Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  “We all sat down for dinner, had the main course, then your sister stood up.

  “‘Guy and I are going to see a movie. But you and Ashton are welcome to stay for dessert,’ she said.

  “Ashton and I exchanged glances, then we went home.”

  Another example of the way in which my sister seems to have lost touch with other people.

  IN SEPTEMBER 2003, Madonna publishes her first children’s book, the forty-eight-page English Roses. It is released in one hundred countries and thirty languages, but I am not impressed. Her experience with children, other than her own, is minimal, as is her understanding of people except on a business or practical level. Moreover, the plots of this and all her subsequent children’s books are written more for adults and are not particularly child-friendly.

  MEANWHILE, OUR CONFLICT over the house escalates when she sends me a vitriolic fax on September 23, 2003, in which she accuses me of not having approached the job with “gusto, enthusiasm, urgency and gratitude” and claims that “you hate the fact that you have to work for me. There is no sense of urgency or gratitude and frankly I’m fed up with all of it.” She ends by saying, “This is not a healthy relationship and when you have gotten rid of your issues with me over the fact that I am what or who I am then perhaps we can work together again.”

  The message is clear: for my sister, our working relationship is over.

  I write straight back to her.

  “m…I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have given you all the information that is possible to give…I am at the house every day…and doing everything that you ask…I spoke to angela this morning…. your reaction is bizarre to say the least…. obviously you’re frustrated with other things and looking for an outlet…. fine…fire me…. I will consider this my last day of work for you. I am fully aware of the concept of “Bread of Shame” and believe me, I worked and have always worked for every penny you have paid me, and generally it was pennies…. rob and I have worked our asses off to get this job done in the time frame you requested…but that doesn’t seem to matter…You really need to assess how you react to things and consider taking the calm, intelligent and peaceful approach to the house and life…. Your overeaction to things is only going [to] make every thing seem unbearable…. you really need to take another look at Kabbalah and [its] teachings m and start practicing it yourself instead of using it as a weapon on others…. take care…peace…oh and…let me know if you want rob to continue in my place…. of course you realize you will have to pay him to continue…. i still love you, crazy as you are…. c”

  The following morning, at just after 6 a.m., she fires off another fax to me in which she ends our working relationship. Along the way, she admits, “Perhaps I expect too much because of history, water under the bridge and the fact that you are my brother. Who knows but it’s not good chemistry.” She ends, “I am calm and I love you too.”

  I am still angry, but I am also sad.

  I spend all morning mulling my reply, then write, “funny how it all comes down to money…hmm…and just for the record…I am the last person in your world who has always had your back…and despite the fact that u live in a fantasy world…I will always have your back…. I love u too much and too deeply to ever let that go…. peace…c.”

  I SUSPECT THAT although Guy has never been to the house while I was working there, he was somewhere in the background, pulling my sister’s strings. Or perhaps he told her she should exercise more control over what I’m doing. Either way, she has made my life a misery during the entire Sunset job.

  FINALLY, THE HOUSE is completed according to schedule.

  However, I don’t receive the final payment of $15,000, so I call Caresse.

  “Madonna wants me to tell you that she doesn’t feel you did enough to warrant the final payment. So she isn’t going to pay it,” she says.

  For a moment, I digest the latest blow my sister has dished out.

  “You tell Madonna if she wants to see any of the rest of the furniture I bought for her and she’s waiting for, she had better pay me my final payment.”

  Caresse gulps and hangs up. Within a few hours, my final check is messengered over to me, and I arrange for Madonna to get the rest of her furniture.

  BY NOW, MADONNA and I are hardly on speaking terms. But we are not completely estranged. Then, at the end of October 2003, in a quirk of fate, she inexplicably decides to return one of the light fixtures I’ve purchased for her for Sunset. Caresse takes it back to the shop, whereupon she learns that I have charged a percentage above the cost of the item—the standard markup every designer takes.

  On October 24, Madonna calls me and says that she can’t believe I’ve done this to her, calling me a thief and a liar, and the most untrustworthy person she’s ever met, accusing me of betraying her after she has put all her love and loyalty into my work. One of the accusations that hurts the most is when she yells, “I’ve made you what you are. You wouldn’t be anything without me.”

  I do my best to defend myself. She hits back with a fax in which she hurls further accusations at me, ending, “Please never contact me again.”

  It is as if my sister has taken a knife, stuck it into my stomach, and twisted it twenty-five times. Or ripped my heart out and carved it into a thousand pieces.

  I’ve spent the last twenty years helping make her a star, supporting her, protecting her, without much financial reward. And now this.

  I stare at the computer screen for what seems like hours, reading the poisonous words over and over, enraged.

  In frustration, I smash my fist on my desk.

  I break a bone in my hand and, for weeks after, have to wear a cast, but the physical pain is negligible next to the psychological pain my sister has just inflicted on me. Every bit of anger I’ve ever felt at her, every disappointment she’s ever caused me, every iota of pride I’ve swallowed on her behalf, every bitter rejection, comes to the surface.

  I sit down and reply to her email.

  “you have never in the entire time I have worked for you since 1985 paid me even close to what i was worth…. I gave up my fucking life to help make you the evil queen you are today…. 15 years listening to your bitching, egotistical rantings, mediocre talent, and a lack of taste that would stun the ages…every ounce of talent you have, you have sucked dry from me and the people around you…i certainly never worked for you for the money…. now you accuse me of lying and cheating you…. you’ve got some fucking nerve…. as usual…you have lost all sense of reality…. i guess I always thought that one day you’d see my worth and behave accordingly…but you never did…. a little fucking respect was all I ever wanted from you and you couldn’t even manage that.”

  I end the email with “Don’t forget to remove me from your will.” Then I press SEND.

  As I do, the weight of the world falls off my shoulders. All of a sudden, I am free of Madonna. I don’t have to protect her anymore. I don’t have to worry about how my public behavior will reflect on her. I can be myself at last. Christopher, not Madonna’s brother.

  Then I am overcome by a deep sadness. The woman I loved above all others, the woman who I thought was incredibly creative and loving has surrounded herself with sycophants who do nothing but agree with her and who I feel have poisoned her against me. The Madonna I once knew is lost to me forever. And I am sorry for her, and us.

  SHE DOESN’T REPLY to my email. When I email Demi to ask where the next Wednesday Kabbalah class is being held, she replies that she isn’t sure. After that, silence. I email her again. Silence. The message comes over loud and clear: I have shared my thoughts and hopes with my fellow members of the Kabbalah class, but because of my rift with my sister, I am no longer welcome.

  Despite having been excluded from Kabbalah classes, I continue to practice Kabbalah’s tenets and precepts all on my own. Kabbalah has taught and continues to teach me a great deal about the manner in which I exist in this world and the consequences of my actions, and is invaluable
to me.

  Kabbalah has now become as integral a part of my existence as my Catholicism. My view of the world has changed and become more positive, and my reactions to other people have become more cerebral and serene. Through Kabbalah, my once negative and somewhat dark reactions to other people have become far more positive.

  However, I do acknowledge that—given my human shortcomings, my human frailties—my study of Kabbalah is ongoing, but necessary if I am to curb those elements within my nature that have often proved to be my undoing.

  My commitment to Kabbalah is, and will always remain, so profound that I now have one of the seventy-one names of God—the one which, in Kabbalah, represents the precept that “everything you do affects the future”—tattooed on my left forearm, never to be removed.

  I also volunteer to get involved with the Spirituality for Kids program, which is run by Eitan’s wife, Sarah.

  I develop a ten-week program in which children ages eight to twelve are presented with disposable Kodak cameras. Each one of them is given a word. Then they spend a week illustrating that word through photographs.

  I enjoy working with the children. The project eventually evolves into a book. I have no part in it, but am glad to have been involved at the early stages of the program.

  TWO WEEKS AFTER I emailed Madonna, VH1 calls me and asks if I would like to appear in a show on design. I am delighted and say that I would. A week passes. I receive a second call from the same producer asking if I’ve spoken to Madonna recently. I tell him I haven’t.

  “She doesn’t want this show to happen, so could you call her?” he says.

  “No,” I say, “if she doesn’t want the show to happen, it probably shouldn’t.”

  And it doesn’t.

  THE WORD IS out and my stock in Hollywood plummets accordingly. Wherever I go, I am haunted by my sister—by her voice and her image. She is on the radio, in the ring of a telephone, on the TV, and I can’t escape her. I talk to a friend, and he asks about Madonna. I go to a bar, one of her songs comes on, the entire room turns to look at me, and my stomach turns over.

  Central Restaurant opens. The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the most beautiful rooms in the country.” But after just three months, it closes. I have spent three years working on Central, as I have a share in the restaurant and believed that I would be recompensed when it was a success. Now, of course, I won’t be. All the investors in the restaurant, including Madonna, lose their money.

  I still have my two lodgers, but my car is repossessed because I can no longer afford the payments. To add injury to insult, while I’m out with friends one night, I tear a ligament in my knee. I have surgery on it and am forced to spend the next four months recovering.

  This enforced period of rest does not help my financial situation at all, nor does the surgeon’s $10,000 bill, which—as my partners in Central failed to pay my insurance premium—I am compelled to settle myself.

  My consolation is my art. And on June 26, 2004, at the opening of Gay Pride Week, the Booty Collection (twenty-five color Polaroids, blown up to eleven by fourteen, of my friends’ backsides) is shown in San Francisco at the Phantom SF Gallery, to great fanfare. Alan Cumming, Armistead Maupin, and Graham Norton all attend and are extremely complimentary about my work.

  I continue with my paintings and photography, and on August 15, 2004, the Mumford Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, also shows the Booty Collection. It’s well received, but my sister makes it clear she doesn’t approve of it and doesn’t consider it art. The subtext is that she assumes that the photographs are the product of a couple of drug binges. Totally untrue.

  MEANWHILE, MADONNA LAUNCHES her Re-invention Tour. I don’t go to see it, but afterward view the DVD: I’m Going to Tell You a Secret. The show opens with “Vogue,” distant and cold, which sets the note for the rest of the show. Throughout, she attempts to force-feed the audience. The show is confrontational, unsubtle, angry. I am amused, though, that in the documentary she features scenes from our father’s vineyard and says that she grew up there. Not so; she merely visited a few times. The scenes featuring Lola and Rocco both touch and sadden me. I am sad, as I have seen so little of them. I am touched at how much Lola reminds me of Madonna. And I miss not knowing her or Rocco.

  I AM VIRTUALLY destitute, save for the largesse of a few friends, especially my long-term friends Daniel Hoff and Eugenio Lopez, as well as Dan Sehres, who is kind enough to let me stay with him for the duration. His kindness and hospitality will continue for the next two years.

  One night, however, back in L.A., as fate would have it, I am invited to a dinner party where I meet Andrea Greenberg, the head of marketing for Fortune International Properties. She offers me a job designing the lobby of their Miami headquarters. The job is projected to last six months, and intensely relieved at getting out of L.A., I relocate to Miami temporarily and begin work.

  After I’ve been in Miami for only a few days, a friend invites me to dinner at China Grill, where I see Ingrid. My impression is that Guy may have attempted to edge her out of Madonna’s life, but he hasn’t completely succeeded. The moment we meet again, she tells me that she knows Madonna and I aren’t talking.

  “You should definitely email her right away,” Ingrid says, giving me one of her intense looks.

  “I don’t have anything to say to her. I won’t speak to her until she treats me with the respect I’ve earned and deserve.”

  Ingrid looks shocked. The thought of not speaking to Madonna is clearly anathema to her.

  “Anyway, I’m out of her life now. And I’m doing fine,” I say.

  There is more, and if, by the time I get home, I’ve forgotten much of it, an email from Madonna is in my inbox, reiterating every word I’ve just uttered to Ingrid and refreshing my memory.

  I haven’t spent time with Ingrid for so long that I’ve forgotten that one of her geniuses is seducing me into having a conversation about Madonna, getting me to spill my guts, letting my guard down. Whereupon she reports back to Madonna. I promise myself never to let my guard down again with Ingrid.

  It takes me a while before I decide to open Madonna’s email. She never puts a subject, so I have no warning whether an email will be friendly or not. This email is neutral. She insists that she does treat me with respect, but she doesn’t say she was wrong or apologize for the hateful things she said in her email. I answer her in polite terms.

  Toward the end of my job with Fortune, I am offered the chance to be the interior design director for the Calypso at Caribbean on Thirty-seventh and Collins, a luxury condominium development, a new and an existing building by architect Kobi Karp.

  Along the way, a friend sends me an article about Madonna, featuring her move to the twelve-hundred-acre Ashcombe House in the English countryside—and depicting her in her latest incarnation: English country lady. A lifetime’s distance away from Madonna the modern dancer, Madonna the punk pop star, and all the other guises my kaleidoscopic sister has assumed in the past. I look at the pictures of Madonna in her manor house, think of my new life in Miami, and am sad at how far apart we now are, how far from each other we have traveled.

  I AM DOING well in Miami and L.A., carving out a life as an artist, interior decorator, and designer on my own merits, not on the back of my sister’s name. On my birthday, in November 2005, I make sure to invite Ingrid to my party, just so she will see for herself that I’m thriving and report accordingly to Madonna.

  At a friend’s house, I meet the co-coordinator of the White Party, given each year to benefit AIDS research. He asks me if I know someone who might like to host a benefit dinner at the Versace mansion. I suggest supermodel and America’s Next Top Model judge Janice Dickinson, whom I had met at Central. He loves the idea. I open negotiations. Initially, Janice demands five first-class tickets and luxury suites for herself and countless members of her entourage. At which point, my experience in handling divas kicks in. Janice ends up toning down her requirements and flies down to Miami to
host the dinner. I am grateful to her for her participation.

  WHILE I AM working on the Caribbean, I design and manufacture a line of T-shirts that I name Basura Boy. Basura, Spanish, loosely translates to “trash.” The T-shirts each feature a symbol from either Kabbalah or Buddhism. The slogan of the company is “Spirituality Is Our Business.”

  In June 2006, I film two episodes of the Bravo show Top Chef, advising on restaurant designs. With the producer’s consent, I give full rein to my acid tongue and observe of one chef’s culinary creation, “If this is a vegetable medley, I’m a monkey.”

  When the show is aired a year later, the reviews of my appearance are extreme and veer between love and hate, but even the negative ones don’t sour me on the experience of making the show. I loved it.

  I am also now managing a young singer named Julien. He’s a little David Bowie, a little Freddie Mercury, but fresh and original. Most of all, though, he reminds me of the young Madonna. He has her passion and drive. I sense his potential and feel I can help his career. He agrees to let me manage him, and we make a nine-track demo to send out to record companies. He also has his first gig at the Roxy in L.A., then another one at Crimson in Hollywood. He receives great reviews and I am optimistic about his future.

  In May 2006, Madonna’s assistant calls and invites me to the May 21 L.A. opening of her Confessions show—a sixty-city tour that will go on to make $260 million. I haven’t seen or spoken to her in two years. I’m sitting in the front row.

  The show is lighthearted, and for the first time since The Girlie Show, Madonna looks as if she is enjoying herself.

  Watching, I am overcome with a sense of nostalgia. I remember the past, when things were great between us. I miss the sister I knew so well, the closeness, the respect, the being part of something that was so great. Suddenly, I yearn to turn back the clock, to be on the road with her again, part of the show, part of her life.