Foxy

by Pam Grier

  I loved his four dogs and played with them every chance I got. I also helped remodel his house, the former Wrigley estate. This was my first experience of putting a house together with a man, and it was not easy. We both had eclectic tastes, but Richard was so indecisive, he eventually caused five different contractors to resign because he couldn’t make up his mind. Of course, it was always their fault, and I was seeing another side of Richard—the one who refused to take responsibility for his own mistakes. I don’t know how many times he ordered someone to rip out a brand-new floor or wall because the color he himself had chosen didn’t suit him any longer.

  I decided to leave most of the remodeling to him, and I taught Richard to swim in his Olympic-size swimming pool. I bought him a bicycle so we could ride places together, and when he said he wanted to ride bikes with his kids from his four relationships, I was very supportive and helped to make it happen. In fact, for his birthday, I invited all of his children and their moms to celebrate with him.

  He had only a sixth-grade education, but Richard was witty and bright with common sense and street smarts. When he did drugs and drank, there was no telling what he would do to himself or say to anyone else. But when he was sober, he spoke quietly, he acted humbly, and he was sensitive and quite different from his aggressive, profane image. He was a good athlete and turned one of the buildings on his land into a boxing ring where he could exercise. He also became pretty good at tennis. Actually, in many ways, Richard and I mirrored each other. As horrible as it was, we’d both been raped at six years old, we had suffered the shame and indignity of it, and we understood the pain of silence. Although I was raised Catholic, I was interested in the principles of Buddhism that invited a person to look within, and so was Richard.

  We were getting along really well. His skin and scalp were clearing up, and he was eating great food and had lots of energy. And so I wasn’t surprised when he asked me to move in. “Pick a room, Pam, and make it yours,” he offered. “You can have a whole wing.”

  “Not now, Richard,” I told him. I’d already watched drugs eating away at Freddie, and I wasn’t eager to go through that again.

  He got frustrated and said, “Most of the women I date want furs and jewels and they can’t wait to move in. You’re the opposite. Whenever I give you a piece of jewelry, you don’t wear it. You’re a hard nut to crack, Pam, because you’re so fuckin’ independent.”

  “I am,” I agreed, “but I can share my independence when I feel safe. The thing is, I don’t feel safe living here yet because I don’t know who you are.”

  “You don’t love me, do you?” he said.

  Echoes of Kareem, who had said exactly the same thing, resounded in my head. “It’s not about that,” I explained. “I don’t know who you are—the kind, loving man who’s sober and fun, or the drugged-out person you become when you abuse yourself. I have no idea how long you’re going to be the real you. Give me some time.”

  “I promise I’m really gonna try,” he said.

  I was well aware of women friends who put up with their husbands’ affairs and drug use, and one day woke up beside a stranger. Or they found themselves traded in for a newer model. I refused to allow that to happen to me.

  CHAPTER 23

  Three Strikes and I’m Outta There!

  Richard included me in so much of his life that I found myself falling in love with him. When he was sober, we had a good balance, but I wondered if I would be a strong enough influence to keep him on a healthy path or if he would have to do it all on his own. If he let me help him for even a few hours each day, we might be able to make our relationship work. But the thing was, I had my own life and my own career, which didn’t leave a lot of room for taking care of Richard. He was of two minds: He wanted me to have my career, but he also wanted me to drop everything and be there for him.

  We had a few good months, but soon enough, Richard started missing his buddies—the way they stroked his ego and complimented him. He was addicted not only to cocaine but to everyone telling him how great he was. He had been sober for about six months when he told me he felt much better. “I miss my friends,” he said, “and I’m ready to see them again. I can do it, Pam, and stay straight. I know I can. They want to help me.”

  “I hope you’re right, Richard,” I said.

  As his friends began trickling back into his life, he introduced me to some of them, and they were sensitive to his situation at first. They got high before they got there and Richard got very busy writing and setting up deals. He had finished shooting the successful action comedy Stir Crazy, and A-level producers were hounding him. He was the new kid on the block, he was writing and creating, and all the heavyweights in production wanted to meet with him. But they were aware of his past troubles with alcohol and drugs, since he had made some public scenes and had earned a bad reputation after flaking out on a few important meetings.

  I became the go-between. A producer would call me and say, “How’s he doing? Do you think he’ll show up today?”

  “He isn’t the same Richard you knew before,” I’d assure him. “Just wait until you see him.”

  But the truth was that Richard was regressing. He was in denial, of course, assuring me his buddies were going to just hang out, eat some food, and play tennis. I looked at them suspiciously. I hated the fact that my relationship with Richard was based on whether or not he was getting high, which, in turn, determined whether or not he showed up for meetings and kept his life together. I feared that renewing his association with his old friends would sabotage what he was building and what we were building together.

  He and his friends used to hang out in the kitchen for hours on end. They liked the large dining table there where they could play “bones,” the hip name that African Americans had for dominoes. They also liked the close proximity to the refrigerator with a constant supply of beer and food. One afternoon, when I went into the kitchen to ask Richard about a contractor, I saw a pile of cocaine sitting on a mirror next to a razor blade and a rolled-up $100 bill. I stuck my finger into the white powder and tasted it. My tongue went numb, and I made a terrible face. “Ugh,” I said, “that tastes like aspirin. Why would anyone want to do it?”

  Richard acted like he hadn’t been indulging, but I knew better. I saw the signs—his bloodshot eyes, the lines of coke, the half-smoked joints, and the nearly empty bottle of Courvoisier.

  I wondered for a moment if I did cocaine, would it make me a genius like Richard? Nah! If I wasn’t a genius by now, it probably wasn’t going to happen. I left the room, disgusted and discouraged. I wanted to speak up right then and there and call out his friends, but I feared his reprisal. I had a healthy sense of self-preservation, so I waited until the time was right to talk with him. Later that day, I tried to make Richard understand that his friends were taking advantage of his good nature, not to mention his addictive tendencies. “Your friends are staying here way too long,” I said. “They’re here for days at a time, they’re doing drugs in front of you, they’re taking everything and giving nothing.”

  “They don’t have as much as I do,” he argued. “Besides, I’ve known them a lot longer than I’ve known you.”

  Because it felt like those words had lacerated my heart, I knew I was in love with him. Why else would it hurt so much? Were his words based on his being high, or was he trying to exert his ego over me? Or was it some of both?

  “If you want to keep feeding your so-called friends and loaning them money,” I said, “that’s up to you, but they’re using you. Why doesn’t anybody call and say, ‘Hey, I’ll bring some ribs and a roast over or a six-pack or a bottle of wine?’ They don’t bring anything. You supply it all.”

  I suggested he get his financial matters in order to help him save some money for himself and his children’s future. Richard didn’t trust managers, and he refused to give over his power and authority to anyone—except me. He wanted me to take over his finances, but I refused. “I have a career, too,” I reminded him.
“I need to focus on myself. If you want to stay up on your pedestal and keep taking care of all your friends, go ahead.”

  “You got no problem with that?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll be doing my thing. But if you continue to stay high and drink, you know you’re destroying any chance of success.”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “I’m surprised you’d give me my space,” he said. “All my other women wanted to be right here, listenin’ to everything.”

  “I’m not like your other women,” I said. “But maybe they hovered around because they felt they had to watch over you. Being holed up in a room for three days with your friends is bad for any relationship. At some point, you have to come out and say hello and see how your woman is doing. If you don’t, that’s a sick lifestyle.”

  Richard kept it together, just barely, for another week or so. Then I got to his place from the set at the end of a day of filming the movie Drum to hear the phone ringing. I picked it up, and it was a producer that Richard really respected. “He blew me off, Pam,” the man said. “Richard didn’t show up for the meeting today. I’ve been calling and calling. There’s been no answer.”

  I got a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. I knew Richard was in trouble, because he had really been looking forward to this meeting. “Listen, I just got home,” I said. “Let me see what’s going on. He’s been doing really well lately,” I lied. “I know this meeting meant the world to him.”

  When I hung up the phone, Richard came sauntering into the kitchen in his terry-cloth bathrobe and with a smug smile on his face. “Hey, babe,” he said. “How’d it go today?”

  “Why did you miss your meeting?” I said, peering into his bloodshot eyes. “You worked hard to get that meeting.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I’ll reschedule it. No problem. I canceled the day to hang out with a buddy from out of town.”

  “You must really like this friend of yours,” I continued, “because you canceled the day, and now the producer is about to cancel you. Why are you still in your robe at five in the afternoon? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” he said defensively. “I told you, we’re just hanging out.”

  I turned away from him. I couldn’t stand seeing him lie to me like a kid lying to his mother. I also hated that I was actually acting like his mother.

  That was strike one.

  I was a little tired from a lot of work and trying to manage Richard, but I felt healthy enough when I went in for my annual checkup with my gynecologist. After the exam, however, he asked me to step into his office to talk. I was scared because that had never happened before.

  I sat opposite him and he said, “Pam, I want to tell you about an epidemic that’s prevalent in Beverly Hills right now. It’s a buildup of cocaine residue around the cervix and in the vagina. You have it. Are you doing drugs?”

  “No,” I said, astonished.

  “Well, it’s really dangerous,” he went on. “Is your partner putting cocaine on his penis to sustain his erection?”

  “No,” I said, “not that I know of. It’s not like he has a pile of cocaine next to the bed and he dips his penis in it before we have sex.” I had a nauseating flash of one of Richard’s famous lines: Even my dick has a cocaine jones.

  “Are you sure he isn’t doing it in the bathroom before he comes to bed?” the doctor asked.

  “That’s a possibility,” I said. “You know, I am dating Richard Pryor.”

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “We have a serious problem here. If he’s not putting it on his skin directly, then it’s worse because the coke is in his seminal fluid. I have to ask you something very personal, Pam, and you need to be one hundred percent honest with me or you’re going to have some serious cervical and uterine problems. You can become sterile, and you might have to have a hysterectomy. When you give him oral sex, do your gums and lips get numb?”

  It was as if a light went on. “Yes,” I said, incredulous. “I couldn’t figure it out.”

  He explained, “Cocaine causes a numbing, like novocaine, and it’s very dangerous for you and for him.”

  “Will it ever go away?” I asked. “Will he have it in his system forever?”

  “It’ll go away eventually,” the doctor said, “if he abstains for long enough. In the meantime, he has to wear a condom or you’re going to be a very sick woman.”

  I left the doctor’s office depressed and scared. I knew Richard wasn’t going to like this, and I was right. “I have cocaine inside of me,” I told him. “It’s eating me up, and it could kill me. Have you been putting it on your penis?”

  “No. Of course not,” he answered quickly. “What are you sayin’?”

  “I’m saying that you’ve been doing cocaine for so long, it’s in your seminal fluid.” I took a deep breath. “I have to ask you to wear a condom when we have sex.”

  “What?” was all he said, but I could read between the lines. It was as if he’d said, “Me? Richard Pryor, wear a condom? I don’t think so.”

  “You have to, Richard,” I pleaded with him. “Only for a while. I have to get rid of these lesions so I don’t get infections.”

  “No, I won’t do it,” was his answer.

  You’d think I’d asked him to get a vasectomy or be castrated, he put up such a fuss. “But it’s about my health,” I said.

  “I hate condoms. I can’t feel anything.”

  “Will you at least talk to my doctor?”

  “No.”

  I realized in that moment that I was not truly loved by this man.

  That was strike two.

  As much as I cared about Richard, I had to realize that, in the end, we are all responsible for our own decisions, the environments in which we choose to live, and the friendships we decide to nurture, no matter our childhood circumstances. A huge rift had grown between Richard and me, but we carried on as sometime lovers. I made sure to clean myself really well, inside and out, after we made love, because as much as I cared for Richard, love can kill. Wasn’t that a refrain from a country song? “Love can kill in more ways than one.”

  The truth was that I loved Richard. There was still affection between us. But then we women always think in the back of our minds that the guy might change, and I was no different. I ran the house and made sure the dogs were taken care of, and I gave instructions to the housekeeper. I was sad about the way our relationship had deteriorated, but I thought maybe, if we waited long enough, things might fall back into place.

  Then Ginger, a miniature chestnut horse, arrived at the house. The beautiful sorrel horse was a gift to Richard from producer Burt Sugarman, and I was as delighted as he was. Ginger was small and adorable, Richard loved her, and I was thrilled to have my own little horse to raise and train.

  I filled up the feed shack in the stables that had been empty until Ginger arrived. I gave her some hay and put her out in a little meadow beside the house to graze. Even though Richard and I were not being intimate, I was staying there most of the time to look after the house and him. Now I added the horse to my daily duties, giving Richard a stern lecture about never letting the dogs out in a pack around the horse. They would tear her limb from limb, I explained—it was in the nature of pack animals—and Ginger, a miniature, was not large enough to kick them away like a bigger horse would do.

  Richard understood and was careful about letting the dogs out one by one. But the housekeeper was not. I explained the characteristics of pack animals to her, but one morning, when the dogs wouldn’t stop barking, she threw them all out into the yard together, right where the horse was grazing. The next thing we knew, the dogs were attacking Ginger, growling and biting at her stomach.

  I heard the ruckus from a room upstairs and flew outside to find the dogs about to kill the horse. Richard rushed out as I turned a hose on the dogs until they went flying off across the meadow, leaving Ginger at death’s door. Richard sobbed as I rushed inside to call the vet. He was backed up with sick animals and couldn’t make it to our house,
but he could see Ginger at his office as soon as we could get her there.

  I glanced around the property. There was no horse trailer or truck. Richard was standing in his robe, screaming and crying, and Ginger was lying on the ground with her intestines coming out. I needed to get her to the vet. “We’re putting her in the backseat of my car,” I told Richard.

  “Pam,” he said, “you drive a Jag.”

  “We’re putting her in the backseat of my car,” I repeated. “I’ll pull her through and you push. She’s only about four hundred pounds. That’s about three or four people. I think the springs under the back wheels can handle it.”

  While Richard continued to cry and mutter under his breath about shooting the dogs, we pushed and pulled Ginger into the backseat of my yellow 1974 Jaguar XJ6 L. “Get in,” I called out to Richard as I slid into the driver’s seat.

  As we tore down the street and onto the 405, I can only imagine how we looked in a brand-new yellow Jaguar with brown stripes, a horse’s head and tail sticking out the two back windows, and two black people in the front—a man in a robe sobbing and a wild woman driving.

  Richard wailed constantly, “My Ginger. My baby.” I looked down at my feet to see that I had on two different shoes. Nothing mattered except getting Ginger to the vet. The back of the car was bouncing and giving off sparks where the metal kept scraping the road. When someone on the freeway recognized Richard Pryor in the front seat (they had no idea about the identity of the wild woman who was driving), we ended up with a long line of cars following us to see where in the hell we were going.

  The entire staff was standing outside the vet’s office when we pulled into the driveway. They got Ginger out of the car and began treating her immediately while we waited. I have the vet and his assistants to thank that Ginger survived, but I’d had enough of taking care of Richard and his crises. We stayed at the vet for about five hours until Ginger was stitched up, medicated, and out of shock. Then we pushed her into the car again for the trip back.