idiot.
“It’s. Time.”
“For…”
“For you to get on birth control.”
People, here again, my face. I can’t even guess what that looked like.
“Oh.” A nervous giggle bubbled out of my mouth. “How… how do I do that?”
“You go to the doctor.”
“Right. Right, of course,” I said, not wanting to tell him that I’d never been to the gynecologist and was terrified at the very idea. I won’t go into the thousand deaths I died making the appointment, enduring my first Pap smear, and forcing myself to present the prescription at the drugstore, because I was almost twenty years old at that point, and I’m sure the twenty-year-olds reading this are doing some hard eye-rolling right now. You have to understand, I wasn’t ignorant, but I’d had a traumatic childhood experience that made me extremely protective about that part of myself. I was grateful—then and now—that God sent me someone who was sensitive enough to be cool about it, even though he didn’t fully understand exactly why I needed so much extra time and patience.
A week or so later, I wrote in bold letters in my journal: February 9, 1993—not a virgin. And I drew a winking smiley face in the margin. It was a big deal to me. So that’s all I’m going to say about it, other than this word of advice to twentysomethings: Patience pays off.
One day not long after that, I saw a precious little black Yorkie pup in a pet store at the mall, and I was powerless to resist. She was the size of a hamster, and the shop owner said she’d grow to about twelve pounds. She was skating around on the slippery linoleum floor, not able to get any traction with her soft little paws. Her eyes were bright and full of friendly mischief. I took her home and named her Hena, because I’d seen an Arabic movie and loved the way the women did the henna on their hands while they were hanging around the harem—a scene that almost hit a bit too close to home.
When I called home and told Mama all about Hena, Mama said, “Mayte, take her back. Take her back first thing in the morning. Don’t get attached.”
I gave the classic answer any almost-twenty-something would give: “I’m an adult, Mama! I can do whatever I want.”
But right after we hung up the phone, I thought, Crap. I’d better take her back. Prince was a bit of a clean freak and probably wouldn’t want a dog around. He had Paisley the cat but never wanted the responsibility of a dog. I would be going on tour again soon. I hadn’t even thought that far in advance. But when I looked into her little face, I just couldn’t part with her. Not yet. I decided I’d keep her until it was time to go on tour and then send her to stay with Mama, who was living in Puerto Rico at the time. After the tour I could go to Puerto Rico and fetch her, and wherever fate was planning to take me next, Hena could go with me.
The Act I Tour started in Florida in March 1993: twenty-five shows in five weeks across the continental United States, plus a couple of nights in Canada and who knows how many of those after-concert jam fests. When Morris Hayes came in to replace Rosie Gaines on keyboard, I missed her ballsy vocals, but I loved Morris and the direction in which NPG was evolving, including more of the rhythms and vibes that brought out the belly dance/flamenco-fusion style that was second nature to me. Prince encouraged me to explore and take chances—as he did with everyone—so my role in the Act I Tour expanded. More stage time, being involved in almost every number, meant I was working harder and learning more, and I loved that.
It was up to me to bring the female energy. We opened with “My Name Is Prince” and “Sexy M.F.”—like kicking down a door—and then we kept that insane pace going for over two hours. Through most of the show, I was The Girl, dancing hard and loving it, kneeling to kiss his guitar, feeling wild and sexy and free. Some of the choreography was the same as it was when Lori and Robia did it, but I brought my own style to it, and it worked. The staging of “7” was created around me, beginning with a long Arabic solo and ending with Prince’s cryptic declaration: “To whom it may concern: You must come to your senses. There are no kings in this world, only princes.”
It was a different experience touring with Prince as his girlfriend. From the time I was little, I had always tried to perform at my highest possible level, but now I knew that anything less than an 800 percent effort would reflect badly on him. It was lovely, however, riding along listening to music he loved. He introduced me to Kate Bush and Miles Davis and so many others I still love. And, you know, I didn’t exactly hate staying in the A hotels with the full-on foo foo.
My love/hate affair with room service took an ironic turn. When I was broke, I’d scavenged people’s leftover bread and Thousand Island dressing from carts in the hallway, because if I ordered my own, they would charge me ten bucks for the bread. When I was with my rock-star boyfriend and money wasn’t an issue, they’d offer it for free, but I cringed at the thought of ordering it because it reminded me of my past. I loved getting breakfast at the start of a busy day, but to sit in a room and order food is so weird to me. Get out and greet the day, already! But of course, that was out of the question for him. When I’m traveling with friends now and someone suggests room service, I don’t mean to stare daggers at them, but all we ever did back then was room service. Dinner out was extremely rare and took a lot of planning, which is why dinner out is so special to me, and I cherish a light breakfast out in the sunshine as one of life’s great simple pleasures.
In the old days, I’d hang out with him till the wee hours, but except for my initial visits, I never spent the night, even when things progressed to making out. After “7,” I started spending the night with him and riding with him to the next venue. As we traveled, I was on the bus with him. It was lonely at times, but I didn’t miss the drama, and I rather enjoyed being put on a pedestal, the cherished object of all his famous and infamous romantic tendencies. He was particular and very protective of me, but I never felt like there was a lid on me or that he was trying to make me do or be anything I didn’t want to do or be.
This was my first real boyfriend, so I was tripping on all the emotional ecstasy most girls get out of their system in high school. Prince loved that I was so in love with being in love. I’d never had my heart broken, so I was open and unjaded. Any old trick in the romance handbook—a candlelit bubble bath, rose petals on the sheets, a sexy handwritten letter—none of the novelty had worn off for me. I was thrilled with all the small gestures of affection, and he enjoyed being appreciated. There wasn’t much drama between us, but I discovered that, if anything, I danced better when I was mad, so we always ended up laughi
ng it off after the show. Somewhere around this time, he wrote a song called “Courtin’ Time” that came out later on the Emancipation album, and I was touched to hear an instrumental version on a concert video just a few years ago.
baby, now you’re gonna know
what it’s like when a boy truly loves a girl…
But all that was off-hours. Our working relationship didn’t change. He wasn’t one for showing affection in public until after we were engaged, maybe because he liked to keep people guessing, but mostly because when he was working, he was lost in the music and entirely focused, moment by moment, on the work. Raquel Welch could have been standing there naked and he’d never notice. Prince consciously surrounded himself with coworkers who were able to find and maintain that same laserlike focus. Take a look at what he’s doing on that stage. (He kept most of that stuff off the Internet when he was alive, but now tons of footage is spilling onto YouTube.) Performers can and do get hurt when they’re operating at that caliber. Everyone has to have his or her head in the game.
About six months after Prince died, I performed “7” in a tribute concert put together by his family. I was horribly nervous about the way it was coming together. People seemed to think we could do all this without a lot of planning and rehearsal. And they were right. I was silly to worry. I should have remembered: These people are the best. No one could walk in, rehearse for one day, and put on a show like NPG, because all of us had been trained by this man who took each unique talent and pressed it to the next level.
The Act I Tour ended in April 1993. We’d be at home in Minnesota for the summer, rehearsing for the Act II Tour, so before we started, I went to Puerto Rico to see my parents and fetch Hena. When I got there, I found the most spoiled dog in canine history. She was dolled up with a little fountain hairdo, ribbons, and charms. Basically, my mother had replaced me with her. When I put Hena in her little carrier and put her in the car to go to the airport, Mama looked so stricken, I couldn’t bear to take Hena away from her.
“Mama… keep her. She’s yours.”
No argument from either of them. They lived happily ever after for many years.
Back in Minnesota, I walked into the first rehearsal and was stunned to find that the band was like a skeleton crew. Several people had been let go, including Tony, Damon, and Kirk, who’d been with Prince for almost ten years. Kirk came back later on as a drummer, and Prince tried to orchestrate a soft landing for them all with Goldnigga, an album that gave them a way forward without him. Truthfully, I wasn’t a huge fan of it—particularly the song “Johnny,” which is this crude song about condoms. The first time I heard it, I wrinkled my nose and said, “What’s up with that? My father’s name is John. Your father’s name is John. I don’t like that.”
I couldn’t understand why Prince would let TDK go. To me, they seemed like such an integral part of his vision for the band. When I asked him about it, he said, “I don’t want guys onstage with me. Just you.”
“Just me? I don’t get it. Why would you change it when—”
“Because it changes. It will always change. Maybe next year I won’t have a band at all.”
“Okay, but from a technical standpoint—how do you expect me to do all that myself?”
“You’ll learn,” he said.
He’d already lined up a series of choreographers to work with me for five weeks. After that, sink or swim, we’d be on tour again.
I trained hard for the rest of the summer, moving in ways I’ve never moved before, thinking about who I could be as a dancer in an entirely different light. In a strange way, hip-hop and belly dancing are natural cousins, because of the muscle isolation that’s necessary to both, so nothing about the choreography felt weird. The only thing that scared me was the stamina it would take to motor through that two-hour show as the only dancer onstage.
One day during rehearsal, Prince looked at me and said, “You know what would be cool?”
“What…”
It always worried me a little when a sentence started this way.
“I was just thinking about this dancer with bangs like—”
“No,” I said. “You don’t want to see me with bangs. I tried bangs when I was twelve, and I feel like I’m still kind of emotionally scarred from it. They won’t lay down straight. As soon as I start sweating, they curl up into weird little devil horns.”
“You’d have them chemically straightened. They’d be straight.”
“Maybe,” I hedged. “I guess they’ll grow back.”
The next day, I flew to LA to have a particular hairdresser cut and straighten my bangs, and much to my surprise, I loved the look. I couldn’t wait to get home and show Prince. When I stood in front of him, feeling like Bettie Page and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford rolled into one, he studied my face carefully.
“Wouldn’t it be cool,” he said, “if they were cut like a V?”
“What do you mean?”
“So they’d come to a point here”—he touched his index finger just above the bridge of my nose—“at the third eye.”
I suppose it’s a demonstration of my trust in him. I let him take me over to the hair salon at his house. (Yes, of course he had a hair salon at his house. Doesn’t everyone?) He stood me against the counter.
“Close your eyes and stand very still.”
It was a strangely sensual experience. I felt his slow, deliberate breath on my face and then the bright coolness of the sharp scissor blade on my forehead, one side and then the other.
“Okay, take a look.”
I opened my eyes and turned toward the mirror. He was right.
My eyebrows naturally go to kind of a zazzy place, and I had them plucked and penciled to accentuate that, but now the subtle but distinct V created a cooler, edgier version of me—a look I’d never seen on any other girl. Probably because I was looking at a woman.
The Act II Tour started in England in July 1993: twenty-seven shows in twelve countries in less than seven weeks. I’d never worked so hard in my life, and the harder I worked, the more fun it was. Prince was very competitive and liked to see us compete with each other, so every once in a while, before the show, he’d call out, “Funk Night!” This meant that whoever did the funkiest thing would get a bonus of a thousand or maybe three thousand dollars, sometimes even five thousand. So we were highly motivated to get out there and get funky. People did crazy things, often prompted by Prince’s come-on: “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
I remember somebody climbing high into the scaffolding one night, scaring the daylights out of everyone. Tommy Barbarella used to fly around on a wire harness.
“Wouldn’t it be cool,” Prince said, “if somebody just like, shaved their head onstage?”
Mr. Hayes stepped up for that one.
During the Diamonds and Pearls Tour, I wasn’t onstage all that much, so Prince was always suggesting to Lori and Robia, “Wouldn’t it be cool if somebody did a stage dive at some point in here?” They were not super into that idea. I’d see them gingerly approach the edge of the stage, tentatively lower their bottoms toward the crowd, and then retreat. Toward the end of the tour, I think at least one of them did it, but not very enthusiastically.
When Act II rolled around, I was out there onstage with a lot more opportunities, rocking the world in a bikini and combat boots, and I started plotting how to get that Funk Night cash. It took me a while to top those guys, but I saw my big chance one night in Berlin. The band was on fire, the crowd was in a state of frenzy, the lights were blazing purple and white and blue. I took a deep breath, started running about twelve feet from the edge of the stage, and dove out over the crowd. Like that old saying: Leap and the net will appear.
For a moment, I flew like an eagle. I corkscrewed in midair so I was facing the ceiling, my arms over my head, my body parallel to the earth. And then I hit the floor like a bag of wet cement.
What up, Germans? Geez!
They looked down at me like, Was ist das? as cartoon star
s circled my head. I was back onstage dancing within thirty seconds, the undisputed winner of Funk Night, but the next day, I was as stiff as the Tin Man, and for weeks, I had to cover the deep green and blue bruises with body makeup—along with all the other bruises I’d sustained during the most demanding, rewarding, infuriating, exhilarating days and nights of my life so far.
The next time I impulsively launched out over the crowd, the people below the stage caught me, lifted me up over their heads, and sailed me back onto the stage again. I was laughing, weightless, totally borne up by their love for what Prince had made of the New Power Generation. He’d created a symphony that was more than musical; it was visual and visceral and theatrical.
“You’re not a backup dancer,” he told me. “You’re part of the band. Your body is the instrument.”
By the end of the tour, I was stage diving like the black swan, and it became my thing for the next few years. I learned to look down first and gage the depth of the reliability pool. If the people down front looked stony or stupid or weak in the triceps, I waited for some burly types to push their way forward. Stage diving is not for sissies. I got pretty banged up sometimes, and one night in Paris, some guy ripped off my shirt. But that’s rock and roll. All in a day’s work, right?
Looking at moments from all this on YouTube or the old concert videos, people don’t always appreciate the hard physical labor that goes into performances like these. It looks so effortless. Underneath our clothes, our shin splints and bruises told the real story. I was always slathering body makeup from my toes to my collarbone. It left a sticky amber ring in the hotel bathtub after each show. I can’t imagine what housekeeping thought I was doing in there.
We didn’t talk about the pain we were in. Prince didn’t complain, and I didn’t see him taking anything other than vitamin B injections, which I refused at first but welcomed later on as the wear and tear of touring life set in. Later on in his life, when we were no longer together, I heard rumors that Prince had had hip replacement surgery. This wouldn’t surprise me at all. And I wouldn’t blame anyone for turning to some kind of pharmaceutical pain relief if they’ve given as much of their body and soul as he did every time he stepped onstage.