Madonna (36 page)

When the book was published, amidst frenetic scenes as fans choked the bookstores, clamoring for the copies, there was an immediate – and personally devastating – backlash. For the first time feminists, liberals and the Christian right were united in their condemnation of a book which, they argued, dealt in pornography, rape and degradation for the singer’s personal profit. The humorous juxtaposition in many of the images – notably the shots of her hitchhiking naked down a Florida highway, or pumping gas wearing nothing but black lace leggings – and the erotic, witty and, at times, self-deprecating text were submerged in the tidal wave of criticism. ‘I think I’m treated that way because people find it hard to believe that an ordinary little lady can become rich and powerful and stay sexy and disrespectful,’ Madonna argued.

Brave words in public, but in private she was distraught.
Sex
proved to be a watershed in her career and her personal life. For the first time there was no way of sliding out from under the controversy – no director, playwright or cameraman to blame for the bitter emotion and biting criticism she had aroused. She was learning that the handmaiden of absolute authority is total responsibility. For once, she was completely exposed, even the caveat in her book, in which she wrote, ‘Nothing in this book is true. I made it all up,’ giving her no room for maneuver, and far less escape.

To feel so utterly out of control was a searing experience, especially for a woman who so badly needed to be in control. She received sackloads of hate mail – at one time running at 200 letters a day – from furious individuals and groups, as well as vicious death threats from groups and individuals, which naturally concerned her, her friends and her staff. Looking back on that period, she reflected, ‘I divide my career from before and after the
Sex
book. Up until then I really was just being a creative person working and doing things that inspired me and I thought would inspire other people. After that I suddenly had a different point of view about life in general.
Sex
was my fantasy and I made money off of it. That is a no-no. I was involved on every level and that is unacceptable. It’s all part of the strong woman in control terrifying people.’

At the time, not only was she was under pressure to finish off the
Erotica
album, whose sales suffered as a result of the backlash, but she had to try to stave off the constant criticism. After the publication of
Sex
, she went on to star in the erotic thriller
Body of Evidence
, and then
Dangerous Game
, the first film funded by her own company. Coming as they did on the heels of the controversy over her book, the failure of these movies, both critically and commercially, would make 1993 a year that was to test her to the limit. Nonetheless, she could at least comfort herself with the commercial success of
Sex
, which went on to sell 1.5 million copies around the world, a triumph of marketing for the fledgling Maverick group.

During previous controversies she had drawn comfort from the experience of the man she sees as her spiritual guide and talisman, Elvis Presley, the anniversary of whose death falls on her birthday. She had always been consoled by the fact that he was ultimately accepted by society when initially he had been vilified as a rebel, a cheap performer whose sexually provocative poses outraged moral America. This time, however, Elvis was no consolation.

Nights were the worst. Always a restless sleeper, Madonna could only sleep if Albright rubbed her forehead or stroked her hair. Even then the singer, who has persistent nightmares about death, was not at peace, her eyes beneath the closed eyelids flickering in constant agitation. ‘She was a mess,’ her former lover states categorically. ‘It was the darkest time in her career. She was haunted by the criticism. My role was as a supporter, to take the pressure off her and constantly reassure her that what she was doing was right, and not to let the negative energy from the media and others affect her. She is a very, very sensitive and insecure person and I just had to let her know that she was a great entertainer, one of the most famous people in the world, and there was a price to be paid for that.’

Madonna was concerned about more than bad reviews, however, although Albright didn’t know it at the time. While he was comforting her, she kept to herself the reaction of one of the participants in the book, Vanilla Ice. Still under the impression, not yet confounded by her, that they had a relationship, the rapper was furious when he found out that she had plastered his face – and much else – all over her book without having the courtesy to ask his permission or, for that matter, considering the consequences to his own career.

Vanilla Ice, who beat his drug habit and is now a born-again Christian, remembers how he very ostentatiously burned the signed copy of
Sex
she sent him. ‘I was so displeased that she put me in this whole slutty package. That was the end for me and her. When she rang I told her that the book belittled and embarrassed me. People looked at me as though I was this big slut and I got bad headlines for it.’ What saddened him as much as anything was that by publishing the book, the Madonna he had come to know was demeaning and degrading herself. ‘I knew her,’ he observes sadly, ‘and what she was portraying was phony, it was fake. She was not this slut at all. She seemed to be doing it just for the money.’

Even as Vanilla Ice and Madonna went their separate ways, Jim Albright too was beginning to see the flip side of his girlfriend. It was not a view he much liked. While they both wanted children, the details seemed to keep getting in the way. There was the thorny issue of a possible pre-nuptial agreement. Madonna was adamant that they draw one up, but Albright argued that as he was not, and would never be, financially dependent on her, there was no need. Nor was he keen on her idea of employing a nanny, believing that they should bring up any children they might have themselves. At the same time there were stories swirling around the mass media that Madonna had contracted AIDS, rumors officially and categorically denied by Liz Rosenberg.

Nonetheless, it must have had the effect of creating further uncertainty in Albright’s mind, especially as he knew that she had had many sexual partners over the years. Even though she seemed anxious to conceive he continued to practice protected sex, his concerns only eased when Madonna received a clean bill of health after taking the obligatory medical prior to starting work on the film
Body of Evidence
in the summer of 1982.

These differences merely exposed more fundamental issues. Although they had been together for some months, Albright found himself frustrated that their relationship seemed to be a one-way street. He lived constantly on ‘Madonna time,’ his whole world shaped around her strictly organized regime with its rigid timetables, always reassuring her and bolstering her battered ego, rarely having the time to enjoy a normal relationship. With the furor surrounding
Sex
in the fall of 1992, and the critical savaging her erotic thriller
Body of Evidence
received when it was released the following January, he felt that Madonna had neither the time nor the emotional strength to prepare for motherhood.

Albright felt, too, a growing sense of distrust not just about the other men in her life, but also the women. Virtually everywhere he and Madonna went the slim, dark-haired figure of Ingrid Casares, the daughter of a millionaire Cuban businessman who first met Madonna at the singer’s 1991 New Year’s Eve party, would go with them. She was Madonna’s shadow, accompanying her and Albright when they went to Florida, Germany, France and Los Angeles together. Like a little lamb – and like Sandra Bernhard before her – everywhere Madonna went, Casares was sure to follow. To Albright, however, she was more than just a shadow; she was an emotional buffer, her presence preventing him and Madonna from growing closer.

At first, Madonna shrugged off accusations from Albright that she and Casares were lovers, saying that, as a friend, she was helping her to overcome her addictions, both to drugs and to her former lover, Bernhard. Later, however, she confirmed to him that they were more than just friends, thereby exposing the unhappy triangular love tangle between Madonna, Sandra Bernhard and their mutual friend, Casares. This perhaps explains, at least in part, the vehemence of Bernhard’s scorn towards the singer when their relationship ended. ‘I look at my friendship with her as like having a gallstone. You deal with it, there is pain, and then you pass it. That’s all I have to say about Schmadonna,’ she scathingly remarked.

It was another nightclub owner, John Enos, widely thought to be the subject of the erotic
faux-
‘Dear John’ letters in
Sex
, whose elusive presence drove a further wedge between Albright and Madonna. On his first visit to Madonna’s new home in Miami since she had bought it, Albright found a Blockbuster Video card in Enos’s name. When he confronted her about Enos, who runs the Roxbury Club in Los Angeles, she at first denied but then admitted that she was still seeing him. She apologized, promised to be faithful, and for a time their relationship flourished.

Over the months, however, his gradual discovery of her secret friendships with everyone from actors to sports stars, and even a supermodel, sapped his faith in her. While she protested her innocence, he began to grow jealous and suspicious, never quite convinced by her protestations, or sure of her motives. Nor were his anxieties eased when he learned from press reports that she had been seeing some well-known personality before she told him that she had done so. It was partly his own fault. A New York Knicks fan, he had inspired her with his love of basketball, and it was not long before she became fascinated with the sport – and its players. For example, on a flying visit to Arizona she sought out Charles Barkley, then of the Phoenix Suns. In time, her taste for basketball stars would cost her dearly.

Given to jealousy, Albright also found it difficult to watch her performance with the craggy actor Willem Dafoe in
Body of Evidence
, in which they enjoyed wild on-screen sex antics, including a famous scene where she poured hot wax over his naked body. At the same time her growing friendship with the Japanese-American model Jenny Shimizu, described by the
Los Angeles Times
as a ‘lezbopunk bike-dyke,’ with whom she spent time in Paris when she went to see the designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, further added to an increasingly complicated love life. As Albright observes of their time together, ‘She’d never been faithful to one man – period. She told me that. She is only loyal to herself.’

For him, though, the most painful time came in November 1993, after he, Madonna, her brother Christopher, the singer Tori Amos and the comedian Rosie O’Donnell, among other friends, had spent Thanksgiving together in the recently acquired house in Miami. They had fun, Madonna and O’Donnell, whom she had met two years earlier during the filming of A
League of Their Own
, keeping everyone amused with their clowning and banter. Beyond that, however, Madonna and her lover were on a high, Albright believing that the worst was behind them. He left the house party early, flying back to New York on his own, but content in the knowledge that their affair was once more back on track. As a result he was devastated to discover later that as soon as he had left, her former lover Tony Ward had joined the house party. Although she dismissed Albright’s accusations that she was still sleeping with Ward, their relationship was now broken-backed, though it would drag on for months yet.

It seemed that while she demanded total loyalty from him, she did not feel the same obligation, for it became clear to him that her concern to keep his name out of the media had as much to do with ensuring that her other lovers could not see who she was with at any one time, as it had with protecting him from media attention. As they became increasingly estranged from each other, however, Madonna seemed, perversely, to become more needy of both his time and his affection. Insecure and possessive, she visited him unannounced at the Roxbury nightclub in New York where he now worked, checking that he was not flirting with, or even looking at, other women. On nights when he went home to his own apartment, she would call him early in the morning to make sure that he was on his own. Her jealousy reached such a pitch that when she arranged a viewing of her new movie,
Body of Evidence
, for Abel Ferrara, the director of her next film,
Dangerous Game
, and his wife Nancy in a private viewing theater, she afterwards accused his wife of making eyes at Albright in the darkened room.

‘She became very, very insecure,’ he says. ‘She was always saying: “I saw you looking at her, why were you talking to her?” She was always accusing me of cheating on her. I told her that she only had those feelings because that was the life she led.’ She left endless messages on his answering machine, their tone by turns humorous, cajoling, wheedling, tetchy or desperate. On one occasion she jokingly threatened to jump from her second-floor hotel balcony if he did not return her call, on another she admitted that she didn’t deserve his trust but that she would change and make things right. Endlessly she told him that she loved him, and wanted to have his child.

The picture is of a woman needing love and giving equally of her love, readily falling
in
love and yet unwilling or unable to give of her essential spirit. Here was the contradiction at the sad heart of Madonna’s soul, a woman looking for love in all the wrong places. She was not unaware of it. She gave her confused, almost continually heartbroken lover a book,
Love Junkie
by Robert Plunkett, which she felt described something of her emotional condition. The novel is a wry, rather sad tale of a well-to-do if innocent suburban housewife who, following her husband’s death, becomes passively involved in the gay scene. The theme of the narrative explores love as something driven by a wistful neediness rather than sexual desire, an aspect of Madonna’s personality that her boyfriend truly understood.