The Truth Is ... Page 10

  It took me a long time to get over the incident with k.d. A part of me tends to drown in those feelings even after all of these years. I wrote a few songs about that encounter. I never wanted to go through that again with Julie. I wasn’t mad at k.d.—okay, maybe I was a little—but we have put it long behind us. We spoke about it once, over the phone. I just said to k.d. that I thought that it sucked that this was going on between her and my girlfriend. I felt, like, kind of stupid about the whole thing. It’s not that particular incident; it’s the idea that Julie could never commit to me and only me. As I’ve said so many times already, monogamy was never something I wanted in a relationship before I met Julie. But something clicked when I met her. I wanted her and only her. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t looked at another woman for ten years. She was the only person I could see, the only woman I wanted, and definitely the woman I needed in my life, if even to a fault.

  A couple of years later, I was sitting in a hot tub with Ellen DeGeneres, k.d. lang, Julie, and a couple of other women, and we were going around the tub asking each other to say a word that described each of us. When it was k.d.’s turn to describe me, she said, “Generous.” I think she was saying that she thought I was very generous to open up that part of my relationship with my partner to someone else. I didn’t look at it that way, although I appreciated the gesture on k.d.’s part.

  I have always believed that love is dramatic and emotional. I believed that the world worked like this: You fall in love, you’re committed, and you live happily ever after. In the movies, actors always have the right thing to say at exactly the right time. (If only someone would give me the script to my own life.) For me, writing music has been my best way of expressing how I feel. It has taken me a lot of years to realize that how I feel about a particular circumstance is as important (if not more so) as how someone else is feeling. I constantly have to remind myself of that.

  Ultimately, what happened with k.d. was exactly what Julie had said it was going to be, an experience to help her better understand her own feelings. But I carried all of my issues about relationships, love, mistrust, mindsets, and psychological sex with me during that incident. To me, sex is as much about your mindset as it is about your body. It’s about the dance and seduction and the conquering, the having—and yes, the winning. Sex is very dark to me in that way, and yet, for Julie, this experience wasn’t about that at all. It was about her body. Her physical attraction. Afterward, we talked about her experience, and I asked her all of the horrible and painful questions I did and didn’t really want to hear the answers to. I wanted to know everything. We managed to get through the experience and actually became closer than ever. The lesson for me in all of this was that I learned to really trust Julie. With her, what you see is what you get, and knowing that was important to me. After all that had been dealt with, Julie and I decided that it was time to move our relationship to a new level. We decided to move in together.

  We found a sweet little house in Hollywood. It was small and cozy and perfect for two people in love. The years that Julie and I lived in that Hollywood house were probably my very favorite days together. We had moved beyond the k.d. situation and had finally decided to make our relationship official. It was just a great time. Everybody we were hanging out with was new to Hollywood. It was a constant social gathering. There was this young actor named Brad Pitt who had just made a movie called Thelma and Louise, and who was learning how to fly-fish in our pool for a movie called A River Runs Through It. He hung out with this really cute boy named Dermot Mulroney and his then-girlfriend, Catherine Keener. Dermot played the cello on the song “Place Your Hand,” off of the Never Enough album. There was this really funny girl named Rosie O’Donnell who was working for VH1, and my friend Ellen, an up-and-coming comedienne. Even k.d. lang was around the house from time to time. Julie was starting her movie, Teresa’s Tattoo, which she was directing. (We all had cameos in it.) We were all struggling, just trying to make our dreams come true in Hollywood. There were lots of talented writers, actors, and producers all waiting to make the big time. It was a very sweet and innocent time. Those years are the ones that I look back on and think of most fondly.

  When the riots happened in Los Angeles, everyone came up to our house and stayed the night. It was a refuge. We climbed up on the roof and just watched L.A. burn. As upsetting as it was, it was a comfort to us all to be together.

  We’ve all come a long way since hanging out together, and, as a result, we don’t get to see each other as often as we would like. I’m glad that we shared those times together, because things have a way of changing. There’s no way they stay the same. If they stayed the same, we’d all still be starving artists just starting out, wanting more.

  Talking to My Angel

  • • •

  After Brave and Crazy, it was back out onto the road and then back into the studio to start my third album, Never Enough. Those were the years when I really had the fire inside me. To perform, to produce, to love Julie. I was so filled with a hunger and a desire to succeed and move onto the next level—I was just driven. I just wanted to go, go, go.

  I was still working with Kevin and Fritz. Kevin was becoming a part of my musical growth. We actually produced Never Enough together. We were in the studio working one afternoon when I got a phone call from my parents. It was one of those phone calls that you just never want to get. My dad had just been diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer. I couldn’t handle this in our usual family way. I couldn’t just pretend this wasn’t happening.

  The first phone call I made was to my manager, Bill. I was sobbing uncontrollably, and Bill did what he does best with me. He went into a protection mode. He assured me that I had his total support to do whatever I needed to do to get through this, and said that I need not worry about anything else other than taking care of my dad. Bill took care of rearranging all of my business obligations, and he made space in my schedule so that I could bring my parents out to California and get my dad the very best medical attention available. Bill was my rock throughout the whole cancer ordeal with my father. But that’s Bill. He is strong and smart and supportive and loves me completely without condition.

  When my parents called, they told me that my father had anywhere from six weeks to six months to live. Knowing that L.A. had great cancer centers and, more importantly, wanting to be near my dad, I brought my mother and father out to Los Angeles to see what could be done. Waiting for them at the airport, I couldn’t help but be nervous as I remembered the last couple of times I saw my father.

  Six months before, he had been to see me in Los Angeles and he didn’t have any fun. He spent most of the trip complaining about little things—things that didn’t seem important at the time but really got him down. Perhaps he felt I was spending too much time with Julie and I wasn’t paying him enough attention. I don’t know. But I do know that it was very unusual for us to bicker like that. My whole life I’d wanted to be like my dad. He was just a nice person. He was a good man who was warm and compassionate and very easygoing. He’d always been so supportive of me—in my career, in my sexuality, in allowing me to be who I needed to be—that I was disturbed by this seeming change in him, this differentness that I had never seen before.

  A few months after that, I went to a family wedding in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. My cousin Andrea was getting married. I flew into the Fayetteville airport and my dad picked me up. He was extremely irritable, much grumpier than usual, even more so than in L.A. a few months before. On the drive to the hotel, he began to talk about the L.A. trip—how he felt I wasn’t his little Missy anymore, how Hollywood and everything had changed me. It was the first time my father had ever confronted me about anything that he didn’t like about me. He was just so irritable and annoyed, and he kept touching his stomach like something was bothering him there.

  All of this flashed quickly through my mind as I waited for my parents at the airport. And when my father walked off the plane, my worst expectations were
realized. He looked like a different man. Like a man who was under a death sentence. A man who knew he was going to die. Which he was.

  Through his sickness, during his last few months of life in Los Angeles, I began to understand that he had spent his entire life suppressing negative feelings and emotions. He grew up in a really tough environment. His father was an alcoholic, and I think that dad had a very damaging upbringing as a young boy. A big reason that I feel the need to try and be so truthful, to really communicate my feelings, is because I have this theory that maybe cancer is a result of keeping all of that emotion, especially anger, stuffed down inside. A lot of people disagree with me on this, but I really believe that part of illness directly correlates with how you deal with your emotions.

  So much of that time with my father, after his diagnosis, was spent dealing with all those emotions, which were struggling to get out. I can’t ever think of a time when my father got angry. Those last few months of his life, I think he was really trying to make up for all of those years of suppression, trying to purge all of that pent-up emotion out of his body—and out of his mind. He tried to get angry. He said some pretty angry things that helped me understand that those emotions were there all along—they had just never surfaced. He talked about his father—his father’s alcoholism and abusive behavior; his life as the son of poverty-stricken migrant workers, and growing up with dreams that were never fulfilled.

  He spoke about my mom, my sister, and me, too. I finally understood how hard it must have been for my father to have been so supportive of me and my career early on. He was driving me all over the state every weekend, leaving my mother at home alone. It had never occurred to me before that this might have been a hardship on their relationship. But it was. And my father let me know that. Which I’m grateful for. He allowed me to see a lot of things about my life, about my family’s life, that I might otherwise never have known.

  Still, in keeping with long family tradition, we never talked about his actual death. There was no discussion of what to do with his body, how he’d like to be buried, or cremated, or any of that. It was just the day-to-day conversation about this medicine, or that nurse. We talked around the issue as much as we possibly could. None of us wanted to admit that he was actually going to die.

  I had to go away for a few days. When I got back to Los Angeles, my mother was worried—really worried. She told me that my dad seemed to be getting sicker and more delirious. When I went to see him, he kept talking about how Netty was coming. Netty was his sister, my aunt. “Netty’s coming on Wednesday.” We kept trying to tell him that Netty wasn’t arriving until next week, but he insisted that she’d be there on Wednesday.

  The morning that my father died, my entire family went to the hospital to be by his side. The doctors had informed me that there was really nothing else that could be done for my dad. Everybody had left the room except me, and I held his hand and looked into his eyes, and we talked and laughed. I am sure that because of the morphine running through his body, he wasn’t in a lot of pain. We talked about fishing and ice cream. The doctor had come back into the room to check on my dad, and he said that it was only a matter of time. The whole family had braced ourselves for a very long night of waiting for my father to die.

  Dad has always been my angel.

  “Talking to My Angel” was originally called “66048,” my Leavenworth zip code.

  After the doctor left, for the last time, I looked into my father’s big brown eyes, spoke quietly to him, and made him a final promise. I said, “You know, it’s okay. You can go. I’ll take care of everybody. I’ll take care of Jennifer.” And after giving that deathbed promise, I watched my father let go and die. For twenty minutes, his body became still and I could feel his spirit go away. His eyes were locked on mine until they became distant, fixed, and, finally, lifeless. I said to him again, “It’s okay. You can go.” And he did.

  My dad died on Tuesday. His sister Netty came to town the next day. Wednesday. Just as he’d said.

  That promise I made to my dad on his deathbed has been an internal battle ever since the words came out of my mouth. I have a lot of guilt about how I feel because, over the years, I have come to resent my sister so much for all of her attempts to manipulate me. I have generously provided for her and her children, and, though it kills me inside, I probably always will because of that promise I made to my father.

  My relationship with my father was flawed, but I sure do wish that he were here today. There’s so much we never got the chance to talk about. So many things that I think he would have been able to enjoy, like being a grandfather to my children. I know he is with me in spirit. I can feel him all around me. And I talk to him all of the time, as if he were right there next to me. I buried my dad in Los Angeles because I think that he wanted to stay near me.

  Yes I Am

  • • •

  As SOON AS I COULD, I WENT BACK INTO THE STUDIO TO finish Never Enough. I liked the album, but there was one particular song that didn’t work. “Yes, I Am” was an offbeat song in three-four time, which just isn’t very rock and roll. So I dropped the song from the album, figuring it was just one of those things that would stay in a drawer somewhere.

  Things at home were great. Julie was so focused about her movie, Teresa’s Tattoo, and was really driving herself and her career forward. It was still so attractive to me: the way she just made decisions about things, the way she just went for it. I went back on the road, but, professionally, things seemed to be in a slump. Never Enough wasn’t selling very well—definitely not as well as the first two albums had—and there wasn’t any hit on the radio to drive things forward. I was a little dismayed, but tried to put it behind me. I told myself, “Okay, that didn’t work.” So I just hunkered down to write more songs.

  It was always so easy for me to write on the road. The rumble of the bus’s engine, the towns flashing by the window. I’d sit in the back of the bus and think. It was just like being in my parents’ basement as a child. A place where I felt safe. Safe to create. Safe to make something that I could be proud of. Something that spoke to who I really was.

  K.d. lang’s album, Ingénue, had been released the same day as Never Enough, in 1992. Just prior to the release of her album, k.d. publicly came out in an interview she gave to The Advocate. She kind of slipped out of the closet in that interview. “Constant Craving” was a hit, and it was kind of cool seeing how everyone accepted her announcing she was gay. We used to have conversations about it long before either one of us openly admitted our sexuality to the world. K.d. had gone through a period when she was getting tons of hate mail and threats because of an antimeat campaign she was a part of. She couldn’t imagine what kind of response she’d get if she admitted to being gay. It was a real worry. We talked about it and made the commitment that someday we were going to do it. Someday, somehow. We’d fantasize about coming out and talking about it. Then, one day, she did it. It was great. Nothing bad happened, and that was so cool to see. Her album did really well and there was no fallout, which was totally inspiring.

  At the end of 1992, Julie became very politically involved with Bill Clinton and the presidential election. As it went along, I did a couple of benefits and we participated in a Young Democrats fundraiser at the Santa Monica airport. Bill and Hillary were attending, but they were late so the organizers kept telling me to stall. I played song after song until they got there. Bill spoke to the crowd and, before he left later that night, he came over to say hello to me. He took one look at Julie and he started checking her out. He didn’t know she was with me. All he saw was an attractive, dark-haired girl, and he just zoomed her. She was like woo! He was very charming, that former president.

  Thankfully, he was elected and Julie and I got invited to the inauguration. The first day of that whole inaugural weekend, I participated in a concert that Quincy Jones was putting together. It was a really big deal and quite an honor to be involved in—on any level. We were performing on the steps of the Linco
ln Memorial, and it was everyone from Aretha Franklin to Michael Jackson, Michael Stipe from REM, and Diana Ross. I sang a duet with Jon Secada. President and Mrs. Clinton and Vice President and Mrs. Gore were sitting right in front of us. It was really overwhelming.

  The next day was the inauguration. Seeing a man sworn in as the president of the United States is a very emotional experience. There was a woman sitting one row in front of us crying, and I asked her what was wrong. She explained that she had never been to a swearing-in ceremony before, but that she had been to the White House as a protester. This was the first time she had been invited as a guest. She was overwhelmed by the power and feeling of positive change that was in the air that day, and it brought her to tears.

  That night, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and other gay organizations were having the Triangle Ball. They had donated a lot of money to Clinton’s campaign to help get him elected. They rallied the gay and lesbian voters to vote for him. It was the first time gays and lesbians were invited to the ceremony. Julie and I went to that ball. It was at the Washington Press Club, and there were just people everywhere. There was a balcony above the crowd and we decided to go up there with k.d. lang and Cassandra Peterson, a.k.a. Elvira. Cassandra was talking to the crowd, and she introduced k.d. There were monitors all over the room showing us up on that balcony. It was so strange. K.d. told the crowd that coming out was the best thing she ever did. And then she introduced me to the crowd. I don’t know why I did it—it certainly wasn’t my plan—but I came out. I walked up to the microphone and said, “Hi. I’m real proud to say I’m a lesbian.” The crowd went crazy. K.d. gave me this huge hug. It really startled everyone, including me. I thought maybe I’d go on Arsenio Hall’s show and go public, but it didn’t happen that way. I walked away from the microphone and Julie said to me, “I think you came out.” I went and sat down in the hall. And she sat with me and we just sat there and went “Well, okay. I’m out.” Both of us were kind of stunned.