I took a private car service to Tots’s apartment. It was certainly a good place to go incognito, but not to sleep. It was cramped and wasn’t exactly comfortable for me, plus my angst and exhaustion were giving me nervous energy. I suggested Tots and her niece Nini, and I all go for a walk to help me wind down.
She said “Girl, wait. You do know you’re Mariah Carey?”
I guess I couldn’t just go traipsing through the streets of Brooklyn. I needed a disguise. Nini braided up my hair, and I put on her Mariah Carey Butterfly T-shirt, sweatpants, and a baseball cap with the brim pulled down low. Hiding in plain sight, the three of us strolled down the Brooklyn streets in an attempt to recover some of my last, lost nerves. No one noticed me comfortably flanked between two Black girls in the diverse Brooklyn neighborhood.
Tots assured me I had nothing to worry about, joking, “They probably just think you’re some cute Puerto Rican girl who went to a Mariah Carey concert.”
We had a little laugh, a little comfort, a little escape—but I still felt like I was being tracked. I couldn’t find any relief. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept or had a meal.
Time was collapsing in on me, the days and events all running together. My management and the label somehow discovered I was in Brooklyn with Tots. They called and asked her to convince me to agree to do the video. My emotional instability, as a result of sleep deprivation, was starting to take hold of me. I was cornered and confused. Morgan was again dispatched to come and get me, since the “delegation” at the hotel had surmised that he was the only one I trusted. No one knew that, for me, trusting Morgan was a dangerous proposition.
I never knew what to expect with Morgan; he’d been so unpredictable, volatile, and violent for so long. And yet, my mother trusted him the most. He’d become her strong man, her protector, almost a father figure to her—a position that should never be filled by a son. And though he had frightened me so many times as a child, I, too, saw him as a smart, strong man. Morgan was very intelligent and impressive and had developed a treacherous set of survival skills.
He was in the downtown New York scene in the late eighties. He worked in some of the hippest bars and clubs. He was strikingly handsome and occasionally worked as a model. He was well known and well liked. He discreetly supplied the beautiful people with their powdered party favors. He was diabolically charismatic.
At the beginning of my career, Morgan was on a mission to be known as the one who was responsible for “discovering” me. (Seymour Stein, founder of Sire Records and signer of Madonna, actually had an opportunity for that distinction, as he was one of the first to have my demo. Alas, he said, “She’s too young”—but that’s another tangent.) Morgan had several sketchy contacts in the music industry but also introduced me to some important players in the fashion scene, like the late legendary hairstylist Oribe. In some circles, I was even known as “Morgan’s little sister,” though he hadn’t seen me as his little sister in a very long time. I was his little ticket to wealth and fame.
I’ve often publicly recognized Morgan for being the one who loaned me five thousand dollars to pay for my first professional demo, for which I remain grateful and which I paid back five thousand times over. And I would continue to pay and pay.
I never thought that modest initial loan made me beholden to him or should allow him to have any say in my career. I was very young, but I knew not to do business with any of the questionable music folks my brother tried to get me to work and sign with. I knew for certain, that for me, business with Morgan would come with serious strings. Like a noose.
Less than a month after I signed my first recording contract, my mother and Morgan proposed a family gathering at the shack—maybe to celebrate? Who knew? I really didn’t like going back. The shame and fear I had endured while living there was still sticky on my skin. Against my better instincts, I agreed.
The shack was as bleak as ever. The air in the tiny living room was thick with an anxiety and manipulation I could taste. The “wood” paneling had faded and worn down to look more like cardboard from men’s shirt packaging. Dingy white polyester lace dime-store drapes hung over the murky windows; the heating vent on the floor coughed up a layer of gray soot that climbed from the hem to midway up those pitiful panels of Irish respectability. My mother and Morgan sat together on the dreary blue corduroy couch. I sat across from them on a run-down beige recliner. Neglect was the overall accent color.
My mother was expressionless, occasionally darting her eyes over to Morgan for approval. He was clearly the “host” of this suspicious homecoming. I could tell he was in straight scheme mode. His eyes had a wild, piercing focus. I could sense his tension, yet he had perfected the art of casting a smooth veneer over his emotions and over his intentions.
Morgan launched straight into a rant about what a conniving lowlife my mother’s second husband could be, and how they were concerned that now that I was on my way to becoming famous, he was likely to pose a “problem.” Warning me that he knew all of our family’s dirty secrets and threatening that he would spill it all to the press. That he would tell the world about Alison being a drug-addicted prostitute and having HIV. What? My mother
