Life with My Sister Madonna (22 page)

My heart starts pounding. I am furious. “What the hell are they doing here?” I ask.

“Oh, didn't you know?” Madonna says, wide-eyed. “They're shooting this.”

“Have you lost your
mind,
Madonna?” I know she isn't going to answer, so I walk away from her.

“Please, Chris, please don't.”

I just keep on walking.

Madonna starts to come after me, then stops. Even she knows better.

I am sick to my stomach.

The cameras power up.

I fight my urge to rip the camera out of the cameraman's hands and smash it over Madonna's head.

Then her performance—which in the completed movie unfolds with the sound track of the song “Promise to Try,” which she cowrote, playing over it, as well as a montage of Madonna on the tour—begins.

I lean against a nearby tree, white with rage, and observe my sister's on-camera shenanigans.

For a while, she wanders around the cemetery, recreating our search for the grave. She places a bunch of flowers on our mother's gravestone, kneels, and kisses it.

In a voice-over that she recorded afterward, but made sure not to let me know about, she recites, “I hadn't been to the cemetery since I was a young girl. I used to go after she died. My mother's death was a whole big mystery to me when I was a child; no one really explained it.

“What I remember most about my mother is that she was very kind and very gentle and very feminine. I mean, I don't know, I guess she just looked like an angel to me, but I suppose everybody thinks their mother is an angel when they are five. I also know she was really religious.

“So I never really understood why she was taken away from us; it seemed so unfair. I never thought that she had done something wrong, so oftentimes I thought it was what I had done wrong.”

Then, in probably the worst moment of all for me, she muses, “I wonder what she looks like now? Just a bunch of dust.”

More theatrics ensue as she lies down next to our mother's grave.

“I am going to get in right here, they are going to bury me sideways,” she declares.

The camera is switched off, then Madonna turns to me and says, “Okay, now it's your turn, Christopher.”

Her voice says it all: light, bright, with a subtext of “no big deal.”

She and Alek expect me to now also visit our mother's grave strictly for the benefit of the camera. That isn't ever going to happen. I make Alek put the camera back in the trunk.

I turn my back on him and Madonna.

I ask him and Madonna to leave me alone at the grave.

After a good deal of cajoling, they finally move away and leave me alone to pay my respects to my mother in relative peace and privacy.

I spend some time sitting by her grave, wishing she were here. Then, full of sadness, I trudge back to the limo.

Madonna and I ride back to the hotel together in silence.

That night, I find it impossible to sleep. That my sister used my mother's grave as a movie location, her death as the impetus for her performance, wounds me deeply.

I am horrified at the lengths my sister is prepared to go to promote herself and her career. I fear she no longer has any boundaries, any limits. Everyone and everything is grist for her publicity mill, fodder for her career—even our late mother.

And if she does still feel genuine grief for the loss of our mother, she has long since buried it under the weight of her mammoth ego, obliterating it with her legend, her superstardom. Perhaps today's spectacle is her way of coping with her grief. Perhaps.

All I know is that to Madonna nothing is sacred anymore. Not even our dead mother, whom she has relegated to the role of mere extra in her movie. Yet to me, nothing is more sacred.

I never mention the graveyard scene to Madonna again. There is no point because I'm sure that she will never understand why her behavior has upset me so much. Instead, I sublimate my anger. Fortunately, the demands of the tour are such that I have little time to brood on my feelings or talk to my sister about anything meaningful. From Pontiac, the tour moves on to Worcester, then to Landover, to Washington, to Nassau Coliseum, to Philadelphia, and ends up at the Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, where Madonna performs two sold-out concerts, followed by a third in memory of Keith Haring, who died earlier in the year, that raises $300,000 for amfAR.

On June 30, 1990, the European leg of the
Blond Ambition
tour opens in Gothenburg, Sweden. On July 3, 4, and 5, Madonna performs three sold-out concerts at the Palais Omnisports de Paris. While we are there, we stay at the Ritz on the Place Vendôme.

Gaultier has agreed to exhibit my paintings at his gallery on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. He has selected twenty of my religious paintings, and I am elated.

Tonight is the opening. Due to nerves, I take a long time to get ready. By the time I go downstairs, Madonna is already in the lobby, yelling for me.

Outside, the hotel is besieged by paparazzi and screaming fans. Madonna and I are escorted out the back door, into an alley behind the Ritz. Our car is waiting for us.

We leave in a convoy of three cars, each with a security guard in it. The first car leaves ahead of us. We follow him. A third security car follows us. As we turn out of the back alley, the paparazzi spot us, and the chase begins.

Our driver drives so fast that he almost runs into the security car in front, until he gets the picture and races ahead even faster. We are now in the Alma tunnel, the same tunnel in which Princess Diana would die. And our driver is driving faster and faster.

The press honk their horns.

Our driver steps on the gas. We hurtle through the tunnel.

“Slow the fuck down!” Madonna screams.

She shrinks down in her seat. I put my arm around her. We are both petrified.

I am convinced that we are going to crash.

Madonna keeps yelling at the driver to slow down.

He ignores her.

Finally, we are out of the tunnel and, with a screech of brakes, stop outside Gaultier's gallery.

When we climb out of the car, still shaken by the chase, Madonna is mobbed.

She smiles and waves and walks ahead, leaving me in her wake, feeling mildly annoyed.

Once inside the gallery, she glitters at the cameras and only gives my art a cursory glance.

I fight back the urge to say, “Madonna, tonight is about me.”

Tonight was, indeed, meant to be my night. With the passing of time, and a degree of maturity, I accept that—no matter how talented an artist I might be—if I were not Madonna's brother, Gaultier would probably not have given me this show. And even if he had, if Madonna didn't attend, none of the press would have bothered to cover it. That night twelve of my paintings sell.

 

F
ROM
P
ARIS, WE
move on to Rome, where Madonna's second show is canceled due to a union strike, and less than stellar ticket sales—perhaps due to Catholic groups having condemned
Blond Ambition
as blasphemous. Undeterred, we move on to Turin and from there fly to Germany, where we play Munich and Dortmund, and then, on July 20, 21, and 22, Madonna performs to three sold-out audiences at Wembley Stadium, where, as always, the fans are among the most enthusiastic in the world.

After London, we play Rotterdam and then fly to Spain, where we play Madrid, Vigo, and Barcelona. On August 5, the
Blond Ambition
tour ends at the Stade de l'Ouest, in Nice. When HBO broadcasts the show live, it is seen in more than 4.3 million households, becomes the most-watched entertainment special in the network's eighteen-year history, and wins the Grammy for Best Music Video, Long Form.

Back in America,
I'm Breathless: Music from and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy
is certified 2 million, Madonna performs “Vogue” at the seventh annual
MTV Video Music Awards
, where the video wins three awards, and on September 7, Madonna is honored with “The Commitment to Life” award and performs “Vogue” at the benefit for AIDS Project Los Angeles. Until now, I have no reason whatsoever to doubt my sister's sincerity regarding AIDS charities and her all-embracing allegiance to the gay world in general.

On October 27, 1990, Christopher Flynn, our first ballet teacher and Madonna's mentor, dies of AIDS. Madonna does not attend his memorial, but I understand and accept that she does not want to upstage the other mourners. I am sure she mourns for Christopher, though. Both of us do.

 

M
ADONNA ENDS THE
year by releasing “Justify My Love,” which, on December 3, 1990, premieres on
Nightline. Rolling Stone
crowns her “Image of the Eighties.”
The Immaculate Collection
is released and stays at number one in the UK for nine weeks. In the United States it is certified two times platinum, and
Forbes
names Madonna the top-earning female entertainer of 1990, citing her income as $39 million. The magazine also votes her “America's Smartest Business Woman.”

I realize that
Forbes
was right when, on May 7, 1991, just as
Truth or Dare
is about to be released, the
Advocate
publishes an interview with Madonna in which she outs me.

In an apparent ploy to garner support for the movie by ingratiating herself with her gay fans, she says, “My brother Christopher's gay, and he and I have always been the closest members of our family.

“It's funny. When he was really young, he was so beautiful and had girls all over him, more than any of my other brothers. I knew something was different but it was not clear to me. I just thought,
I know there are a lot of girls around, but I don't get that he has a girlfriend.
He was like a girl-magnet. They all seemed incredibly fond of him and close to him in a way I hadn't seen men with women.

“I'll tell you when I knew. After I met Christopher [Flynn], I brought my brother to my ballet class because he wanted to start studying dance. I just saw something between them. I can't even tell you exactly what, but then I thought,
Oh, I get it. Oh, okay. He likes men too.
It was an incredible revelation, but I didn't say anything to my brother yet. I'm not even sure he knew. He's two years younger than me. He was still a baby. I could just feel something.”

I was incensed. From my point of view, my sister has evidently decided that outing me to the readers of the
Advocate
is the perfect promotional tool for the movie. Let's face it,
Truth or Dare
deals—directly or indirectly—with sadomasochism, lesbianism, rape, a hint of incest, a dead mother, so why not a gay brother as well?

After all, Madonna used my mother's grave as a movie location, so why not use my sexuality as a publicity opportunity? I realize another reason. The gay community had been her original fan base in the early eighties. Now, though, some gay fans were starting to feel that she had become far too mainstream, too hetero. Her answer? Her way of winning them back? “My brother Christopher is gay.”

At the time, though, I don't ruminate over her motives for outing me. I just know how outraged I am. Without asking me, without giving me a say in the decision, she has taken it upon herself to out me. I know that she hasn't for a moment considered whether my homosexuality is public knowledge, the reality that our grandmother doesn't know about it, and neither does our extended family nor anyone outside our circle of friends. Besides, it has always been my choice whether, when, or where to come out, not Madonna's. But why should I be surprised? She didn't stop at exploiting our grief at our mother's death, so why should she stop at exploiting me?

“How could you possibly have done that to me, Madonna!”

A moment's silence, during which she chews her gum.

“Don't see why you're upset, Chrissy.”

She knows I hate being called Chrissy. She knows my name is Christopher. If the subject weren't so serious, I'd call her Mud, just to piss her off.

“I mean, everyone knows you're gay. I don't see why you give a fuck,” she goes on.

Half an hour of trying to explain, trying to make her understand that it should be my decision to go public or not, not hers, but to no avail.

“What's the big deal? You
are
gay, aren't you?”

I try not to make as big a deal of it as I'd like. She quite plainly doesn't understand what she's done. How can you fight with someone who doesn't understand?

A week after the
Advocate
appears, I get a call on my unlisted phone number from the
Enquirer,
telling me that they are about to publish a story that I have AIDS. I'm monogamous. And so is Danny. Although I have been tested before and know I am not positive, I get tested again and send the
Enquirer
the results. I am negative. They drop the story.