“Matthew—okay.” Having Madonna approve your Christian name is much like being baptized by the Pope. Somehow, I remembered to let go of her hand.
Madonna leaned over the table (I told you it was small) and shook the hand and got the name of every other journalist, giving all of them the contact—and eye contact—they wanted. She repeated everyone’s name as it was offered, lingering over the Argentinean’s exotic moniker. Leave it to Madonna to enter a den of homosexuality and be able to sniff out the only hetero.
At this point, she was welcomed to “the gay room” and said, “Let’s start with levity.”
“I have a good question to kick it off...” I began.
Lookit, I am not going to wind up getting no question asked after changing my trip and organizing my life up till now around this person.
Madonna cooed, “I’m sure you do.”
Another of the writers, a very knowledgeable and articulate fellow who was older than everyone else there and had been kind of dominating our conversation (not unpleasantly) prior, arrived back to the table after a coffee break and broke in with some banter, the first sign that he could be an issue. Madonna rolled with it, but I steered things back to my question.
If you take nothing from this book other than this single piece of advice, applicable far beyond the fandom realm, you will still take something valuable:
Make it happen now, or it might never happen.
“Let’s get down to business,” Madonna prompted, so I asked her an on-topic question about her movie. She gave me a long and thoughtful and unhesitant answer, which you don’t care about a bit. But without listening back to it, I couldn’t tell you much about its content because I was knee-to-knee with her, turned in my seat and facing her, and I’m sure I was redder than that lipstick she loves to wear.
I nodded, listening to her, but also just enjoying the thought that I had made this meeting work and had gotten my question in. It felt like a huge burden being lifted. I had met Madonna, spoken to her, touched her. I don’t smoke, but this would have been the moment for a cig.
As she answered other questions, I was able to discreetly examine every inch of her. I’m sure she is used to this everywhere she goes, but still, I didn’t make a spectacle of myself. I probably looked about like the gay journalist who was sitting next to her on the other side. I glanced up and saw his poker face with its continually roving eyes. Together, we were giving her a four-eyeball massage.
Something that marred things was that the talkative correspondent
did
hog Madonna, asking several questions (one or two of the guys at the table never got a single question because of this) and at times finishing her answers for her. It’s always every man for himself in these situations.
As things ended, Madonna entertained a few random questions. Because I was practically on top of her, I asked her if the bracelet she was wearing—gold with four crosses, quite visible in the film and a match for a famous piece owned by Wallis Simpson—had actually belonged to the Duchess.
“No, this isn’t hers… Cartier made two bracelets for me, for the film not for me; they recreated them for Andrea to wear and I asked if I could have one at the end and they said no, so, um, they made this for me as a consolation prize. I got four crosses, one for each of my children. So...better than nothing!”
As Liz brought things to a firmer end, Madonna asked, “Do I leave this room?”
I’d say she left it enthralled.
My next visitation was the exclamation point at the end of the sentence. Madonna was appearing at Macy’s on April 12, 2012, to plug her Truth or Dare fragrance—we were now fully in the age of Madonna the relentless brand, with a clothing line, perfume, gym, and more on the way. People often wonder if Madonna is money-hungry…I think she sees money as tangible proof that she is being heard.
I’d been talking a lot with Liz so I decided to remind her that I’d never gotten a picture with Madonna, and to ask if this might be a good night to try for one. To my utter shock and delight, she immediately agreed that it was time. I was relieved I was having a good waist day.
I arrived around 5:45 p.m. armed with the required wristband but knowing I may not have to use it—I’d been cleared for the press line, and all media would be checking in at the same time as the party guests.
Attendees, including all of the “famous” Madonna fans, were lined up facing east at the side of Macy’s while press and photographers were clotted around the entrance to the tent area right out front. The cluster of photographers around a famous person is sometimes like a moat around a castle—filled with alligators.
I had one skanky woman with a Canon turn and say, “Are you press? Yes? Oh, if you weren’t I was going to say to back up.” Then, a minute later, she turned to say, “No, seriously—
back up.”
We were all jammed together, but I was in no way on top of her. Women hate me—hate me—in crowds. I have had a woman at a claustrophobic Cher event scream at me at the top of her lungs to stop bumping her, had a young girl at one of Rihanna’s surprise gigs accuse me of intentionally rubbing against her (“I’m gay—I’m not interested in you at all, dearie…”), and have written thousands of words about the short girls at general-admission concerts who invariably find me and throw their entire body weight against me in order to get closer to the front, which they believe is their right since all concert audiences are supposed to be arranged by height, right?
As I settled into my spot, I chatted with my friend Greg, a photographer who’d started out as a twelve-year-old hunting down stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Bette Davis on the streets of New York City and who’d turned his obsession into his work, and his art, as I felt like I had.
When the press line was formed (they called out names as looky-loos began to clog the area like a plague of locusts), my name was actually on it. I can think it was one of the few times in recorded history my name has actually been on a list (well, a
good
list).
I wound up at the very end of the print and video interviews and just before the photographers, a good spot for my photo op.
When Madonna showed up, there was a hush and then lots of commotion. She hopped out of her car looking flawless in a form-fitting, sheer black dress with long locks flatteringly styled. Even from my vantage point halfway down the carpet, it was clear Madonna was having a ball—she was very chatty and laughing a lot as she did her interviews.
I had fun talking with a radio correspondent who’d interviewed Madonna before. She let me know she already had her photo op, which I took as a good omen even though I don’t believe in omens and often don’t even believe in
good
.
We spied on Madonna’s progress, noticing when Madonna mouthed to Liz, “I’m cold!” No shit, woman—you’re in a see-through dress. She donned a black jacket for the rest of the line. Then she was standing before me, and the word “radiant” came to mind. Are stars stars
because
they radiate stardom, or do they radiate stardom because they’re mirrors reflecting our beaming devotion?
I extended my hand and told Madonna it was nice to see her again. The photographer told her to stand to my left, the barricade between us. Madonna didn’t skip a beat, saying, “Not in
that
light.”
My heart stopped. As much fun as it can be to have a bitchy encounter with someone famous, especially someone famous for being bitchy, I knew in that moment I would drop dead on the spot if she Lauren Bacalled me. Her photographer, total pro Kevin Mazur, tried to tell her it was good light and that he could flash it out, but Madonna said with playful seriousness, “I’m not stupid.”
Then, in a moment that could have gone so wrong, she turned to me and said the words any fan longs to hear.
“No,
you
come to
me.
”
I’d been doing it for decades, so I knew the way.
Not sure if I might get shot by her bodyguard, I hopped up on a step stool used by one of the photographers, popped over the barricade as if I were a lithe teen dancing with her on her Soho rooftop in the early ‘80s and not a lumbering forty-year-old man, and greeted the only woman for me. Flashes went off everywhere as I confidently placed my hand on the small of her back and moved in for the pic-with to end them all.
We smiled. Kevin flashed. Then it was over. Not just the photo, but something deeper. It’s not like I was going to stop being way too interested in Madonna (she hadn’t even launched her Instagram yet), and it wasn’t like I would never again try to get close to her, but knowing that I had achieved this silly-to-some goal of interacting with not only my ultimate favorite star but one of the most famous women in history removed a feverish urgency in my brain. It was that hope-against-hope that had driven my fandom for all those years, that borderline desperate need to be officially recognized by Madonna. Starfucking is usually a one-way proposition; it’s pop-culture masturbation. When it’s a tango, it breaks the spell in the best possible way. It becomes at its highest an ascension, and if nothing else a graduation. It was like I was Rosanna Arquette’s “Roberta Glass” in
Desperately Seeking Susan
, finally meeting the real “Susan” and letting go of the fantasy one she’d been following in the personals.
When that photo was snapped, the real Madonna (and the fantasy “Susan”) turned to me and gamely asked the question that we should all ask ourselves when our lives feel satisfying, when they seem to have meaning, or even just when some small miracle happens that makes us go to sleep happy for a night—all things that so many others rarely or never experience:
“What makes
you
so lucky?”