by Johnny Weir
“What happened today?” another said.
“I missed the bus to come here, which got me off on the wrong foot. I felt rushed at the arena because I was late,” I said.
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized I had made one of the biggest media flubs of my career.
“You’re blaming a botched triple toe loop on the bus?” a reporter asked.
“No, I was just saying that I spent the day doing my makeup and then I missed the bus, so—”
“So you missed the bus because you were doing your makeup?”
I was getting twisted in my own words. The clever Johnny who also skated well had left the building. I knew I had skated poorly and was the first person to say so, but they thought I was making excuses, and nobody likes excuses. The American press that had loved me so much the day before, and the day before that, and the month before that, started to turn.
“There’s a poll on the Internet asking whether people care whether you are gay or not. What’s your response?”
What a perfect time to bring up my sexuality. I had to get the fuck out of there; this was starting to get ugly (I didn’t realize it then but something a lot uglier awaited me back in my room. I received hate mail from many of the same people who had earlier sent me fan mail. “You failed the country. You failed us.” And that was a nice letter. “You wear animals; you should die.” “You lost our medal; you should die.” One letter even hoped that I’d get “raped to death.”)
Priscilla extricated me from the press conference from hell. As we walked back to the dressing room, I stopped to check the drug-testing list. The skaters who placed first, second, and third had mandatory drug testing. And then there was one random test—and of course it was me. What did I do to deserve this? I threw my water bottle against the wall and it burst everywhere. Walking into the locker room to change out of my costume, I practically ripped the gorgeous velvet and net creation off my emaciated shoulders, growling at no one in particular. I was a livid, crestfallen failure. This was not the Olympic moment I had wanted.
I was the first one in the antidoping room since I was the only one who didn’t have to participate in the awards ceremony.Wearing their medals, Evgeni, Stéphane, and Jeffrey were excitedly talking with their coaches as they walked in about forty-five minutes later. On the American team, skaters aren’t allowed to have their coach with them during drug tests, so I was all alone staring at the three Olympic medalists I had lost to. I took a seat by the window and let the tears I had been holding back since my performance fall. Nobody cared; I cried without making a sound, plus they were all too engrossed to pay any attention to me.
The event had been over for a good hour and a half before I was able to leave. I had had trouble urinating because of my wrecked nerves, so everyone else, the fans, the skaters, and the officials, were already gone when I finally exited the building.
I walked outside into the complete darkness. It was pushing one o’clock and the big paved courtyard was completely deserted. The idling engine of the waiting bus lent a feeling of drudgery to the desolate scene.
“Johnny!”
I looked over, and I saw my mom. Standing behind the bars that fenced in the courtyard, she put her arms through them and out toward me.
It would have been a security breach for me to leave the official premises, so I ran over to her and we hugged with the bars between us. When I stood back I saw her glasses were all fogged up.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry for all of this—what I’ve done to the family, and with money, and all this stuff.”
“Honey, you made it to the Olympics,” she said. “I’ve never been more proud of you in my life.”
10
After the Storm
I had been to Las Vegas before, but never like this. When I was shown into the suite at Caesars Palace that Kathy Griffin’s people had put me up in, it took my breath away—and I’m the biggest snob ever when it comes to hotel rooms. Four lavish rooms, bedecked with chandeliers and gobs of marble, were capped off with a giant seashell bathtub in the middle of one of the bathrooms. I was definitely going to get some much-needed rest and relaxation in these stunning surroundings.
Kathy had asked me to appear on her Bravo reality show, My Life on the D-List, after she saw a reference I had made to her show in a post-Olympics interview. After I’d appeared on the cover of the New York Times I had told a reporter at Russia House—the country’s official debauched party palace in Torino—that my new widespread notoriety put me “on the same level as Kathy Griffin and her D-List.” I was joking, but someone from her team called to see if I would do an episode, and Kathy herself followed up by sending flowers.
The bouquet was unnecessary (but appreciated). A huge fan of the comedian and her show, I said yes right away. While I don’t get starstruck easily, Kathy Griffin was pretty A-List to me.
With a couple of hours to go before our meeting, I took a quick shower and ordered chicken fingers with ranch dressing up to the room as my first post-season treat. Nothing could soothe me after what I had been through at the Olympics—not a truckload of chicken fingers or a twenty-room suite at Caesars—but the trip offered a welcome distraction.
Of course, making my entertainment TV debut came with its own worries. I had to watch what I said and did on air. Because Kathy was a gay icon, I didn’t want to give her anything too gay or over the top. In private I had no issues with my sexuality, but I still wasn’t comfortable with it as a topic of public discourse. I didn’t need it put all over a TV show.
And there was the issue of what to wear. The episode’s setup was that I would teach Kathy how to skate. During the Olympics I’d established myself as really into fashion, so I had to look good. At the same time, I was going to be on the ice and I’d already been away from home for two weeks, so I was on the last legs of what was still clean in my luggage. I freaked out for a good hour, trying on different ensembles and running through my suite to look at myself in various gold-framed mirrors until I settled on my skater-with-an-edge look: track pants and a giant black John Galliano hoodie that zipped off to the side. It was a little aggressive for ice skating, but with my flat-ironed hair ending in a long unruly mullet, so was I.
Greeting me at the tiny rink in the middle of Las Vegas with big, loving, open arms, Kathy immediately put me at ease. She had gathered all the kids who trained at the rink to watch from above, which was a really thoughtful move. Their clapping and screaming upon my arrival made me feel like a super A-List celebrity worthy of a TV appearance.
I held Kathy’s hand for what she called a “couples skate” and tried to be professional while giving her pointers for looking beautiful on the ice. “Don’t use your butt,” I shouted, describing her during the session as a “liver sausage” and a “monkey.” Okay, maybe I was going for funny more than professional. Whatever I did, it worked. Everyone was pleased with my performance, including Kathy, who paid me the highest compliment off-air by calling me “one of her gays.”
Although I still fretted over the past season, which had ended in a monumentally disappointing Olympics and my transformation into the laughingstock of the skating world, my appearance on the D-List was just one example of the new and massive stage that I had entered.
Love me or hate me, everyone seemed to have an opinion about me.
By no stretch of the imagination did I kid myself then (or now) that I was famous. I’m no Britney Spears with paparazzi camped outside my house or trailing me as I pick up my dry cleaning. Still, as a top athlete with the rare ability to be myself, I became an object of curiosity and entered the pop culture radar as a tiny celebrity blip.
I knew whatever fame I found would be very fleeting, so I wanted to do as many things to get my face out there as possible, particularly because my skating was shaky enough to make me worried for my future in the sport. I loved the invitations to exclusive events, such as the opening of a club in Manhattan’s meatpacking district or a party to sh
owcase Louis Vuitton’s new collection, which had started arriving at the house in Delaware. But between skating, touring, having a relationship, and getting ready for a new season, there was no room for parties (plus, I’m not really a party person; I am terrible at meeting new people). Anything that resembled a work opportunity, however, I tried to make happen.
So when two different production companies approached me right after the Olympics about making a documentary of my life, I was into the idea—although I had absolutely no clue what it meant. Totally oblivious to how most of the entertainment world worked, I figured they would shoot for a couple months, make a movie, play it somewhere, and that would be it. But the first people that approached me (they had produced the popular documentary Murderball about quadriplegic athletes who play wheelchair rugby) quickly disabused me of that notion. They had a plan to buy the house next to the one where I lived with my parents in order to shoot everything I did from morning until night. That was a little too aggressive for my taste.
I probably would have nixed the whole idea if it weren’t for Butch and Grämz—aka David Barba and James Pellerito. When they came to my rink to propose a movie about my life and career, they were upfront: they had no sponsor and no money. Their company, Retribution Media, was basically them working catering jobs on the side to fund their shoots. A couple as well as work partners, they wanted to do the doc in a very low-key way, shooting me during scheduled times when it worked for all of us. Priscilla was fine with it, as long as it didn’t detract from my training. My family was also on board, and Paris “loved it.”
They dove right in, coming down from New York to Delaware about once a week to film my training in hopes they could turn my antics into a movie. Because I tend to nickname people when they come into my life, even if they come with their own nicknames, I had to rename James and David before we could get down to business. David became “Butch” because he’s the smaller of the two with a little faux-hawk, which gives him a bit of a tough puppy look. And what better name for a puppy than Butch? But Butch wasn’t allowed to drive because he was in this country from Mexico on a green card. So James had to do all the driving, and being from New York City, he was a terrible driver, crouching up near the steering wheel of their small rental and holding on for dear life while inching along at fifty miles an hour. I crowned him “Grams” because of his grandmotherly style of driving. But he didn’t appreciate his new nickname, so I had to cool it out with z at the end and an umlaut over the a—a modern Grämz that we both could live with.
While the idea of a documentary about my life took a little bit of convincing at the outset (since there were a number of things at that time, like my love life, which I didn’t want aired in public), I needed no pitch—or money—when BlackBook asked me to do a fashion spread. The editors of the hip fashion magazine had reached out to me because they liked my kind of elfin quality to which they wanted to add the magic of designer clothes.
I was over the moon about doing my first big photo shoot, although it represented yet another break with the skating world. Most male skaters, if they get any mainstream press, it’s usually a page in Men’s Health where they talk about their awesome abs and pose in a Team USA T-shirt. Occasionally the girls will do something a little more outrageous, like when Katarina Witt posed nude for Playboy. For some reason, everyone’s okay when the women shed their clothes for a nudie mag. However, I knew the federation would not be okay with my appearing in a high-fashion spread where they planned God-knows-what kind of outfits. It would embarrass and shock them. So I went ahead and booked the shoot immediately.
I had been to New York many times, but when I arrived on the train the night before the shoot it was my first trip to the big city alone. And I get nervous my first time doing anything. It didn’t help that the magazine had booked me into a hotel in one of the Villages. East or West, I’m not a big Village fan. And this hotel was vintage Village—dark and dirty and small. A homeboy in big, baggy jeans that I guess was supposed to be the desk clerk showed me and my mega Rimowa suitcase (I don’t pack light, even for overnight trips) to my room where I could just feel the cockroaches staring at me. When I stay at a hotel, I like there to be room service, not a woman moaning in the room next to mine.
There was no way I was staying there. Sitting on a plastic laundry bag on the bed, I started calling every famous, expensive hotel that I could think of in New York City: the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, the Plaza. Nothing. Fully booked. Finally I found a generic business hotel in midtown with a room—three stars as opposed to the negative six-star hotel I was in—and I hightailed it out of there in time to get a few hours of sleep before my 7 a.m. start time.
All was forgiven and forgotten the minute I arrived at the studio. There were hair and makeup people, a stylist, the photographer, and his assistants running around the large white loft, which was drenched with sun pouring in through enormous windows. And there were tons and tons of beautiful clothes everywhere. The glamour! It was a big-deal fashion shoot . . . for me. (Of course, I had to say something about the “hotel.” “Just for your information, it was terrible,” I told the editor. But in that way New York trendy people pretend nothing is a mistake, she passed it off as though they thought it would be a cool, cultural experience.)
The photographer, David Armstrong, only used natural light, which made me nervous that I wouldn’t look great. But, I mean, twenty-one years old, skinny as a rail, and in love—how bad could I look?
Plus, the clothes were the real stars. I had never seen such treasures. There were Henri Duarte jeans and Wunderkind shorts, amazing rings by Etro, a Dior jacket worth $30,000 that had flown in from a fashion show in Hong Kong the night before the shoot, plus many designers I had never even heard of despite my extensive studies.
In the spread that they called “Johnny: I’m Only Dancing,” it was drama, drama, drama. I flipped over one setup (which they didn’t end up using in the magazine) where I portrayed the late, legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev with the whole pancake-on-the-face ballet makeup and hair extensions in a pulled-back ponytail.
Like the Nureyev photos, the majority of the shots we did were topless. I was all for nudity. I loved having my picture taken and wanted so much to do a good job that I would have done anything. And I pretty much did. I danced across the studio and slithered on the floor. When they brought out a pair of six-inch Gucci stilettos to go with the leggings I wore, I didn’t flinch, even though I knew a photo of me in ladies’ heels would cause major waves in the skating world. Hey, they make anybody’s legs look better. I pranced around like a high-end call girl, which emboldened the editors to put a Gucci dress on me. I tried my hardest to cram myself into the size 00 dress, but I wasn’t a miracle worker. They had to settle on letting it sit like a skirt around my waist with my arms wrapped around my, of course, naked torso while I didn’t breathe. What we do for beauty.
While I loved every minute of my pop culture moments, they didn’t pay the bills. For that I again joined the cast of Champions on Ice in what would be my longest tour to date. From the beginning of April through August, I crisscrossed the country in a bus with the best skaters in the world, including Evan Lysacek and Stéphane Lambiel, both of whom I had lost to in the Olympics and would be once more competing against the next season.
For my number, I chose to skate to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” for its obvious symbolism. The Olympic season had nearly killed me, but at least I could hold my head up high because I had done it my way.
The actual skating is such a small part of any tour. There’s a lot more traveling, waiting around, and—at least in the case of that year’s Champions show—drinking. To make it through the slog of this endless tour, I drank nearly every night during dinner and lots of times while traveling on the bus. No sooner had we loaded into the bus after a performance when the Russians would whip out their bottles of vodka (or someone feeling fancy might have picked up a bottle of champagne), which we happily let them pour into our paper cu
ps as small cities receded into the distance. I’m not a big drinker in general, but at that time, when I was superskinny from the Olympic season, I was an especially cheap date. For that spring and summer, I grew my tolerance and joined the rest of the merry band of skaters. Having a buzz made being far from home and Alex after such a rocky couple of months a little easier to swallow.
Alcohol wasn’t my only solace during the tour. Marina Anissina, the 2002 Olympic Champion in ice dancing and one of my best friends, became my greatest confidante and constant dinner companion. Over absurdly glamorous meals of filet mignon or sushi (and, of course, lots of wine), I moaned to her about the clear downfall of my condition. Four months was a long time to be on the road and away from training for a competitive figure skater, but there was no other way; I needed the money if I wanted to keep skating.
So I had to strategize a way to create new programs for next year in between shows on tour. I couldn’t wait until the tour finished in August because that would be too late for a season that officially begins in September. Tatiana Tarasova, who had created my programs for the last few years, was out of the question since there was no way I’d have enough time with her after she’d moved back to Moscow.
One night, while sharing quesadillas and margaritas the size of my head with Marina, I realized the solution sat right across the table from me. Marina should choreograph my new programs! I wanted a person to pull something creative and new out of me. Marina, whose powerful reputation in the skating world could only help me politically, fit the bill artistically as well. I asked her to work with me before the ice in my margarita had time to melt.
As Russians tend to do, she mulled it over for a few days, keeping me on edge before accepting the challenge. And a challenge it would be. Marina had a very different aesthetic from mine: hers was modern dance to my old-school ballet. Beyond that, Marina decided that for the upcoming season she intended to get me to skate like a man. I told her, “Good luck.” But she didn’t find that very funny.