Did I Ever Tell You About the Night Prince Came to My Place?

Way way back in the day – I’m talking about 1992 or 1993 here – the impious entertainer Prince Rogers Nelson hung out at my studio apartment in Uptown Minneapolis.  Here’s how it all went down:

First off, let me tell you I was not some psycho Prince stalker.  I enjoyed “Purple Rain” and thought he was an engaging entertainer, but I wasn’t obsessed with the dude like many people were at the time.  I did think it was cool that he lived in the same town I had moved to and wouldn’t mind it if I ran into him someday.

Anyappollonia, shortly after I turned 21 Prince’s club “Glam Slam” was all the rage here in Minneapolis.  My best girl friend, L, and I would get all gussied up in our best “slutty yet classy” outfits and make the Glam Slam scene almost every weekend.  There was a VIP area upstairs that we dreamed of visiting some day.  We knew Prince often showed up at the club and getting upstairs was the only way to see him.

One night, after hitching our star to a completely wasted DJ who had a membership to the VIP club, we made it upstairs.  Luckily the DJ was so drunk he didn’t notice that we had ditched him while continuing to put our drinks on his tab.  We glanced around and there HE was:  the diminutive musician named Prince tucked away in a booth in the corner.  He was alone  but surrounded by security.  We watched as dozens of drunk chicks stumbled over to his table to try to talk to him only to be shooed away by his security.  How would L and I get past the proverbial red rope?  We hatched a plan to make ourselves stand out from the other floosies: 1) we pretended to be uninterested in the Purple One and 2) we held hands.

You must understand how groundbreaking the second part of this plan was because it was years and years before making out with your girlfriends became just another step of being a teenage girl.  THIS HAD NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE!  L and I sauntered around the VIP area pretending to ignore Prince.  We giggled and whispered to each other until we were sure we had his attention.  When we knew he was looking at us we approached.  Would we be rebuffed like all the others?  No!  Prince waved his security off and invited us to sit down.

For the next hour or so the three of us hit it off famously.  Prince was really funny and sarcastic.  He was also insecure:  he was drinking a “Sex on the Beach” and I had never tried one before.  He offered me a sip of it and I made some crack about not wanting to share his straw and he looked genuinely hurt and insulted.  He was also wearing more makeup than I had ever had on in my entire life.  But he had beautiful hands.

So, my whole goal was to get him to take  us back to Paisley park, which I had never visited before.  We kept asking him where we were going after the club closed and he kept saying that he wanted to come back to one of our apartments.  Although L had the more spacious abode I ended up giving him my address, thinking he’d never really show up.

Once L and I left the club all aglow in our Prince encounter, we arrived at my studio apartment and waited.  Soon, my buzzer rang and a large man came up to case the joint and make sure it was clear of explosives and paparazzi.  I guess we passed the test because after a moment this petite man, clad in his silk baby-blue pantsuit comes tottering in on 4 inch high boots.  We had not seen him standing before and did not realize how tiny he was all over:  dude must wear the comparative of a woman’s size 2!  (He was not wearing any underwear, however, and it was clear to see that not everything on the man was tiny.)

After taking the very quick tour of my home he was so shy he decided to sit in my little dressing area that opened out into the living area instead of sitting in the living area itself.  He drank a glass of water, made fun of the bangs on the model on the box for my curling iron, and repeatedly offered to buy me a bed to replace my futon (which I stupidly turned down!).  After a bit I think he got tired of our intoxicated prattling and realized that he wasn’t going to get to see a lesbian sex show, so he made his exit, leaving us with a story to tell for years to come.

There you have the tale of my evening with Prince.