To Selena, With Love (5 page)

There were plenty of reasons for me to fall in love with Selena. She was a talented, sensual dancer and singer, and a compelling entertainer. She really broke the mold in Tejano music with everything from the music she sang to the way she dressed in her glittery bustier tops and formfitting pants—later, a journalist would call her “the Mexican Madonna” partly because of her stage costumes. She was gorgeous, she was sexy, and she was also very funny.

I was attracted to that woman I saw onstage. But I fell in love with the real Selena, the woman who laughed hysterically while riding speedboats, was determined to beat every guy in the band at video games, and wore jeans and sneakers and a baseball hat on the bus. Selena had a huge talent and sang like an angel. But she also worked tirelessly, doing every promotional opportunity that came her way. She made fans and reporters feel like they’d been friends forever. She had a rare gift with people, because she was always true to herself with everyone she met. She trusted everyone and thought the best of most. Later, many would say that she was perhaps too trusting.

Selena was, in a word,
good
. And who was I to win her heart?

Unlike Selena, I never had anyone pushing me into music. Yet, in an odd way, it was my mother’s love of music that eventually led me to Selena and the true meaning of love.

My parents were divorced by the time I was four, and my mother, my sister, and I shared a small two-bedroom apartment in San Antonio. My mother worked full-time as a payroll clerk, but we were still poor enough to need food stamps. Mom was so tired that sometimes I’d catch her crying while she washed the dishes or when she was alone in her bedroom. Sometimes she didn’t eat so that my sister and I wouldn’t go hungry. Still, Mom hardly complained about anything.

Music was her escape from the exhausting routines of her life, so music was always part of my life, too, like eating and breathing. We woke up every morning to her alarm clock, set to 55KTSA, a Top 40 AM radio station. In the early 1970s, disco was hot, and I loved that music as a little kid. We listened to music in the car, too, because Mom always had the radio playing when she picked us up from my grandparents’ house after work.

On weekends, she’d light candles in the apartment to get it smelling good. Then she’d get on her hands and knees to clean everything. When she cleaned, the TV went off, and it was all about music. She had this really cool record collection and turned me on to classical stuff, like
The Nutcracker
and
Peter and the Wolf
. I also loved listening to story albums, where the sleeves opened like books and you could listen to the music while a narrator read the story. I never once suspected that my mother was deliberately giving me a musical education.

In middle school, I finally learned to play an instrument. My
mom told me about beginner band and said that she really wanted me to try out for it, because she’d been the first chair flute player all through high school.

“Being in the school band sounds stupid,” I complained.

“Trust me,” she said. “Just try it.”

For her, I did it. I went to the band room, where they had all of these mouthpieces set up on a table for you to try: trumpet, trombone, saxophone, clarinet, French horn, everything. I didn’t know what the instruments looked like that went with those mouthpieces, or what criteria to use for choosing, but my band director let me try them all. At last I showed her the mouthpiece I liked the best, because it made this big buzzing sound when I blew on it.

“Great,” the band director said. “You’re going to play the French horn.”

“Okay. Cool,” I said.

Did I know what a French horn was? Hell, no. But she gave me this awkward black case and I had to carry it home.

So, I played the French horn—and grew to love it. I was good at it right away. I had a musical ear and I made rapid progress. I’d sit in my room and practice with the French horn and my book for hours at a time. It was really an awkward thing to have on your lap, this French horn, especially because I was a little skinny kid. It didn’t help that I didn’t have a music stand to prop up the book.

Eventually, I decided that I wanted to play guitar. I learned through osmosis. I had two friends who were incredible guitar players, and we all listened to the same music—Ozzy, Van Halen, Black Sabbath, Whitesnake, Mötley Crüe. I’d watch them play these songs and I’d take a snapshot with my mind so that I could remember where their hands were when they played certain chords or did
these wild riffs. Then I’d go home and put my fingers in the same spots on my guitar and hit the notes.

My mom, of course, didn’t want me to play electric guitar. She associated rock and roll with all of those stereotypical bad boy things, like long hair and drugs and sleeping around. It’s no secret that, if you play in a band, your chances of having a girlfriend and being invited to the coolest parties are a lot higher, but I didn’t do it for that. I was too busy learning new songs in my room.

For me, like Selena, music was all about being able to express myself in ways I couldn’t with words. But, from the outside, I was a nobody. Or worse, I’m sure that to Abraham I was a stereotype, a ponytailed, beer-drinking hard rock guitarist in Tejano disguise. I sort of understood why he would object so strongly to me courting his daughter. He had treated her like a princess, a priceless treasure, and Selena was all that and more as a loving daughter and sister. She also embodied
his
dreams, because Abraham had always wanted to make it as a musician himself.

Maybe Selena would never have noticed me, much less fallen in love with me, if I hadn’t been in her band. But I was, and that meant we were together almost twenty-four/seven some weeks. The close proximity and the fact that we were the two youngest members of the band probably played a large part in why we were drawn together at first.

But there was more to our mutual attraction than proximity. Selena knew my capacity for love even before I did, I think. She was the kind of loving daughter, sister, and friend who always told people how she felt about them, and constantly sent cards or bought little gifts for people she cared about whenever we were on the road. I had thought of myself as this tough, cool musician, but Selena told
me later how impressed she was whenever she saw me playing with A.B.’s two young children.

In those early years, A.B. often brought his wife and kids with him when we toured. The children were perhaps three and six years old at the time, and they were Selena’s pride and joy as an aunt. I adored them, too. Me being as relaxed a person as I am, I have always had a certain connection with kids, and I suppose when I joined the band I was still a kid myself in a lot of ways. Whenever I saw A.B.’s kids, I’d get right down on the floor and enjoy playing with them, and if Selena happened to be walking by A.B.’s hotel room and see me doing this, she’d always stop and join us.

“You’re going to be a great dad someday, Chris,” Selena said to me once, and I was startled by her comment, because I had never thought much about it. But it made me proud to hear her say that, too.

Selena also enjoyed meeting my friends, who are really good people, and who came around often whenever we played shows in San Antonio. I think that Selena saw how my friends were as loyal to me as I was to them, and she admired that. Selena hadn’t had the same chance I had to make lifelong friendships, since she’d been on the road so much since early childhood.

Perhaps most importantly, Selena knew that I wasn’t the kind of guy to object to her career, as so many men would. I wasn’t jealous or possessive. I let Selena be herself, and I was willing to share her with the world—even a world where many people saw her only for who she was onstage.

I was proud of how smart Selena was, of how she brought books on the bus and earned her high school equivalency diploma, and then went on to master Spanish. I admired how much energy she put into telling kids to stay in school and stay off drugs whenever
she was asked to speak at a school. She wasn’t just talking the talk. She lived according to the philosophy she preached.

She had a special soft spot for fans who faced more obstacles than most. Abraham and members of the road crew would go out in the crowd and spot them, then come backstage or onto the bus and tell her all about the audience members who had struggled to come and see her. And, without fail, Selena made time for them.

“Selena!” Abraham might call, coming backstage. “There’s a little girl out here in a wheelchair who really wants to meet you.”

Selena would drop everything to go meet those fans and have her picture taken with them, hugging them and giving them her full-wattage smile.

She was fun, too, always dreaming up pranks. Once, we had a well-muscled security guard named Dave who made the mistake of accepting one of Selena’s challenges. “I want to check out your reflexes and reaction times,” she told him. “You’ve got to follow me and do everything I do.” Selena held a Coke can in one hand; now she handed him a can of Coke, too.

“Okay, Dave,” she said. “Just copy me. Let’s see how fast you really are.”

Selena started doing things with her Coke can, tapping it on top, putting it against her face, or stroking the can with one finger. Her motions were faster and faster as Dave followed her every move, trying to mimic her exactly.

What Dave didn’t know, however, was that Selena had lined the bottom of his Coke can heavily with red lipstick, so that every time he touched his face with the bottom of the can, he marked his face. Finally we all just started laughing because we couldn’t contain ourselves anymore, and Selena laughed louder than anybody else.

Onstage, of course, everyone saw a confident Selena, someone who could get the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand in minutes. She had that kind of comfort level in public. What nobody ever saw—except those of us on the bus—were her pensive moods, times when she might seem really subdued as she sat looking out the window, thinking hard about whatever was on her mind, or frowning over a new fashion design as she worked it out on paper.

I was amazed by Selena’s fashion sense, and I loved looking at the sketches that she was always doing on the bus. She frequently fantasized about one day opening a clothing boutique of her own. She would always sketch her designs and then add her signature like a fancy designer’s logo.

She was already starting to make her own accessories, like jeweled belt buckles, as well as designing costumes for the band. Selena would draw the designs and choose the fabric, then send everything off to a seamstress who had all of our measurements on hand.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much say in what we wore and most of the outfits didn’t appeal to me. Selena’s tastes were flamboyant, to say the least. She liked to see a lot of glitter and shine. I’d be handed a pair of black-and-white cowhide pants or a shiny purple satin suit with gold seams sewn down the front of the legs, and I’d say, “Oh, man. Do I really have to wear this?”

I remember an especially trying phase when Selena was all about crazy jackets that were cut short and square, with enormous shoulder pads. One particularly odious version was black on the left side and white on the right side. Meanwhile, I was listening to Nirvana and that band was wearing torn jeans and sneakers—pretty much my everyday look. Still, I loved it that Selena could create
something seemingly out of thin air, visualizing ideas in her mind and then making them real through her voice and her hands.

That’s the thing about Selena: she amazed me more and more every day that we spent together. This girl was getting under my skin in ways no other woman ever had. It was now to the point where I could barely stifle my feelings for her even when Abraham was around. I knew that I was in trouble even before our troubles really began.

There was kind of a ritual when the band was touring on Big Bertha. If we were far from our destination, we would all hang out in our bunks or play video games in the back lounge. The closer we got to our stop for the night, the more we all hung out in the front of the bus, looking out the windows and joking around as we eagerly anticipated being able to stretch our legs and maybe even explore a new city.

On this one particular night, everyone except Selena and I had gone to the front of the bus. She and I lingered in the bunk area, standing just a few feet apart from each other. Even with the door closed we could hear Pete clowning around to make everyone laugh.

I think that Selena and I both realized at the same time that we were alone for once. I wanted to kiss her, but I was afraid that Selena might turn me down. The strength of my feelings for her, along with this awkward situation, made me more reserved than I would have been with another woman in another place.

Nonetheless, bit by bit, we began drawing closer together as we talked. Well, to be honest, I was nervously backing up as she gradually came toward me. Selena had her back to the door leading to the
front lounge area; I kept taking little steps away from her. I was breathing harder now, my face flushed and hot as I wondered,
Is this really going to happen?