Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  We have cocktails with her at the table, along with Madonna, Guy Ritchie, Rupert Everett, and Gwyneth, who is currently in a flirtation with Guy Oseary, now running Maverick Records for Madonna, and sits close to him.

  Just before midnight, Ingrid rushes out into the courtyard.

  “J.Lo is here,” she announces, “and we’re not talking to her.”

  I flash back to a recent newspaper article and remember that Gwyneth and Madonna are feuding with J.Lo because J.Lo was quoted by a journalist as saying that Madonna couldn’t sing and Gwyneth couldn’t act. Most unwise.

  Everyone, with the exception of Donatella and me, gives J.Lo the cold shoulder.

  At midnight sharp, we are all momentarily distracted from the dramatic J.Lo-related tension when we all gather round the TV screen and watch the New Year’s Eve celebrations all over the world. The pope gives his blessing, then they cut to fireworks. It looks as if the pope has blown up. We all dissolve into hysterics, then, of course, look up warily toward the heavens, just in case.

  I dance with Donatella on the acrylic dance floor that covers the sunken, gilt-inlay swimming pool. Then someone, I don’t recall whom, comes over to me and whispers into my ear that a bunch of us are going to do half a tab of ecstasy.

  Around two in the morning, we all move on to the VIP Room of the Bar Room, Ingrid’s new club. The VIP is a dark room, small—about fifty by fifty—with large glass windows overlooking the main dance floor.

  We all drink Veuve Clicquot, and I can tell everyone is feeling good.

  Madonna, Gwyneth, Ingrid, the two Guys, and I are all sitting in a booth.

  Gwyneth gives me a playful, lascivious look.

  I jump up and pull her onto the dance floor.

  It’s now around four in the morning. Madonna, who is definitely feeling no pain, is dancing on the table. Gwyneth joins her, and they dance together. In the middle of the dance, Madonna grabs Gwyneth, and kisses her full on the mouth.

  It is that sort of a night.

  My friend Dan has brought a nineteen-year-old boy to the party with him. The boy is always handling his crotch. And as a result, I call him Scratchy. Madonna, in a knee-length pink chiffon Versace dress, is on the dance floor, dancing with a group of people. We all look good together, and we know it. Suddenly Scratchy squeezes up to Madonna. He edges between us, puts his arms around her, and they dance a slow dance close together.

  Within an instant, Guy Ritchie strides across the dance floor. He kicks Scratchy in the leg to get his attention and drags him away from Madonna. Then he swings his fist at him. I push Guy back and yank Scratchy out of the room.

  THE MOMENT PASSES. The dancing begins again.

  I’m on the dance floor, dancing with Gwyneth again.

  Suddenly I sense someone coming up behind me.

  Guy grabs me from behind and starts bouncing me up and down like a rag doll.

  “Put me down!” I say.

  I extract myself from his iron grip.

  I shove him up against the wall, push into him, and grind my hips right into him.

  “If you want to dance with me, this is how we dance here,” I say grimly.

  He flushes and pushes me off.

  I walk away. I don’t give Guy another thought. Rupert, however, is watching us intently, and apparently does. Later, in his autobiography, he comments, “Guy and Chris were from different planets, and in a way the one’s success relied on the other not being there.” At that stage, though, I don’t focus on Guy’s actions because I’m distracted by a commotion on the dance floor: two people are openly doing drugs. Security grabs them both and throws them out.

  We all keep on dancing.

  The evening fades away.

  Somehow, and I can’t remember how, I get home.

  The next day, Madonna throws a barbecue in the garden, but most of us are so hungover that we just chill out, lounge by the pool, and speak softly.

  We only come alive when Lola starts screaming that Mo, Rupert’s puppy, is drowning. We dive into the pool and rescue him, whereupon he collapses, and we are terrified. Fortunately, though, after being ministered to by Elsa, the New Age priestess, he recovers.

  The afternoon ends, and everyone leaves. Throughout the day, Guy and I haven’t said a word to each other. I decide that he is a bit of an oaf, particularly on the dance floor, a drawback with regard to Madonna, as she likes her lovers to dance well.

  Above all, it has always been of paramount importance to Madonna that the man in her life be able to deal with the gay men in her life. I can’t imagine that Guy will be around for long.

  I am wrong, of course. Perhaps I was too close to my sister, too caught up in the drama of that New Year’s Eve, to read the writing on the wall. I have no intimation whatsoever that the advent of Guy in Madonna’s life is the death knell for my relationship with her.

  THE DECADE ENDS with The Guinness Book of World Records listing Madonna as the most successful female solo artist, citing her as having sold 120 million albums worldwide. The Blond Ambition tour is named the Greatest Concert of the 1990s by Rolling Stone. Entertainment Weekly lists Madonna as the fifth Top Entertainer of the Half-Century (1950–2000). She is anointed Artist of the Millennium by MTV Asia.

  Madonna’s latest movie, The Next Best Thing, which she makes with Rupert Everett, opens on February 29, 2000. She invites me to the premiere. I go with Billie Myers, a good friend and favorite singer of mine. Madonna is sitting two rows in front of me. The movie is awful. I pretend that I have to go to the bathroom and hope no one notices that I don’t come back.

  Instead, I stand in the hallway and listen, but at least don’t have to watch. Afterward, I tell Madonna that she was great and the movie is funny, but this isn’t true. I am glad that I am not alone with her because if we had a proper conversation about the movie, I know she would realize that I am lying. She has no idea whatsoever how bad she is in the movie but I realize that nothing good would come of speaking my mind so I decide not to. The movie has already premiered, and there is nothing that can be done anymore to improve it or my sister’s performance in it. Commenting on it negatively to her would be both pointless and destructive and I refuse to go there.

  THAT SAME MONTH, four months after I finished the latest addition to Coconut Grove, Madonna decides to sell the house. The end of an era. She also still hasn’t paid me my final installment for work on the addition.

  She is now living in London, where she starts the year by filming her “American Pie” video. In America, The Immaculate Collection is certified as having sold 9 million units, and on March 20, 2000, Madonna announces that she is pregnant with Guy’s child. I am still not convinced that Guy is in her life to stay, reasoning that she had Lola with Carlos, but still didn’t stay with him.

  On August 11, 2000, Madonna and Guy’s son, Rocco, is born at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles. I am in Miami working and so am not there for his birth.

  Madonna clearly doesn’t intend to stay in California, though, as she is now permanently based in London. There, she meets Prince Charles at a charity dinner at his home in Gloucestershire and, later in the year, gives her first UK concert in seven years, at Brixton Academy, which is seen by 9 million viewers throughout the world and is the biggest live webcast ever, breaking Sir Paul McCartney’s 1999 online record of 3 million.

  She will become so much a part of life in her new country, England—the country she and I once disliked so much during our first trip there together, all those years ago—that she is even asked to present the prestigious Turner Prize at the Tate Britain Gallery. Doing so, she demonstrates that she hasn’t quite lost her American-style Madonna ability to shock: “At a time when political correctness is valued over honesty, I would like to say, right on, motherfucker, everyone is a winner!”

  Her comments so scandalize the British television-viewing public that Channel 4 is compelled to issue an apology for them.

  Along the way, she breaks the news to me that she and Gu
y are getting married. I tell her I am glad for her. I am, because I realize that she is vulnerable and needs him. Apart from the fact that Guy must remind her of Sean, she is getting older and needs a father for her children. She casts such a big shadow, and most men just aren’t prepared to subjugate themselves to her. I guess that Guy isn’t either, but at least he is prepared to marry her.

  BY OCTOBER 2000, my finances are in shambles. I have been working on Central, a new restaurant on Sunset Plaza, for most of the year and haven’t been paid. I have no choice but to downsize. I give up my apartment in Hollywood and rent a three-bedroom house in Los Angeles proper, renting out the other two rooms. Madonna continues to stall my payment for Coconut Grove. I protest, and we argue.

  On October 9, 2000, she sends me a letter saying that she is putting her “indignation aside”—referring to our payment dispute—and inviting me to her wedding. In a backhanded compliment, she says that she is inviting “my close friends and family members that are not insane.” She adds, “We will be married by a vicar in the Church of England because Catholics are a pain and GR doesn’t want to convert and besides I’m a divorcée.”

  I am not keen to attend the wedding, as I really can’t afford it. Moreover, I no longer have any affinity for Guy. So I call to make my apologies.

  Madonna isn’t around, but her assistant Caresse calls me back: “Madonna told me to tell you if you want to be paid the final payment for Coconut Grove, you have to use the money to buy a ticket to her wedding.”

  A knot forms in my stomach. “You are joking, right? Because if you aren’t, then she is blackmailing me.” I hang up.

  Caresse calls back. “We are going to take the money Madonna owes you, buy you a ticket to Scotland, and send you the money that is left over.”

  I ask again if she’s kidding, and she tells me she isn’t. This is how Madonna wants to proceed.

  I spend a few days mulling over the situation. I feel I don’t know this person who is attempting to blackmail me into attending her wedding. However, I am consoled that my sister and I can’t be on such bad terms as she really does seem to want me at her wedding. So I capitulate.

  Caresse gives me the rundown of the wedding plans. I will fly to London a week before the wedding, be fitted for a tuxedo, and the following morning fly to Inverness, a forty-five-minute drive from Skibo Castle, in Dornoch, on the shores of Dornoch Firth in the Scottish Highlands. On December 21, Rocco will be christened, and the wedding will take place on December 22.

  Later, I discover that before the wedding, the staff are forced to sign a four-page confidentiality agreement, that none of the guests is allowed mobile phones, and that we are all banned from leaving the castle during the five-day wedding celebrations. Moreover, seventy security guards will be on hand to ensure that no press infiltrate Skibo, and no guest escapes either. Colditz Castle, here I come!

  A business-class British Airways ticket is messengered to me from Madonna’s office. When I check the price, I discover that only a few hundred dollars of my final fee remain.

  Once in London, I follow Caresse’s instructions and go to Moss Bros on Regent Street to rent my tuxedo. They hand me this gray cutaway that all the male guests are supposed to wear. It’s pure polyester, and when I slide the jacket on, it burns my fingers. The shop assistant presents me with the rental bill. “Put it on Guy’s bill,” I say, and walk out.

  That night, I go out to dinner with friends. We party, and I end up going to bed at five in the morning. Consequently, I miss my flight to Inverness. At the airport, a BA official takes pity on me and arranges for me to fly to Edinburgh, and from there to Inverness. I am not particularly happy, but I am still curious about Scotland and am interested to discover what it’s like.

  A car meets me at the airport. After about an hour’s drive, we arrive at Dornach, drive up a sweeping beech-tree-lined drive, and Skibo Castle looms in front of me cloaked in mist, big: beautiful, mysterious, and set on seventy-five hundred acres of prime Highlands land. A flag featuring the Union Jack on one side and the Stars and Stripes on the other—a tradition stemming from Andrew Carnegie, who restored the castle in the nineteenth century—flies from one of the turrets.

  My first sight of the Skibo main hall is straight out of any Hollywood movie featuring an ancient Scottish castle. A crackling log fire burns brightly, the walls are Edwardian oak-paneled, some with stuffed animal heads displayed on them. A sweeping oak staircase leads to a landing with a stained-glass bow window, where Madonna’s wedding ceremony will take place.

  I expect Errol Flynn to swagger down the magnificent staircase at any moment and start fencing with me. My fantasies are punctured, however, when at the reception desk I am asked to hand over my credit card for incidentals. I tell the receptionist that I didn’t bring my credit card with me. The result is that all my charges will be billed to Madonna and Guy. My white lie is, of course, motivated by my reaction to Madonna having blackmailed me into attending her wedding. I don’t want to feel that way, but I just can’t forget her bullying, overbearing behavior toward me.

  I follow Skibo’s kilted “greeter” to my accommodations, assuming they will be baronial and splendid, given the grand entrance hall. We walk up two flights, three flights. We walk up four flights, five flights. We walk up six. Along the way, we pass various suites, all magnificent, all with four-poster beds and furnished with antiques.

  My room is on the top floor in a turret attic. I go through a little door, into a small hallway, then into a room about six by six, with a claw-footed Victorian bathtub in the middle and a toilet against the wall. That leads to another doorway, another low-ceilinged room, and there is my bed.

  The phone rings and I am informed that dinner will be at eight. Moreover, it is black-tie. Madonna never warned me that there would be black-tie events. I’ve only brought one suit with me—Prada—so it looks like I’ll be wearing the same suit every night.

  I go down six flights of stairs. I pass a library and a billiards room. I take a walk outside, see the small gym and serene spa, and the historic Edwardian indoor swimming pool. Skibo is imposing yet beautiful, and I think to myself that I can deal with this for a week.

  A pretty girl rides by on a horse. She introduces herself to me as Stella. The penny drops. Stella McCartney. Madonna’s maid of honor. As far as I know, she and Madonna have only just met, yet Madonna has chosen her—not Ingrid or Gwyneth—to be her maid of honor. Stella designs and makes a free $30,000 dress specially for Madonna. Still, Ingrid can’t be happy.

  Stella explains the drill to me. Every morning, the men will go shooting, and the women will have a themed luncheon. She knows, because Madonna has told her.

  “So I either have to go to lunch with the women or go shooting?” I ask Stella.

  She tells me that no men are allowed at the lunches.

  Shooting is out of the question for me.

  I dress for dinner, then go into the library. Guy’s friends are in there. I don’t know any of them, but one or two look familiar so I guess I’ve seen them in some film or another. They are relatively friendly, and they all clearly have a history with one another.

  We have cocktails and I try to make small talk. I ask how the shooting went and they tell me that they have shot three hundred birds.

  I ask them if they are kidding.

  They tell me they aren’t. They are going to get hung up, where they are meant to rot. I flash back to the goat heads I saw hanging in a primitive Moroccan village all those years ago. Guy and his friends may be civilized Englishmen, not North African peasants, but their pursuits are similar.

  “So are we having them for dinner?” I ask.

  They all laugh and tell me that we aren’t.

  I GO TO dinner. Madonna walks in, says, “Welcome to Scotland,” and gives me a hug. Guy shakes my hand.

  Trudie and Sting arrive. I met him when he played the Pacific Amphitheatre in 1993 and like him.

  Melanie and her husband, Joe, walk in, and I’m glad
to see them.

  The large dining table is set for ten. Madonna has a seating chart, and on this first evening she’s put me next to Melanie and Joe, and I’m glad. Scottish food is served. For a while, I pick at it halfheartedly. Then I ask for some chicken.

  Tonight, and every night afterward, the guests toast the bridal couple. Tonight, one of Guy’s friends makes the toast, which culminates in a crack with the subtext “Wouldn’t it be funny if Guy were gay?”

  I don’t laugh. It wouldn’t be funny.

  After dinner, I decide to read up on Skibo’s history. I learn that the castle stands on the site of an original Viking edifice. Through the years reduced to ruin, Skibo was reborn in 1898, when it was bought by Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who immigrated to America at age twelve and as an adult accumulated a $10 billion fortune by manufacturing steel. Having made a fortune beyond his wildest dreams, Carnegie returned to Scotland, determined to buy the castle of his dreams, and spent $2 million restoring and decorating Skibo.

  Since then, King Edward VII, Edward Elgar, Lloyd George, Helen Keller, Rudyard Kipling, and the Rockefellers have all stayed at Skibo. Moreover, Paderewski even played the vast organ in the Great Hall. I relish Skibo’s illustrious history, but still feel lonely there.

  In the morning, I am awoken by a bagpiper playing under my window—apparently, a Skibo tradition dating back to Carnegie.

  When I go down to breakfast, where all manner of Scottish delicacies are on offer, I discover that I am condemned to spend the day on my own. The guys are scheduled to go shooting, the women to spend the day behind closed doors taking part in various female pursuits. Madonna doesn’t suggest any alternatives for me. Generally, a prospective bride isn’t responsible for entertaining her guests, but I can’t help wondering about the point of inviting someone to a wedding in the middle of nowhere, then leaving him to his own devices.