Whitney Houston’s death is almost more than the heart can bear. When she burst onto the mainstream music scene in 1985 – after a storied career singing in church, and professionally as backup to the likes of Chaka Khan – Houston was in a romantic relationship with a woman named Robyn Crawford. Actual people laid eyes on the reality of their relationship, and in private circles – including here in the San Francisco Bay Area, where a number of Houston’s early hits were produced – it leaked into the proverbial water supply. (Not huge cause for excitement in these parts for obvious reasons.) It was a relationship that endured through more than half of Houston’s “good” high-profile years... and then she married Bobby Brown. While Crawford was on the scene, her relationship with Houston was obfuscated by an enforced wall of silence. The subject was explicitly off-limits to those whose fortunes brought them into professional contact with Houston; to sign onto her payroll was to be bound contractually never to utter a word about it.
The basics of this story began “breaking” on social media the day after Houston’s funeral, sparked by
a piece published that same day in the Daily Mail. The publication of this item was a revelation to me not because it’s
news to me, but because only now that it has begun to see (a sliver of) the light of day do I feel emboldened to utter these thoughts out loud. Not dissimilarly to when we learned she was marrying Bobby Brown, those of us for whom the Houston-Crawford affair is old news immediately “went there” following Houston’s death.
She was forced to renounce that most elemental part of herself, we thought to ourselves,
and now this. But there was no fervent waving of the rainbow flag following Houston’s passing. We all knew what we knew.
My own reticence has stemmed from a combination of the facts that (1) I did not know Whitney Houston personally; (2) suggesting a celebrity is (was) gay when they themselves have denied it so publicly can come across as fantastical; and (3) there existed a sort of social compact amongst those in the know, however close in or far removed, not to upset Houston’s apple cart by airing her Dirty Laundry – that alt form of the proverbial “DL,” if you will. As borne out by the dearth of posthumous tributes/reflections that describe Houston’s relationship with Crawford as anything other than a “close friendship” (including
Crawford's own statement for Esquire), this latter point is particularly salient; it seems no one near to the truth
(no one) has been willing publicly to break the collective silence. Who, after all (among those close in, not far removed like myself or even the author of the
Daily Mail piece), wants to be seen as dragging Houston down by naming as true what she herself insisted was not.
And there’s the rub: No matter how you slice it, to suggest that Houston was (ever) gay will be read in certain circles as slander – if not an outright slur – not least, one must imagine, by those who encouraged or participated in “the coverup.” Never mind that during and after her marriage to Bobby Brown, Houston engaged in behavior far more troubling than a same-sex relationship, thus opening herself up to the worst slanders of all.
I went offline for three+ hours this past Saturday (newsworthy: me awake and offline for one hour) to watch Houston’s funeral on CNN, and was deeply moved by the dignity the participants individually and collectively managed to restore to her sadly downward-spiraled life and legacy. At the same time, I was struck by how profoundly difficult it remains for us – whoever we are – to accept and embrace our fellow human beings, or perhaps I should say ourselves, in all of our myriad complexity. Since the unfortunate airing of “Being Bobby Brown,” it’s not far off to say that, at least prior to her death, Houston was caricaturized at the pop culture level into a female version of Dave Chappelle’s infamous Tyrone Biggums character. Her “Crack is whack” phase proved the enduring – indeed the dogging – headline, the distortive kaleidoscope to which all backward glances at her career were subjected – and, too, the unfortunate prism through which everything she did subsequently was viewed.*
And then, in death, there is Saint Whitney, by many accounts pure of heart and without question possessed of the voice of an angel.
Both are true. Yet as plainly as they did in reality, these two sides of Whitney Houston were challenged to coexist in the popular imagination. Thanks to the relentless mainstream media (including the producers of “Being Bobby Brown”), the Whitney of old – who stole all of our hearts through some combination of The Voice, looks, presence,
way – effectively was overwritten by her later exploits… and thus all but obliterated from public memory. Whereas for her nearest and dearest, who spoke and sang and preached and
bore witness in her memory on Saturday, the ravages of Whitney’s Life Part Two barely entered the discourse – Kim Burrell’s poignant and allusive personalized version of “A Change Is Gonna Come” notwithstanding.
This isn’t to say that those who essentially testified on Houston’s behalf at her funeral service are not mindful of Saint Whitney’s demons – they know better than we. Nor is it to suggest that her funeral should have been anything other than the stunningly beautiful and uplifting tribute that it was.
But it
is to say that the spectrum of Houston as a
whole, her Jekyll, her Hyde, and everything in between, is a tough one for us – again, whoever we are – to wrap our minds around all at once.
In the context of all that transpired during her years in the public eye – the unfathomable highs and lows that were so much more dramatic, even, than her otherworldly three-octave range – the question of Whitney Houston’s sexuality, as embodied by her onetime relationship with Robyn Crawford, seems relatively trivial. That is, until you consider that ultimately it was a requirement of her professional career that she deny that part of herself. When illuminated by this tremendous sacrifice that he – and others in her inner circle – must have called upon his protégé to make, Clive Davis’s funereal story of taking two years to ready Houston for her solo début takes on a grim new dimension. Many people close to Houston, her grieving mother included, are indicted by this story.
Which isn’t to say that Houston lacked volition in all of this. Clearly no one could force her to do what she didn’t want to do. She wanted to conquer the world with her voice. She
decided to make this and other sacrifices. She
decided to make a different kind of commitment. As Crawford stated in her somewhat stifled reflections for
Esquire, “She chose the life she lived, and she chose it from the beginning.” A harrowing reality, all things considered.**
To my mind, the final chapter in this particular volume of Whitney Houston’s story will not be a definitive public statement by Robyn Crawford or anyone who was a witness to their relationship, nor will it be an acknowledgment coupled with an expression of regret by anyone who encouraged or participated in the jettisoning of same. Rather, it will be the U.S. media and public’s ability to handle this story with the sensitivity and dignity that Houston’s tormented soul deserves.
A bunch of freaking out about the gay thing is so far beneath us at this point. Isn’t it?
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*I think it important to mention that Whitney Houston did not originate the phrase “Crack is whack,” though she did redouble its popularity. The artist Keith Haring first broadcast this statement publicly in 1986 with
this mural.
**Houston’s addiction is an important element that I am not qualified to address. The most insightful piece I’ve read on this subject is the
Huffington Post’s provocatively titled but very thoughtfully written
The Truth About Whitney Houston And Xanax.
