Madonna and Me (29 page)

I heavily identified with these outspoken, courageous, intelligent women who took risks and remained relatively marginalized due to their lack of compromise. Once again, the sexuality Madonna leaned on allowed her to keep her femininity intact—and her fame afloat—even as vocal, politically active, angry women with lesser public images were tossed to the wolves.

In the wake of that new feminist backlash, Madonna seemed more shrewd than cool, more constructed than spontaneous. Instead of being silenced or misconstrued, Madonna could move in and out of the feminist label as it suited her, and use it only enough to garner more attention. In the end, it was third-wave feminism that thrilled me, not the vague skimmed-from-the-top self-expression that Madonna promoted. Rather than being a rebel, Madonna simply played her cards right.

I still listen to that first album, though. I still love the rumpled punk-orphan image from her early years. The Gaultier bustiers she wore were gorgeous, and I still think she looked fabulous as a platinum blonde. But now I can see clearly that she was just a gateway to the real risk-takers and visionary women who would inspire me—the ones who saw a better way for us in life, politics, and art. Madonna might have influenced me as a girl, but real rebellion, and real feminism, made me who I am as a woman.

Caroline Leavitt

 

 

 

 

 

PICTURE THIS. I’VE just sold my novel,
Into Thin Air,
to a publisher, and suddenly I have a bona fide producer named Dan interested in making it into a movie. I lie my way into writing the script (I say I have written many scripts before, and when Dan realizes I haven’t, the only thing keeping me on the project is the fact that I blurt out that I will work for free). People are excited, and then a new producer—we’ll call her Adelle—comes on board, and things really start to spark, because Adelle just happens to also be working with Madonna on an indie film.

“What’s she like?” I ask, and Adelle tells me she is a consummate pro, that she comes to work on time, that she knows not only her lines but the lines of just about everyone else on the set. “I carry your novel to work with me every day,” Adelle tells me. She also carries her little girl, and she tells me that Madonna is really, really interested in both. “She’s thinking about making her directorial debut,”
Adelle tells me. She nods enthusiastically. “And when she asked to borrow your book, I gave it right to her.”

Adelle’s smile is the size of Jupiter, but I’ve had my heart broken by Hollywood before. I know what that word “interest” means, and that and a dollar won’t get you very far in the New York City subway. “She’s reading you,” Adelle tells me. “And no matter what you think of her, if she takes it on, you and your book will be famous.”

That night, when I go home, I mull all this over. What
do
I think of her? Not that much, I’m afraid. I don’t really like her music, which seems too boppy and synthetic and just plain overproduced for my taste. I don’t really like her style, which seems calculated to me. I know from a friend of a friend who wrote the movie
Desperately Seeking Susan
that the star of that film was supposed to be the divine Rosanna Arquette, and supposedly Arquette felt that Madonna took over. All the press wanted to talk to her, not Arquette, and the film even began being called “The Madonna movie.” (“She takes over everything,” Adelle tells me. “But then again, she’s Madonna.”) Do I want this to happen?

I know already how producers change stories, and I begin to imagine what Madonna might do to mine.
Into Thin Air
is about a young woman vanishing into a whole other life hours after giving birth to her child. Would the Madonna-ization of it change my book into something I not only don’t recognize, but don’t like? Already, under Dan and Adelle, my main character has gone from a waitress to a phone sex worker (not my choice!) to a photographer. Characters that die come back to life and then are knocked off again. I know movie-making is a collaborative effort, but I can’t shake the feeling: You don’t collaborate with Madonna. She’s too strong-willed. She calls all the shots, and maybe my job would be just to agree with her or not say anything at all.

I’m more and more wary, but Dan and Adelle are so excited that they almost never stop talking about it. Dan sits me down and tells me not to say anything to anyone about what might be happening concerning Madonna and my movie, that it must stay hush-hush until there is a firm deal in place. “But a story this big could leak out,” he tells me. “Imagine
the phone calls! We’re talking
People
magazine! We’re talking
The New York Times
! You have to be prepared when that happens.”

“But I don’t know anything about what’s going on,” I tell him. “I don’t know what Madonna is thinking about my book, or when she might decide, or what she wants to do with my story.” I ask if I can talk to Madonna about my book. I figure I can be smart and charming, plus—I admit, I really want to meet her. He looks at me as if I have asked him to run through Times Square without clothes on. “You’re the writer. You don’t really talk to anyone,” he says. “And when you do, when the calls come, you say what we tell you to say.”

“You can’t be serious,” I say.

“‘Please talk to my producers.’ That’s all you say,” he tells me. And that is that. I wait and wait, but the calls never come, and I confess, I’m getting a little peeved. I know that being associated with Madonna will boost my career, that some of her sparkle might even rub off on me. But it frustrates me that I have no contact with her, that I can’t meet her and make a case for myself and my novel.

“She’s reading it,” Adelle keeps telling me. I think of Madonna reading and I wonder if she’s imagining certain actors and actresses as my characters, if she’s plotting out the visuals or even thinking about distribution deals. But I don’t actually imagine we will be friends, Madonna and I. Or even that I might like her. I’m shy and bookish and her flamboyance bothers me because it seems like an act, an irritant to get a reaction. What would we ever talk about? I just want her to make my movie. “Don’t tell anyone about your Madonna connection,” I am warned again by my producers, and so I don’t, though truthfully, I don’t think anyone will believe me, anyway.

Two weeks later, while deep in a reverie about how I am going to convince Madonna to shoot the last act, I hear it on the TV news: Madonna is leaving on a worldwide concert tour. Heartsick, my fantasies crashing, I call Dan. “Oh,” he says. His voice is dull and faded. “We were going to tell you. She decided to go make music instead of movies.”

“But what did she say about the book? About me?”

“She said she was going on tour. That’s Madonna for you.”

So there I am. Does it bring me any sort of fame by association to know that Madonna read my book? Or had she not even read it, only skimmed it? Maybe she didn’t even like it.

Suddenly, everything else about my film begins falling apart, as if Madonna is the first domino to fall, and look out now, because here come all the others. Dan falls in love with another new producer and they are talking about moving to France. Adelle is busy with a new film. Suddenly, no one is answering my calls or making any calls to me.

I think of Madonna, the way she simply tears off to do her tour when she could be directing a movie of my novel. And then I remember this story a friend had told me about her—something she had read in a magazine. When Madonna was struggling, she had been rejected by some record company executive. But instead of caving or feeling humiliated, she walked back into the office, ignoring the receptionist who tried to stop her, and she said to the executive, “Someday, you’re going to wish you had said yes to me.” I hate the Madonna who isn’t going to make my film, but I like the one who stood up for herself like that. I like the way she was confident, that nothing was a slight to her—only a mistake, or a misjudgment.

In the end, Hollywood could have broken my heart. And Madonna could have, too. Instead, I choose to look at both in a different way. No one can make you feel small or wrong unless you allow it, and I’m not going to let that happen to me. I might have lost those producers, I might always wonder what would have happened if Madonna had directed my novels, but I don’t give up, no more than Madonna did when that executive told her to get lost. I get new producers, and make new deals. I write more books, too. And yes, occasionally I think, “Someday, you’re going to wish you said yes to me.” But then I let it go.

You could say this change in me—this decision to never play the victim—was the one gift I got from Madonna when she almost, almost made my movie.

 

 

 

 

 

REMEMBER HOW THAT lovely but basically powerless Diana Prince would go into a clearing, spin around, then suddenly her dress would disappear and she’d be wearing starry hot pants and a red-and-gold bustier, able to deflect bullets with her wrist bands and whip some not so good ol’boys into shape with her Wonder Woman Lasso of Truth?

Well, that’s pretty much what I thought would happen if I tried to dress like Madonna.

Ever since I was little, I have been certain of two things. One, I definitely
did
see a ghost in my basement when I was five; and two, Madonna was the strongest, most unique, most uncompromising trailblazer pop music had ever seen, and deep down I always wished I were her. Madonna was fearless and unapologetic and in charge of both her naughty bits
and
yours. She gave a concrete visual to all my concepts of “cool,” and I always thought her traits—chief among them fearlessness—would magically become mine the second I slipped on fingerless gloves or a bedazzled cowboy hat.

In October of 2001, I was invited to a costume party where everyone was “encouraged” to come dressed as a pimp. This was the beginning of the new millennium, a time when pimps had become a pop culture fascination again, but only to the point that they were considered wisecracking, colorful street characters and not dangerous Svengalis hell-bent on making a dirty buck. I had never seen a live pimp before, so dressing like one would be especially challenging. Girls who just got out of college with a degree in musical theater didn’t really interact with a lot of pimps—at least not that early in their careers. But fortunately for me, Madonna’s
Music
album had just come out. And for “Music,” its first single, the video showed her as a pimp-like character, hitting the strip club with her entourage, decked out all in white, complete with a cowboy hat and gold tooth.
I won’t be dressing like her to be her, it’ll just be like she’s my “style guide”,
I thought. Slick. Powerful. A one-woman rodeo with a steely stare and a fire in my pants.

I checked my closet and assembled an outfit that came as close as it was going to, since my closet was the most boring thing this side of the Gap. Black shirt, grey pants with pink pinstripes, black boots (from Payless—I’m so sorry, Madonna), a blue crushed-velvet knee-length coat, and a grey felt cowboy hat with black dots on it, all of which I sincerely hoped would scream, “Don’t fuck with me, world!”

Just like Madonna.

I grabbed for my purse as I was about to leave the house, but reconsidered—I didn’t think either a pimp
or
Madonna would carry a purse from Express. So I decided to just take what I needed, stashing it in my pockets: fifteen dollars cash, my keys, and a full pack of Parliament Light 100s.

I don’t remember much about the party itself. I spent part of it alone on the bathroom floor singing “Linger,” and most of it hiding in rooms or behind groups of particularly tall people to avoid flirtatious advances from this guy named Greg.

Greg didn’t deserve to be avoided. He was a quiet and down-to-earth guy dressed like a business-class pimp: three-piece grey suit,
pink shirt, matching muted tie—and he wasn’t spending the majority of his time trying to make people notice him, like so many other guys there. The problem was me—at that time, I was so uncomfortable with myself, my sexuality, even basic flirting, that it’s a wonder I wasn’t a virgin. It had only been a year since I’d needed three sedatives to ask a guy in
bell choir
out for coffee (which, admittedly, is not very Madonna-like). But I couldn’t handle being both fear-inducing
and
vampy at the same time.

So I avoided Greg like a virgin avoids Fleet Week.

But he wasn’t deterred. When the party started winding down around 4:30 AM, Greg insisted he walk me home to my apartment in South Philadelphia, which I definitely did not want. But I begrudgingly gave in, telling myself I was the one doing him a favor.

For most of the walk home, I didn’t shut up long enough to hear another person sneeze. Talking incessantly is a crutch I lean on anytime I’m in a situation tinged with some kind of intimate overtone that I’m trying to skirt, and given my level of comfort when it came to anything related to S-E-X, I was trying to skirt this big-time.

So as we walked, I talked—about any and everything that popped into my head, from my favorite diner to a stoop where I once saw a guy masturbating. Finally, a block from my house, I realized I could just tell him, “It’s five in the morning and you’re so far from your house; I got it from here.”
Oooh, you’re so cool and detached, girl. Keep rocking that.

I turned to launch
el grande
brush-off, and I noticed that Greg’s eyes were fixed on something coming toward us. But before I had a chance to turn and see what he was looking at, a pair of large, solid arms softly restrained me, and a very gentle, quiet voice said, “Hold up, hold up, hold up.”

It took me only a split second to realize that there were now two men in front of us, and one of them had a gun pointed at me.

Earlier that year, I had been walking this same stretch of road when I came up behind a scraggly guy walking in the same direction
I was. As I pulled even with him, I got a look and thought
Wow, he’s homely
, before continuing on my way. But when I reached the next block, I heard furious footsteps coming up behind me and I felt a vicious yank on my purse, which I was wearing cross-shoulder. The culprit was the guy I passed, who was now yanking on my purse, seemingly trying to pull me down with it. But all he succeeded in doing was pulling me into the “power position”—legs wide, flat back, slight squat—that actually put me in control. I yanked up with all my lady balls and jerked my purse right out of his hands. He stumbled back, dumbstruck, and fell flat on his ass. As the now dominant animal in this kingdom where only the sassiest survive, I bent over him, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Get up and run, bitch.”