Arthur did call again after that night, and again and again for many nights afterward. I was thrilled. But the nightmare of our busy lives proved challenging for both of us: He played tennis all over the world, and I traveled all over the world for fashion shows and editorial assignments. This was all well before the invention of cell phones, texting, or Skype, so we spoke maybe three or four times a week and saw one another only a few times a month. Still, I found myself falling madly in love with him. And to my surprise, we began to gather our own fan club as news of our relationship leaked out via Jet and Ebony.
Arthur had taken a good deal of flak before we dated because of his previous girlfriend’s race. She was white, and that hadn’t gone over very well in either the black or the white community. And since I’d had my own issues with a few in the black community over my infrequent appearances in minority magazines, our relationship was a much-needed boost for both of us in the keeping-it-real department.
Unfortunately, our hectic traveling schedules wouldn’t be the only issue that caused friction. Though we had both triumphed over a great deal of racial resistance to reach the top in our respective careers, we were still subjected to endless amounts of discrimination. My way of handling the overt prejudice against my race was to ignore it as best I could and fight off any chance of that poison seeping into my psyche. I couldn’t and wouldn’t let that happen. To me, that would be the kiss of death, and my parents had always taught me as much.
Arthur, bless his heart, was never quite able to master that much-needed shield of protection. He took every slight, insult, or verbal slur he heard on and off the tennis court to heart. He let the intent of that type of hate hit its bull’s-eye—his mind and spirit.
Another problem was that, other than having successful, high-profile, international careers, Arthur and I didn’t share very much in common. His childhood didn’t come close to the one I’d enjoyed growing up in Buffalo. His mother had died of complications from surgery when Arthur was only six years old, and that traumatic event shaped him in ways I think even Arthur never fully realized.
His handyman father had raised both him and his younger brother, Johnnie, after his mother’s death. It had been a particularly strict household. Single fathers during those days were few and far between, but Arthur’s was determined to take care of his family with as little outside assistance as possible. When Arthur was growing up, his father forbade him from playing football because of his slender frame. I believe that lay the foundation for Arthur’s mild-mannered approach to the outside world. It’s understandable that his father wanted to protect his motherless sons from all the ills of life around them—as a parent raising two young black boys alone, he did what he could to guide his children away from danger. Unfortunately, some demons can’t be sidestepped or served away.
As the bond between Arthur and me grew tighter, a completely different side of his easygoing and gentle personality came out. I witnessed a part of him that I hadn’t been privy to in the early, getting-to-know-you phase of our relationship. As he slowly lowered his guard around me, he revealed a man capable of collapsing into deep and dark moods, especially after long tennis matches, no matter whether there was W or L at the end. Arthur could slip into a depressed state after a heckling fan called him a name, or another player refused to shake his hand, or a ref failed to call a point in his favor. It didn’t take much to send him spiraling down that deep, dark hole for days.
Arthur seemed resigned to the fact that, as a black man, he could ill afford to lose his temper in full view of the public. He was convinced that somehow black men who got angry in public wouldn’t go down in history as heroes or icons. So he held all the anger and frustration he felt deep inside his spirit and soul.
Arthur once told a reporter from Sports Illustrated, “It’s an abnormal world I live in. It’s like I’m floating down the middle. I’m never quite sure where I am. It does bother me that I’m in this predicament, but I don’t dwell on it because I know it will resolve itself.”
I didn’t love Arthur’s mood swings, but I did adore how his brilliant brain worked otherwise. He was a wiz at advising me on my career, and anything else I asked him. And he understood my position as often the only person of color in a room more than anyone else could. He understood perfectly the delicate dance that came from finding ourselves in a world that hadn’t prepared for our arrival.
I learned everything I knew through reading books and newspapers, but Arthur’s intelligence was natural and instinctive. His brain soaked up information in an instant and stored it like a steel trap. I rarely saw him read a newspaper, but he was as sharp on world issues and events as any expert.
In his downtime, I was his breath of fresh air, or so he often said. He would say that whenever he heard my voice on the phone, he automatically smiled because he knew I’d be able to make him laugh. I certainly did everything within my power to make him smile when we were together. I wracked my brain about how to lighten his mood, how to make him chuckle and forget the concerns of the tour and his game. I just wanted him to put down the weight of the world, which he seemed to carry on his shoulders at all times.
My cheerful disposition, jokes, and the all-night fashion parties I dragged him to whenever he was in New York weren’t the only ways I tried to lift my man’s lagging spirits. There were also the many passion-filled nights we spent together where I tried to entice him with my womanly charms.
I guess those four-hour, hot-and-heavy tennis matches developed endurance muscles in every area of the body. We had all-night lovemaking sessions, and I’m not exaggerating on the length of time here, either. I was forced to pull out a bigger book of tricks to help him get to the point of no return sooner, or risk some serious health issues of my own. Swinging from the chandelier each and every time we spent the night together was taking its toll on my own well-being. So, one day, I arrived at Arthur’s apartment with a seductive cowgirl outfit on.
My top was sheer, my denim skirt was wide, and there was nothing on underneath. I also wore a fabulously constructed cowboy hat to top it off. Thank goodness it worked wonders in soothing and relaxing Arthur enough so he arrived at the finish line just a tad sooner! Success at last!
Once I really got the hang of how to rattle Arthur’s cage, he was an amazing lover; he was one of the most passionate and focused lovers I’d ever had, and I kept up my end of the relationship by never allowing a dull moment to creep into our whirlwind romance. I didn’t want to take Arthur, or anything about what we had, for granted, particularly given how much time we spent apart. I tried my best to make sure our separations weren’t too long, which meant hopping a plane to watch him play as soon as time permitted in my schedule. On one occasion, I was so tired after flying on a red-eye flight that I fell asleep during the game. Arthur called me out about it afterward because television cameras had caught me napping on air. There I was in all my glory, nodding off while Arthur played his heart out. All in the name of love!
A second marriage didn’t sound too bad, either. I was ready for another shot at being a wife, and I was enjoying being in a serious relationship with a man who cared about me and really had something going on in his life. But the old folks down south have a saying: “Still waters run deep.”
I’ll never forget the sound of the phone ringing in my apartment one day as I leisurely reclined on my favorite brown velvet sofa wearing my favorite silk robe.
Yes, Arthur’s call had a certain ring that particular day. The ring of doom.
Arthur said, “Hi, Beverly, I really need to speak to you.”
“OK,” I said.
“I’ve met someone else,” said Arthur.
His words hung in the air for a while as I tried to process them. Had the man I thought I was going to marry just said he’d met someone else? What?
“I’m really sorry about this, but it’s pretty serious, so I can’t see you anymore.”
In between all our flights, meetings, parties, two-hour phone calls, cow
girl costumes, and red-eyes, he’d actually met someone else?
Ain’t that a bitch? I said to myself.
I didn’t use that exact language with him on the phone, though I so wanted to, but I did manage to ask, “What about us?”
He said, “You aren’t ready for a serious relationship. You are a party girl.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, and I didn’t really care. He said good-bye and hung up. Sometime later that night, still in a daze, I called him back and asked if we would be going to dinner later while he was in town. I’d lost my mind a bit at that point. He reminded me of our earlier conversation and insisted I not reach out to him again. The cold reality finally hit me, and it hit hard. I had just been dumped by the man I thought would be my second husband, and over the phone to boot.
Who dumps somebody over the phone after a year of dating?
In the end, I cried a bit, mourned a bit, and then realized he’d probably made the right decision. He was truly amazing and one of a kind, but he wasn’t for me. Loving him was a full-time job, even a little draining at times, given that he needed a lot of support with the life he was living. I was certain someone else was far better suited to do his cheerleading.
Arthur hadn’t just met someone, by the way. He’d met a beautiful and accomplished woman named Jeanne Moutoussamy, a photographer and the daughter of a well-known architect. Her father had designed the building in Chicago that houses Ebony and Jet magazines, and Arthur met her when she took photos of him for Ebony at a New York benefit.
Our paths wouldn’t cross again until years later, after he’d had a heart attack in 1979 and undergone two open-heart surgeries. It was suspected that he contracted AIDS as a result of several blood transfusions during the second heart surgery. I was heavily involved in fundraising for a cure for the disease by this time, in light of all the friends I’d lost to it over the years. The fashion industry suffered greatly at the hands of AIDS in the late eighties and early nineties. So many talented and beautiful souls lost their lives: Halston, Suga, Willi Smith, Patrick Kelly, Gia, and countless others.
Arthur dived deep into the fight to raise awareness about AIDS and advocated teaching sex education and safe sex in schools. He worked hard to clear up misconceptions about the HIV virus, such as it only affecting homosexuals and drug users. He so wanted to find a cure and held several fundraisers to help push the research along. He called to ask if I would attend his events, and I happily agreed. I met his beautiful wife, Jeanne, the woman he dumped me for, which confirmed my suspicions that she was indeed the right one for him.
Arthur and I had some wonderful, heartfelt chats, conversations left unfinished from our previous life together. I finally got to see that spark of joy in his being that I hadn’t seen before. A sense of passion and drive that had all but eluded him in earlier years was there now on full display. He wasn’t in the middle anymore. That was so wonderful to see.
Arthur Ashe died at the age of forty-nine. I didn’t attend Arthur’s funeral in February 1993, but I was overjoyed with the outpouring of love he received from around the world. He so deserved that recognition and much more. President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his achievements in tennis, his fight against apartheid, and his fight against AIDS.
At Arthur’s request, he was buried beside his mother, Mattie, at the Woodland Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. Through his wife Jeanne’s tireless work to ensure that his unique legacy endures, the Arthur Ashe Stadium now stands as the cornerstone of the US Open Championship in New York, a monument to Arthur’s many achievements, reminding the world of the true champion he was and will always be.
CHAPTER 11
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
In the wake of Arthur’s abrupt exit from my life, I buried myself deep in my work once again. My timing couldn’t have been better as Iman was quickly becoming a major force in the fashion world. Her face was now a familiar fixture in print editorials, and she could be seen frequently walking the catwalks of Europe for various couture and high-end designers.
Try as I might, runway modeling and I never really quite clicked. Janice Dickinson, a beautiful, exotic, crazy, fun, and successful model friend of mine, made sure I got booked in a number of European shows, and I did my best to walk the walk of a top model in each one of them. But my best just wasn’t good enough on the runway. I never had as much grace as Naomi Sims, or the swagger of Iman, or the perfect hip-to-hip rhythm of Naomi Campbell. In those days, there was no one around with the skill set of the fabulous Miss J from America’s Next Top Model to help me perfect my stride on the runway.
I was happy for Iman’s climb to the top in all areas of the fashion business. Peter Beard regularly asked me for names and numbers of places to get Iman’s hair, facials, and nails done, and I happily shared my glam squad. There was no need for shade in a business with so few of us, though I’m not sure many of the other girls (black or white) would have been as kind.
Soon, Iman and I were running into each other more and more at parties, fashion shoots, and dinners, which caused us to form a true sisterhood. Iman seemed to appreciate the fact that she might be in need of more allies in such a cutthroat industry. I’m sure that reality became much clearer after the story Peter had created about Iman being discovered in the great wild bush of Africa was discredited by reporters. (Iman was actually the product of a pretty well-to-do family from Somalia.)
I won’t go so as far as to say that Iman and I were the best of friends during our early years in the business, but we were always supportive of one another. I think some people thought we should be joined at the hip because we were the only two black supermodels at the top of the game, but our personalities were very different. Still, we did spend plenty of time together as both of our careers continued to soar. We laughed and cried together—that is, until Iman met a famous, athletic, and very tall man.
Spencer Haywood was a New York Knick and one of the most popular players on the team in the seventies. He and Iman had a whirlwind romance that received a fair amount of press in all the New York tabloids, and they were married a year or so after meeting each other.
For a while I became the dreaded third wheel, tagging along on dates with Spencer and Iman. We were often invited to premieres and concerts, and I couldn’t just go alone. After my divorce from Billy, and the heartbreaking split with Arthur, I made the decision to take some well-deserved alone time to figure out what I really wanted and needed in a relationship. Clearly, I wasn’t making the best decisions in the romance department.
But sitting in the backseat of Spencer’s Rolls-Royce one night after a party and watching him lovingly massage Iman’s hand, I was forced to reconsider my self-inflicted sabbatical from love. I was twenty-five years old, the age when most women were getting married, or were already married, or were having children, or at the very least were shacked up with someone. I wanted someone in my life more than anything, but I knew I wasn’t going to find it sitting in the backseat of Spencer’s big-ass car. I had to get back into the dating world, and fast.
For many black women, a trip to a hairstylist is a regular thing. I went every other day—if not every day—to see my beloved James, both for his curls and his counsel. Every now and then James would pull out a list of single men he thought I had to meet. Usually, I listened politely and then quickly dismissed them all with the wave of my hand. I’m not sure anyone understood where I was emotionally at that time. I couldn’t rush into yet another attachment. Broken hearts do eventually heal over time, but one never knows how long it will take.
One of James’s other favorite clients, Claudia, had a good friend named Danny Sims she wanted me to meet. I knew Claudia well from her weekly hair appointments. Claudia was a well-put-together African-American woman in her mid-forties. She was always tastefully dressed and wore the most beautiful diamond and gold jewelry. I hung out a few times with Claudia and her husband, Tripp, whose real first name I never learne
d in all the years I knew them. I was fairly certain his mother didn’t name him Tripp. Whatever his real name, judging from my visits to their lovely home on the Upper East Side, it was pretty clear they were enjoying the good life. My impression was that Tripp was actually a high-level drug dealer, but no one told me that and I never asked. He was always in possession of large amounts of cocaine and other mood enhancers, which he happily shared, so I assumed that’s what he did for a living.
Their friend Danny was a well-known music publisher, and both James and Claudia could not stop talking about how perfect he would be for me as a boyfriend. I realized there would be no peace for me at the salon until I agreed to meet him. I also thought about how Spencer had gently and lovingly caressed Iman’s hand that night in his car, and in that instant I gave in. I wanted my Mr. Right right now, so I agreed to meet Danny at Claudia’s home the next day. What harm could one blind date cause?
I arrived at Claudia and Tripp’s apartment at around seven or so in the evening. We had a few drinks and other substances as we waited for Danny, and boy did he take his own sweet time getting there—he didn’t show up until around ten thirty or eleven. Along with his tardiness there were a few other “side-eye” moments that caught me by surprise that night. It was a winter’s evening in New York, yet Danny walked in the door all smiles wearing only a pair of khaki shorts and a polo shirt. No coat, no socks, and no scarf. Only God knows why I didn’t hightail out of the door without ever looking back.
For one reason or another, neither James nor Claudia had bothered to mention that Danny had a good twenty years on me age-wise, was bald, and was in the process of installing hair plugs! It looked like he had a yard with plots of grass being installed on the top of his head. I wish they’d told me so that I could have avoided my startled reaction when I first saw him.
My dear friends had also withheld from me how Danny liked to ramble on and on about himself. His nonstop chatter didn’t allow anyone else a chance to get a word in edgewise, ask a question, or even take a bathroom break. I sat there in the living room with him (Tripp and Claudia had excused themselves for the night pretty quickly) as he talked about himself. I thanked the stars above that I’d had enough mood enhancers that night to block out the vast majority of everything he was saying. We were on the twenty-fourth floor, and I fear that had I been in my right mind I might have walked to an open window and jumped right out of it in order to make him stop talking.
The Face That Changed It All Page 12