by Chris Perez
“You mean if he’d asked you, you would have just jumped ship and left us?” I said, laughing.
“I’d already be gone,” Rudy promised.
The next morning, I called A.B. and joined Los Dinos. That phone call set the course of my life in ways I never could have predicted.
But I guess that’s always true in life, isn’t it? You never know which decisions you make are going to be the big ones—even when they’re as seemingly small as deciding to play a musical instrument or who to sit next to on a plane.
TWO
ROMANCE ON TOUR
Courtesy of Tommie Rodriguez
About a month after our trip to Acapulco, Selena and I were talking alone in the darkened bunk area of the tour bus. I was lying in my bed, one of the upper bunks, and she was standing next to me, her elbow on the bunk. She was close enough for me to lean over and kiss her.
Suddenly, the door separating the bunks from the lounge area slapped open, making us both jump. Her father, Abraham, was supposed to be driving the bus. Instead, here he was, looming in the doorway and glaring at us.
Abraham didn’t say a word. He looked at Selena, she looked at him, and then he walked on through the bunk area to the back of the bus.
Later, she told me that he asked her what we’d been doing. “Nothing,” she had told him. “We were just talking.”
“It didn’t look like nothing,” he said. “You don’t want to make people think that something’s going on between you and Chris.”
Selena apologized and Abraham never said anything to me about it. To him, I was still a cool guy, a friend of the whole family. He thought that he could trust me with his daughter.
What he didn’t know was that our feelings for each other had begun to build after that trip to Mexico, despite the constant scrutiny of Selena’s parents and the other band members within the close quarters of the tour bus.
I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. As I boarded the tour bus for the first time after our trip to Acapulco, I had firmly reminded myself that becoming involved with Selena would bring nothing but trouble to both of us—and to Los Dinos as well. I was resolved not to let that happen.
The minute her luminous dark eyes met mine, however, I felt my defenses melt away. From then on, I decided to be open to anything that happened. My feelings for Selena were so overwhelming that I knew I had to give our relationship a one hundred percent chance.
Selena clearly felt the same way. Just as it had felt so natural to sit beside her on the plane from Mexico and hold hands while we talked, it felt natural now for us to spend as much time together as we could.
Before that trip to Mexico, I had kept a professional distance from her. Onstage, Selena sang up front while I was off in my own world, playing guitar and adjusting to this whole new life. Offstage, I saw her only with her family and other members of the band. Between gigs, I often stayed with A.B. when we were rehearsing or playing in Corpus, and sometimes Selena might join us to watch TV or talk for a little while, but that was it.
And that was the way it should be, I had thought during that first year I was with Los Dinos. Even if there had been sparks, I would have stomped them out because I knew that nothing could happen between us. I didn’t want to jeopardize my job. I had a girlfriend in San Antonio. The last thing I needed was for some rumor to start up about us seeing each other.
At the very least, I knew that the Quintanilla family was tight, and Selena’s father, Abraham—whom I liked and respected, and often kept company up front in the tour bus while he was driving—would feel furious and betrayed if he thought somebody in the band had the nerve to hit on his daughter.
That’s why I had worked at maintaining distance from Selena and tried to think of her as a little sister. The only time I had ever wavered from this stance was a pure accident.
I was in Corpus with A.B. We were driving back from somewhere, and as we turned onto A.B.’s street, we saw a limo parked in front of his parents’ house. The limo was for Suzette, Selena, and a group of their friends; they were all going together to a Garth Brooks concert. This was a big night for them and they were all dressed up.
Well, as we came around the corner, I spotted a woman with curly dark hair and an incredible body leaning into the window of the limo. I couldn’t see her face.
“Oh, man, who’s that?” I said to A.B.
A.B. started cracking up. “That’s Selena, stupid,” he said.
Of course, even if I had wanted to get closer to Selena, it would have been difficult. Abraham and Marcella, Selena’s mother, were extremely protective of her. They had to be. On the Tejano music scene, stories were always flying about women entertainers getting stage time because they’d slept with so-and-so. It was important for Abraham to present his band, and especially his youngest daughter, as chaste and pure, no matter what costumes she wore onstage or how much makeup she wore.
Selena was therefore never without a chaperone. She and Suzette slept in their parents’ hotel room when we were on the road, and Selena’s parents accompanied her if she wasn’t onstage, unless they sent A.B. or Suzette to chaperone her instead.
Even on the bus, Selena often sat in the back with her mother. Marcella and Selena could sit on the sofa back there and talk for hours. Sometimes Selena would lie with her head on her mom’s lap, while Marcella played with Selena’s hair or massaged her scalp. I’d walk back there sometimes and Selena would have this glazed look, like a cat. She was always Marcella’s beloved baby girl.
After that fateful trip to Mexico, though, Selena and I started seeing each other secretly. Sometimes we’d just slip off to take a walk before one of the shows, or we might see a movie together or grab a bite to eat if we had a few hours to kill on the road. Abraham seemed cool with this; perhaps he thought it was natural for Selena and me to have a lot to talk about, since we were the youngest members of the band, and I’m sure he thought that Selena was safer in my company than she would have been out on the street by herself.
Meanwhile, Selena and I agreed that letting as few people as possible know about our feelings for one another was the best course of action, because then there would be less chance of anyone trying to tell us to put the brakes on. I didn’t even let my closest friends in San Antonio know what was going on.
And, in a way, nothing really was going on, at least not physically. Onstage, it was business as usual. It was easy to act natural together despite our heightened awareness of one another, because Selena and I were so accustomed to playing together at that point. Offstage, we were always surrounded by her family, her fans, and the other band members. By the time I joined Los Dinos, the band also included keyboardist and songwriter Ricky Vela, and vocalist and songwriter Pete Astudillio. Pete was a Tejano star in his own right, whose duet with Selena in 1989, “Amame, Quiéreme,” was nominated for Vocal Duo of the Year at the Tejano Music Awards soon after I joined the band.
Even though Selena and I were rarely alone, however, our feelings for each other rapidly grew and were soon so intense that I could almost imagine the air crackling with electricity whenever Selena walked into the room. We never touched, and yet I felt that something connected us—a force stronger than either of us.
There were plenty of reasons for me to fall in love with Selena. She was a talented, sensual dancer and singer, and a compelling entertainer. She really broke the mold in Tejano music with everything from the music she sang to the way she dressed in her glittery bustier tops and formfitting pants—later, a journalist would call her “the Mexican Madonna” partly because of her stage costumes. She was gorgeous, she was sexy, and she was also very funny.
I was attracted to that woman I saw onstage. But I fell in love with the real Selena, the woman who laughed hysterically while riding speedboats, was determined to beat every guy in the band at video games, and wore jeans and sneakers and a baseball hat on the bus. Selena had a huge talent and sang like an angel. But she also worked tirelessly, doing every promotional opportunity that came her way
. She made fans and reporters feel like they’d been friends forever. She had a rare gift with people, because she was always true to herself with everyone she met. She trusted everyone and thought the best of most. Later, many would say that she was perhaps too trusting.
Selena was, in a word, good. And who was I to win her heart?
Unlike Selena, I never had anyone pushing me into music. Yet, in an odd way, it was my mother’s love of music that eventually led me to Selena and the true meaning of love.
My parents were divorced by the time I was four, and my mother, my sister, and I shared a small two-bedroom apartment in San Antonio. My mother worked full-time as a payroll clerk, but we were still poor enough to need food stamps. Mom was so tired that sometimes I’d catch her crying while she washed the dishes or when she was alone in her bedroom. Sometimes she didn’t eat so that my sister and I wouldn’t go hungry. Still, Mom hardly complained about anything.
Music was her escape from the exhausting routines of her life, so music was always part of my life, too, like eating and breathing. We woke up every morning to her alarm clock, set to 55KTSA, a Top 40 AM radio station. In the early 1970s, disco was hot, and I loved that music as a little kid. We listened to music in the car, too, because Mom always had the radio playing when she picked us up from my grandparents’ house after work.
On weekends, she’d light candles in the apartment to get it smelling good. Then she’d get on her hands and knees to clean everything. When she cleaned, the TV went off, and it was all about music. She had this really cool record collection and turned me on to classical stuff, like The Nutcracker and Peter and the Wolf. I also loved listening to story albums, where the sleeves opened like books and you could listen to the music while a narrator read the story. I never once suspected that my mother was deliberately giving me a musical education.
In middle school, I finally learned to play an instrument. My mom told me about beginner band and said that she really wanted me to try out for it, because she’d been the first chair flute player all through high school.
“Being in the school band sounds stupid,” I complained.
“Trust me,” she said. “Just try it.”
For her, I did it. I went to the band room, where they had all of these mouthpieces set up on a table for you to try: trumpet, trombone, saxophone, clarinet, French horn, everything. I didn’t know what the instruments looked like that went with those mouthpieces, or what criteria to use for choosing, but my band director let me try them all. At last I showed her the mouthpiece I liked the best, because it made this big buzzing sound when I blew on it.
“Great,” the band director said. “You’re going to play the French horn.”
“Okay. Cool,” I said.
Did I know what a French horn was? Hell, no. But she gave me this awkward black case and I had to carry it home.
So, I played the French horn—and grew to love it. I was good at it right away. I had a musical ear and I made rapid progress. I’d sit in my room and practice with the French horn and my book for hours at a time. It was really an awkward thing to have on your lap, this French horn, especially because I was a little skinny kid. It didn’t help that I didn’t have a music stand to prop up the book.
Eventually, I decided that I wanted to play guitar. I learned through osmosis. I had two friends who were incredible guitar players, and we all listened to the same music—Ozzy, Van Halen, Black Sabbath, Whitesnake, Mötley Crüe. I’d watch them play these songs and I’d take a snapshot with my mind so that I could remember where their hands were when they played certain chords or did these wild riffs. Then I’d go home and put my fingers in the same spots on my guitar and hit the notes.
My mom, of course, didn’t want me to play electric guitar. She associated rock and roll with all of those stereotypical bad boy things, like long hair and drugs and sleeping around. It’s no secret that, if you play in a band, your chances of having a girlfriend and being invited to the coolest parties are a lot higher, but I didn’t do it for that. I was too busy learning new songs in my room.
For me, like Selena, music was all about being able to express myself in ways I couldn’t with words. But, from the outside, I was a nobody. Or worse, I’m sure that to Abraham I was a stereotype, a ponytailed, beer-drinking hard rock guitarist in Tejano disguise. I sort of understood why he would object so strongly to me courting his daughter. He had treated her like a princess, a priceless treasure, and Selena was all that and more as a loving daughter and sister. She also embodied his dreams, because Abraham had always wanted to make it as a musician himself.
Maybe Selena would never have noticed me, much less fallen in love with me, if I hadn’t been in her band. But I was, and that meant we were together almost twenty-four/seven some weeks. The close proximity and the fact that we were the two youngest members of the band probably played a large part in why we were drawn together at first.
But there was more to our mutual attraction than proximity. Selena knew my capacity for love even before I did, I think. She was the kind of loving daughter, sister, and friend who always told people how she felt about them, and constantly sent cards or bought little gifts for people she cared about whenever we were on the road. I had thought of myself as this tough, cool musician, but Selena told me later how impressed she was whenever she saw me playing with A.B.’s two young children.
In those early years, A.B. often brought his wife and kids with him when we toured. The children were perhaps three and six years old at the time, and they were Selena’s pride and joy as an aunt. I adored them, too. Me being as relaxed a person as I am, I have always had a certain connection with kids, and I suppose when I joined the band I was still a kid myself in a lot of ways. Whenever I saw A.B.’s kids, I’d get right down on the floor and enjoy playing with them, and if Selena happened to be walking by A.B.’s hotel room and see me doing this, she’d always stop and join us.
“You’re going to be a great dad someday, Chris,” Selena said to me once, and I was startled by her comment, because I had never thought much about it. But it made me proud to hear her say that, too.
Selena also enjoyed meeting my friends, who are really good people, and who came around often whenever we played shows in San Antonio. I think that Selena saw how my friends were as loyal to me as I was to them, and she admired that. Selena hadn’t had the same chance I had to make lifelong friendships, since she’d been on the road so much since early childhood.
Perhaps most importantly, Selena knew that I wasn’t the kind of guy to object to her career, as so many men would. I wasn’t jealous or possessive. I let Selena be herself, and I was willing to share her with the world—even a world where many people saw her only for who she was onstage.
I was proud of how smart Selena was, of how she brought books on the bus and earned her high school equivalency diploma, and then went on to master Spanish. I admired how much energy she put into telling kids to stay in school and stay off drugs whenever she was asked to speak at a school. She wasn’t just talking the talk. She lived according to the philosophy she preached.
She had a special soft spot for fans who faced more obstacles than most. Abraham and members of the road crew would go out in the crowd and spot them, then come backstage or onto the bus and tell her all about the audience members who had struggled to come and see her. And, without fail, Selena made time for them.
“Selena!” Abraham might call, coming backstage. “There’s a little girl out here in a wheelchair who really wants to meet you.”
Selena would drop everything to go meet those fans and have her picture taken with them, hugging them and giving them her full-wattage smile.
She was fun, too, always dreaming up pranks. Once, we had a well-muscled security guard named Dave who made the mistake of accepting one of Selena’s challenges. “I want to check out your reflexes and reaction times,” she told him. “You’ve got to follow me and do everything I do.” Selena held a Coke can in one hand; now she handed him a can of Coke,
too.
“Okay, Dave,” she said. “Just copy me. Let’s see how fast you really are.”
Selena started doing things with her Coke can, tapping it on top, putting it against her face, or stroking the can with one finger. Her motions were faster and faster as Dave followed her every move, trying to mimic her exactly.
What Dave didn’t know, however, was that Selena had lined the bottom of his Coke can heavily with red lipstick, so that every time he touched his face with the bottom of the can, he marked his face. Finally we all just started laughing because we couldn’t contain ourselves anymore, and Selena laughed louder than anybody else.
Onstage, of course, everyone saw a confident Selena, someone who could get the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand in minutes. She had that kind of comfort level in public. What nobody ever saw—except those of us on the bus—were her pensive moods, times when she might seem really subdued as she sat looking out the window, thinking hard about whatever was on her mind, or frowning over a new fashion design as she worked it out on paper.
I was amazed by Selena’s fashion sense, and I loved looking at the sketches that she was always doing on the bus. She frequently fantasized about one day opening a clothing boutique of her own. She would always sketch her designs and then add her signature like a fancy designer’s logo.
She was already starting to make her own accessories, like jeweled belt buckles, as well as designing costumes for the band. Selena would draw the designs and choose the fabric, then send everything off to a seamstress who had all of our measurements on hand.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have much say in what we wore and most of the outfits didn’t appeal to me. Selena’s tastes were flamboyant, to say the least. She liked to see a lot of glitter and shine. I’d be handed a pair of black-and-white cowhide pants or a shiny purple satin suit with gold seams sewn down the front of the legs, and I’d say, “Oh, man. Do I really have to wear this?”