Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

Ingrid and I become close friends, and even today, however much harm she may have done to my relationship with my sister, I still love her as best I can. She has helped in my career as a music video director, is fun to be with, and, above all, is a true original. Born in 1964, in Little Havana, Miami, Ingrid is the daughter of wealthy parents—her father owns RC Aluminum, which makes windows for high-rises—who fled Cuba during the revolution.

  A convent schoolgirl, and a brilliant basketball player, Ingrid grew up a typical Coral Gables rich girl. She went to the University of Miami, first began using cocaine at fifteen or sixteen, and by 1994 has struggled to treat the problem several times. Along the way, she took a degree in English and PR, then moved to L.A., where she became a model booker for Wilhelmina and met Sandra.

  Since then, she has worked as image consultant for Emilio Estefan’s Crescent Moon Records—whose artists include Jon Secada and Albita—and was co-owner of the Miami clubs Liquid and Bar Room. In the late nineties, she tried without success to open a club in Manhattan. She has always been a hard worker, but she has nonetheless aroused the ire of feminists such as Camille Paglia, who has written of her, “She’s turned herself into Madonna’s flunky and yes-girl. I think Madonna’s dependence on Ingrid Casares is a self-stunting illness. Madonna should go to the Betty Ford clinic to break her addiction and detox from Ingrid.”

  At the time of Madonna’s first meeting with Ingrid, the woman in Madonna’s life was Sandra, but—whether or not their relationship was physical—Madonna couldn’t control Sandra. A woman with her own career, a definite personality and opinions, Sandra has never been Madonna’s puppy dog. Ingrid, however, is quite another story.

  Madonna has never taken well to criticism. At the time of her first meeting with Ingrid, she is well primed to find a permanent yes-woman. Now that she is a star, she has no patience with anyone who disagrees with her. Ingrid never will.

  A snapshot: Madonna and Ingrid are breakfasting in Madonna’s Miami home. Madonna is reading Vogue. She comes across a picture of an actress and says to Ingrid, “Look at her—she’s so fucking ugly.”

  Ingrid takes a brief look at the picture.

  “I don’t think she’s that ugly.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “You are so right, Madonna,” Ingrid says, “she is so ugly.”

  Ingrid is the perfect echo for Madonna. Never an instigator of conversation, she has a knack for taking on her environment and the opinions of the most important person around her—Madonna. She is the perfect chameleon, never challenging, never confrontational, and incredibly skilled at asking or answering questions, saying exactly what Madonna needs to hear.

  Ingrid knows exactly how to make herself indispensable to Madonna. Ingrid’s a great networker and collector of gossip and, from the first, is happy to pass information on to Madonna. She is always available, and as she is independently wealthy, she always pays her own way. She is at the house early in the morning, ready to work out with Madonna; Ingrid is a big fish in the small Miami pond, ready and willing to shop with Madonna or for her. She can find clothing Madonna wants, and if Madonna is in the mood for a man, Ingrid will find one for her.

  In actuality, until Madonna marries Guy—who Ingrid tells me doesn’t like her—Ingrid is the man in Madonna’s life. Or perhaps boy would be more accurate. Ingrid looks like a boy, but because she is a girl, she is happy to do girl stuff with Madonna: get her nails done with her, have a massage or a facial with her. And she’s discreet, which is of paramount importance to Madonna.

  Above all, Ingrid is no competition for Madonna. She doesn’t compete with Madonna for men, nor does she compete with her for women. For more than fifteen years, Ingrid will endure in Madonna’s life, as Ingrid doesn’t need Madonna for money, keeps her mouth shut, and adores her without question or limitations. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if my sister and Ingrid were having intimate relations. But Madonna never confirms or denies it.

  I have no real problem with Madonna’s relationship with Ingrid. In a way, it’s a match made in heaven. Ostensibly, Ingrid and Madonna have nothing in common, except one thing: they are both in love with Madonna. At least, Ingrid definitely falls in love with her at their first meeting and, to this day, remains enthralled.

  When Madonna and Ingrid are out in public, Ingrid always hovers over Madonna protectively. Madonna rarely reciprocates. Now and again, she does flirt with Ingrid only slightly, just enough to keep her on the hook. If they are out in a club, Madonna will give Ingrid a big kiss on the lips or cheek, and for the next five months Ingrid will live on that moment. But when they watch movies together, for example, they don’t sit on each other’s lap, although Ingrid sometimes sits at Madonna’s feet, as if she were Madonna’s slave. To some extent, she is. And Madonna knows exactly how to keep her in line. Many times, when they are going to a party together, at the last minute Madonna will inform Ingrid that she can’t ride with Madonna in her car because there is no room. Ingrid will be devastated.

  One night, the three of us are at a big dinner together. Ingrid goes to take her place next to Madonna.

  Madonna shakes her head. “No, Gridy, you can’t sit next to me tonight.”

  Ingrid makes a face, then quickly masks it with a small smile.

  She takes her place at the other end of the table.

  But as the evening progresses, she slowly makes her way back to the seat near Madonna. When the moment is right, she sits down next to her, just as she intended in the first place. Then she is happy.

  In general, I find it painful to observe Madonna demeaning Ingrid, and Ingrid unresistingly acquiescing.

  In January 1992, Madonna and photographer Steven Meisel start shooting her Sex book in Coconut Grove, Florida. From that time on, Ingrid and Madonna hang out together in the $4.9 million, six-bedroom, four-bathroom Coconut Grove mansion, which Madonna rents during the shoot and then buys.

  I dislike the book—which is published on October 16, 1992—intensely. Before production on it begins, I tell Madonna she should have Helmut Newton shoot the pictures and only publish five hundred leatherbound, numbered copies.

  “Make it special, unique, a collector’s item,” I say.

  “This is how I wanna do it,” she says.

  And that’s how she does it.

  In the United States the book sells a record five hundred thousand copies in just one week, and in Europe sells more than one hundred thousand copies in just two days, so on a commercial level she was obviously right.

  The Coconut Grove house was built in the thirties and was originally part of the Vizcaya estate. Madonna asks me to decorate it for her, so I fly down to Miami, where the first person I meet is Ingrid, who has come over to check out the house on Madonna’s behalf, along with Eugene Rodriguez, the broker for the property.

  The former owners of the house replaced the original thirties Spanish interior with Italian light oak wood and had everything built in, even the beds. Horrifying. I set about restoring the house. It ends up having six bedrooms, new bathrooms—Madonna’s is black-and-white marble—a large living room with a carved ceiling, a long dining room with coral keystone arches, a gym, an office, and a media room. All in all, a great place to hang out.

  Sylvester Stallone lives on the same street, and Madonna and I laugh at the vanity of his CASA ROCKO insignia emblazoned on his mansion gate.

  Although the house is intended to be Madonna’s vacation home, she often uses it year-round, primarily because she is at her most relaxed at the Coconut Grove house. The press has no access. We hang out by the pool, I cook a great deal—pastas and salads—and Madonna, Ingrid, and I, along with various other people, all watch old movies together—A Clockwork Orange, 2001, Laura, Bringing Up Baby.

  Often, a New Age priestess, Elsa Patton—a tall, heavily made-up blonde who drives a late-model Rolls-Royce—comes to the house with her daughter, Marisol, and sprinkles blessed water around all the doors. Now and again, she takes Madonna and Ingrid out on Madonna�
�s small speedboat, Lola Lola, and gives them a ritual baptism in the ocean.

  Once Elsa conducts one of her iconoclastic rituals on me—a treatment that Madonna has regularly, which Madonna explains to me is designed to cleanse the soul. I lie on the bed, wearing all white, and Elsa rubs hot oil with rosemary and other herbs and spices into my body. Then she goes into a trance and starts talking to me in a strange language. This takes precisely thirty-five minutes. When she’s done, she says I have to keep the oils on for the next twenty-four hours. I think I smell like a roasted chicken and shower the oil off immediately.

  But Madonna believes implicitly in Elsa and her treatments. When it comes to religion and rituals, Madonna’s policy—to be on the safe side—is to cover all bases. In Coconut Grove, she has containers of spiritually cleansed water by the doorways, a nineteenth-century Italian dark-mahogany-with-ivory-inlay prayer bench that I gave her for Christmas, rosaries hang throughout the house, and a small shrine to our mother.

  Elsa and Marisol are frequent visitors, and Madonna’s soul is repeatedly cleansed. On reflection, I suppose it isn’t a big leap from there to Kabbalah.

  Although Ingrid is very much a part of Madonna’s life now—rather like Cleopatra’s handmaiden, or a windup doll that can speak, but whose battery has wound down, or, if she does speak, is an ever-willing echo—Madonna still has relationships with a series of men.

  She has a brief relationship with Vanilla Ice, but breaks it off because she considers him less than her intellectual equal, and I agree. Then she starts seeing the actor John Enos, who appeared in Melrose Place, a genuine man’s man. Like my brother Marty, John Enos is the kind of man both Sean and Guy long to be. He changes the oil in his car, drives a fifties pickup truck, which he restored on his own, and has a basement in his house set up as a shooting range. He is tall, happy, quite good-looking, and is one of the owners of the Roxbury nightclub in L.A.

  Despite being so masculine, John is, like Warren, totally comfortable with gay men, and we often hang out together. In yet another attempt to bond with the man in my sister’s life, I go with John to Tattoo’s By Lou in South Beach, where I have the tattoo of an anchor and the word “mother” tattooed on my shoulder. While we don’t mingle our blood together like Sean and I once did, John and I are definitely buddies and I like and admire him. A year later, Madonna, John, and I go to a party up in the Hollywood Hills, along with Guy Oseary, who works for Madonna’s company, Maverick Records, and is straight. Marky Mark—Mark Wahlberg—is also at the party. I dance with a guy on the dance floor, and Marky mutters something under his breath. Guy Oseary comes to my defense and starts tussling with Marky. Things look as if they are about to get ugly. John makes a move toward Marky. Marky takes one look at him and sprints out of the house. Enos follows in hot pursuit, yelling, “Come back here, you pussy, I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.” But Marky just keeps on running.

  However much a man John is, he still isn’t man enough for Madonna, who starts cavorting around with her twenty-two-year-old bodyguard, Jim Albright. It only takes me an hour with Albright to conclude that the attraction might be purely physical.

  Ingrid, Madonna, Jim, and I take Lola Lola across the bay to Key Biscayne. The water in between is shallow. We’ve ridden the boat out that way many times, and I know you have to take a certain route. I tell Jim, but he doesn’t listen.

  On the way back, I again tell him what route to take, but he insists on steering the boat in the direction he wants. Seven hundred yards from the dock at the end of our garden, the water is only around two feet deep. I try to direct Jim, but he ignores me.

  Two minutes later we are stuck on a sandbar.

  Madonna yells, “Goddamm it, Jim, why the fuck didn’t you listen to my brother?”

  I call on the cell phone for a boat to tow us out.

  We sit in the boat, waiting.

  After twenty minutes, Madonna stands up. “I’m not waiting here anymore.” She starts to climb out of the boat and into the water.

  “Don’t, Madonna,” I say, and tell her about the nurse sharks that normally lurk around the bay. “Six or seven feet long, and not particularly docile, so it’s not a good idea to go wading.”

  She sits down in the boat again.

  The sun is beating down on us. In a replay of our Moroccan trip, she starts bitching about the heat.

  Finally, a boat pulls up to tow us home.

  “You’re driving, Christopher,” she says.

  And that’s the last I see of Jim Albright.

  MADONNA AND I spend Thanksgiving and Easter in the Coconut Grove house, and during the year, she often throws parties there. Her parties are relatively sedate and usually end with everyone sitting in the living room playing some stupid game she has suggested.

  On one occasion, David Geffen, Rosie O’Donnell, Ingrid, Madonna, John Enos, and I are all in the living room. Madonna suggests we play a game—a hybrid version of truth or dare—in which we pass a lit match around and whoever is holding the match when it goes out has to answer a question.

  The questions?

  “If you have to kiss anyone in the room, who would you like it to be?”

  “Who is the most beautiful person in the room?”

  “If you have to have sex with anyone in the room, who would you like to have it with?”

  The others answer: “Madonna.” “Madonna.” “Madonna.”

  My answer: John Enos.

  All the focus in the room is on Madonna, every question is about her, every answer—and they all go along with it. She is the be-all and end-all, the alpha and the omega, of all our existences, and we endlessly trumpet our allegiance to her.

  In Coconut Grove, Madonna now owns three Chihuahuas—Chiquita, Rosita, and Evita—all selected for her by Ingrid. But Madonna is not a dog or cat lover. She won’t walk the dogs and views them as little more than live-in accessories. She allows them to run all over the house and, even though they shit everywhere, pays scant attention to them.

  I FIND OUT in April 1992 that Madonna is still seeing Jim Albright. John Enos also knows and is not happy about it. But he is so besotted with her that he doesn’t end their relationship.

  She says of him, “He’s way too available and way too mainstream, although he’s extremely handy around the house.”

  One incident in particular rankles John. Madonna takes Good Friday off. Enos assumes that he will spend the day with her. Instead, she tells him she wants to hang out in South Beach with Ingrid and have lunch with her there, just the two of them. As it happens, Sean was also in South Beach with Robin at the time.

  Poor John. Not only does he have to cope with Madonna and Albright and her intense relationship with Ingrid, but also her continuing fascination with her ex-husband, Sean Penn. Then there is Guy Oseary, now her manager, with whom she has had a long-running flirtation.

  Madonna’s breakup with John is inevitable. Afterward, he dates a glittering array of sexy women: Taylor Dayne, Heidi Fleiss, and Traci Lords—all a testament to his masculinity.

  ON THE CAREER front, both Madonna and I are more than surprised when Oliver Crumes, Kevin Stea, and Gabriel Trupin, dancers from Blond Ambition, file a lawsuit against Madonna for invasion of privacy, fraud and deceit, intentional misrepresentation, and more, basically accusing her of exposing their private lives in Truth or Dare.

  I have little sympathy for them; all the dancers were aware, from the first, that they were being filmed for Truth or Dare, and no matter how much I might dislike the graveyard scene in the film, all the dancers knew exactly what they were participating in. Nonetheless, Madonna eventually chose to settle with them.

  THROUGH THE YEAR, Madonna and I remain extremely close. We both relish seeing legends perform, then meeting them afterward, and often go to their performances together. On February 24, 1992, we see Pavarotti at Lincoln Center. At intermission, we go backstage to visit him. In his dressing room, he is spread out on the couch, his big body all covered in warm, wet towels to sooth
e his voice, his head popping out of another towel. A translator is on hand for his conversation with Madonna.

  “The show is great,” she says.

  “It’s an honor,” Pavarotti says.

  “Grazie.”

  “You’re Italian! Isn’t that great!”

  “Shouldn’t the whole world be?” she says.

  ON AUGUST 26, 1992, Madonna, Ingrid, and I go to see Peggy Lee sing at Club 53 at the New York Hilton. Peggy is wonderful, but can barely move onstage. She’s seventy-two and infirm, but is still an incredible performer. She is wearing a wig, attached to her head by a large diamond brooch, which seems to be pinned into the top of her skull. It’s an odd sight, but quickly forgotten when she belts out “Fever,” which Madonna will cover on her Erotica album. After the show is over, Madonna presents her with a bouquet of red roses. Then Peggy is wheeled out in her wheelchair.

  IN DECEMBER 1992, Madonna’s Dangerous Game is released. I tell her this is the best movie that she has ever made and that I think she can act. This time, I mean it. Soon after, Body of Evidence comes out, and I am once again tremendously embarrassed for her.

  Despite the debacle of Body of Evidence, which critics universally pan, Madonna now has tremendous compensations—financial and otherwise—in her career, particularly after she signs a $60 million, seven-year contract with Time Warner, with whom she forms a new multimedia entertainment company. Her reviews for A League of Their Own are positive—and I agree with them.

  True to form, she also fans the flames of controversy by modeling topless at the Gaultier amfAR benefit at the Shrine Auditorium, but the cause is good and the show raises $750,000 for AIDS research. I am glad that my sister still does so much for the fans who made her and against the sickness from which so many of our friends have died.

  EIGHT

  “Wouldn’t it be awful if this was—was the

  high point?”

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise