by Grace Jones
It was a very simple, relaxed relationship, really, connected to that part of me that enjoys being based in one place, cooking, eating, sleeping, talking. I had been on the move for so long, and to an extent still was, that being a little cozy was very inviting. We would cook for each other, talk about our families. He loved music, and in my apartment in New York, I had lots of instruments from around the world. We would sit together, banging drums and singing together. It was a long way from Tony Pike in Ibiza. It was a form of settling down, for me, and I was very happy with our lives. It was hard for him, though, being separated from his family, from his friends. His friends started to come over, but it was very difficult.
We loved each other, and he was very tender and very shy. He would come to gigs and events, but no one really knew who he was. He would make sure I was okay and then let me get on with it. He didn’t want any of the attention. He would stay well in the background.
Atila was not jealous, but he could be territorial. There is a difference. He would get angry and accuse me of doing things behind his back. These things usually involved work, or dealing with old friends, or, yes, having fun, but never the sort of fun that would threaten our relationship. I was committed, and as playful as I could get with other people, I would never have let that disrupt our togetherness.
It turned out he had an aggressive streak. Jean-Paul said I had a way of bringing violence out in men because I tell the truth, because I fight back in any argument like a man. The truth hurts and I would never hold back for the sake of a peaceful but dishonest life. I have marks on my thigh to prove it.
The frustration Atila was feeling, regarding not only his worries about me, but being estranged from his friends and family, eventually erupted in our kitchen. He held two sharp butcher knives to my throat. I had an instant image of my head been severed and rolling on the floor like salami. Physically, I was totally freaked. Mentally, I took control and talked him down. He slowly took the knives away from my throat and put them away and we both started crying.
There is a point in a relationship where you have to make your mind up what you can live with, and what you can live without. Violence is something I can absolutely live without. That’s when I walk away. I have thrown things that could decapitate people. I would be aiming right at you. You would have to know when to duck. Once there is that kind of aggression, it is time to go before someone gets really hurt, or worse. I never wanted to be like my mother and my grandmother when it came to relationships. They were always following, always submissive.
Atila and I sat down and had a quiet talk about what had happened. He said, “I was only trying to frighten you.” He thought that was a way of keeping control over me, of making sure I didn’t stray too far away from him. I was all that he had, which wasn’t what either of us wanted. I said, “Well, you have done a very good job, and I am now very scared of you.” We couldn’t be together anymore. He didn’t hurt me, but there was this vivid vision of what could happen, a vision that was shaking next to the veins on my neck.
That was it. We’re not divorced. We are still married. I can’t find him to get the divorce sorted. He disappeared back into his family. And anyway, I don’t believe in divorce.
* * *
Since Syracuse, since Sam, I have gone from relationship to relationship. If I wasn’t in love with someone, someone was in love with me. People would be in my life for a long time before we became a couple. I had an Italian driver, Massimo, who was like my friend. I had known him since he was seventeen.
When I was touring in Italy and I was with Jean-Paul, Massimo would be my driver. People said, “Oh, he is in love with you,” and I said, “No, never, he’s a family friend, I have known him since he was a teenager.” But he was always around, and anytime I split with someone, with Jean-Paul, with Dolph, there he would be, concerned, and slowly, our relationship became more intimate, and suddenly, we are together.
He waited all these years for a gap, and we got along very well because I had known him for so long. We ended up together because I am a creature of habit. It is rare that I meet someone and there is an instant connection. I prefer the slow build-up, and I am a gypsy, I am on the road. Those who are often along for the ride with me become familiar to me, and something can change.
There was a strong connection with Massimo and it did eventually spill over into a relationship. He was there all along, but not like that, not in bed there—friend there, family friend there. Our relationship went from the North Pole to the South Pole, but he was obviously waiting and waiting for the moment when he could move closer. Watching from afar, biding his time.
Perhaps because I was in the habit of always being with someone, it was an easy transition. I’m used to that feeling of hugging. Maybe that happens when you are not all in one piece, when you are feeling bad, after a breakup. If you are in one piece, you might be able to postpone the moment. Don’t stay with me now, I will see you tomorrow, I’m not feeling so good. Instead, not being whole makes me open to approach. I’m vulnerable enough to feel that I want to be alone, but vulnerable enough to need some comfort. I guess Massimo, after being near me for so many years, seeing my boyfriends come and go, had worked this out.
He turned out to be the most jealous boyfriend I ever had. The sweet, sensitive friend becomes a lover and then immediately becomes extremely jealous. He became so jealous I couldn’t go to the bathroom in a club by myself. He thought I was going to meet someone. I couldn’t go to a club with a girlfriend because he thought I was up to something with her. That became too intense. A nightmare. You would think that after knowing me for all those years, in a rock ’n’ roll world, after seeing me getting high, dancing on tables all night, he would have accepted how I lived my life. But no. After waiting for years, once he finally had me all to himself, after watching me with others and being patient, he was determined not to let me go. But he had to let me go, because I let him go.
* * *
I met Sven-Ole Thorsen through Conan. He trained Arnie for the Mr. Universe competitions, and they were best friends. He’s Danish, so I was becoming a Scandinavian connoisseur. I always stayed in touch with Arnold after making Conan. He would always invite me to his birthday party. I would fly in, turn up, look fabulous, dance on the tables, sing “Happy Birthday,” be that Grace. Me and my sister Pam, whom Arnold and Maria liked, would be invited to various fund-raising events. I became close to Maria, and like a buddy to Arnie. I was the only female in Arnie’s cigar club. I would wear a suit and be one of the guys.
One year there was an earthquake in Mexico when we were there for an AIDS foundation event for Mexican children who had been infected. I had known Sven for eight years, and I wasn’t with anyone at the time, so Arnie suggested Sven bring me to the party. He was a friend, and we had this mischievous relationship as friends, and then suddenly, after being friends for so long, we got together. After all those years when nothing happened, abruptly, inside a few minutes, our relationship became something else. I wonder whether us coming together caused the Mexican earthquake.
Dolph would come down to the Conan set, and Sven would be there hanging out with Arnie. I was a little uncomfortable with Dolph being around, because they had dressed me in that rag of a bikini and I was almost butt-naked. I wouldn’t leave my trailer for weeks, because I felt so exposed. I am at my most comfortable being naked, but I prefer to choose my own time and place when I am. I don’t want to be pushed into taking my clothes off by Hollywood executives treating me as nothing but a body they’ve bought and think they own.
I spent a lot of time with Arnie, Sven, and Dolph. One Austrian, one Swede, and one Dane. They were very funny. When the three of them hung out on set, they would tease me via pretend, but also sometimes quite serious, fighting—expressing affection through little tussles and provocations. It was like being with my three brothers all over again. We would all be in the gym working out together, the three big men and me. I became one of the guys.
Sven,
Arnie, and Dolph: very European, giant, and gentle, and fond of silly practical jokes. I understood that, and I understood their accents a lot more than many Americans because I had spent so much time in Europe. You can still hear a trace of their accents in how I speak now. I live in four or five time zones simultaneously, and I have four or five accents blended into one, a kind of French-Scandi-Latin-Jamerican.
When we were together, Sven kept me very healthy, continuing the regimen Dolph had started, but sometimes it was too much. He liked to be in the gym by seven in the morning, and if I wasn’t ready, he would gently lift me out of bed and put me in the shower. It became too strict for me after a while. A little too church.
With Sven, after four years of a long-distance but close relationship, what broke us up was the Tequila Incident. There would be lots of tequila parties, and I liked tequila back when I was young and never thought about liver damage, or that it was a pleasure but also a pressure on your mind and body. Tequila was guaranteed to send me to extremes, as well, so I always know to be very careful with it.
I had a birthday in L.A., and I was with Sven. There was a surprise party at one of those drag clubs where one of the drag queens does me very well. Before I knew it, I wanted to party all night, and I was pissed off because we are in L.A. and everyone thinks that 2 A.M. is really late. I am used to Paris, to New York, where you go until morning. I was drinking tequila and demanding that the party continue. I do remember saying to Sven, “Please take care of me tonight, because I will need you if I am going to drink tequila.”
I was in such a state that Sven and my friends Sarah and Steve Newman, my publicist, had to lift me into the limo. Apparently I wouldn’t shut up, going on about wanting to party more as we drove home. Sven opened the car door and jokingly told me to get out of the car. He loved his practical jokes, even when no one thought they were funny except him.
Well, I did get out of the car. Sven drove off, and his idea was to circle the block and come back and get me, probably to teach me a lesson. When he came back to get me, I had disappeared. Sven couldn’t find me, so he drove off. Sarah and Steve were looking for me in the Beverly Hills bushes with a flashlight.
They didn’t find me. Somehow, wearing knee-high boots, Bulgari jewelry, a Claude Montana fur stole, and dressed in the style of ’50s Hollywood, I had crawled off and found an apartment complex near the highway. I woke up the next morning crumpled on the hard concrete stairs in a stairwell, clothes all wrinkled as though I had been molested. Apparently I had curled up on the stairs and taken off my boots as if I was at home in bed.
I woke up in complete confusion. Where is everyone? Why am I in a stairwell? One minute I am at my birthday party, the next minute I am abandoned in a strange building. I was in complete meltdown, banging on doors, crying for help. Where was Sven?
The people living there, faced with a crazy lady screaming nonsense, sensibly didn’t let me in, and they called the police. A couple of young cops came. They said, “You’re lucky it’s us.” They hadn’t yet turned into some of those older, more publicity-hungry cops who like to tell the press about celebrities in distress. They said, “Where do you live? We will call you a cab.”
Apparently, I was crying, “No, no, no, please take me home!” They saw that I was in such distress that they agreed to take me home.
When I got there, Sven was fast asleep, snoring like an earthquake, not a care in the world. He loved to sleep. I shook him awake and shouted, “Why didn’t you take care of me? I could have died out there!” I couldn’t really blame him. I shouldn’t have drunk so much. I am responsible for myself, but I was so angry with him, and that was really the end of our relationship. The Tequila Incident. It wasn’t the same after that night. My relationship with tequila changed a little, too.
We’ve stayed friends to this day, and I remember before we finally broke up, I went out, met this beautiful black girl I thought he would like, and took her home for him. I said to him, “Sven, darling, I want to introduce you to someone. . . .”
* * *
The only time I went to a psychotherapist was not for me but because my partner at the time, Ivor, asked me to go and see one with him. We’d had a very intense love affair, and worked together on my first album for many years, Hurricane, which I think only Ivor could have persuaded me to make. (And I could only have released it with the help of Alison Pearson, who I borrowed from Philip Treacy where she was a PA. She organized the whole project and the tour that followed as much more than simply an assistant. In my post-Island life, I need committed, loyal, incredibly energetic personalities like Alison to help me deliver my new projects.) Ivor made making music—the whole process of writing, recording, and conceiving an album—exciting again. He had a different way of working from Tom, Chris, Trevor, and Niles, but it was exactly what I needed—something different but that flowed out of the songs I had done before. I loved knowing Ivor, and being with him, and things got very serious between us. Early on in our relationship I was determined to impress him, especially because of my notorious reputation for uninhibitedness. He was a good influence on me and I didn’t want to put him off. I took him to my apartment in the Meatpacking District neighborhood of New York overlooking the Hudson River—all the places I live in look over water. I hadn’t been there for some time, and while he was looking around I went into the room where I kept all my old costumes. It was unbelievable—a host of flapping, squawking pigeons had found their way through the air conditioning and were happily nesting in there. Having not been used in months, it was chaos—old nests that had been used by previous occupants, new nests filled with eggs, pigeons treating it as their place. The room was packed with pigeons and shit. I was so worried that this would confirm to Ivor I was out of control that I tried to keep him out of the room. Eventually I gave in, and said, “You won’t believe what’s happened in there . . .” It didn’t put him off. This wasn’t the kind of animal behavior that was going to alienate him! We both had very traditional and old-fashioned backgrounds to deal with—mine very Jamaican, his very British—and negotiating that brought us together. After a while, we had to start thinking seriously about the future.
It reached a point where he was, and therefore we were, having certain problems, and I wanted to help him through them. So I went with him to see a therapist. He was more open to the idea. I could tell the psychotherapist was uptight as soon as we walked into the room. It was unbelievable. I needed to help her.
I had mastered therapy in my own way for my own ends. And when I went to see a therapist after many years, decades, and relationships during which I did not see one—I thought, perhaps too quickly, What a waste of time and money.
I studied her as she was studying us. Her shoes, her stockings, her tight, cool posture—very Nurse Ratched, the nurse in the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She got so overwhelmed by my background and Ivor’s background. She couldn’t see very deeply, and her solutions were very basic and straight out of a textbook: On certain days of the week, make sure you do something for each other—three days you do something for him, three days you do something for her. She had charlatan written all over her. Only the gullible and desperate could take this satanic nonsense seriously.
I have always been my own psychotherapist since I was very young. I would stand outside myself and talk to myself, talk through whatever was bothering me. There’s a schizophrenic element to it, but I have accepted that part of me since an early age. I analyze myself completely, so I have never needed to go to therapy. A lot of people I knew went to therapy, and I never thought it did them any good. In fact, lots of friends come to me and I say, “You need to cry now, you need to let it out.” A lot of people come up to a wall and then they cannot break through barriers. They don’t know how to cry and let it all out without wanting to kill themselves.
I find that mostly in men. They won’t cry. I am like that—very male. I won’t cry. I am very male emotionally. Tough, with a very strong male side that I d
eveloped to protect my female side. As my own therapist, I have told myself that, and worked with it.
When I analyzed myself, I never thought of it being a way of mending myself. I saw it as a process of calming myself, or releasing tension, of making space to think, of understanding when I need to be alone. Get to know yourself, have fun, by yourself. That was often my decision.
Funnily enough, often the next thing that happens, after I come to the conclusion that I need to be on my own, I want to be on my own, is that I meet some guy and he moves in with me. It often takes me by surprise. How did that happen? I’d go away for a bit, do some work, and when I came home, there would be more clothes in my apartment, more shoes, unfamiliar furniture.
It always happens. It’s never the right time, but you go along with it, see what happens. In the end, you realize the decision to be on your own was the correct one. They complain about my habits. They moan about the fact I want to watch tennis. But I don’t think there’s a problem with me that needs to be repaired. The solution is for me to live on my own.
Warren Robertson was a kind of therapist. As my acting teacher, he made me think about my emotional state. I could take it from him. He didn’t make me feel like he was fixing something that was wrong; he was just digging into me to get me to use parts of myself to become another person. I didn’t think he was saying there was something wrong with me, and I really don’t like it when someone implies there is something wrong with me. Perhaps I think the next thing that will happen is that they will select a whip. Warren was simply looking at all the emotional textures that made me who I was, and suggesting ways of using these parts of me when I performed. That worked, because it is a positive action
This woman me and Ivor saw took it for granted that there was a horrible problem that needed to be resolved. She transmitted nothing positive or negative. She was blank. At the same time, there was an air of superiority about her that tilted into negativity. She made me want to kill myself. I’m not kidding. In the end, she split us up. We were closer before we went to see her.