Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  So I work out and then read. I’m curious, though, about what’s going on in the girls’ room. It’s all very hush-hush. After a while, Stella comes out and says, “I’m tired of the girls, I’m going to ride my horse.”

  In the evening, I check the seating chart and discover I am sitting between Trudie and Sting. At first, they talk about the castle and the weather.

  Then Trudie leans in to me and says, “Christopher, do I have BO?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do I have BO? Do I smell?”

  “Not that I can tell,” I say, perplexed.

  “Are you into that sort of thing?” Before I can think of an answer, she chips in, “Mightn’t you be?”

  “Isn’t the smoked salmon delicious?” I say.

  GUY’S PRIDE IN his own heterosexuality swells noticeably when he’s in the presence of a gay man like me. And during this wedding week, when there are nightly after-dinner toasts made by his male friends—many of which are aimed at underscoring his overt masculinity—he is in his element. I, however, am far from amused when many of the speeches trumpeting Guy’s heterosexuality include the word poofter, a derogatory British expression for “gay.”

  Ignoring all the other guests—Sting, Trudie, Stella McCartney, my sister Melanie and her husband, Joe—Madonna, who is at the head of the table, stands up and issues the instruction, “Christopher, tonight it’s your turn to give the toast.”

  I lean down the baronial table and, with great emphasis, reply, “Madonna, you really don’t want me to do that.”

  It’s a statement, not a question.

  Madonna looks back at me blankly.

  “I think you should ask someone else,” I volunteer helpfully.

  “No, Christopher, it’s your turn!” she bark in a tone identical to the one she always used as a kid when she and my siblings all played Monopoly together; if she didn’t get Park Place, she invariably stamped her feet and said, “But it’s mine!”

  In those days, in the face of her strong will, I always capitulated and rescinded my purchase of Park Place.

  Nothing seems to have changed.

  I stand up.

  My fellow guests fall silent out of respect; the brother of the bride is about to make a speech.

  I raise my glass, “I’d like to toast this happy moment that comes only twice in a person’s lifetime.” Then, without skipping a beat, I go on, “And if anybody wants to fuck Guy, he’ll be in my room later.”

  Everyone erupts in peals of laughter. Everyone, of course, except Madonna, who keeps saying, “What did he mean? What did he mean?” and Guy, who I suspect knows exactly what I mean, says nothing.

  AFTERWARD, HE AVOIDS looking at me. Soon after, I go to my room. I’m walking along the corridor, thinking that at least I got my dagger in when Trudie comes up behind me.

  “That was hysterical,” she says. “Your sister didn’t get it, but I’ve been listening to all those homophobic jokes, and if you weren’t pissed off, I’d be worried about you. I just want you to know that we were aware of how you must be feeling.”

  At that moment, I fall in love with Trudie, and she knows it.

  THE NEXT DAY, my parents arrive, along with Paula. Initially, Madonna didn’t invite her. Paula tells me that she called Madonna and said she really wanted to be at her wedding, and Madonna said that as long as Paula paid for her own plane ticket and incidentals she could come. I am really pissed off at Madonna for treating Paula so badly. She is working as a graphic artist and only earns a modest salary. Yet Madonna still expects her to pay her own plane fare to this far-flung place.

  My mood improves when Rupert, Alek, Gwyneth, and Donatella arrive. We take a golf-cart ride, and I tell them about the homophobic toasts and how awful everything has been. They laugh and console me. Gwyneth says, “Poor Christopher, we’ll look after you.” We spend the rest of the day together.

  The christening is in the evening. A long line of Range Rovers pull up in front of the castle, ready to take us to Dornoch Cathedral. A press pack of five hundred photographers and even more journalists is waiting for us outside the castle gate. We drive past them, but they follow us all the way to Dornoch.

  More than a thousand fans are gathered outside the small, 776-year-old cathedral, famous for its beautiful stained-glass windows. Inside, the cathedral is lit with candles and garlanded with ivy and flowers.

  I sit with Gwyneth and Rupert and only see Rocco—swaddled in his white-and-gold, $45,000 Versace christening outfit, a gift from Donatella—from a distance. I learn afterward that a journalist has been hiding in the massive pipe organ for three days. By the time someone discovers him, he has passed out cold.

  Guy Oseary has been awarded the distinction of being Rocco’s godfather. I try not to mind and, instead, focus on Sting’s moving rendition of “Ave Maria.” After around thirty minutes, the service is over. We are driven back to the house, with the press following close behind.

  Dinner is served, toasts are given. I experience a sudden urge to smoke, but know I can’t, as Madonna has banned smoking.

  Gwyneth and I leave at the same time. On the way up to my room, we stop at her suite, which is massive and beautiful. It occurs to me that I—who sometimes signed my letters to Madonna “Your humble servant” just to annoy her—have been relegated to what must be one of the smallest rooms in the castle, perhaps even the servants’ quarters. A joke? Or just my sister’s way of keeping me in my place.

  THE NEXT EVENING, the evening of the wedding, I put on my rented tux, but in a moment of rebellion akin to Madonna’s cutting holes in her ballet clothes all those years ago, I pair it with my own Vivienne Westwood waistcoat.

  Just before 6:30 p.m., we all gather in the Great Hall, now lit by candles, and take our seats at the foot of the staircase, the balustrades of which are garlanded in ivy and white orchids. It is beautiful.

  I am sitting in an aisle seat, five rows from the front. The strains of the hymn “Highland Cathedral,” played by a lone bagpiper, fill the foyer. He is replaced by a pianist, Katia Labèque, who plays as Lola, in a long, ivory, high-necked dress, descends the staircase to the landing above us, scattering red rose petals in front of her.

  Lola is sweet, winsome, and adorable. I feel sad that all week she has either been with her nanny or her nurse, or sequestered in the locked room with Madonna and the other girls, as I would have liked the opportunity to get to know her better.

  Then Madonna, beautiful in a fitted ivory silk dress, enters on our father’s arm. In his tuxedo, our father looks handsome, distinguished, and every bit the aristocrat. For a second, I wonder what his father, Gaetano—who arrived in America with just his $300 dowry, all those years ago—would think of his son now. Not to mention his granddaughter.

  On the landing in front of the stained-glass bay window, Madonna joins Guy, who is wearing a green Shetland-tweed jacket, green tie, green and diamond antique cuff links, which, I later learn, are a gift from Madonna, white cotton shirt, and a kilt that someone explains to me is in the plaid of the Mackintosh clan. Rocco, snuggling in his nanny’s arms, is dressed in a kilt made from identical fabric.

  Guy and Madonna exchange diamond wedding rings. Then, in front of a female pastor, they speak the vows they’ve written themselves. I wish I could hear them, but the ceremony is so far from where we are all sitting that although we can hear Katia play “Nessun Dorma,” and Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue,” none of us can make out a single word of the vows. Déjà vu—Sean and Madonna’s wedding all over again. Although perhaps Sean isn’t looking like such a bad choice of brother-in-law anymore.

  After fifteen minutes the ceremony ends. The wedding party descends the staircase and we all congratulate them. We sip champagne, then Madonna and Guy go up to their rooms to change. After a short while, Madonna emerges in a Gaultier dress, and Guy in a blue suit.

  AT EIGHT, WE all come back to the Great Hall, where a bagpiper pipes us into dinner. Tonight there is no long table, but rather seven round tables.
Madonna and Gwyneth and Guy are at the front table, along with Sting and Trudie and Donatella. My parents are at a side table with Joe and Paula and Melanie.

  Perhaps as a direct result of my toast, I have been allocated a seat at the back of the room, sitting with my back to the bride’s table. I’m not surprised because, after all, I’ve been a bad boy. Alek Keshishian is sitting at my right and spends most of the dinner—salmon and mussels, Scottish beef, roast potatoes, cabbage, and the Scottish national dish, haggis—bitching that he isn’t sitting with Madonna, which irritates me to no end.

  The best man, nightclub owner Piers Adam, stands up to give his toast. Behind him, a screen features images of Guy as a baby, Guy as a schoolboy, and even Guy in a dress. One picture shows Guy as a child, lying across a black dog, with his hand near the dog’s penis. Piers Adams points at it. “You see, Guy was a poofter early on,” he chortles, really pleased with himself.

  I restrain myself from getting up and throwing a plate at him.

  I glance at my sister, hoping to see a look of outrage on her face, but there is none. And I am sad that Madonna, whose early success was built on her legions of gay fans, can listen to these antigay comments without protesting. I feel even sadder that she is now married to a man who seems so insecure in his masculinity that he thrives on homophobia, and his friends know it.

  I leave the dinner, go upstairs, and fall asleep. I wake up at around two in the morning and go downstairs to get something to eat. I hear music coming from the castle’s cellars and take a look. A big party is going on, and everyone is dancing. Among them, Madonna’s maid from America. While a very nice gesture that she paid her maid’s way, it is almost beyond my comprehension that Madonna categorically refused to pay for our sister Paula to fly to Scotland as well. In the morning, we all pile into the bus taking us to the airport and we fly back to London. I breathe a sigh of relief. I’ve served my time at Skibo and it’s over.

  Madonna, at least, enjoyed her wedding. She later said, “It was a truly magical experience. It was very personal and very intimate.” And she makes a conciliatory gesture toward me, suggesting that I stay at her Holland Park home on Christmas Eve, then on Christmas Day join her and Guy at Sting and Trudie’s fifty-two-acre Wiltshire estate, where the newlyweds are spending their honeymoon.

  Once I get there, the honeymooners naturally keep to themselves, and I hang out with Trudie and Sting. After the disappointment of the wedding, it’s nice to be with friends, however new.

  At dusk, Sting and I walk around the property together. He and Trudie keep sheep and they run everywhere. There is also a little lake with an island in the middle, with a large tree growing on it. Sting tells me a story about a girl who died out there. According to him, at certain times of the year you can still see her ghost, dressed in a white gown, sitting on a chair, gazing out over the lake. The property is unmodernized, beautiful, and for that evening I feel as if I have gone back in time.

  But even the serene surroundings and the kindness Sting and Trudie both show me don’t eradicate the unhappy memories of my week in Scotland. And when I arrive back home in America again, open my mail, and find an invitation to join Skibo’s exclusive private members’ club, I don’t, for one second, consider accepting it.

  TWELVE

  Everything you do affects the future.

  Kabbalah wisdom

  I BEGIN 2001 feeling positive and happy. But in March, I make the chilling discovery that Madonna is going on the road again on her forty-eight-city Drowned World tour, but isn’t hiring me to direct it. Perhaps as retaliation for my wedding toast and the disdain I have demonstrated for her new husband, she has hired another director, Jamie King, instead. I get the news from Caresse. I email Madonna about it and her reply is that she feels that—because of my drug taking—I have become unreliable. I immediately write back telling her in no uncertain terms that my drug use is recreational and that I have never allowed it to interfere with my work.

  Although she doesn’t retract her accusation and clearly still believes all the rumors about me, a few weeks later she writes inviting me to sit in on one of the rehearsals. In the same letter, she tells me that she, Guy, and the children are now eating a macrobiotic diet—no meat, chicken, bread, sugar, dairy, or alcohol—prepared by a French macrobiotic cook. She also invites me to come to a Kabbalah class.

  Although I am slightly intrigued by Kabbalah, I decline. But I do accept Madonna’s invitation to attend the Drowned World rehearsal. In an irony that feels decidedly bitter to me, rehearsals are being held at Sony Studios in Culver City, where—just eight years before—we rehearsed The Girlie Show.

  When I arrive at the stage door, the first thing I see is Jamie King’s brand-new black Mercedes. Only recently, he was driving a late American model. I can only surmise that Madonna is paying him a fortune to direct Drowned World, certainly much more than she paid me, and this rankles with me.

  I go inside and watch the “Ray of Light” segment, in which Madonna sings three songs. She is wearing a kimono with fifty-foot-long arms. Despite her commitment to Kabbalah, the overall vibe is angry, violent, and not fun to watch.

  I don’t want to sound unsupportive, so I say a few constructive things. Then, referring to a scene in which she is supposed to be momentarily submissive, I suggest to Jamie that she look down first, as it will then make more of a dramatic impact if after that she looks up.

  He snaps, “We want to do it our way.”

  I don’t react.

  Later, I mention my suggestion to Madonna. She gives no response. But later on, when I go to the dress rehearsal, I see that she has followed my suggestion.

  NOW THAT MADONNA and Guy are married, she puts the Los Feliz home on the market, sells Coconut Grove, and makes an offer on a new house on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, which belongs to Diane Keaton.

  At the moment I am still designing the new L.A. restaurant Central—still unpaid—and I am broke. So I ask Madonna if I can design the house for her.

  Caresse has recently told me that Madonna was shocked when she received David Collins’s bill. Until then, she had no idea what kind of fees designers routinely charge. Now, however, she understands how low my fee really is. She’s ready for me to work for her again. As she knows my situation, she haggles over my rate. I have no choice but to settle for a low rate, and she agrees to hire me.

  She pays $6.5 million for the house, which was designed by architect Wallace Neff. Before the sale closes, we go to look at the house together. It’s north of Sunset, an odd Spanish Mediterranean house with no wall around it and no gate. The yard is full of big agave plants and cacti, with huge six-inch spikes growing out of them, and lavender is everywhere.

  Diane still hasn’t moved out of the house, but isn’t there today. Her children’s toys are by the pool, all lined up in perfect order according to size.

  Madonna and I exchange glances.

  “Why are they lined up like that? And how can the kids play in the yard without stabbing themselves on the cacti?” she says.

  The first thing I do is get rid of the cacti. The backyard is dug up, and underneath the lavender we discover a great many rats and immediately have them exterminated.

  Before I start work on the interior, Madonna takes me aside and says, “You know, Christopher, I’ve got kids now and a husband, and you are going to have to design the house for the kids and to deal with my husband as well.”

  I tell her it won’t be a big deal, but I am wrong.

  In theory, decorating Roxbury should be easy. The only construction required is changing the bathroom upstairs so it suits Madonna, building a closet for Guy, and enlarging the pool. The rest of the job really only involves moving furniture from Castillo del Lago into the new house.

  However, Guy’s closet turns out to be a massive enterprise, particularly as it involves my dealing with Guy directly.

  We meet at the house and he tells me what he wants.

  “Nothing mincey, mate. Nothing twee,”
he says.

  I stop myself from knocking his front teeth in.

  He tells me that the closet must be six feet long and five feet wide, with hanging space just so, drawers of only one kind, and—most important of all—a glass case for his cuff links and watches. The case, he says, must be lined in red velvet, with lights, so he can see his cuff links and watches displayed there.

  It has to be made out of dark wood; the grain must match and run from left to right.

  Through it all, he addresses me as “Chris,” even though he knows I prefer Christopher. He is lordly, not in the least bit friendly—as if I am just another employee and not his brother-in-law.

  Madonna, too, treats me as if I am nothing other than a serf paid to decorate her home. In the past, I researched fabric and furniture for her, narrowed the choice down to three samples of fabric, or three types of chairs, and brought her the samples and the photographs so she could pick which she wanted.

  Now, though, she says three samples are not enough. She instructs me to bring her at least ten samples, photographs of at least ten types of chairs, and so on. And when I do, she says, she will then confer with Guy regarding the right choice.

  Up till now, I have designed eight of her homes and she has always trusted me implicitly. Not anymore. I show her five samples of paint color and suggest the appropriate one for the house, but she ignores me and asks to see more.

  If she does agree on a color, the following morning she will come back to the house and tell me, “Guy doesn’t like that color, so we have to pick another one.”

  I sense that her obstinacy stems from a deep desire to please Guy, and that he is secretly working to edge me out of every aspect of her life.