Madonna (6 page)

The angriest time in my life—

I'd have to say that was in

my teen years,
²⁸
—Madonna

 

W
hen Madonna was ten years old, things started to change both within and around her. It was then that the Ciccone family moved from Pontiac to the nearby suburb of Rochester, Michigan. It was also around this time that Madonna began to question everything that she had been taught or told about life. There seemed to be a vast difference of opinion between her father, the nuns, and her own will. It was at this age of ten that she began making her own decisions about life.

As a small child, her picture of earthly perfection was the life of the nuns, because it seemed that they were divine untouchables. She had dreams of becoming a nun. “Then, when I realized that nuns didn't have a sex life, I was incredibly disenchanted.”
¹¹

In an effort to discover what made the nuns tick, she and her cohort in crime, a neighborhood friend named Carol Belanger, went on a spying expedition, inquisitively peeking through the windows of the convent. Their mission was to see what was beneath the nuns' habits.

When the subjects of sex and boys entered the picture, Madonna found herself even more confused. It seemed that the more she pondered, the more perplexed she became. Madonna's family was a strict one, and when she was a child her grandmother often preached to her that it was best to love Jesus and to stay away from boys. “I grew up with two images of a woman—the virgin and the whore.”
²⁴

She claims, “Your parents give you false expectations of life. All of us grow up with completely misguided notions about life and they don't change until you get out into the world.”
³⁴

Madonna suddenly realized that she would have to find out what life was all about for herself. Step number one in her program of exploration called for breaking all of the previous rules that had been imposed upon her. “I wanted to do everything everybody told me I couldn't do,” she proclaims of her own preteen declaration of independence.
³

At the age of ten, Madonna's childish attention-getting ploys successfully garnered her the all-eyes-on-me effect she desired. Her favorite stunt was still the tried-and-true hanging upside down from the gym equipment on the playground so that all the boys could see her panties. Little did the appalled nuns know, but fifteen years later, Madonna Ciccone was to become world famous for a slight variation on that same theme, wearing a brassiere as an outer garment. Even as a fourth-grader she was perfecting her craft as an exhibitionist!

A new way of life called for new role models. This time around it was the world of pop music and the movies. Her early idols included Nancy Sinatra (go-go boots, miniskirts, blonde hair, and all), Marilyn Monroe (of course), Jean Seberg in
Joan of Arc
, and Brigitte Bardot, particularly in the film
Contempt
, in which Bardot seemed obsessed with her looks, as was Madonna.

“When I was growing up, I was religious, in a passionate, adolescent way. Jesus Christ was like a movie star, my favorite idol of all.”
¹⁵
Even as a child, Madonna's perception of the world had always been a tug of war between the profane and the sacred.

Madonna also seemed to embrace the wisdom of Oscar Wilde when he said, “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”
³⁵
From that point on, she launched herself on a campaign of self-discovery. Bending the rules to fit her needs, she cleverly devised ways to
appear
to be obedient to her father's many edicts. Remembering this era, Madonna explains, “When I'd go to school I'd roll up my uniform skirt so it was short, I'd go to the school bathroom and put makeup on and change into nylon stockings I'd bought. I was incredibly flirtatious and I'd do
anything
to rebel against my father.”
³

In 1969, as a fifth-grade schoolgirl, she nearly gave her father heart failure with one of her onstage appearances. It was during a St. Andrew's school talent show. Ever on top of a trend, Madonna's concept was to perform a go-go dance like she had seen Goldie Hawn do on TV's “Laugh-In.” Gyrating to a song by The Who, there on-stage stood Madonna—wearing a bikini bathing suit and covered from top to bottom with psychedelic swirls of fluorescent green paint. From where Tony Ciccone sat in the audience, it appeared that his ten-year-old daughter was stark naked! He was so mad he nearly hit the ceiling.

“My father grounded me for two weeks,” she recalls. “Oh, he was so horrified. ‘How could you do that to me?' he said.”
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Having her dad angry at her was something that she just had to get used to, because she was constantly doing something to piss him off. Madonna remembers, “He wanted me to have more humility, more modesty.”
³⁶
It became a never-ending battle between them.

The following year, while in junior high school, to get involved in an after school activity that would keep her out of the house, Madonna became a cheerleader. For her it was just another outlet for her hyperactivity. Cruising the boys was just the first of her rebellions. Around the same time, she began rebelling against the church in earnest. In addition, she was maturing physically at a much faster rate than the rest of the girls in her class. “They hated me,” Madonna recalls. It was at this time, that she became more aware of sex. “About its presence, not about what I was going to do about it.”
¹¹

It was blond-haired Colin McGregor who shared some of Madonna's first physical experiences with the opposite sex. Colin met Madonna when they were both nine years old at St. Andrew's in Rochester. He never paid much attention to her until their hormones started flowing at the age of twelve, when they were both in seventh grade.

“She kept wearing scanty panties and the shortest miniskirts in the school to make the boys notice her,” Colin recalls of the sudden maturing of Madonna.
³⁷

In an effort to see the panties of the girls on the cheerleading squad, Colin and a group of his friends begged to see them perform their cheers. All but one of the girls on the squad refused, knowing full well what the boys were after. But Madonna went on to show them her act, performing cartwheels, and ultimately showing off her red underwear.

Although Madonna was forbidden to go to the movies, she managed to make plans to meet Colin and catch a film. Advanced for his age, Colin had other objectives on his mind when he asked his rebellious classmate to the screening. There was no hesitation when she accepted the young Romeo's invitation. In teenage terms, his goal was to get her alone in the dark and “cop a feel.”
³⁷

“It happened after I persuaded Madonna to go to a spooky movie—
The House of Dark Shadows
” says Colin, as if the incident were yesterday. “She was very well developed for her age and her breasts were her best assets.”
³⁷

From that point on Colin and Madonna would meet on the sly for “make-out sessions.” There was a wooded area behind the school that the kids used to call “the swamp.”
³⁷
Between classes Madonna and the aggressive McGregor boy would rendezvous.

Up until this point Madonna professes that she was quite a loner. Although she hung out with Carol Belanger, she pretty much stuck to herself. “I never had a group of friends in school,” she remembers. “I kept to myself and did what I wanted to do.”
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Even in high school Madonna sensed there was something more to life, while her classmates plodded through school days and social activities perfectly contented. Her inability to be completely satisfied with high school life made it difficult for young Madonna to identify with most of her peer group. “As far as friendships go, I sort of hung around on the outside of things and befriended [those] who other people thought were the class nerds,” she recalls.
¹³

In seventh grade, Madonna continued to experiment with the boys. “I remember this girl named Katrina who was really blonde and pretty, and everybody liked her, and her boyfriend started flirting with me.”
³²
The interaction between Katrina's boyfriend and Madonna led to hard feelings, and eventually Katrina slapped Madonna in front of “everybody.”
³²

To this day Madonna feels that she was grossly misjudged. She recalls that her unjustified reputation as school slut made it difficult to make friends. The girls in her class avoided her because of her terrible reputation, while the boys in the class wouldn't date her because it wasn't cool to go out with someone perceived of as a slut. “I was called those names when I was still a virgin,” she claims.
³⁸

In addition to occasionally sneaking off to the movies, there were also school dances that Madonna went to. Moira McFarland recalls going with her to one of the after-school dances. “When she started to dance,” says Moira, “everybody cleared off the dance floor and started watching.”
²³
Madonna's actions were so unrestrained that even though she was only twelve, people around her looked to her as an inspiring, liberating influence. It was to remain one of her most essential charms.

At house parties the kids would bring their favorite dance music singles. Records would spin on the stereo, and Madonna and Carol, and several of their other friends, would give each other dance lessons while Sly and the Family Stone or The Rolling Stones would play. Madonna remembers when she gave her first lesson to a boy. “I was really sexy—right—like stomping, grinding.”
¹⁹

Carol Belanger laughingly remembers Madonna as a buxom and strikingly attractive girl: “She teased the boys by going to parties wearing a full-length figure-hugging bodysuit to protect her virginity.”
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When she was in the eighth grade, thirteen-year-old Madonna made her movie-acting debut. It was a school project, directed by one of her classmates. Filmed with a Super-8 camera, Madonna's role called for her to have an egg fried on her stomach. Even then her performances were deemed to be in questionable taste.

In 1971, the summer between eighth and ninth grade, Madonna went up to Bay City to stay with her grandmother for several weeks. Staying at Grandma's was always a treat for Madonna. While her parents were assured that she was properly chaperoned, Madonna was busy breaking all the rules that her parents laid down. To her, it felt as if she was on her first adult vacation. Describing Grandma, Madonna recalls, “She wasn't an extreme disciplinarian like my parents, so I loved going there.”
¹³

Another fun aspect of going to spend time in Bay City was that she got to hang out with her uncles. Her mother's brothers were only a couple of years older than her brother Anthony. Not only were they a treat to be with, but they also had their own band. The young girl was immediately impressed with their fun-loving lifestyle, which was so different from the atmosphere she was raised in. Madonna describes her uncles with much fondness. “I was watching my uncles' rock and roll band—wearing tight jeans for the first time in my life. I smoked a cigarette—not too successfully. I started feeling like, ‘Yeah, this is it, I'm
cool
!'”
¹³

She came back from her sojourn away from her parents and for the first time felt like a real grownup. But her dream was quickly shattered when her stepmother took one look at Madonna in mascara and rouge and told her to her painted face that she looked like a cheap “floozy” and to wash the makeup off before her father saw her. This became a private joke between Madonna and her friend Carol Belanger. Plotting personal revenge, Madonna and Carol decided that if they were going to be branded as “floozies,” then they would really play the part to the hilt—at least on film.

Their famous floozy afternoon was staged only because they knew that their parents didn't approve. Madonna says, “We got dressed to the nines. We got bras and stuffed them so our breasts were over-large and wore really tight sweaters—we were sweater-girl floozies. We wore tons of lipstick and really badly applied makeup and huge beauty marks and did our hair up like Tammy Wynette.”
¹³
To this day Carol has the “floozy” snapshots.

Another of Madonna and Carol's revels involved going to church together, dressed in long overcoats—and totally naked underneath. There were also shoplifting competitions to see who could get away with the most merchandise. Three guesses who won. Bingo: Madonna by a landslide!

Madonna's conflicts with her stepmother reached a greater frequency after the girl reached puberty. Joan informed her that she was absolutely forbidden to wear anything during her period except sanitary napkins. “My stepmother said [tampons were] like intercourse,” complains Madonna.
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Madonna says it was Moira McFarland who showed her how to correctly insert a tampon. Since her stepmother told her not to wear one, she was determined to learn how on her own. The lesson in tampon insertion led to some adolescent same-sex experimentation. In Madonna's
Truth or Dare
film she talked about being manually masturbated by Moira. McFarland also taught Madonna how to properly smoke a cigarette. Even as a teenager, there were few things that Madonna wouldn't try.

In the autumn of 1973 Madonna found herself in a new and more liberal atmosphere. She convinced her parents to allow her to attend public school, Rochester Adams High School. No more Catholic schoolgirl uniforms, and it was a chance to stretch out a bit more and define her own personality. Among the extracurricular activities she became involved in were cheerleading and the drama club.

On the pages of the school's yearbook, the
Highlander
, Madonna is seen as a member of the Junior Varsity cheerleading squad. The caption read: “Can you imagine what life at Adams would have been like without our JV cheerleaders?”
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