So, after all the positive things that I had come to believe about myself, like being open and political about my sexuality, I suddenly found myself having to be guarded about my life. I tried to get round it by convincing myself I was just being economical with the truth, but you get yourself into trouble pretending to be single when you’re not.
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One night, desperate for the loo, I stepped on a giant slug and it squelched between my toes in long green tubes. I think that’s the night I became a soprano. After that, I made myself a salt path every night to dispose of them. As young, first time tenants, we had no idea that we could complain – we had to pay the whole term’s rent up front, so we had no leverage at all. God, it was awful, but we loved having our independence.
I’d found myself. Once I’d shaved my head people would look at me, so I had to be confident, to let go of my shyness, and a bold new me emerged. Every time I went to the barbers they whined and complained. They were from a different era: ‘C’mon, baby, you mus’ leave a lickle ’fro fe de man dem’ – they figured I wouldn’t catch a boyfriend with such short hair – so eventually I bought a pair of clippers and learnt how to do it myself, backwards in a hand mirror, and I haven’t needed a barber since.
After my crisis, everyone became more supportive and realised I was vulnerable. I learnt how to cope better by expressing myself when I felt too much pressure instead of pretending I was invincible. For me, it was the beginning of the realisation that I don’t have to sound like Aretha or anyone else. I just have to sound like me.
I appealed to an alternative crowd. We all know that sex sells – but I wasn’t that kind of artist. I signed my first record deal when I was twenty-six. I was a grown woman, I had my politics down, I had my attitude and my band. I wasn’t manipulable. I didn’t get much negativity about being bisexual – by the mid-1990s people were cooler about gay sexuality – but at the same time it meant that I couldn’t be marketed as the straight sexy rock chick.
Back then, a shaven-headed black girl was seen as quite radical and made some people uncomfortable, but I also realised the thing I’d been trying to run away from was what people liked about me the most – that I was uncompromising with my look. If you try to conform, I concluded, you’re taking away your own power, putting your best asset away in a box, so instead I decided to accentuate and love my differences.