“Say ‘my telephone,’” I said, “but stop before ‘–lephone.’ Like Myyyyyy. Teeeelephone. My. Te—! Mayte.”
“Mayte.” He pronounced it carefully and correctly. He practiced it a few times, and from then on, he was the first one to step in and correct anyone—including Herb Ritts—who mispronounced it. I always loved that.
“What’s the origin of it?” he asked
Rather than go into the whole story of Mama and the telenovela, I opted for the short answer. “It’s Basque. It means ‘beloved.’”
He seemed weary and deflated—the opposite of his presence onstage—and obviously had a miserable cold.
He asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“Don’t get up,” I said. “I’ll make some tea. Can I make some for you?”
“Sure. Thank you.”
When I brought him his tea, he declared it was exactly right, exactly the way he liked it. I assumed at the time he was being polite, but in fact, he told me for years that I was the best tea maker. “It’s not as straightforward as people think,” he said, and I agree; there’s a precise color and chemistry to a good cup of tea with honey.
Neither of us said anything for a long while, but the silence wasn’t awkward. There was music playing on the roadie box stereo, and between tracks, there was the soft hiss of a humidifier and the occasional clink of my spoon in my teacup. We sat together without needing to do anything more. Every once in a while, he reached over to rub my face with his hand, as if he were checking to see if I was actually there or just a fever dream, and I’d giggle and relocate to a spot on the floor or side chair. The quiet minutes stretched to an hour, and the hour stretched to two hours.
“On the phone you’re a firecracker,” he said. “Now you’re here and you’re not talking.”
“It’s because I’m dying right now. I don’t know what I’m feeling.”
Impulsively, I got up to hug him, but he said, “No.”
“I was just going to give you a hug. I’m glad I’m here. That’s all.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want you to get sick.”
I hugged him anyway. After a moment, he hugged me back, and then we snuggled together on the sofa. The closest feeling I can compare would be crowding onto the sofa in front of the TV with Gia and our dogs. I felt safe and at home, and he seemed to feel the same way, because as we sat there together, he settled his head back, listening to the music, drifting in and out of sleep. I didn’t understand at the time what a luxury it was for him to be so quiet and unguarded without being alone.
Before I left, I hugged him again, and at the last moment, we got the trajectory wrong and our noses brushed together in a way that might have led to an accidental kiss if we hadn’t both pulled away and laughed.
Infatuation, from the scientific point of view, is a chemical reaction that intensifies perception and floods the body with endorphins, and Prince tried, in his way, to say something to me about this after I returned to Germany.
“I’m sending you a song I want you to dance to. It’s called ‘The Dopamine Rush.’”
“What’s dopamine?” I asked.
He laughed and said, “Look it up.”
I did look it up and figured out that dopamine is a chemical that blitzes through your brain, making you feel deliciously happy—exactly the way I was feeling at the time. My world was more colorful. The sky was bluer. The sun shone with a very personal intensity. The rain had a secret message for me. My own skin reminded me of gold and roses. It was a high I’ll never forget. I was rushing on that sweet dopamine, and he was letting me know he knew it.
The “Dopamine Rush” cassette arrived. The track was part of a suite Prince had started working and reworking two years earlier in Europe and was now producing for an Eric Leeds album called Times Squared. I tried my best to work with it, but it was a smooth type of instrumental jazz, and something about the timing just didn’t sync with my style.
“Where’s my ‘Dopamine Rush’ video?” he asked me the following week.
“I can’t dance to it,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
He didn’t question or comment on that. He just said, “Okay.”
He sent me another track from the suite, an unpolished piece called “Amsterdam” that sounded sad and a little lonely, but there was an honest rhythm to it that moved me. I danced to it, only vaguely aware that this was a form of communication we were developing, a secret language in which he would tell me—or try to tell me—what he wasn’t always able to say in words.