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Now...if you've been following Ms. O'Connor on Facebook (which you might, if you're into Nancy Spungen styled train wrecks) you know homegirl is a few crayons short of the handful they give kids in restaurants...but, God Bless Her.
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Sinead O'Connor
2 hrs ·
Thought would try to lighten the mood since things got so shit around here for a while.. so am going to hope my publishers won't kill me for sharing a funny one chapter of my book (not out until next october) as a little teaser. Each chapter has a song title (in this case the song is Lee Perry's. And is posted below this post.). It is the true story of a night that will live in infamy and I hope one day Charlie Murphy plays me in the sketch.
Disco Devil
Soon as I arrived on my last day, the Kabbalah teacher spun me out the classroom door by my elbow, into the rounded corridor, whispering loudly in my ear “You know fame is a curse and the devil is a gentleman? As I nodded my affirmative, he swung me back in, saying “Don’t forget to leave the party before they all get drunk and start fighting.”
Nine months later my tour has finished and I've rented a house in Los Angeles because I couldn’t go home until after the MTV awards. Spanish looking house halfway up a hill. Beautiful old white plasterwork on the outside. Even a tiny cross at the front door, just like Ireland. I can see the Hollywood sign away to my left when I’m on my patio. Sometimes there are young deers clambering about in the trees to my right.
But one whole wall of the downstairs sitting room is a glass window, facing so that you can see down into the city. At night its like a black frame around the lights of living hell. Every time the dusk comes I get anxious.
I had my bedroom painted purple. I thought “What the hell, you can have a purple bedroom in America, that’s the whole point.” In Ireland you’d never have a purple bedroom unless you were a hooer. And since in Ireland sex is a sin, you can’t be a hooer because you wouldn’t have any customers. So no one has ever had a purple bedroom, apart from Archbishop John Charles McQuaid.
As I’m figuring what to wear one mid-week morning, the phone rings in my room. ‘Effeminate but oddly, irritated male voice asks “Is that Shine-head O’Kahn-er?”
I say “No, this is Sinead O’Connor” just to wind him up. Then I ask him who he is.
He says he's Prince.
‘Says he wants to send a car down for me later, and let’s hang out.
I met him in a club when my first album came out, but we never talked really. We were just getting off on the tunes the DJ was playing. Sly Stone and such.
We haven’t met or spoken since. He didn’t have anything to do with the recording of Nothing Compares 2 U. This call in my purple bedroom is the first time we’ve been in contact in since 1988.
I’m still twenty-three. Me and my friends get romantic ideas. We all thought maybe me and him would fall in love.
At very least we thought me and him would get on well, because the lovely Steve Fargnoli (my manager) had previously managed him, and had first introduced us.
We thought “He must be wanting to celebrate the song doing so well! There’ll be cake! Princes always have cake!.”
I was thrice wrong, and my poor girlfriends fell from agape to aghast, when I told them what went down.
At nine pm I see the proverbial long black limousine slink itself to a silent stop at my gate from the darkness of my bedroom window and imagine I’m in a spy movie, about to be driven to a secret location where I’m gonna be given my next mission.
The proverbial driver with suit and hat is driving. I’m a yapper, so on the way l ask him all about Prince and whats the house like etc. He never says one word. Just looks at me scared every now and then in the rear view mirror, as if I’ve asked him for directions to Dracula’s castle. Very strange. Usually drivers like to chat as much as girls do.
We drive a long time before winding our way up a black-dark hill, at the top of which becomes apparent a large house, very dimly lit. We pull into it’s driveway. The front door is to my right. It seems we’re in a courtyard, beyond which facing me about two hundred feet away, I discern some outbuildings.
I get out of the car and the driver gestures with his head to say I can go ring on the door by myself. This I do. I wait several moments and nothing happens. I ring again and still nothing. I turn round to ask the driver’s head’s opinion as to what I ought do, but he and the limousine have vanished.
Just as I’m realising I have no idea where I am or how to get home in the event no one is in, and that the road is so dark I won’t be able to see further than my eyelashes, the door with a creak opens slowly.
I’m thinking the person behind it is gonna say “You rang?” like in the movies, and be named Igor. Turns out his name is not Igor. But I don’t find that out until later.
Seems like nobody speaks around here, they just use movements of the head. His tells me I’m to step inside and follow him. This I do, observing in his deportment a definite air of ‘Master, Master’ though he’s not quite dragging one leg. His chin is down, his arms are straight by his sides, his shoulders attempt to protect his heart.
Through two enormous reception rooms we roam, unlit but for what little dribbles in from the hallways. In each one, a window, I’d say twenty feet high and ten feet wide,
every millimetre of the glass upon which, was completely covered with several finely applied layers of aluminium foil.
“What’s with that?” I gesture with my head to Igor as he’s turning round to make sure I’m not falling over anything in the dark. He utters the only four words I hear him say in the two times we meet that evening “He don’t like light”.
The second time I meet him his body and being are paralysed with fear.
But for now I’m delivered, oddly to a very well-lit small kitchen, in the midst of which is a small square breakfast bar, around which people could sit if there were stools, and poor Igor makes himself scarce.
Enough minutes go by with no one coming, that I feel safe to quickly peek in the cupboard under the sink to see what cleaning products Prince uses. After all, what woman wouldn’t want her kitchen gleaming like a palace?
Actually its a bit of a mess in there, so I set about sorting it for him. Soon there’s a swoosh sound and a sweet smell from somewhere behind me. I turn round. He’s in the doorway. Ol’ Fluffy Cuffs. Done up like the dog’s dinner.
’Seems like he’s wearing literally all the make up that was ever in history applied to the face of Boy George. 'Looks like I did at Jerome Kearns’ High School Prom.
“You must be Shine-aid” he says. “You must be Prance.” I reply.
The breakfast bar is between us. He doesn’t cross it. The refrigerator is to his right and to my left. “You wanna drink?” he smiles. “Yeah, anything non-alcoholic please.” It being the case I don’t like alcohol because it makes me puke, and puking isn’t a good look for Cinderella. It also being the case my granny taught me to always say please and thanks.
He turns his back to reach up in the cupboard for a glass. Then quick as a flash he spins round and smashes the glass so hard down in front of me that I don’t know how his hand didn’t go through it, saying “Get it yourself."
I’ve seen this before. I grew up with it. I know it like the back of my hand. I start mentally checking for exits without taking my eyes off him.
I realise I don’t know where I am. I never asked for an address. I don’t know how to find the front door. It’s dark. I don’t know how to find a cab. I’m away off up in some hills very far from the highway is all I know. And it doesn’t look like he's got me here for cake.
He commences stalking up and down his side of the breakfast bar, arms crossed, one hand rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger as if he has a beard, looking me up and down like a) I’m a piece of dog-shit on the end of his shoe, and b) he’s figuring out where best upon my little body to box me for the fullest effect.
I don’t like this. And I don’t appreciate it. And I don’t appreciate the assumption I’m easy prey. I’m Irish. we’re different. We don’t give a shit who you are. We’ve been colonised by the very worst of the spiritual worst and survived intact.
Accordingly, when he shouts at me “I don’t like the language you’re using in your print interviews.” I say “You mean English? Oh. I’m sorry about that, the Irish was beaten out of us.”
“No.” he says. ”I don’t like you swearing.” I tell him “I don’t work for you. If you don’t like it you can fuck yourself.” This reeeeeeeeeaaaalllly pisses him off. But he contains it. In a silent seeth.
He leaves the kitchen and I hear him call several times for someone named Duane. His voice is further away each time he shouts out so I know I have a moment to look for a back door. No luck. And soon I hear the footsteps of himself and also Igor, returning.
Before they can get to the door I hear him summon me out. I’m to follow him up a few steps into a tiny dining area. This I do. Noticing as I pass Igor that he’s keeping his eyes to the floor, very frightened. His body frozen in subservient stance.
I sit at the table. I'm facing toward the courtyard. Himself is to my left. He shouts a violent order down the few steps to Igor. He wants soup. He asks if I want any. But I really don’t wanna be part of treating Igor badly, so I say I’m not hungry.
Its not well lit at all where we are sitting. Very, very low light. We aren’t saying anything. He’s brooding. He shouts again, and after a while poor Igor shuffles up the steps, carrying a silver tray which is draped with cream linen, upon which stutter two bowls of soup and two spoons.
He is carrying himself as if he’s a battered child about to get beaten again. His hands are shaking and he is cowed as if before a demon. Its the same abject fear I saw my mother induce so often in my little brother. The man looks like he's ready to piss his pants. He also seems woozy, as if drugged.
He stands at the table facing his master. He doesn’t put the tray down. Maybe twenty seconds go by. His head is down. 'Looks like Oliver asking for more.
Then “You may put it down now” says himself. This Igor does. And stands back with his hands held as if there is a cap in them. For some reason I know what’s about to happen.
“Serve Ms O’Connor some soup” himself barks at Igor. “I don’t want any soup thanks” I politely say, patting my belly, looking at Igor as if to say “I’m sure its delicious but I’m stuffed” (just as my granny taught me). Igor’s head doesn’t move but his eyes flash to me and then himself and back to the floor.
Rather like Mrs Doyle in Father Ted, himself then began repeatedly insisting to Igor, that he serve me soup. Only, unlike Mrs Doyle, he spoke in such a demeaning and humiliating manner that poor Igor shook more and begged me with his eyes to let me serve the stupid soup. But every time he moved toward me with the bowl, I held my hands up and said “No thanks.”
Igor knew what was going on. I wasn’t going to be part of humiliating him. I wouldn’t have eaten the soup if my life depended on it. He finally placed the bowl back on the tray and stood holding the lot, not knowing what to do, looking like he was gonna cry.
Silence for some moments. Igor waiting for his lashing. It finally comes. When himself turns his vicious little face to mine, and in a tone normal people would use when discussing faeces, says “This by the way is my brother Duane”.
I’m stunned. And I’m disgusted. That he could treat his brother so badly. I express this as poor Duane fades out of the room. Things get heated.
‘Some point himself decides we need to calm down and he’s going upstairs, I’m thinking presumably to powder his nose and make sure Dorian Grey’s portrait is still ok in the attic.
He comes down with two pillows and says “Why don’t we have a pillow fight?” All smiles and nice. I think “Ok, it wouldn’t be every day that you'd get to have a pillow fight with Prince, what the hell, lets try to make it a fun evening after the shitty start.
Only first thump I get I realise he’s got something in the pillow, stuffed down the end, designed to hurt. He ain’t playing at all.
I get really annoyed. And also really frightened. A few more thumps get exchanged and he goes upstairs again. By this time we’re beside the front door. I open it and run out. The driver is there in the limousine parked, heavily asleep. I don’t want to wake him. But there’s a huge gate, locked. I begin quietly calling for Duane. I run to the right, where the outbuildings are, thinking maybe he lives there.
Next thing a swoosh and a sweet smell, and there’s himself behind me. He orders me back in the house. This is all too familiar for me to accept without protest, needless to say. I wish to leave and am told I may not.
After a while I’m told I may open the front door and tell his driver to take me home. I open the door so that there is some decent light, and say I do not wish to wake the driver, that I would prefer to call a cab. Another temper ensues. How dare I not do as he is telling me. He stomps upstairs again.
Right inside the front door there is a small chair. When he comes back down he throws himself on it, and sits staring at the floor, saying nothing for maybe two minutes. I stand very close in front of him, trying to reason with him about how I really don’t feel very safe right now and would like to be in control of what manner in which I get home.
He lifts his face up to mine, as close as six inches, and stares into my eyes for like ten seconds. From the light through the open door I could see his eyes clearly. His irises dissolve in front of me, so that his eyes go pure white.
They don’t go up. They don’t go down. They don’t go left. They don’t go right. They dissolve. I see it clear as day. I get a cold fear in my stomach. I run out the door again and shake the driver awake though his open window while yelling for Duane.
I hear Duane’s shuffle coming from the vicinity of the outbuildings but before he can get to me, and before the driver has both eyes open, himself has me by the elbow.
He orders Duane to back off, and tells the driver to go to bed. They both do as they’re told.
Himself drags me toward the front door and orders me to stand on the step while he finds his car keys. No way in hell am I getting in a locked vehicle with this motherfucker, so I make a run for it round the left of the building, and get very far in the darkness, about five hundred feet.
I find myself beyond the boundaries of the property. There are some palm trees. I hide myself behind one ad turn my head to the right, to see where he is. Seeing nothing, I take off my outer top, which is light coloured. Underneath I’m wearing black. He won’t see me. He’ll be looking for what I was wearing.
I hear him stomp about at the front of the house. Shouting, but still not knowing how to say my name. All he could do was say ‘Where the fuck you gone?” I hear the ground crunch a little in my direction. But he decides to go back and get in the car.
He drives down the winding hill. I can see him clearly because of the car's lights. They also clarify my pathway enough that I make a move from tree to tree each time he disappears down a bend, until after about half an hour I see the lights of a highway.
By the time I made it all the way down, the sun began making it’s way up. I was relieved. Everything was silver-lit. I trooped along, head hung. Thumbing a lift back to Loz Feliz. Horribly familiar the walk, and the whole experience. I may as well have been in Glenageary. All the time I’m looking to make sure it ain’t him stops to give me a lift.
Next thing it fuckin’ is him. He drives alongside me, rolls down the passenger window and orders me to get in, his left hand limp across his pimp rest. I tell him he can suck my dick. Or some such.
He screeches the car to a halt in the slow lane and gets out. ‘Starts chasing me round the car telling me he’s gonna kick the shit out of me (as if I hadn’t spotted clue one, at ten pm).
I chase him back, and we run around the car for a few moments, him furious not to be able to catch me, me spitting at him like a cat that just had babies.
I’ve been walking long enough that there are now houses on each side of the highway, with driveways of only about six foot in length. I recall my father telling me once, that if ever I found myself in such a situation with a man, I should (after declaring my father is a policeman) ring on someone’s doorbell if possible and get help. And this I did.
I ran around after the stupid bastard enough to observe his pattern. I knew when I’d get my break because he’d have to look to his right for a second before he ran into the road. ‘Soon as he did, I bolted. Up the drive and rang the first doorbell I got to and just kept ringing it.
He jumped back in his car (my father was right). He sat and watched me for a minute as if, in the event of no answer he was contemplating another few laps. But he decided not to take the risk. He doesn’t like light. Someone might have seen him. He turned the car around and sped off. Didn’t bother looking left at me as he passed.
I walked ages more because no one answered at the house. I knew he was gone.
when I got to the first phone box I called my friend Ciara, who was living with me. She came to pick me up. I was about forty minutes drive away from home.
When I told Steve Fargnoli he went berserk. He wants to go round and shoot Fluffy Cuffs. As does another of his Italian American friends. They say I’ve been the victim of an attack which was actually meant to terrorise Steve.
Apparently there’s some legal proceedings going on between he and Prince. I dunno anything about it. I don’t care either.
I just never ever want to see that devil again.
But I think of Duane fondly, quite often.
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s.blak
Prince...c'mon, blood...we need your version. Don't sick your goons on OKP/Me/Sinead keep: looking,searching,seeking,finding
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The Lesson
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