A Little Thing Called Life
Page 30
We established an understanding between us early in our coparenting: He would discipline his daughters, and I would discipline my sons, when we each saw fit. That way there would be no unnecessary additional discord between us. While I wanted peace in our household, I also stood my ground with David if we ever had a disagreement about how things should be.
At the time I couldn’t see how much I’d changed in just ten years, from the sweet, submissive girl who’d followed every direction, subsuming my own feelings in order to keep Elvis placated and happy. I understand now that this newfound ferocity was the result of becoming a mother. When you carry a baby for nine months, and struggle through labor, and nursing, and everything else that goes into mothering, your primary job is to keep your kids safe. It’s primal. Even today, they’re grown men, and I would stand up to a lion, a bullet, or anything else on their behalf. That’s the kind of intense, “mama bear,” protective love they’ve awoken in me, and which they’ll always inspire. Having found my power as a mother had also translated into other areas of my life as well, helping me to stand up for what I believed was fair and right, rather than simply going along with whatever was happening in order to keep the peace.
But whereas our differences in childrearing led to some occasional tension between us in our personal life, when we began collaborating on songs in our professional one, the experience instantly brought us closer together. Music became a catharsis for us, helping to complete the circle we needed to close in order to move into our new future as one.
As we started collaborating, I had even more reason to admire some of his best qualities. David was an intelligent man with stratospheric ambitions—better at self-promotion than anybody else I’ve ever met. Throughout the 1980s, David produced a succession of top-charting albums for the band Chicago, and his continuous accomplishments were leading him to be an even more sought-after producer. Once we began writing together, these aspects of David’s personality also benefited me immensely. David was an outspoken advocate and ally when he needed to be, and I appreciated that strength when I was more retiring in my presentations.
And so began a nearly two-decade union in which we alternated between periods of tension and intimacy in our romantic relationship, while always collaborating on a successful and rewarding shared career. I don’t think I can overstate how meaningful this aspect of our relationship was to me. While I’d obviously been dabbling in songwriting for years and had enjoyed success at it before I met David, it soon became clear that David could help me uncover new depths of creativity within myself, and in doing so, I was able to bring my talents to full fruition and accomplish so much more.
Our first notable collaboration was in 1987, when we were asked to compose a special song for an event called Rendezvous ’87 to commemorate a very important hockey game between the United States and the Soviet Union. David wrote the music as usual, and I wrote the lyrics to a song called, “Love Lights the World.” The plan was for the Red Army choir to record the song, fly to Quebec City, where the event was being held, and perform it on a television special for the Canadian national network, CBC. David and I flew to Moscow, via quite a circuitous route, arriving in Moscow after about thirty hours in transit. When our Aeroflot plane arrived, because of significant tailwinds we were approximately fifteen minutes early. The Russian soldiers who met the flight would not allow us off the airplane until our appointed time of arrival, saying, “If we allow you to disembark the aircraft before its appointed time it would be a sign of insurrection.” Remember, in 1987, this was pre-Glasnost, pre-Perestroika Russia, and they were still living under hard-line communist rule.
We finally got off the airplane, made it to our hotel, rested for a bit, then were transported to a military facility. We sat with Russian generals, and I had to explain through an interpreter what each word of my lyric meant and indicated. They scrutinized the lyric very carefully to make sure there was nothing derogatory or incendiary. It was quite an intimidating experience, and yet strangely humanized for me a people who had been very mysterious to me. Once the ice was broken, I found the Russian soldiers to be warm and welcoming to David and me. We toured Red Square, which was breathtaking. We were in Moscow in January, and it was brutally cold. It was fascinating to see the looks on the faces we passed on the street as people glanced at us in wonder, or just stared blankly at us. There was a bleakness in the air and in the people we encountered that went well beyond the frigid air. It was a remarkable experience.
When we finally did shoot the CBC special with the Red Army choir, we brought all our children along. Brody was just under four years old and when he saw the imposing uniformed Russian soldier before him, he broke into a big smile and ran toward the soldier with open arms. This big, burly, decorated man lifted Brody high in the air with tremendous warmth. It felt like such a unifying moment. In the hearts of children, there’s so much trust and love. If only we could all cling throughout our lives to the wonder and innocence that are always present in a child.
Our next big job was for the film Stealing Home, starring Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster, which was due to be released in August 1988. David came up with a beautiful melody, which inspired me profoundly, and the lyrics seemed to just flow out of me. We called our song “And When She Danced.” My lyrics went like this:
“And when she danced, I lost my innocence. I loved her then, I always will.”
The first time I sang these words for David, he stopped me right there.
“You can’t write ‘innocence,’ ” he said.
“Why not?”
“Just because it won’t sing well,” he said.
“But it does sing well,” I said, singing the line again. “ ‘And when she danced, I lost my innocence.’ It fits perfectly. It flows beautifully.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he argued. “You can’t do that. You’ve got to listen to me. I’m the one with the experience.”
I couldn’t argue about the fact that he was the more practiced songwriter than I was. But I was also fully confident that I knew my way around a lyric, and that in this instance I was right about my use of the word innocence. Having found my strength and my voice, I was determined to make good use of both.
“Yes, ‘innocence’ sings,” I said.
We were at an impasse. Neither one of us is a singer, so we hired a vocalist to come into the home studio David had built in our guesthouse. She was going to record vocals for our demo, so we could send it to the film’s producer. After she ran through the song, her first reaction made me smile.
“Oh, I love how ‘innocence’ sings,” she said. “What a beautiful word.”
David just looked at me like: Well, all right, I guess you won that one. I didn’t rub it in, but of course, I was pleased. Relatively green as I was, I felt justifiably confident in my lyrical talents, but every little bit of fortification helped when dealing with a strong personality like David’s.
Admittedly, it was sometimes a challenge to hold my ground, because he was so undeniably accomplished. I knew I had to defer to him when it came to his knowledge of production and song composition. But I thought some aspects of his approach amounted to casual dismissal, and in these instances, I had to stand up for what I knew to be fair and right. The unexpected upside to all the loss, disruption, and profound transformation I’d experienced in the past decade was that I was somewhat emotionally fearless by this point.
While David sometimes created such moments where he downplayed my expertise, he also gave me glowing accolades for my abilities, and the longer we worked together, the more my confidence grew. It was yin and yang in our songwriting and in our life together. The good and bad, the up and down. And it worked for a very long time.
“I Cry Real Tears”
You ought to be ashamed of yourself
The way you talk down to me
Oh baby
And didn’t anybody ever teach you
To act more respectfully
I’m telling you
Don’t you realize
Look at my face
What do you see in my eyes
When a part of me just dies
I cry real tears
I have real fears
I’ve got a heart that’s beating inside
Sometimes it breaks
And when it aches
My eyes cry real tears
You treat me like you think I’m made of stone
Like when I’m cut I don’t bleed
Oh baby, don’t you know I’m just flesh and bone
So what do you want from me
I’m telling you
That I’m only human too
Don’t you realize
Look at my face
What do you see in my eyes
When a part of me just dies
I cry real tears
I have real fears
I’ve got a heart that’s beating inside
Sometimes it breaks
And when it aches
My eyes cry real tears
There’s something called the golden rule
Someday you’ll wish you’d followed it more
You’ve been a fool
My love is truer than any love you’ll find
But I’m worth more, and so is my time
I cry real tears
I have real fears
I’ve got a heart that’s beating inside
Sometimes it breaks
And when it aches
My eyes cry real tears
LYRIC: LINDA THOMPSON
Chapter Eighteen
No Filter
Throughout the rest of our many years together, David and I would remain passionately—sometimes tumultuously—in love and our musical partnership would extend to heights more fulfilling than I could have imagined. But the joy of our early days did not last, unfortunately. Just as Elvis and my mama had been riddled with paradoxes, so too was my new love, David. As our relationship stretched from its first months to its early years, David revealed another aspect to his complex personality: he could be difficult. I tried to hold my ground, and as a result, we argued a great deal.
One of the clearest manifestations of David’s intensity and most common sources of conflict between us came from his tendency to become jealous as well as controlling—even when it came to my past. In April 1987, at a U2 concert, I had the happy surprise of running into Lisa Marie, who was now a very mature and poised young woman of nineteen. Since Elvis had passed away, I hadn’t had any way to get in touch with Lisa or maintain our relationship, so we’d fallen out of touch. As we each absorbed this emotional moment, it was apparent she had a lot of Presley in her, not just in the eyes, but also in the wariness and dark humor. Just as Mr. Presley was not won over very easily, Lisa seemed cautious, which was totally understandable given the circumstances of her young life.
Seeing Lisa brought my past back to me in a visceral way, reminding me how deeply I had loved her and her father and how his family and world had been mine for four and a half years. I felt the urge to reconnect with her if possible, and to be a friend. I gave her my phone number, and we reunited from time to time in the years to come.
David was gracious to Lisa Marie at that encounter, but I soon came to see that he did not like to be reminded of the fact that Elvis had been my first love. That summer, David and I were alone on his boat on what happened to be the tenth anniversary of Elvis’s death. There was a news story on TV about how the date was being commemorated. David came in, took one look at the TV I was watching, and turned it off.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “I was watching that.”
“I don’t want you watching a show about your ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh my God, he’s been dead ten years,” I said. “He’s not coming back to claim me. This was a part of my life, a part of my history, and it’s a part of history, period. You’re in the music industry. You don’t want to watch this?”
“Hell no, and I don’t want you watching it, either.”
Okay, he is not going to want to ever hear about Elvis, I thought. So I guess if I’m attempting to make a life with this person, I’ll need to respect that. David was clearly threatened by Elvis’s ghost and never wanted me to mention him.
But whereas avoiding the topic of Elvis was relatively easy given that he was no longer alive, David also had to contend with the fact that my ex-husband happened to be the world’s greatest athlete, Bruce Jenner. As most red-blooded American men would be, David was a bit resentful that my ex was Bruce Jenner, but for him, these feelings were complicated by the fact that not only were we living in the house that Bruce and I had shared, but Bruce was still coming by the house to visit the boys. And while these visits didn’t happen every day, nor did Bruce commit himself to a regular schedule, he stopped by more frequently than David would have liked. Bruce had the gate code, and he was free to come and go as he pleased. Once or twice a week, he stopped by to swim or play with the boys for very brief increments of time. Bruce was also invited to, and usually attended, every holiday celebration and kids’ birthday party. He always had his video recorder in hand, and he was very much in the mix at such events. I tried to do everything I could to make David feel at ease, while also making Bruce feel comfortable, but my primary concern was always that Brandon and Brody felt secure in their young lives. I wanted my boys to feel that everyone was there for them, and that we could all coparent together.
I did tell Bruce on several occasions that he also needed to set up a dedicated room for the boys at his new house, so that if they ever wanted to sleep over, they would feel like they were welcome to do so. Bruce acknowledged what I said but he never created such a bedroom. I got it. As one of the only people in the world who knew Bruce’s secret, I was also one of his only confidants. Although we did not engage in lengthy conversations about his state of mind, now that we were separated, when I asked him how he was doing, I could see in his face and hear in his voice that he was really struggling. He was in the midst of his own deeply personal, deeply confusing and emotional metamorphosis, which required him to have his own private sanctuary. I stopped pressing the matter with Bruce. But David, not immediately knowing the full story, remained adamant.
“Why is Bruce always coming over here?” David used to ask. “Why doesn’t Bruce take the boys to his house?”
Very early on in our relationship, I knew I had to confide in David about Bruce, so he would stop seeing him as a threat. Furthermore, because David also resented that Bruce did not in any way provide for the boys, I wanted David to understand why I’d agreed to this arrangement. I needed David to see why I did not want to burden Bruce with financial concerns, but cared rather about him seeing the boys.
“Listen, I need to tell you the truth about Bruce,” I said one afternoon. “He’s really a woman, and he’s in the middle of transitioning.”
Of course, this concept was hard for David to grasp at first. He had much the same initial reaction that I’d had when Bruce told me.
“What?” he asked incredulously. “What do you mean?”
And then he glared at me suspiciously.
“Are you just telling me that because you don’t want me to be jealous or threatened?” David asked.
“No, this is the truth, David,” I said. “This is really what’s going on.”
I went on to explain my rationale for refusing child support from Bruce and why I remained so encouraging of any efforts Bruce had made to be in the boys’ lives. Unfortunately, the knowledge of Bruce’s secret, even coupled with the visible signs of Bruce’s ongoing transition, couldn’t sway David. He simply didn’t like Bruce being at the house as much as he was, even though his visits were brief.
For his part, Bruce had his own issues with the situation. Bruce didn’t like the fact that David had moved into the house that he had bought with me, and in many ways he still seemed bitter about the choice I’d made to end our marriage. We were deal
ing with all the tensions and resentments that couples experience in a normal divorce, plus we had our own unique baggage. I might not have been as cognizant of Bruce’s turmoil then as I am now, because I had plenty of my own inner turmoil to contend with, but I could see a few things clearly. Bruce was angry at David for taking his place, and understandably so. And he was angry at me because I was able to move on with a new love and find another life for myself. Bruce still loved me, and he still loved the idea of having a family with me. He’d wanted to transition to be a woman and then stay married to me, as a woman. But I’d already moved on. Meanwhile, he was wrestling with his transition and feeling very much alone. And so it was painful for him to be reminded of all that he’d lost. It was gut-wrenching for me to witness Bruce’s agony and his attempts to navigate uncharted waters on his way to transitioning. To have another man live at the house he’d given up to me and our sons in the divorce chagrinned the part left inside of him that was masculine and territorial. The two continued to have some obvious rancor between them.
One day David and I were standing at the kitchen sink. Bruce had come to see the boys, and then quickly left in a huff when he found David at home. Bruce was getting into his car when he looked up, saw David in the window, and flipped him off.
“He just gave me the bird,” David said.
“You guys, stop being children,” I said.
As these and other issues began to loom larger for us, I suggested David and I go to see Trudy so she could fully explain Bruce’s circumstances and counsel us about the problems we were having in our own relationship. After Trudy, we saw a therapist named Brandy, and then we saw a man who looked like my dad. None of it went well.
It was obvious there were no easy answers for the things we needed to work through. Beyond Bruce, one of the most frequent sources of our disagreements came from David’s antiquated view of women. At times, he had an expectation that I was there to serve and take care of him, to make beds and do housework. He used to say things to me like, “You don’t do anything for me. You don’t iron my shirts. You don’t darn my socks.”