Life with My Sister Madonna
Page 31
After the show, I go backstage to the greenroom to see Madonna. As I walk in, a man with a full beard taps me on the shoulder. I assume he’s a rabbi.
In a polite but distant voice, I say, “Hi.”
“It’s Guy, dummy.”
I didn’t recognize him at all. I stand in the entrance of the greenroom and wait to see Madonna. In a white T-shirt and jeans, light makeup, her hair pulled back, she is perched on the edge of a chair. She knows the show has gone well and looks relaxed.
A line of people wait to shake her hand.
Our eyes meet.
She smiles at me.
I bypass the line.
We hug.
I tell her the show was great.
She thanks me for coming.
“You look good. You look happy,” she says.
I tell her she does, too, and I mean it.
We have reconnected at last, and I am glad.
IN JUNE, I go to my father’s seventy-fifth birthday in Traverse City. Joan throws a big party for him in a large barn on the property that holds five hundred. Madonna doesn’t come. I’m pleased because otherwise the party would have been about her, not him.
During the day, my father comes up to me and asks what’s going on with me and Madonna. I tell him we’ve had a disagreement and she’s hurt me badly, but we’re working on getting over it at last.
“I wish you would sort it out; it’s making me unhappy,” he says.
I don’t want to make my father unhappy. I love and respect him far too much. And I am glad to tell him that I feel that Madonna and I have almost sorted out all our differences and that I believe that there is hope for us again, at last.
WHEN CONFESSIONS OPENS in Miami on July 22, I ask for tickets so I can see the show again.
The atmosphere inside the arena is electric, if steamy, as Madonna, contrary to all the rules, has prevailed on the management to kill the air-conditioning.
I sit next to Gloria and Emilio on my left, and Dan Sehres on my right.
As Madonna is lowered onstage in the disco ball, I flash back for a moment to the disco ball at the Rubaiyat and feel nostalgic for that night, that time, and our shared past together. At that moment, Madonna looks directly at me and gives me a little nod and I smile at her.
I notice that Ingrid hasn’t got a good seat and keeps craning her neck for a view of Madonna. Ingrid is wearing the slightly hangdog look she has when she feels she’s been dissed. She keeps attempting to catch Madonna’s eye, but Madonna ignores her.
I am wrapped up in the show and really enjoying it when—all of a sudden—Madonna announces, “This song is for my brother, who is in the audience,” and sings “Paradise,” which she has cowritten.
Although the lyrics don’t contain a particular message, I am utterly stunned she has dedicated the song to me. As far as I know, she has only twice dedicated songs to someone: once to my father, and once to Martin Burgoyne. She has paid me a compliment and I’m happy.
AFTER THE SHOW, I am invited to the party in the Raleigh’s upstairs room. Madonna is in black, Ricky Martin stands on one side of her, and Mickey Rourke on the other. Ingrid hovers behind her.
I say hello to Madonna.
We have a repeat of our Los Angeles conversation.
After a while, I take a look at the dancers in the room. All of them are straight. None of them is dancing.
I go up to Madonna and say, “You don’t have any gay dancers!”
She thinks for a second, slightly puzzled. “You’re right, we don’t. Isn’t that weird?”
The question is rhetorical.
The party is dull. I think back to all the after-show parties Madonna and I have had in the past, when everyone was dancing and having fun and the atmosphere was joyful.
This party is joyless and dull.
After an hour, I leave.
IN OCTOBER 2006, Madonna and Guy fly to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, with a population of 12 million, including an estimated 1 million orphans, many of them children whose parents have died of AIDS. As Madonna has put it, “I didn’t choose Malawi. It chose me.”
From Malawi’s capital, they travel to the Home of Hope orphanage, thirty miles away, where they will meet twelve children—one of whom they are considering for adoption. They take one look at thirteen-month-old David Banda and the choice is made. It is not difficult. He is adorable, intelligent, and healthy. And I am surprised at the tidal wave of world media outrage that hits her and Guy after they make their decision.
I respect that Madonna is trying to help a young child from an impoverished third-world country. But the cynic in me reads about the publicists and camera crews who traveled with her and Guy on their first visit to the orphanage and—remembering Truth or Dare—can’t help thinking, Madonna is competing with Angelina Jolie. So she isn’t going to stop with one child, she is going to help an entire country, and she wants the world to know about it.
I’d like to think her motives are entirely altruistic, but am slightly disturbed that she couldn’t adopt David quietly, without all the concomitant press attention, and a documentary crew to record it.
Yet whatever her motivations, she has also helped form the charity Raising Malawi and has pledged more than $3 million to help Malawi’s orphans. She also does all she can to make the world aware that while Malawi may be a beautiful country, it has also been severely blighted by AIDS, famine, and war.
All in all, I respect her giving heart and know that whatever she contributes, the attention her involvement in Malawi brings can only help those less fortunate than herself.
BY THE TIME my birthday comes around in 2006, I am settled and feeling happier, traveling between L.A. and Miami, and assume that all my bitterness over Madonna has dissipated. I have a dinner at Karu & Y, then go to a party at the Sagamore, thrown for me by Ingrid.
She is running Saturday nights there, so she is primarily giving the party to get press. She tells me that I can invite twenty people, and that she will provide three tables and serve free vodka.
When I arrive, fifteen strangers are sitting at my tables. I ask Ingrid who they are. She brushes aside my question and tells me that when my friends arrive, she will make room for them. I tell her that this will make my friends uncomfortable. Then I take a look at the vodka she’s provided: just two bottles for twenty people, and a cheap brand at that.
Suddenly, something in me snaps. I may be projecting Madonna onto Ingrid, but I just freak out. I storm out of the restaurant and my friends follow.
By morning, I have calmed down; I realize that I have over-reacted. Although I have now created a life for myself based on my own talents and not Madonna’s, I am still bitter at her. Kabbalah has not helped exorcise my demons, nor have I really forgiven her.
I turn on my computer and find two emails—one from Madonna and one from Ingrid. Ingrid is indignant, telling me that she did me a favor and how dare I walk out on her. It goes on, accusing me of having an exaggerated sense of entitlement. To some degree, she is right. I did feel entitled—because I was aware that my presence meant that the Sagamore would get press that night—but I was wrong to explode at her and to walk out. I write back immediately and apologize.
Then I read Madonna’s email. She gives a blow-by-blow account of my behavior that evening, as described to her by Ingrid, and most of it is true. She doesn’t berate me, though. The tone is relatively soft. The purpose of the email is to let me know that she still believes I am a drug addict and an alcoholic and that I need help. She suggests that I go to an outpatient rehab center and offers to pay for it.
I think about what she has written, then take a long, hard look at myself. I don’t think I am an alcoholic or a drug addict, but I do know that—due, in part, to my relationship with Madonna—I’ve got some serious issues to deal with. I agree to go to Transitions Recovery Program in North Miami Beach, and Madonna pays the cost in advance for a consultation with a psychiatrist there.
Four days later, we have another meeting, in which he tells me that neither the blood tests nor our conversation indicates either alcoholism or drug addiction. He recommends I have long-term one-on-one therapy and names a good therapist in Miami. With my consent, he emails a copy of his recommendations to Madonna.
Madonna rattles off an instant email in response, telling the doctor that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. The doctor reads to me: “My brother belongs in rehab and that’s that.”
“Your sister has control issues,” he tells me.
Ingrid has apparently also called the psychiatrist, expressing surprise that he had not told me to go into rehab.
He repeats his recommendations based on the tests and his lengthy consultation with me about my situation.
I get an email from Madonna telling me that she has received the doctor’s assessment, that she disagrees totally with him, but is glad I am seeking help for my problems and will pay for a number of my sessions. Despite her control issues, I realize that she is being generous and kind in attempting to help me.
In January 2007, I start seeing my therapist twice a week. On the proviso that she receive progress reports, Madonna agrees to pay for a fixed number of sessions at $150 a time. With my consent, the therapist agrees to send her a weekly report on my progress in therapy, approved by me and without revealing the content of our sessions, as I want to find a way back to forming a real relationship with Madonna again.
My therapist writes to Madonna, reiterating the doctor’s feelings regarding rehab.
Madonna apparently emails her back saying that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, that she has no clue and can’t be a good therapist. She tells my therapist that I am manipulating her.
My therapist reacts by telling me that she is glad to be getting such a good idea of my sister. She says that Madonna is not going to go away and I need to learn how to deal with her, and that she will help me. For the first time in my life, I have someone to whom I can talk openly and honestly. She validates my reality for me. I look forward to our sessions and feel that I am making progress. I am confronting my demons, acknowledging my strengths and weaknesses, and mustering the courage to explore them in this book.
IN THE EARLY summer of 2007, as I am still looking for additional work as a designer, I write a letter to Madonna, asking her for a letter of recommendation for my résumé and design book. She writes back and says she can’t, in good conscience, give me a recommendation until I have been in rehab.
I write back, telling her that my therapist says I don’t need rehab, and that I have chosen to become a healthy person on my own terms, not Madonna’s. I try to explain to her that rehab is a place to detox. It isn’t a fix, which is why people who visit rehab without simultaneously having long-term therapy tend to end up returning over and over. Madonna’s response makes it clear to me that she doesn’t or won’t understand. I let go of the need to have her understand and move on emotionally.
IN LATE JUNE, I go to Traverse City and spend two weeks with my father. I help him in the vineyard, and for the first time ever we talk to each other as if we are friends. It’s been a long time coming.
At the same time, I am worried about him. He is seventy-six now, yet he gets up at six in the morning and works twelve hours straight doing exhausting manual labor. He has created several different varieties of wine and has won many medals for them. Madonna did help him financially to buy the vineyard, but I feel that he needs more help in promoting it.
He is about to auction a magnum of his dolcetto wine at a wine fair in Saratoga Springs, New York. I call the publisher of Instinct magazine and suggest that I write a story about the vineyard, and the auction. My concept—which is designed to help my father, the wine, and Madonna’s charity—is that my father donate part of the proceeds of the auction to her Malawian charity. I email her requesting that she give me some quotes. She responds, but she says she’s done plenty for Dad, and that perhaps she could provide a single quote.
Instead of erupting in a rage, as I would have in the past, I write back and ask her to write a couple of paragraphs about her charity, and we could run it unedited.
She tells me to go to her website.
I take the path of least resistance and email back, “Okay, I will.”
The kitchen of my father’s home in Traverse City, Michigan, 7 p.m., September 3, 2007
MELANIE AND I are in the midst of cooking Labor Day dinner for the family when she tells me that Madonna sent her a round-trip ticket to London as a birthday present, so Melanie can come and celebrate Madonna’s birthday with her and her family.
Melanie tells me that she flew to England and stayed with Madonna at Ashcombe House. On the eve of her birthday, Madonna screened I Am Because We Are, her documentary on Malawi. President Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Professor Jeffrey Sachs all took part in the documentary, which includes the harrowing stories of many of the children left in Malawi, orphaned and alone.
According to Melanie, the documentary also features female circumcision, abject poverty, and is extremely bloody.
The following day, in celebration of her birthday, Madonna threw a party at Ashcombe. Gypsies and horses were flown in from Europe, knights in full armor strolled around the property, and every kind of luxurious food was served.
Melanie says that she found it difficult to understand the dichotomy between Madonna’s work in Malawi and the opulent excess of her party.
I explain that no matter how altruistic Madonna may be in her Malawi work, it still generates publicity for her and burnishes her public image. Although I don’t want to diminish the good she is doing in Malawi, at times the entire enterprise feels slightly self-serving.
According to Melanie, Kabbalah is the focal point of Madonna’s and Guy’s lives. While Melanie was at Ashcombe, the atmosphere between Madonna and Guy was very tense and a Kabbalah rabbi would come down from London and mediate between them. This does not surprise me.
I believe that Kabbalah is helping keep Guy and Madonna together. No matter how much I dislike him, how much I hold him responsible for the rift between me and my sister, I wish him and their marriage well.
Sadly, I’ve never met my nephew David; I hardly know Rocco, and I know Lola only a little. But I sincerely hope that some day, I will be able to forge my own relationship with them. I want them to know that, as their uncle, I will always be there for them—because that, when all is said and done, is the nature of family.
EPILOGUE
Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
Miguel de Cervantes
MADONNA HAS NOW been world famous for a quarter of a century and is probably the most celebrated woman on the planet. She has sold an estimated 200 million albums worldwide and has been listed in Guinness World Records as the female singer with the highest annual earnings. Her latest album, Hard Candy, debuted at number one around the globe and has sold more than a million copies during the first month on sale, and her world tour, Sweet and Sticky, launches on August 23, 2008. She is now a global icon, a legend, and her importance to popular culture can never be overstated.
But when it all began for her, Billboard’s editor predicted, “Madonna will be out of business in six months.” Madonna, in a moment of triumph, once admitted, “People underestimated me, didn’t they?” Like me, she has the longest memory of anyone I know. She hasn’t forgotten how little faith many people once had in her, and I’m proud never to have been one of them.
This year my sister will be fifty years old. I hope and believe that she still has many more years of performing ahead of her, and that I’ll be there, right to the end, applauding her. And I believe that
Guy will be there, too. Despite the fact that recent reports have claimed that Madonna and Guy’s marriage is in serious trouble—which, of course, has met with several official denials from her camp—I know Guy and Madonna love each other, and that, apart from anything else, they have been passionately committed to working on their relationship with the guidance of Kabbalah.
LAST SUMMER, MY father and I unpacked boxes from my past that he’d been storing for me for more than fifteen years. I stood there staring at the contents—letters from Danny, bills, invoices, postcards, photographs, memories of another life—and I was momentarily paralyzed.
Then my father, the man who made me and Madonna exactly what and who we are, sensing my emotions, said, “Why don’t we have a bonfire and burn everything?”
So we did. We took fifteen boxes filled with twenty years of my life and stood there, together, and watched the flames consume my past.
I turned and looked at my father and said, “You know, Dad, so many times in my life, I’ve felt like a loser.”
And he said, “Christopher, you’re not a loser. And I’m very proud of you.”
His words made me happy, but I wished I could hear my mother say them to me as well.
THE PAST TWENTY-FIVE years have been a great adventure and a learning process for me. Through it all, I’ve often kicked against the fact that my name, my reputation, and my entire identity are inextricably linked to Madonna’s. Now, though, with the passing of time, through therapy and the writing of this book, I have come to terms with the truth that I can never escape that reality.
Nor can I turn back the clock. If I could, I would not have written my sister those hurtful words. Even though I don’t think it was her intention, she did hurt me, and I hurt her in retaliation.
Yet my lifetime with Madonna has yielded many lessons for me. The prosaic lesson that if you do business with a family member, no matter how close you are—always get a contract.