Foxy

Foxy



Richard [Pryor] and I did not begin dating until several months after our movie was wrapped. He was single and lonely, just like me, when we dropped our outer facades and got to know each other as real people instead of constructed film images. I saw a wonderful side of him, the way he loved his family, his pride about his success, and his humility about his career. This was a good sign since he had power coming to him that was unprecedented in the world of black comedians, or any comedian, for that matter. I wanted to be friends with him and I thought we might become lovers, but I also feared what power and money would do to his psyche. Would it help or hurt and where did I fit in? He was part of a world that I didn’t really understand. And then, I had to wonder what it was about comedians that attracted me. Was it a hormone and estrogen cocktail that inexorably drew me to these men?

It didn’t take long until Richard and I realized that maybe we were not as unlikely as we first thought. For starters, we had a wonderful and romantic sex life, an ordinary one, which was contrary to both of our images. The truth is that he was shy and my military upbringing (as well as my difficult past) had taught me to be cautious. But I was interested in helping him get healthy, which he wanted me to do. He was a great talent, a brilliant man, and I hated that drugs were stopping him from attaining real success. The most profound and naked comment he ever made to me about his drug addiction was, “I’m afraid if I stop doing drugs, I won’t be funny.”

“But you’re naturally funny,” I told him. “The drugs just enhance what you already do and say. Maybe they give you courage to say things that you normally wouldn’t. When the filter is gone, you can just go for it. But that has nothing to do with whether or not you’re funny.”

This is an excerpt from “FOXY: My Life in Three Acts” by Pam Grier with Andrea Cagan. Copyright © 2010 by Pam Grier. Reprinted by permission of Springboard, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc, NY. All rights reserved.