To Selena, With Love Read online

  TO

  Selena,

  WITH LOVE

  TO

  Selena,

  WITH LOVE

  CHRIS PEREZ

  A CELEBRA BOOK

  CELEBRA

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  First published by Celebra,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, March 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Chris Perez, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Lyrics from “Best I Can” written by Chris Perez and Julian Raymond. © 1999 JCJ Music (ASCAP)/Domax Music (ASCAP)/Seven Peaks Music (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

  CELEBRA and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Perez, Chris.

  To Selena, with love / Chris Perez.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-58026-4

  1. Selena, 1971–1995. 2. Singers—United States—Biography.

  3. Mexican-American women singers—Biography. 4. Perez, Chris.

  5. Tejano musicians—Biography. I. Title.

  ML420.S458P47 2012

  782.42164092—dc23 2011046126

  [B]

  Set in Carre Noir STD

  Designed by Alissa Amell

  Printed in the United States of America

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however the story, the experiences and the words are the author’s alone.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  To the loving memory of Selena Quintanilla Perez and her dedicated fans around the world.

  I can’t erase this lonely heart that keeps on remembering.

  Every day I live, I live with you, and with all the

  things we’ll never do.

  Heaven holds a place for souls like mine.

  Try to leave my troubled past behind.

  You know it’s so damn hard letting go . . .

  Standing here, holding my heart in my hands

  Yes, I am . . .

  Trying to live every day the best I can.

  —Lyrics from “Best I Can,” The Chris Perez Band

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  One: Holding Hands Over Mexico

  Two: Romance on Tour

  Three: Earning Selena’s Trust

  Four: Facing a Father’s Wrath

  Five: A Secret Wedding

  Six: Our First Months as Man and Wife

  Seven: Making Music in Mexico

  Eight: Bliss, Mostly

  Nine: A House of Our Own (Sort Of) and Our Practice Family

  Ten: A Wild Ride With Selena

  Eleven: Dreams Come True

  Twelve: Amor Prohibido

  Thirteen: The Day the World Stopped

  Fourteen: Resurrection

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  C. W. Bush/Shooting Star

  A month before she was murdered, Selena and I drove out to the property we’d bought in Corpus Christi. It was a beautiful piece of land, with a creek bordering one side and a hill that seemed to be the perfect place for us to build a house for the family we were planning. We loved driving out there at sunset and imagining our future together. Selena always told me that she wanted five kids, which made me laugh.

  “Let’s try having one baby first,” I’d tell her. “Then we’ll talk.”

  This particular evening, Selena and I sat on top of our hill watching the wide Texas sky turn every color from pale blue to bright peach to inky purple. “I want to raise our kids around lots of animals,” Selena said. “Every kind of animal there is.”

  “You can’t put all kinds of animals together,” I teased. “You do that, you’ll come outside and find nothing but a mound of feathers where something ate your chickens.”

  Selena leaned her head on my shoulder. “Just think, Chris. This is where our kids are going to be running around and playing someday soon. Can you believe it?”

  I could, I told her. We continued to sit there until nearly dark, even though what I really wanted to do was jump up and start clearing our property right away. I didn’t want there to be any coyotes or rattlesnakes around to bite our kids. I wanted to protect my family.

  It didn’t turn out that way, of course. I wasn’t able to protect Selena.

  After Selena was killed, I sold the property we owned together. I couldn’t bear the thought of living on that land without her. I couldn’t bear a lot of things for a while.

  Lots of people asked me to write our story after Selena passed. I always said no. My feelings were too private. When we lose people who are precious to us, we all have to grieve in our own ways. My way was to keep my memories to myself. It was an automatic response for me to put a lid on my emotions after I lost Selena, because the feelings were so strong. I kept pushing my grief under the surface as I tried hard to continue what was left of my life.

  I didn’t want to think about Selena at all, because the sudden loss of everything we had worked for and believed in hurt too much. I thought about her anyway, of course. Every day, things would just enter my mind, uninvited. I’d hear one of Selena’s songs on the radio, or see a story about her on TV, and the pain would surface again, sharp as a needle pricking the palm of your hand.

  People kept asking me questions about her, too. They wanted to know why her father objected to me so strongly that Selena and I had to see each other secretly until finally, out of desperation, we eloped. They wanted to know whether Selena—who spoke regularly to schoolchildren about the importance of staying in school and staying off drugs—was as good and honest and generous as she acted in public—or was she just a really good actress? Did Selena have a dark secret? Was she murdered out of envy? Was her death the result of a drug deal gone wrong? Was she having a love affair? Was our marriage over?

  I didn’t car
e about setting the record straight at that point. I didn’t answer any questions by the media or Selena’s fans. I was too busy desperately trying to wall off that part of my life completely. I couldn’t share my memories of Selena because that would mean accepting her death. I grieved in private and survived the loss by staying close to my family and continuing to play music. I even started a band and won my own Grammy for a Latin rock album called Resurrection, which featured songs that Selena inspired me to write after she was long gone.

  Recently, though, I have begun to realize that, by burying everything, I’ve actually been living my life with blinders on, just putting one foot in front of the other without really moving forward at all. I started wondering if maybe I needed to remember everything after all, and if writing a book could help me finally come to terms with losing Selena.

  Not long after I started having those thoughts, I got a phone call from my good friend Carlos. He was one of the few people I told about being in love with Selena back when she and I had to be so secretive about our relationship. It was a strange phone call at first. Carlos wasn’t saying much, even though he was the one who’d called me. Finally I mentioned that I was thinking about writing a book.

  “Man, that’s so weird,” Carlos said.

  “Why? What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I had a dream about Selena last night. That’s why I called you,” he told me. “I was doing this show with my band in the dream and she came backstage. She was smiling, and she gave me a hug.”

  “That all sounds good,” I said.

  “Yeah, but the strange part is that at first I couldn’t get any words out in the dream to talk to her,” Carlos said. “Then Selena asked me how you were doing and I lost it. I told her you’ve been having a really hard time lately.”

  “Then what did she say?” I was picturing all of this just like it was happening in front of me.

  “Selena gave me this big hug,” Carlos said. “She told me not to worry about you. ‘I got him,’ she said, just like that.”

  I was quiet for a minute, feeling Selena close to me. Then I said, “I think it’s time I wrote that book.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Selena would want you to do it.”

  So here it is: the story of my life with Selena. She deserves to be remembered not only for her beautiful voice and talent as an entertainer, but as a real woman who loved the ordinary everyday things, like walking barefoot in the evening to feel the warmth of the sidewalk on her skin.

  Selena loved as hard as she lived. We loved her in return—her family, her friends, her fans, and me, her husband, who felt like the luckiest man alive every time Selena said my name. This book is for her.

  ONE

  HOLDING HANDS OVER MEXICO

  Courtesy of Patricia Perez Ratcliff

  The seat next to me on the plane ride home from Acapulco was empty, but not for long. After a little while, Selena joined me. I had been playing guitar with Selena y Los Dinos for a year by then, but our journey together really began at that moment, as we started sharing our lives and falling in love while defying gravity in the bright blue cloudless sky over Mexico.

  We started off with small talk, chatting about music and the trip we had just taken. Selena’s brother, A.B., had treated me and some of the other band members to a vacation in Acapulco in exchange for writing a Coca-Cola jingle for Selena. Selena had started representing Coca-Cola even before I met her; we had written a jingle with a Tejano beat so that the Coke commercial would sound like a Selena song.

  “Come to Mexico with us,” A.B. had urged when I hesitated. “It’ll be fun.”

  He was right. It was. It was also the trip that changed our lives forever.

  Up until this point, Selena and I had always been friendly around each other, but professional. I was closer to her older sister, Suzette, who played drums in the band and had a warm, wry sense of humor. With Suzette, I was comfortable enough to joke around, but I maintained a certain distance from Selena.

  Selena was barely eighteen years old when I first joined her band, but she was already a seasoned professional entertainer. She had just signed with Capitol EMI, which was starting up its Latin division, and had a voice that went right to your heart.

  Many singers hit the correct notes in a song. Still, they lack something. I don’t really know how to explain what it is. Maybe they’re singing a song like they’re telling you a story, but they should be asking a question instead. Or they’re growling when they should be purring.

  Whatever a song required, Selena could do it all and still bring more. She was smart and picked up lyrics right away. More importantly, though, she had a musical range that went from a deep growl to a high soprano, and she could convey raw emotion with her voice, whether she was singing about love, loss, betrayal, or anger.

  When Selena sang, it was always as if she sang directly to you. Everyone who heard her felt that. She had more stage presence and control over a crowd than anyone I’d ever met. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful and had a figure that could stop traffic.

  When my guy friends found out that I was playing with Selena’s band, they always teased me about her looks. The first thing out of their mouths was always something about how fine she was. I can’t count how many times I heard them say, “Man, how lucky are you? You get to stand right behind her in the band and watch it all going on right there in front of your eyes!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I’d say. “But the important thing is that she can sing.”

  Since joining the band, I hadn’t had the chance to spend time alone with Selena. We were always in a group, whether we were onstage, on the bus, going out to eat if we were amped up after a show, in the studio, or playing video games.

  Still, it didn’t take me long to realize that Selena and I were polar opposites. She was lively and outgoing, and loved being the center of attention. Meanwhile, I quietly observed whatever was going on from the fringes, often just listening to music on my headphones or playing my guitar while everyone else fooled around. It didn’t take Selena long to start joking about me being “too laid-back.”

  Sometimes I’d provoke Selena deliberately, just to tease her, and we quickly developed a little comedy routine around this. Selena would start talking while we were together with everyone, and I’d pretend that I wasn’t paying any attention. I’d just keep staring ahead with my headphones on as if I could see right through her.

  Selena would come stand right in front of me then and start moving her head from side to side, saying, “Hello? I’m right here!” If I could keep from laughing, she’d act like she was slapping me awake and I’d pretend to be startled. This got a laugh out of her every time.

  Selena was always a lot of fun on tour. Besides joking around with me, she would pull pranks on the rest of the band members, challenge us to beat her at video games, or sneak food out of Suzette’s hidden stashes of chips and cookies. It was only in Mexico, though, that Selena was truly free to be herself—and to act like an independent woman instead of everyone’s kid sister.

  You didn’t have to be twenty-one to drink in Acapulco, so Selena and I were now able to go barhopping with the rest of the band. She’d stand shoulder to shoulder with me, leaning against me a little and talking excitedly about which restaurant we would go to that night or what we might do with the others. Once, at dinner, we sat next to each other and I was conscious of her warm thigh pressing against mine. Of course I didn’t complain about that.

  On this vacation, beneath the swaying palm trees of Acapulco, I couldn’t help but become increasingly aware of Selena’s physical presence, her body enticing me even though she always wore cover-ups over her bikini. I tried not to stare at her, but I did anyway, watching her out of the corner of my eye when I thought she wasn’t looking. A few times, I had caught her looking at me, too.

  When we weren’t on the beach, in the pool, or in the bars, we rented little boats on a cove and sped around. Selena was a daredevil, and she’d get hysterical every
time we did this, laughing harder than I’d ever seen her let go. She had a great, contagious laugh, and pretty soon the rest of us would be hysterical, too.

  Now that I was sitting so close to Selena on the plane, I was having trouble catching my breath. It was almost unbearable to sit there and not touch her. The air felt charged between us as Selena kept up the conversation, somehow managing to draw me out emotionally. I ended up telling her about how I first started playing music, my parents’ divorce, and my dreams about becoming a rock musician—dreams I had temporarily set aside to play Tejano music.

  Finally, Selena leaned a little closer and asked about my girlfriend back in San Antonio.

  “She’s fine, I guess,” I answered. “Though I haven’t talked to her since we left for Mexico.”

  After we had talked for a little while longer, Selena asked, “Would you look at something for me?” She reached into her purse and pulled out some proofs from a photo shoot she had done recently. “Tell me what you think of these,” she said. “Be honest.”

  She handed me the pictures and I flipped through them. For the shoot, she’d dressed in a black bustier top and black tights, and she was standing on a beach. She looked amazing.

  “You look incredible,” I said. “You really do.”

  At that moment, the plane hit turbulence. I had never flown before this trip to Mexico, so the sudden jolt terrified me. I reacted by grabbing the armrest between our seats.

  Selena laughed because I looked so scared. I laughed with her, but I was aware at the same time of feeling the side of her hand brush against mine. I wondered what would happen if I grabbed her hand. I thought it would probably either be a huge mistake—or the best idea ever.

  And then we hit another bump, and Selena took my hand. As she assured me that everything would be all right, I forgot all about the turbulence. I probably even forgot that we were on a plane. I was too busy freaking out: I was happy, I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do next. I just sat there with my fingers entwined with hers, hardly able to speak, my heart pounding.