As a reward for Jo Jo, I decided to sprint across the country in my Ferrari. People asked why. Simply because I had a Testarossa, you know. That was reason enough. Going 130 miles an hour, I wanted to blaze my own path into the future. Slip in and out of time as it applied to people. Flee the past. Escape Hollywood, a town I didn’t like in the first place.
But where were you going, Rich?
I didn’t know.
I was just going. Going fast, too.
But where?
Maybe nowhere. Maybe just away.
Or maybe I was trapped.
Trapped in a cosmic joke, you know?
If so, I wasn’t alone. Geraldine Mason, a pretty actress who’d auditioned for Jo Jo, sat beside me. She had stars for eyes, a smile as bright as a sign in front of the hotel in Las Vegas where we partied for a few days, and, as far as I knew, she really wanted to be with me.
We sped through Las Vegas, intent on getting to Peoria in record time. Somewhere along the way, Geraldine mentioned she might be pregnant. I didn’t know there was such a condition as “might be pregnant.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” she said softly. “Maybe nothing will happen.”
In my entire life nothing was something that never happened to me, and that didn’t change in 1986.
That summer the first signs of a serious problem surfaced. It snuck up on me while I finished shooting Critical Condition in LA. I remember being tired by that time, feeling drained of my normal energy. Then one day the floor caved in. I had been resting in a chair between setups and camera changes when director Michael Apted finally asked me to take my place.
I heard him loud and clear.
No problem.
“Okay, Michael,” I said.
The message was relayed to my brain.
My brain said, You have to get the fuck up, Rich.
But nothing moved.
Raise your ass up off the chair, my brain continued.
I tried. But nothing moved.
“Come on, Richard,” the director said. “Quit fooling around.”
I wasn’t fooling around. That’s what scared me.
“I’m not joking,” I called. “I’m trying to get there.”
And I was. Real hard. But my body wasn’t buying that shit. It was fucking with me. Like ha-ha-ha, you know?
I saw my legs. Told them to get up and go. But the job order got lost around my waist. My legs were on vacation.
Numb and dumb.
I didn’t panic. Probably because I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I had to believe it was just a strange muscle twitch. Something that was going to pass. After massaging my legs, I shuffled my feet in place, a tentative start up, and then, just as strangely as the motherfuckers had quit, they started back up again.
My brain was going nuts: You’re under your own power. Good, Rich. But what the fuck is going on? Don’t matter. Just don’t fall.
I walked funny, but at least I made it to where I was supposed to be and did my scene without incident.
Afterward, I didn’t know what to make of the problem. I hoped I could forget about it. Tried to, anyway.
But it sure tripped up my sanity, you know?
After I guested on The Tonight Show a short time later, people noticed a dramatic change in my appearance. I’d suffered a noticeable loss of weight. My body was spindly and my face looked thin and tired. Suddenly, the rumor mill overflowed with speculation that I had AIDS. I didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me, but blood tests proved it wasn’t AIDS.
I tried ignoring the symptoms, but that became impossible. At a charity basketball game, I fell down while dribbling the ball. Nobody was around me. My legs just took a time-out. I went splat. I looked like a motherfucking clown, though it obviously wasn’t funny. After resting, I finished the game. But the incident shook me up.
Frightened by the way my eyesight and balance came and went without informing me of its schedule, I finally saw my longtime physician. After he asked a ton of questions and performed numerous tests, I asked him what he thought might be the problem. He looked at me as if I’d just walked through the door.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
Well, I knew that much. Motherfucker did everything but make lemonade from my piss and didn’t know more than I did. That infuriated me, you know?
Because something was wrong.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
My intuition told me that he suspected the problem, but didn’t want to tell me. Conservative doctor shit.
“We need more information,” he counseled. “I really think you should go to the Mayo Clinic for more tests.”
It took until August for him to finally persuade me it was in my best interests to stop ignoring the problem and go for an examination. Childlike in my fear of what they might discover, I asked Debbie to accompany me. Though we hadn’t spoken for a while, she agreed. In spite of all the reasons we couldn’t live together, we still loved each other.
For the next week, I went through a series of intensive, often frightening and exhausting tests. Embarrassed when my eyes’ inability to focus prevented me from describing pictures on large cards, I shifted into unrestrained terror when I saw the needle they were going to use during my spinal tap. At least the pretty nurse was nice.
“Now, Mr. Pryor, don’t move,” she said.
“I won’t,” I replied. “I’m looking at your titties.”
The brief glimpse might’ve been the lone bright spot. Unable to handle the fear of what the doctors were going to find, I secretly turned to the only relief I’d ever known. One night Debbie, worried by the unusually long time I stayed in the bathroom, opened the door and caught me fumbling with a tourniquet and syringe as I shot up with Demerol.
Oh, Mama.
I stared at her, helpless and frightened and silent.
Mama.
She didn’t say a word. She took in the scene and backed out of the room, shutting the door.
In the movies, I would’ve heard crying coming from the other side. But there was nothing.
Just the sound of my heart beating and the silent cry in my head for my mother to make it all better.
At the end of the week, Debbie and I finally met with the doc. For five days, I’d been asking what they thought and getting mystified shrugs in return. Now they had a diagnosis. In a plain, emotionless voice, the doctor told me that I had multiple sclerosis. Debbie and I turned and exchanged blank, worried looks.
Multiple sclerosis.
Those two words hit me like a ball on a backboard.
Bounce.
“Oh, I got it?” I said. “What is it?”
The doctor’s face was all funny and shit. I’d never heard a doctor just say, “Ahhhhhhhhh.”
“So what is it, Doc?”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“That means you don’t know anything about this shit, right?”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.”
He told me that the MS was still in its infancy. That I was fortunate.
“Your prognosis is good,” he said. “Many people with MS can live for a long, long time. But…”
I told the doctor: “You don’t know how the fuck I got it and you don’t know when it’s going away. So don’t be bringing up theories about my cocaine. You didn’t even know I did no cocaine.”
He still said. “Maybe it was those two ounces you did that time.”
I said, “Man, what do you mean, ‘that time’? I did two ounces every time.”
“Well, slow down.”
I flew back to LA in shock. Neither Debbie nor I mentioned a word about MS the entire flight. I didn’t know what to think. Living life so large, bigger than life, you tend to believe you have some sort of superhuman power. I’d left the ghetto behind. The whorehouses of my youth were like postcards from past journeys. I’d walked through fire. Seen my own motherfucking flesh regenerate. I wanted to see myself as a blessed motherfucker. But suddenly I felt the floor start wobbling. Like in an earthquake, my footing was unsure. All my different incarnations stared at me. Child, comedian, asshole, addict, man, father, husband, actor, victim, superstar, patient, child.
They all wanted to know the same thing.
“What now, motherfucker?”
It occurred to me then that at the outset of life God gives you a certain number of angels. They hover above you, protecting your ass from danger. But if you cross a certain line too many times, they get the hell away. Say, “Hey, motherfucker, you’ve abused us too many times. From here on, you’re on your own.”
That’s what scared me—the prospect of being alone. One option was to marry Flynn. Despite all my philandering, she remained as determined as ever to become the next Mrs. Richard Pryor. She’d become a devout Jehovah’s Witness, once even trying to convert me while sitting on the edge of my bed. But I didn’t hold that against her any more than I did other shit.
Worn out and in deep denial, I caved in to fears of being alone, and on October 10, 1986, we married in a civil ceremony performed in a judge’s chambers. She brought a girlfriend to witness the occasion; I didn’t bring nothing but misgivings.
In the weeks following the wedding, I started working out new material at the Comedy Store. Some people talk to psychiatrists, but my biggest insights had always come onstage, so for me it was therapeutic. About the AIDS rumors, I said, “That was funny the first time I cleared out an elevator.” Flynn’s and my twenty-two-year age difference also proved fruitful. “My wife is young,” I said. “The school bus had her back on time today.”
But it just wasn’t the same as before. My performance lacked the passion that had always given my performances an incendiary edge. After leaving the Mayo Clinic, the only constant was the level of chaos in my life. It reached the danger zone when Geraldine gave birth to my son Franklin. The news pissed off Flynn, who wanted to be the mother of the youngest Pryor offspring.
What could I do, you know?
Try—to—get—away!
If only I’d been able. Separated in early December—after less than two months of marriage—our divorce was finalized in January. As we left for court, Flynn sashayed out of the house wearing a fur coat with nothing on underneath.
The upshot?
Roughly ten months later, Kelsey was born.
She was my sixth child. Her mother was my fifth ex-wife.
I wondered if I was ever going to roll a seven. Probably not. Better not. Later on, I got a vasectomy to make sure I damn well didn’t.
But God love us all anyway, you know?