My acting teacher’s building was connected by a private passageway to the building next door. It was possible to access the neighboring building by going through the front entrance of her building. It was like something out of the opening of the 1960s comedy show Get Smart: you had to go through a nondescript side door and walk down a concrete corridor and through an enclosed back alley, but it was possible to go from building to building without ever going outside.
So I secretly rented a small apartment in the building next to hers. I was able to work with the building’s management to arrange to have things brought in for me under a fake name. I had it set up very simply, with a convertible couch so I could sleep—by myself. I would tell Tommy that I was tired from acting class and staying overnight with my teacher, then slip over to my own little place and exit in the morning from my teacher’s building. It was sneaky, but I was at the end of my fucking rope! There was always someone watching my every move. This was basic survival.
Later on, my survival cave became my personal office and private studio. I had a simple wall of mirrors installed, and it was there I did the best bodywork in my career with the incomparable Debbie Allen. Ms. Allen had gotten in touch with me and said she wanted to work with me because she really connected with my music. What a Godsend! She was masterful. She analyzed how I moved or didn’t move. She taught me stretches and other tools to help liberate and ground me. She worked with me on choreography for performances. She created moves that worked for me. She had dancers surround me, literally giving me support. And that was what I had needed for so long—someone to be patient with me as I discovered my own body.
I had been totally disconnected from my body for so long. I only knew how to let myself be completely taken over by a song. I had no clue I fluttered my hands the way I did until I saw one of my early performances on TV! It took the fabulous Kiki Shepard to discover I didn’t really know how to walk in heels. She pulled me aside and had me walk up and down the stairs on the side of the stage at the Apollo until I got it right. Pow.
Guardian angels do exist—Debbie Allen was surely one of mine.
The therapist put together a plan for me to go out socially without Tommy for the first time. This was major. It was going to be new to me too: I had gone straight from a complicated and careless childhood into the treacherous music industry and a toxic, tumultuous marriage. And I was barely in my midtwenties. But I was finally starting to access a different kind of courage—one that was there to protect my life, not just my songs.
Tommy had been adamant about me not acting because he feared I would be on glamorous sets with attractive actors or directors or whatever. The fact that he conceded to me having an acting coach (who he thought was loyal to him) was mildly promising. He didn’t have the same pull in Hollywood as he did in the music business. Me taking acting classes in the city perhaps wasn’t so threatening to him, because New York was his town and he had eyes everywhere. But me being out with my peers, people my age, for fun? That was deeply threatening to him. What was scariest of all was the notion of me being seen without him and, God forbid, photographed without him. He couldn’t bear to think people would see Cinderella out at the ball without her prince and savior.
Controlling public perception was vital to Tommy, and before social media and smartphones, it was fairly achievable. So the deal was, we would go to a big event together, be seen, have it documented, and then afterward we’d split up, and I would be able to hang out with my friends. Tommy was likely less afraid of losing me to cheating (which never crossed my mind) and more afraid that he would lose his influence over me, which was far more valuable to him than my fidelity. Though he was opposed, he knew he had made a deal, and in his world, a deal is a deal. So we negotiated my first solo flight as a social butterfly.
Our relationship was very much like a teen-and-parent arrangement where independence is earned in increments. I was close in age to a teen, but it was Tommy, clearly my senior, who needed to be taught to be an adult about the matter. It was all so twisted, but we were trying to give normal our best attempt, sweetie.
THE MAN FROM KALAMAZOO
Operation Mariah’s Solo Test Flight Night had a strict itinerary: First, Tommy and I would attend the Fresh Air Fund gala together, which we’d done in previous years (acting normal). Afterward, I would have dinner with a group of friends (actually normal). Being out with Tommy had become such a strained performance, I was riddled with a horrible cocktail of anxiety and boredom.
Fortunately, that night, I knew that some of my peers, like Wanya Morris from Boyz II Men, were also going to be at the gala, so I wouldn’t have to wear such a heavy mask all night. I held on to the fact that on the other side of the photo ops, thousand-dollar plates, and platitudes was not the usual silent, suffocating ride back
