Untitled #3

by Grace Jones

  That would become my role: to suggest to him an image that he would turn into a visual moment, part of a story that contained darkness but was heading toward a happy ending, or that contained beauty and was heading toward disaster. I would say his work was based on the experiments I performed on myself. The images were reflections of my past, my memories turned into visual expressions. I loved how artistic he could be in a commercial world, how funny, perceptive, strange, surprising. He was the best at being an artist in a commercial world. Those kinds of people come along once in a lifetime.

  A lot of his work is very sexual, and I loved that he was so kinky. But when we started to have trouble in our relationship, it led to me putting my foot in it. One of the reasons I kept my own place for a long time when we were together, apart from the need to maintain my independence, was because he had these statues of Toukie in his house—it was his work, but it was other women, their bodies. I was jealous and silly because of that. I did not want to see his creation of another woman right in front of me all the time.

  It made me think of what Helmut Newton had said—I didn’t have big tits. Toukie did! I knew I had something else. But now and then I would think, in my insecurity, Maybe I need to bring him a girl like the sculpture. Maybe that’s what he wants. So I did: I brought home a girl shaped like Toukie, so that we could all go to bed. I was so pleased with myself. I thought, Have I got a surprise for you! Boy, did I blow that.

  He went through the motions with the two of us to be kind of hip, but the next day he was not a happy bunny. He said, “Don’t you ever do anything like that again! What on earth were you thinking?” That shows you how my mind works. That was my attempt to enter his fantasy world, by bringing in my fantasy world. He was kinky in the pictures, but he didn’t want it in our life.

  I remember I had a beautiful girlfriend called Nina, and we would pretend to make love in the other room to see if we could take him away from his work. Help me out, Nina, I can’t get him away from his desk. We’d make these sex noises. I didn’t think about his deadlines, or about how long it took him to complete a piece; I was being selfish. I want attention! Now!

  Jean-Paul thought it was simply me being crazy. He loved it at first, when he was looking at me from the outside, causing mayhem on small club stages, attacking a gay audience with pure relish. The reality was less amusing to him.

  It was always me he was working on. It wasn’t like he was paying attention to another woman, but I became jealous of me. That, in the end, is what broke us up. He was paying attention to me. He was looking at nothing but me. He was inserting his imagination right inside me, and he has a very big imagination, believe me. But that meant he was ignoring me. He was a perfectionist, and he was always obsessed with making his work flawless. In a relationship, this can be difficult. He was always turning me into an ideal being, the perfect specimen, and meanwhile, I was living in the real world.

  This was the battle—him creating the perfect Grace through the manipulation of image versus the flesh-and-blood Grace in the real world. I was so scared of appearing less than perfect that I would pose even on the toilet. The toilet door didn’t have a lock, and I would be like a statue on a throne in case he came in while I was there. I so wanted to please him, but had I known better I would have just kicked him around a bit. If I had to do it all over again, I would say, “This is silly, stop making me feel silly.” I was looking up to him too much. We were putting each other on these pedestals, whereas where we needed to be was more down-to-earth. We needed to be realistic with each other.

  Jean-Paul became well known after working with me, but from the outside, he was as much relegated behind the image of me he designed as he was promoted to a new level of success. He would be called Mr. Jones when we checked into hotels, and he did not like that. If you have an ego—and he does, and I liked that—it’s difficult to be seen as a supporting act. It wasn’t my fault, though, and I hoped he could forget it.

  He was in my shadow, as much as he had emerged from the shadows of the underground,where he had been before. This did bruise his ego, and in the realm where he was inventing himself as much as he was me, this disconcerted him. His best creation was an obstacle in front of what he ultimately wanted to be his greatest creation—himself.

  He would be working, working, working on me, but I needed the physical comfort. He thought my work was enough to keep me company, in the way his was. But I was not with him when I worked on the road in the way he was with me as he worked on my appearance in the studio, at his desk. Perhaps if he had been using computers it would have been different. He could have moved around with me; but then, you had to work at your desk, in your studio. Jean-Paul was wrapped up in me, carving me up, remaking me, putting me together, paying very close attention to me on paper, but ignoring me for real.

  As Janis Joplin said, when you sing you are being adored by thousands of people, but you go home alone. The kinds of people who want to come back to your room with you are not the kind of people you want to have in your room. I could have had groupies, two dozen in line, next, next, next, but that’s not what I wanted. There were hundreds of people after me, guys and girls, but if people are chasing me, I back off.

  I like a quiet, slow build, rather than being accosted. People could come back with me, to the hotel, to my room, but at the end of the day, I go to bed alone, and everyone has to leave. I like to be quiet, and sometimes that can attract people even more. You want to be alone, and this intrigues people. They want to conquer you.

  He was alone with his work, and I was surrounded by a ton of people, most of them wanting something from me. I was dealing with madness on the road, and in the end all you want to do is get high, because of the anonymous crush of people around you, and yet the loneliness.

  Being onstage is a high, but I never wanted to get high to get onstage. I could never do that. I would see singers get high before they went out, and I would go, “How on earth do you do that?!” I was almost jealous in a way. My voice could not take me being out of control. Probably a good thing, because I might have OD’d by now if I needed to be high to get out and perform. I have to be completely straight.

  When I sing I have to be aware from second to second—of the breathing, the note that has just gone, the note that is coming. I need it all in my head, plus I am thinking of the lighting and of everything that is happening around me. Getting high wrecks my concentration. That’s where I am very disciplined.

  I tried a joint once in a show during “My Jamaican Guy,” but it totally dried my voice out, and I got very paranoid. I thought I would use it as a prop—the song is all about the spliff—and I lost control of my whole body, of my whole senses. I lost the flow. You get so high from singing beyond anything you could take. Holding notes, breathing very quickly, you get high after doing that for an hour and a half. It’s like sex, if you do it right.

  * * *

  I met Dolph Lundgren while I was on tour. Jean-Paul was at home—with me, but not with me. Dolph was Hans Lundgren then. Jean-Paul and I were looking for a place in New York to move in together. Paulo was two, it was 1981, and I met Dolph on tour in Australia. This is a time and date I can be relatively precise about.

  I was saying to Jean-Paul, “I really need you with me,” not for needy reasons but because I loved him, and missed him when I was away. He was editing A One Man Show, our masterpiece, a live show he was turning into a film, so he was probably feeling that I was in the room with him. But I felt very distant from him. He said, “I cannot come; you have to control yourself—I am working on the film.”

  I said, “Get over here!” I remember saying, “I don’t cheat, but I am giving you a first warning: if you don’t come, I might start thinking of cheating. Three warnings, and you’re out.” I couldn’t control my hormones; they were all over the place.

  I find it very difficult to masturbate, so I couldn’t get it out of my system that way. Any other woman might have dealt with it all by masturbating, but I thou
ght the whole thing was absurd. I imagined myself doing it, and it was so ridiculous—I project myself doing it, and I just want to laugh at myself. If I was a guy, it’d be easier. A guy masturbating is very sexy. A woman masturbating is preposterous. That is my Oscar Wilde statement about the whole rigmarole.

  I couldn’t relieve the tension and loneliness that way. I knew if I ever did cheat on him, it would be all over. We were so connected, in every way, that there could be no frivolous escape through a trivial one-night stand. I started to get high when I could to such an extent it was dangerous because I was hurting so much.

  It’s easy to get high when you are on the road. Everyone is throwing shit at you. They throw it on the stage. I didn’t smoke because it spoiled my vocal cords. It was the coke period, and coke doesn’t really agree with me. I never really got it.

  It makes you want to talk, but I can do that anyway. It makes you chatty, but I didn’t get the high. Pills were more my thing—the quaalude, Mandrax, Valium—they make you relax. I far preferred downers, and was always wishing that instead of giving me bad cocaine, the last thing I wanted, people would give me quaaludes. Just half a quaalude was perfect for me. They were so sexy, as long as you could stay awake more than fifteen minutes after you took one. They were like downers with an edge. Whatever it was the scientists did with the ingredients in that pill so that the psychotic people they were designed for would love everyone, when you took it for fun there was a very unique sensation.

  In the end, all drugs, legal or illegal, are bad for you if you take them in the wrong way, or you take too many, or they simply don’t agree with your personality or basic DNA. I believe in drug use, not drug abuse. Coke was never my drug, although there are some who might be surprised by that. By being so closely associated with Studio 54, the assumption is that I was a complete cocaine fiend. There are rumors that my rider can include a demand for $30,000 worth of cocaine. This is from that part of Google that is pure fantasy, the part of Google that is itself high on something. If I had taken as much as cocaine as it is rumored, I wouldn’t have a nose. If I was such a coke monster, I wouldn’t have a life.

  Actually, I preferred to put a rock up my ass rather than snort it. Sometimes it might get blown up there, one way or another. Then you get a very wonderful sexual feeling in your lower half. Stick a tiny little rock up your butt and it feels fantastic. The coke must be clean, of course. Very clean—that’s the word, more than “pure.” Or you put it in a bit of lotion and rub it on your skin. Tried that with a couple of girlfriends in Paris—nice. And the Cocoa Puffs. That way of taking it, rather than putting it up my nose.

  The coke created this babble. Ideas, ideas, ideas, fabulous, fabulous, fabulous, and the next day none of it makes sense. You feel on top of the world, but a world made of powder.

  Coke you had to keep taking to keep the buzz. The pill buzz lasted.

  Coke was a constant thing that you had to keep topping up. It can take over your day. I figured out later it was because the coke was always cut, diluted. Eventually, I would want to know everything that I was putting in my body. I became a scientist, a doctor of medicine. I wanted to know what was okay, what might kill me. I could break down the ingredients of everything I was taking. I wanted to make sure that if I took coke, most of what was in there was coke. By taste, by smell, by look.

  Sometimes in clubs, at parties, they would put down coke on a big table, loads of lines, and most of what was in there was heroin. That could have killed me without me knowing what I had taken. I quickly learned to come really prepared. To know what I was doing. I didn’t want an accident, which would be so stupid. I would sample every pill I was given before I swallowed it, even aspirin, and I could tell on my tongue if something was up, if there was some strange ingredient that did not belong. I became such an expert.

  I had my very first ecstasy pill in the company of Timothy Leary, which is a bit like flying to the moon with Neil Armstrong, and I learned the taste of what was good, and what was bad. I developed my taste buds to tell when something was wrong. On very good ecstasy, I was okay. I would only take half a tablet, because my body is not good on excess. I know my body. I like to be in control of being out of control. Extreme, but in moderation. Crazy out there, but within reason. Take nothing in your body without being completely fussy. Be very aware. Make rare visits to certain drugs, so that it is a treat rather than a necessity—so many people, once they start taking drugs, binge on them, and that ruins the point for me. I don’t want drugs to wreck me, I want them to give me power, and strength, maybe warp me for a while, but not permanently.

  I’m not an excessive person, except on tequila, perhaps. I don’t take acid anymore because it can make me lose control, and that is not a feeling I like to have now. It was right at the time when I took it under controlled circumstances, and it opened my mind, but it got about as open as it could. Now people take stuff without knowing what they are taking and what the consequences are. It was all very chic at the beginning, when it was open, and then shit turns to shit, and it becomes secretive, and the whole thing changes. Instead of having a line like a cup of coffee, very normal and everyday, it becomes dark and dirty, and then dangerous and life-threatening. When it becomes something to hide, you binge on it as quick as you can while you can.

  I was getting in a spin. I said, “Jean-Paul, I need you, I’m losing it, please come.” He didn’t want to come; he was only interested in the film. The film me, not the real me. I could see it coming, that something was about to happen.

  I was playing this huge theater in Sydney. Australia really liked me; I had a massive gay following there. I had a big dressing room filled with goodies, loads of food and drink, and it was my birthday. Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver were in town filming The Year of Living Dangerously, and we were going to be taken out to meet them. Dolph—Hans then—was at the University of Sydney studying chemical engineering. He was from a long line of chemical engineers. He had been hired for two weeks to do security at the theater, to make some pocket money. He was standing in front of my dressing room door, keeping people away. My friend Mary Vinson, who would later marry Chris Blackwell, was there with me, keeping me company.

  I invited Hans in. We changed his name much later, when he started acting. I was in the mood to start flirting. I said, “Oh, you look like you are hungry. I have all this food.” He and his colleague were in the dressing room with Mary and me. Mary naughtily said to them, “Well, why don’t you take us somewhere, so we can go dancing.” They were both very quiet and proper. Very nice, unassuming. From college, straight, and they were still treating it as a bodyguard job. Well, that soon stopped.

  I remember saying to Mary, “Ooh, I don’t know which one I want. You choose for me!” We were high after the show, and buzzing, being a little silly. We ended up in a club, dancing, and we were two girls thinking it over, for fun, and she said, “Well why don’t you dance with them both and see which one you like. See how they dance!”

  I was feeling very vulnerable. It was my birthday, and I was feeling I couldn’t count on Jean-Paul, that his work was more important than me. All these insecurities were raining down on me like a fucking storm. I was feeling very depressed and trying to deal with that by getting high and forgetting. I still had the whole tour ahead of me—everything was conspiring. I thought, Well, I’m going to sleep with one of them . . . and I decided to go with Dolph.

  When I came back to New York, I told Jean-Paul. I figured, He has to know, because I would want to know. I was always straightforward and honest. There were too many secrets growing up. I didn’t want that in my life, so from the beginning of a relationship, I was always very up-front.

  It was all I could think about when I flew back to America. There was Jean-Paul, and I had a small child, and I had warned him that if he didn’t come and help me, things would change. I wasn’t married, I hadn’t made that commitment, and so there was still this place for something to happen. Once Jean-Paul had recoiled from th
e physical me, the one that existed off the page, outside of his carving and modifying, changed very fast.

  I said to Jean-Paul, “If you can forgive me, I still love you. Why don’t you take some time to think about it?” He said, “No, I will give you my answer now. And it’s no.” So that was it.

  It was very difficult, splitting up. I was childishly in love with him—I had so much love for him, and I never felt that he loved me in the same way. Later he told me that he was trying to show me how much he loved me through the work. I was too young to understand that. I was in my late twenties, but emotionally I was like a teenager.

  Hans and I wrote to each other for a few months. Then he came over to see me. Jean-Paul and I carried on working together—a romantic breakup couldn’t break that up, not immediately. We were too intertwined. We’d had Paulo. It took time for the inspiration to fade away. We still inspired each other creatively, and there was still a sense that we might get back together again.

  Jean-Paul was still editing A One Man Show in New York, which came out of the idea that Jean-Paul thought I was sexier dressed as a guy than as a Christmas tree disco star. He liked me more in disguise as a savage or a surreal superhero than obviously dolled up and stripping off to impress.

  With Richard, I had played with the Marlene Dietrich imagery, my head on her body in the sailor suit. Jean-Paul saw me as the black Dietrich. There was something about the idea of her that he wanted to update. The French saw me as the new Josephine Baker, even before the music, and he updated that as well, an imaginary Africa dislocated even more than it was, a distorted reincarnation of the danse sauvage, an uproar of the senses.

  I met Josephine Baker once at her last show in Paris. It was very brief; she passed away shortly after. We didn’t really have time to talk, but I remember she wore a lovely turban, and she was very sweet to me.

  I had a friend, Patrice Calmettes, who managed at Le Palace after Fabrice died. Patrice and I are very close, and he was close friends with Marlene Dietrich. When I was with him one night he put me on the phone. I said, “Hello,” in my usual deep voice. And she said, “Well, you sound just like me.” It was close to the end of her life, and she had become a recluse—she didn’t leave her apartment or speak to many people. Patrice was one of those she still spoke to. Our conversation was very brief: “We have the same voice,” she purred. She wished me all the best.