Open: An Autobiography

In 1992, however, spending time together suddenly becomes more complicated. Sitting in a movie theater, eating in a restaurant, we’re never truly alone. People appear from nowhere, requesting my picture, demanding my autograph, seeking my attention or opinion. Wimbledon has made me famous. I thought I was famous long ago - I signed my first autograph when I was six - but now I discover that I was actually infamous. Wimbledon has legitimized me, broadened and deepened my appeal, at least according to the agents and managers and marketing experts with whom I now regularly meet. People want to get closer to me; they feel they have that right. I understand that there’s a tax on everything in America. Now I discover that this is the tax on success in sports - fifteen seconds of time for every fan. I can accept this, intellectually. I just wish it didn’t mean the loss of privacy with my girl.

Wendi shrugs it off. She’s a good sport about every intrusion. She keeps me from taking anything too seriously, including myself. With her help I decide that the best approach to being famous is to forget you’re famous. I work hard at putting fame out of my mind.

But fame is a force. It’s unstoppable. You shut your windows to fame and it slides under the door. I turn around one day and discover that I have dozens of famous friends, and I don’t know how I met half of them. I’m invited to parties and VIP rooms, events and galas where the famous gather, and many ask for my phone number, or press their numbers on me. In the same way that my win at Wimbledon automatically made me a lifetime member of the All England Club, it also admitted me to this nebulous Famous People’s Club. My circle of ac-quaintances now includes Kenny G, Kevin Costner, and Barbra Streisand. I’m invited to spend the night at the White House, to eat dinner with President George Bush before his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev. I sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom.

I find it surreal, then perfectly normal. I’m struck by how fast the surreal becomes the norm. I marvel at how unexciting it is to be famous, how mundane famous people are. They’re confused, uncertain, insecure, and often hate what they do. It’s something we always hear - like that old adage that money can’t buy happiness - but we never believe it until we see it for ourselves. Seeing it in 1992 brings me a new measure of confidence.

I’M SAILING NEAR VANCOUVER ISLAND, vacationing with my new friend David Foster, the music producer. Shortly after Wendi and I board Foster’s yacht, Costner comes aboard and invites us to join him on his yacht, anchored fifty yards away. We hit it off immediately.

Even though he has a yacht, Costner seems like the classic man’s man. Easygoing, funny, cool. He loves sports, follows them avidly, and assumes I do too. I tell him shyly that I don’t follow sports. That I don’t like them.

How do you mean?

I mean, I don’t like sports.

He laughs. You mean besides tennis?

I hate tennis most of all.

Right, right. I guess it’s a grind. But you don’t actually hate tennis.

I do.

Wendi and I spend much of the boating trip watching Costner’s three children. Well mannered, personable, they’re also remarkably beautiful. They look as if they tumbled out of one of my mother’s Norman Rockwell puzzles. Shortly after meeting me, four-year-old Joe Costner grabs at my pants leg and looks up at me with his big blue eyes. He shouts: Let’s play wrestle! I pick him up and hold him upside down, and the sound of his giggling is one of the most delicious sounds I’ve ever heard. Wendi and I tell ourselves we’re hopelessly charmed by the little Costners, but in reality we’re deliberately playing at being their parents.

Now and then I catch Wendi slipping away from the grownups to have another look at the children. I can see that she’s going to be a great mother. I imagine being there by her side, through it all, helping her raise three towheads with green eyes. The thought thrills me - and her. I broach the subject of family, the future. She doesn’t blink. She wants it too.

Weeks later, Costner invites us to his house in Los Angeles for a preview of his new film, The Bodyguard. Wendi and I don’t think much of the movie, but we swoon over the theme song, I Will Always Love You.

This will be our song, Wendi says.

Always.

We sing this song to each other, quote it to each other, and when the song comes on the radio we stop whatever we’re doing and make goo-goo eyes at each other, which makes everyone around us sick. We couldn’t care less.

I tell Philly and Perry that I can imagine spending the rest of my life with Wendi, that I might soon propose. Philly gives me a full nod. Perry gives me the green light.

Wendi is the one, I tell J.P.

What about Steffi Graf?

She blew me off. Forget her. It’s Wendi.

I’M SHOWING OFF my new toy for J.P. and Wendi.

J.P. asks, What’s this thing called again?

A Hummer. They used it in the Gulf War.