Prince was actively seeking the help of opioid addiction specialists in the days leading up to his death, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The morning his body was found, on April 21, he was scheduled to meet with Andrew Kornfeld, a staff member from Recovery Without Walls, a rehabilitation facility in California, according to…
via Will Prince finally get us talking about the prescription pill epidemic in America? — Quartz
Yesterday I was picked up by the short bus for back-to-back appointments at the health crisis center. I was the only one on the bus and so I felt comfortable chatting with the driver, unhindered by eavesdroppers or joiners. First I asked if he was a Prince fan. Hey, why not? He didn’t look to be much younger than me, and it’s still big news around here since it’s Prince’s home base. Rumors are still flying and spreading like wildfire. How did he actually die? How will his estate be handled? Will his family completely melt down and will it get ugly like it so often does when there is money involved?
The guy admitted he wasn’t much of a Prince fan. Our conversation wandered around the world of entertainment, and he talked about how dissatisfied he was with staying hooked up with satellite TV, but he kept it for sports. But then he said that he really didn’t enjoy watching any sports either. I asked him if he liked to see games in person as opposed to seeing them on TV and he said he kind of did, but he couldn’t afford to go to games. I asked him if he liked to go to shows like theater or dance, and he said he’d rather be burned alive. He also didn’t really “get into” movies or music.
A 20-minute bus ride isn’t really the place to offer life coaching. I also can’t make people feel what I feel, which can’t necessarily be put into words. A sense of urgency, maybe, or finality? It could be that my bullshit meter goes off a lot more than it ever has before. What I wanted to tell him is that he needs to find his joy. I cannot say this loudly enough, though, but this cannot be confused with finding his next fix. So many men are stuck in this cycle of seeking thrills and the adrenaline wears off and they are onto the next conquest while constantly feeling empty and wondering why they do. Where is their humanity?
Before connecting with The Saint Paul, I talked to a few men through OKCupid by text and/or phone who made excuses to play stupid games with me or not respect boundaries. I changed their identifiers in my phone to start with “Asshole ______” and programmed my phone to automatically send their calls and messages into my spam folders. I don’t even think about these folders unless I get weird calls like I have been for the past three days from recruiters based on resumes I put out in the universe over a year ago when I got laid off of my job in Phoenix before I had my last surgery. I went to update the blocks and thought to myself, “I should check my spam folder.” Lo and behold, there were some messages.
The first was from the Christian asshole who had no respect for my boundaries, and who previously tried to bait me into talking to him again by randomly telling me he had arrived at his hotel room. This time he just said, “Hey stranger how are you?” Of course, it’s been almost three months since we’ve texted, and we never even talked on the phone – but by God, he’s not gonna give up!!!! Answer, bitch!!!
The other two were from the last guy I talked to on the phone and texted with before I met The Saint Paul who abruptly said he met someone and cut off all communication after he tried to sext, which I guessed to be a lie since he was constantly logging into OKCupid still when I had an account before mine was deactivated. After two months of silence, he sent texts saying, “How have you been? Just wanted to say hi.” Gawd, please – I am not new. He didn’t “just” want to say hi. We were not casually keeping in contact and staying friends. He’s trying to keep his options open in case whomever he is currently trying to bang doesn’t work out.
I resisted the urge to reply to both of these messages because really, neither one of them deserve a response. I really, really like this phone I purchased on New Year’s just for this blocking feature alone.
There are a couple of great lines in this song by Sean Rowe that I think applies to these guys (and really, listen to the whole song because it fucking rocks): “I’m a man, I am the world, I’m a man, I am the Lord” and “He puts out the lights and jerks off alone.”
I can’t save everyone. They need to figure this shit out.
This morning after I took my bath, I wrestled into my purple bra and underwear, shoved my purple long-sleeved shirt over my head and torso and slipped my phone with its purple case into my pocket before heading out the door. I briefly considered taking my purple cane but decided against it because I knew I would be gone for about 20 minutes tops, which is the high end of how long it takes for the CSF to start pressing on my brain and making me wobbly.
Then the news started to trickle in: A dead body was reported at Paisley Park, Prince’s residence here in Minnesota. Just a week ago or less, there was a report that Prince’s plane had to make an emergency landing because he was experiencing some sort of health crisis, but he was resting at home comfortably. It was not a huge leap to assume the body was Prince’s, and it’s also not a huge leap to know that many of us locals are just plain sad about it. Of course he has a large following outside of Minnesota, but he was OUR guy.
Back when my dad was working on making a name for himself as a top-rate hair stylist in the very early 1980’s, he met Prince. My dad loved to name drop. He also thought Prince was a spoiled brat and didn’t hold back on saying so. Prince always traveled with an entourage (read: there was never a time he wasn’t a star). I later bragged to my classmates that my dad talked to Prince. I wasn’t afraid to name drop either.
The movie “Purple Rain” came out and the residents of Minneapolis/St. Paul (commonly referred to as the Twin Cities) were absolutely thrilled to be featured in a movie. First Avenue – “First Ave” if you’re cool – was forever galvanized as THE stage to play on thanks to “Purple Rain,” and who cares that the script was weak? The soundtrack was to die for! I mean, “Darling Nikki”?? Prince was so dirty! He actually talked about masturbation in a song and if any stations played it, the word had to be altered. How could such a short little guy get so many women to throw their panties at him?
When I went to the arts high school for my junior and senior year, I remember a boy who was trying to get into my pants saying to me, “Just give me a dark room and a Sam Cooke album.” I had no idea he was quoting a line from “Under the Cherry Moon,” another low-budget Prince movie that also starred Kristin Scott Thomas, at that point an actress largely unknown to American audiences in a film that didn’t have the commercial or musical success that “Purple Rain” did. I laughed when I finally did see the movie (on VHS tape!) because Prince found a way to infiltrate my love life as I’m sure was his intention all along.
In my senior year at the arts high school, I had a roommate who only played three albums: Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Weird Al (I can’t remember the name) and Prince’s “Diamonds and Pearls.”
I don’t remember which album the rumors were flying around for, but supposedly Prince actually recorded a woman getting off and put her “sounds” on a track. This was well before we could actually research anything on the internet. He is well-known for pushing artistic and cultural boundaries. I mean, who else would have a top 40 song called “Cream (Get On Top)”?
In 1996, my boyfriend at the time and I road tripped back from Albuquerque to Minneapolis and after a night of drinking with a friend and my sister, decided to check out Paisley Park. My friend had worked there previously as a security guard and offered to guide us with him driving his car and me driving my car just to show us where it was. Well, my boyfriend told me to pull into the driveway where the guard was stationed; when my friend saw what we were doing, he took off. My sister was pretty drunk in the back seat and pulled a blanket over her head, saying, “If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.” The guard greeted us, saying, “Can I help you?” My boyfriend leaned over me from the passenger seat and slurred, “Is this where Prince lives??” The guard straightened up and said, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” My boyfriend persisted, saying, “Can we take your picture??” The guard said again, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” In the meantime, my sister Heidi is quietly saying, “Oh god, oh god” in the back seat under the blanket. I backed up and managed to find our way out of the back roads of wherever we were; this was well before GPS and it was around 1:00 a.m. in a very rural area, and my friend was long gone, so it was no cake walk. Thank goodness I have a pretty good internal compass.
The same boyfriend and I relocated to Cincinnati and worked for a box office that was also a Ticketmaster outlet and managed to score tickets to two very different Prince shows. One was in Columbus, Ohio; the entire show started two hours later than it should have and we were already an hour away from home. Start time was supposed to be 8 but it was more like 10 and it was an opening act, then Prince came on at around midnight and played “Purple Rain” and we thought well shit, that’s it – but NO, he played for two more hours!!! The next day was hell because of course we had to work after taking an hour to drive home, but we got to see it. The next show we saw was very different, which was Prince playing with no opening act and playing all of his hit songs, but it was like one 2-hour medley – he had so many hits that he couldn’t play any of them all the way through. I was sitting behind Peter Frampton for that show.
After I moved here from Phoenix last summer, I saw something I never thought I would see, and that is Prince opening Paisley Park up to the public for parties. He has always been notoriously private. I hope that holding those parties brought him some joy. I never thought they would be his final act.
I feel like those of us (and yes, I say “us” because I count myself in this bunch) who do as much as we can as soon as we can somehow have a sense that our time on this earth will end at a much younger age than those who are much more methodical about how they spend their time. The moral of this story is to get your purple on and party like it’s 1999. We will miss this magical man and all of the soundtracks that he has provided for our lives.
The Sick and the Dating 