Life with My Sister Madonna (20 page)

 

T
HE THREE OF
us go to see k. d. lang perform at the Wiltern in L.A. Warren drives us to and from the show in his gold 560SEL Mercedes, which I covet. I vow to one day own the identical model in black, and eventually I do.

After the concert, in the car driving home, Warren ponders, “Why is it that women with extremely strong voices are always nuts?”

An interesting question and, perhaps, a backhanded compliment to my sister.

I'm extremely curious about Warren's relationship with his own sister, actress Shirley MacLaine, three years his senior, but he never mentions her. When I tentatively ask him if he ever hangs out with her, there is a long pause.

“We live in separate worlds,” he finally says.

 

T
HAT SUMMER
D
ANNY
and I lease our usual house on Fire Island—a three-bedroom, 1950s cottage on the bay. Fire Island is twenty-six miles long, a quarter of a mile wide, and runs along the southern coast of Long Island and is dotted with small, separate communities. The farther east you travel from New York City, the more “rugged” and gay the communities become—culminating in Cherry Grove and the Pines, which are completely gay.

Cars are banned here, so the residents use small wagons to transport luggage and groceries around its narrow boardwalks. Fire Island is beautiful and the only place in the world where I feel completely at ease being a gay man. I invite Warren and Madonna to come out there for lunch, and—to my surprise—they agree. I tell them that they can either drive to Sayville and take the ferry from there to the Pines, or take a seaplane from East Twenty-third Street in Manhattan. They opt to take the seaplane.

I go to meet them at the dock. They disembark from the plane looking green with nausea. Both of them say, “We are never ever doing this again. Why didn't you tell us?”

Apparently, space in the plane was really tight, and it flew so low that it bounced all the way from Manhattan to the Pines.

Once they've recovered from the trip, we have lunch and then go swimming.

By now it's midafternoon. The island is swarming with people.

The word that Warren and Madonna are in town sweeps through the island like wildfire. They are probably the biggest stars ever to visit in more than fifty years. After that, my status on Fire Island really soars.

At the end of the day, I take Warren and Madonna to the ferry, which takes them to Sayville, where a car will take them to Manhattan in comfort. Danny and I walk back to the house, smiling, knowing that everyone knows we just had Madonna and Warren Beatty to lunch.

 

M
ADONNA CARES ENOUGH
about Warren to want to buy him a birthday gift. She shows me a 1930s Lempicka-style painting of a man sitting in a cockpit, entitled
The Aviator
, and asks me if I think he will like it. Aware of Warren's fascination with Howard Hughes, I tell her I think he will and she buys it for him. He hangs it just outside the foyer of his house, and it is now the only piece of art to hang in his home.

 

D
URING THE MAKING
of
Dick Tracy,
I visit Madonna on set. She is shooting the first scene, set in Breathless Mahoney's dressing room, when Breathless first meets Dick and asks if he is going to arrest her. In a sheer, black, floor-length robe, which affords the illusion that—aside from small black panties—she has nothing on underneath, Madonna is at her most beautiful. Her makeup, too, is flawless: translucent skin, bright red lips, and her hair in platinum curls.

As we chat on set, her hairdresser is teasing her hair. I ask Madonna how the movie is going for her.

“Difficult. Nerve-racking, really. I feel like the baby on set.”

I tell her I sympathize.

“I'm playing a bad girl.”

I attempt to raise an eyebrow. “So what's it like working with Warren?”

“Amazing. He's being so helpful and patient. Not like working with Sean.”

On many nights, after dinner, Warren, Madonna, and I go clubbing together. Throughout her career, Madonna has always made a point of checking out all the clubs—in particular the black clubs, where the new dance trends usually begin, so she can monitor what everyone is doing.

Hence her discovery of voguing. By maintaining contact with the club world, keeping a toe in the water, and staying on top of the current trends, Madonna has consistently remained at the top of her game. Of course, her club forays end when she discovers Kabbalah, but around the time of her relationship with Warren, she is still going to clubs, catching dance trends at the top of the wave, then incorporating them into her albums or videos.

The three of us often go to Catch One, a black club with a drag-queen room. The club is in the kind of L.A. district where you leave your car outside, but have to pay a guy to watch it—otherwise it won't be there when you come out.

We also often go to Club Louis on Pico, a tiny place run by Steve Antin, an actor, with a bar rather like someone's living room, decorated with seventies posters of black guys with Afros. Very cool. Madonna and I really love it there, and so do countless other celebrities.

We spend the night on the dance floor, doing steps from our old track-date routines, making up new ones along the way. My sister dances with me, and if any of our dancers come with us, we all dance together. On the dance floor Madonna isn't self-centered. She doesn't want to dance alone, but in step with me and anyone else we are with; we all end up dancing the same steps together.

Meanwhile, Warren sits on the sidelines, sometimes smiling, other times frowning, always watching, always indulgent, and un-threatened by being around so many gay people.

I say, “Come on, Warren, come and dance with us.”

He grins that half grin and says, “No, thanks, you guys do it better than I do. Dance away.”

He is the only straight guy in the room, and I think he likes it that way. He doesn't have a problem with all the gays dancing together. He is far too sure of his own masculinity for that.

Nor does he react to my gayness by deriding me or by suggesting that my sexuality emasculates me. He always treats me with the utmost respect, makes sure never to overlook me, and never comes between Madonna and me. All in all, I really like and admire Warren.

Meanwhile, my sister is cheating on him.

 

I
KNOW LITTLE
about the other man, just that he is Latino.

She has told me that she doesn't trust Warren; she is convinced that he is being unfaithful to her, but she has nothing tangible on which to base her suspicions.

From what I know of him, I think she is wrong and that he isn't fooling around.

Warren is perceptive enough to sense that Madonna has other fish to fry, and that, as far as she is concerned, he definitely is not the only game in town.

At this stage, we are rehearsing for the next tour,
Blond Ambition.
Madonna has promoted me to artistic director, although she still wants me to dress her, and I am more involved than ever in planning the tour. In the four-month run-up, I stay with her at Oriole Way, where I have my own room.

We run together every day and afterward work fourteen hours a day and hang out together when we're not working.

Warren rarely comes to rehearsals. Many times at the end of the day, when we are in the kitchen, talking about the show, Madonna tells me Warren is coming over later. By the time he makes it, I am usually in bed. The next morning, Madonna and I go running. When we get back, he has already left.

One night, I wake up thirsty at around three in the morning and go to get a glass of water. The house is dark and the limestone floors are cool beneath my feet. The house is shaped like a U, with the master bedroom at the end of one side of the U and my bedroom at the end of the other. In between, there is the office, the library, the living room, and the kitchen. To get to the kitchen, you have to go past the office. As I walk down the long hall to the kitchen, out of the corner of my eye, in the shadows, I see Warren in the office. It looks to me as if he is rifling through my sister's wastebasket.

I quickly walk on into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water, making sure to create a lot of noise.

When I walk past the office again, Warren is gone.

The next morning I decide to keep the whole Warren-in-the-office incident to myself. But deep down, I think that Warren, operator that he has always been, has had the sense to recognize his equal in Madonna. An accomplished philanderer, he has met his match and knows it. All that is left for him is to un-earth the evidence. And that, I believe, is apparently the explanation for his going through Madonna's garbage: searching for proof of her infidelity out of an understandable desire to know the truth.

Whether he finds it is debatable. What is incontrovertible is that as soon as Madonna starts being filmed for
Truth or Dare,
his relationship with her starts to spiral downward. Warren exhibits great disdain for the project, and—with the exception of one short scene—refuses to take part in it. His refusal earns him my further admiration.

 

E
ACH MORNING BEFORE
rehearsal, Madonna and I go for our usual six-mile run. On the way back to Oriole Way, we run up an extremely steep hill. One morning, I get to the top of the hill and feel light-headed. I don't say anything to Madonna, drive with her to rehearsals, but all morning keep forgetting things and, in general, feel extremely weird. I find it difficult to catch my breath.

By lunchtime, my thoughts are in turmoil. So I go to see David Mallet, the tour director, and tell him I don't feel well and that I think I need to go to the hospital—adding that he mustn't tell Madonna, as I don't want her to freak out.

I go to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, on South Buena Vista right by Warner Studios, and take an ECG. The results show that I am in the midst of an arrhythmia attack. My heartbeat is off-kilter and blood is failing to reach my brain properly. I lie on the table, worrying about how rehearsal is going without me.

A freckle-faced nurse pops her head into the curtained area I'm in and with a look of surprise and curiosity says, “Madonna is on the phone for you. Is it
the
Madonna?” I tell her it is and ask her to bring me the phone, which she does.

Madonna asks me what's going on.

I tell her that I have a problem with my heart and that further tests are pending.

She tells me not to worry about coming back to rehearsals, and that she'll call back to see how I am.

Then she carries on rehearsing.

Fifteen minutes later, the same nurse comes up to me and—with utter disbelief—announces, “Warren Beatty's on the phone! You're pretty popular!”

I smile wanly and get on the phone with Warren.

“Christopher, tell me exactly what's going on.”

I tell him, and without skipping a beat, Warren says, “I am going to call my cardiologist. He'll call you back in five minutes.”

He does.

I see the cardiologist the next morning, and he diagnoses me with mitral-valve prolapse. Whatever is or is not going on between Warren and my sister, Warren is there for me, he comes through. I think he is cooler than ever. (Six years later, the same thing happens to me again, but my heart problem is reclassified as a stress-related electrical issue—at that time in my life, hardly surprising.)

The last time I see my sister and Warren together is at the Washington premiere of
Dick Tracy.
Afterward, they and the dancers and I all come back to the hotel together. I go downstairs to have a drink, and Warren and Madonna go upstairs together. After that, their relationship just fizzles out. They have been an item for just fifteen months. No fireworks, no recriminations herald the end of their romance. Just a slow, gentle fade-out.

I last see Warren about four years ago when we have lunch together at a little Japanese restaurant high above Beverly Hills, close to his home on Mulholland. He advises me about a script I've written, I advise him regarding renovations on his home, and then he asks me about Madonna.

For a while, we chat about her. But during the entire lunch, Warren, cool as ever, never once mentions current my brother-in-law Guy Ritchie. All during my lunch with Warren, I wish that Madonna had married him instead.

Warren's successor in my sister's life is not a big-time Hollywood tycoon, but a twenty-seven-year-old actor, Tony Ward—who appeared in the Pepsi video and has also made gay as well as straight porn. Not that Madonna has ever been remotely interested in porn. The image she so painstakingly projects in her book
Sex
is just that—an image concocted for commercial purposes. She never has any porn around any of her houses. Like Warren, though, Tony is incredibly sexy, and I fully understand Madonna's attraction to him, though in this case I don't share it.

As the eighties end, Madonna is showered with accolades. MTV's viewers vote her Artist of the Decade,
People
lists her as one of “20 Who Defined the Decade,” she overtakes the Beatles on the list of all-time consecutive top-five U.S. singles (she has sixteen of them in a row), and she is named the world's top-earning female entertainer. Madonna's legend will unquestionably endure far into the next decade.