A brush with His Purple Highness

On Boxing Day, ca. 2002, in the early evening, I was walking though Toronto's Bay St. subway station. The hordes of bargain-shoppers had dispersed, the station was eerily deserted. Coming toward me, down a tiled corridor, was one boy. As we drew closer, I realized the boy was actually a diminuitive adult, and, seconds later, that it was Prince. (At that time, he had a Canadian wife, and a house in Toronto.)

I'm a lifelong Prince fan; one of my sons remembers receiving the Emancipation triple album from me when he was 9, parental advisory sticker be damned. He wore a conservative, elegant ensemble: impeccably tailored tweed jacket, soft brown trousers, cognac boots with a high Cuban heel. No tie, not a hint of purple rock n' roll. But, indubitably and sinuously Prince.

No stranger to tailoring

He gave me the look Le Duc and I have occasionally received from other celebrities: I Know You've Seen, and I Thank You for Not Bothering Me. So I passed without acknowledgement, but inside, I was shrieking, foaming crazy with delight, lightly in shock, wanting the forty-second encounter to never end.  When he had just passed me, a woman appeared, and I clutched her elbow, saying, "PRINCE! Look, there's Prince!" She said, "Prince who?"

I never saw him perform live; either the tickets sold out before I could snag one (as for Montréal's flash concert last winter) or the price was prohibitive. But, a Prince show was top of my Dream List and I figured next time, spare no expense.

I met my longtime friend Christine in Toronto last week, coincidentally at the very spot where I'd seen him; she too adored Prince. dBar, where moody mauve lighting felt especially apt, featured a Purple Rain cocktail, but we stuck with our favourites, a martini and a rusty nail, and spent an hour recalling our favourite songs and his irreplaceable persona. Christine had just returned from Italy, and had tucked a gift for me into her bag: a chic ring of leather with Florentine gold accents. 

Her present will always remind me of Prince, of his dance-till-you-drop music, and the evening we spent celebrating his gifts to us, with sadness and affection.