by Johnny Weir
Galina slammed the door. “Oh, no, you’re not,” she said, taking the luggage out of my hands. I had experienced enough of her guilt trips to know I was never going to win a fight with her.
“Fine. Fine. I don’t need another room, Galina. I’ll stay here,” I said, annoyed that going into my first Worlds competition where I really had a chance at a title someone inside my circle was giving me grief.
The next day, after practicing and going to the grocery store, I was relaxing in my room listening to music when Galina pounded on my door.
Storming in with Viktor in tow, she started looking around my tiny room, under the bed, in the wardrobe, in the bathroom, out the window, and on the roof.
“Galina, what are you doing?”
“I’m looking for that girl.”
“What girl?”
“You know exactly which girl.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“The girl from the ballet.”
“One of my fans?”
Galina had seen the same Russian fan I had appeared with at the Bolshoi walking through the lobby while I was having my wild moment buying bottled water and Ricola at the store.
“Yes, your prostitute.”
I was going to have to explain to Galina that gay didn’t just mean a love of fashion.
Viktor sat down on the bed and told me to sit beside him.
“Johnny, what are you doing?” he said. “You’re completely ruining your chances at doing well in this competition. You’re aggravating Galina. She doesn’t need this. She’s an old woman. She doesn’t need this on her heart.”
Meanwhile, Galina was repeating from the other side of the room, “Who’s here? Who’s here? I know somebody’s in this room with you.”
The insane scene was like something out of a bad Russian soap opera. Finally I looked at both of them and said, “Get the fuck out of my room.
“There’s been no one in my room aside from you right now,” I said. “And you’re doing more to me right now than anyone could ever do. I will see you at the practice. Now get out.”
Galina left with fire in her eyes and Viktor walking slowly and methodically behind her.
I tried to listen to music and do my makeup, but I couldn’t relax. The two of them were literally making me crazy. I thought they knew me and that the rumors about my wild reputation were completely unfounded. My problems with competing had to do with psychology, not parties.
By the time I got to practice that night, I was livid. Galina, Viktor, and Nina acted jovial because all the media had showed up, but I don’t play games. I’m not about to fake it for anyone. So I didn’t speak to any of them. While putting on my skates, I became more and more furious, slamming my laces into the holes. For the first time since I had started with Galina, I didn’t bow to her before I began.
Back at the hotel after the practice, Galina and I had the unfortunate luck of winding up in the elevator together. She was so angry that she stood close to the doors, with her back to me, jamming the button for our floor over and over as if it would get us there faster.
I really didn’t need this. If she wasn’t going to stand behind me for this competition, I would have my mother by the boards. Galina had done her job training me, and I was ready. If we parted now, it would be okay.
I knocked on her door.
“Galina, we need to talk.”
“Johnny, this all started because you wanted to switch rooms. All the drama is because of you. I don’t trust you right now. I don’t trust that you have your best interest at heart.”
Then she rattled off all these skaters, through the years, who had hung out with their friends through competitions, partying and drinking and losing. Galina listed all the people I had hugged and said hello to, accusing me of inviting them to my room to play and have fun.
“You’re going to ruin yourself.”
“Galina, I wanted to move rooms to get away from this whole team . . . and you.”
“You can do what you want,” she said. “But I want you to know that I’m watching, no matter where you are.”
The drama was done, but she didn’t accept me and I didn’t accept her. The tension didn’t abate until after I had skated my short program better than I had skated all season and earned a new personal best score. I was in second place, the highest I had ever been in the World Championships. The slate had been wiped clean. Galina, Viktor, and I all hugged as if nothing had happened. Winning will do that to you.
Going into the long program, it was very important I do well, not just for me but also the entire U.S. skating team. The men were closing the Worlds this year, and so far no Americans had won any medals—no women, no pairs, nothing. Our country had done terribly, which was pretty embarrassing since it was a year the federation had spent a lot of extra money creating a program with the specific purpose of winning more medals.
Pride wasn’t the only issue. It was important for the following year’s World Championships in Los Angeles that the Americans place high enough to secure three starting positions. It would be humiliating if we had bad placement in the Worlds hosted on our home turf. Not only that, but the World Championship in L.A. also decided how many spots the United States would get for the next Olympics.
With Evan having withdrawn from the World Championships a week before because of an injury, I was the top American in Sweden and the last chance for a medal.
In addition to all this drama with Galina and Viktor, there was also this crushing burden to win a medal for my federation, which didn’t appreciate me, and, of course, win my first medal for myself.
It’s no wonder then that when I got on the ice for the long program, stiff and cottonmouthed, that it went by in a flash. While it wasn’t unusual for me to finish a performance and not remember exactly what happened, this time it was literally like a big blank; I had no idea what I had done in the past four minutes.
“Did I do the quad toe?” I asked Galina in the kiss and cry.
“Yes. Two feet on the landing.”
“The triple axel?”
“Yes, you did.”
My score brought me out of the surreal moment and back to reality: I was in first place with a few more skaters remaining to skate. Before long I learned that I had earned a bronze, not the medal I had hoped for, but still a huge victory. I had earned my first Worlds medal and the only one for the United States. I came through for my country and helped secure three spots for next year’s World Championships in Los Angeles. I was ecstatic. This finally seemed like the fairy-tale ending everyone had been hoping for.
After the euphoria had mellowed, the press conference finished, the drug tests taken, and I made my way back to the hotel, I found myself again knocking on Galina’s door. She answered, wearing her kimono. All’s well that ends well, but I still needed closure on why she had created so much chaos.
“If we’re going to continue to work together, I really need to understand what this was,” I said.
“Well, Johnny, when you go to competitions, you always need some kind of drama. Before China, it was trouble with your skate sharpening. Before Russia, you know, we had the fight about you showing up drunk to the ballet. Before the National Championships, you had your back problem.” She’s like, “Everything was moving along too smoothly on this trip, so I wanted you to be upset. I wanted you to be angry so that you would skate well. I did this for you.”
I didn’t believe a word of it. She was pissed that I had wanted to change rooms and tried to play it off like she was inspiring my fighting spirit. I found myself aggravated yet again, because I couldn’t call her on it. If I had called her a liar, she would have thrown me out the window.
“Congratulations,” I said wearing my Amerikanski smile. “We did this together. I’ll see you when we get home.”
Boarding the plane back to New York, I was extremely grateful the season’s end had finally come and that I was traveling alone. Galina had certainly done a lot for me—bringing me back from th
e brink of disaster to a World medal—but we needed a little break from each other.
Just as I had settled into my seat, closed my eyes, and prepared for a relaxing, silent trip, one of the flight’s crew got on the PA system. “Ladies and gentleman,” he said. “We would like to announce that our new World Championships bronze medalist Johnny Weir is on the flight with us.” Everyone onboard started clapping. Fairy-tale endings might be something I could get used to.
13
Weircapades
Waking up alone in a Korean hotel on Christmas Day was just sad. Even though I’m not one to really celebrate holidays (not only does my tightly structured life not allow me time to enjoy them, but I’m also not a big believer in enforced fun), this was a little too Lost in Translation even for me.
But I couldn’t say no to the amazing, charity gig where I’d be performing in a Christmas show with the country’s top champion Kim Yu-Na. So four days after I competed in the 2008 Grand Prix finals in Seoul, I was back at JFK to return in what would be my twelfth flight to Asia that year.
Another Grand Prix season had flown by in a whirlwind of travel, training, and, alas, unlike the previous one, defeat. The year started out on the wrong foot when I discovered that my blades weren’t aligned properly on the new skates I had received at the end of the summer. It felt like I was walking on a stiletto with one foot and a ballet flat with the other. Not comfortable. On the ice, I couldn’t stand straight and had a lot of problems with my jumps. But it was too late to get new boots because the process of breaking them in to a point where a skater can jump safely takes time. I just had to make the best of my stiletto-ballet combo.
At my first event, Skate America, a competition I had avoided until this point in my career because of the early date and the bias against me in my own country, Evan and I lost to an unknown Japanese skater. Evan placed third, and I second, which was humiliating for both of us in our own country. The only highlight was seeing Evan, who had gone to Tarasova for help with his programs that year, come out in a crazy costume that made him look like a waiter. The sparkly penguin suit signaled to me that Tarasova, who had always promoted my skating over Evan’s in her TV commentary, was messing with him.
Then I came down with bronchitis for my second event in Japan. With an army of my Japanese fans in tow to help her translate, Galina mined the pharmacy for every remedy allowed under the international skating regulations. With death warming me over, I competed and miraculously placed second. But there were no more miracles left by the Grand Prix final in Seoul. After two solid weeks of fighting with Galina, feeling sick, and skating on my wonky blades, I had no more fight left. I fell in the short program and placed third.
It was a tribute to my Asian fans, whose love didn’t waver with my uneven scores, that I was the only non-Korean invited to perform in this huge Christmas spectacular. So although I was wrung dry by the last couple of months, I still felt proud to be there (plus, I loved the star treatment they lavished on me from the minute I stepped off the plane).
On Christmas, the day of the show, I didn’t have too long to experience the holiday blues because my new manager, Tara Modlin, landed in my hotel room like a hurricane. I had changed from my previous manager at Michael Collins Enterprises—one of two big skating agencies—after Tara wooed my mom and me over a cozy meal at Elmo. A former skater, she understood my world but was young and new to the business. I wasn’t worried. By that point a homeless person could have done a better job than my manager, who would literally take two months to return my call. My previous manager even went as far as to go on Nancy Kerrigan’s TV show (only a year after I had been publicly humiliated on it when Mark Lund made rude comments about my skating and sexuality) to say, “Johnny will do better this year because he hasn’t been partying as much.” With the Olympics looming, I wanted a go-getter and Tara fit the bill. She’s a very forceful girl who loves cowboy boots, rhinestones, ruffles, sparkles, and polka dots. She’s also very clever and gets what she wants.
Although Tara had been my agent for only a few months, this was our first real experience together, because at competitions Galina didn’t like her talking business anywhere near me.
After quickly washing her blond bangs in the sink, Tara escorted me to the rink for the show. On the way there, I started to feel a little queasy but I made a joke of it, teasing Tara that her perfume was making me sick. But after the rehearsal, where I learned the opening number, I was no longer joking around; something was terribly wrong with me. I felt like a narcoleptic because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. When the shaking began, I lay down in front of a heater. Then the puking started. I couldn’t stand up straight without puking. I couldn’t lie down without puking.
With only three hours before showtime and me puking nonstop into a box that Tara held like a champ, a team of doctors ran in to cure me, or at least get me through the next three hours. Their medicine was as foreign to me as their country. One doctor tried to bleed the illness out of me by pricking all my fingers, while an acupuncturist put needles in my stomach and head.
Everyone needed me to get on that ice, most of all me. It was big, big money, and if I didn’t perform I would have traveled to Korea, missed Christmas with my family, pissed off my mom, and become sick for nothing. I told myself that I would skate, even if I had to puke into a sparkly glove during the show.
While lying on a massage table in a parka and under fourteen blankets, I asked Tara to pull the mirror over to me. With only one eye open at a time, I started putting my makeup on my stone-white face. Then Tara took my pants and top off like she was changing a baby and helped me into my costume. Five minutes before my number, three Korean doctors carried me to the ice with Tara holding a giant box in which for me to get sick. With no warm-up, no nothing, I threw up in the box, got on the ice and skated to the center.
Somehow, I skated both my numbers without throwing up or fainting, although I could sense fear in Yu-Na’s eyes as she took my hand in our pairs performance.
As soon as I finished, I skated right for the back door, where I puked three times into my box before an ambulance picked me up. The paparazzi waiting outside took photos of me swaddled in coats and blankets like a big baby. People in the hospital also took pictures of me as they wheeled me to a private room.
After weighing me and discovering that I had lost eight pounds in one day, they wanted to hook me up to an IV immediately. Suffering from dehydration and exhaustion, I was sicker than I had ever been in my life. I wanted to feel better, but it’s terrifying for an athlete to be in a situation like this where you have no idea what they are putting into you. We had to find a doctor who could translate from Korean into English, and then call an American doctor before they put any needles in me. It was the middle of the night on Christmas Eve back in the States, so it would have to be a Jewish doctor—Tara found one in five minutes flat.
A much harder task was calling my mother. “Patti, everything is okay,” Tara said in her sweetest voice. “Don’t freak out. We’re in the hospital but it’s under control.”
Of course my mother freaked out and burst into tears.
“He just has exhaustion,” Tara explained. “He threw up his entire life today, but he’ll be fine.”
By now Galina was used to me crying since I had done it just about every day at practice since returning from Korea. The National Championships were only two weeks away, and I still hadn’t been able to regain the strength I had lost from my illness over the holidays. Galina yelled at me out of frustration, reminding me over and over that she had warned me not to go to Korea. Still, I would sleep through morning practices out of sheer exhaustion. The weight I had lost during my illness had taken my already thin frame into concentration camp territory. I had no energy and now no jumps.
It was a terrifying moment when my jumps left me. Stuff that I could do since I was thirteen vanished. It’s not uncommon for skaters to wake up one day and find they’ve lost technique, but it had never happened to me. Goi
ng into my triple axel, all of a sudden I didn’t know what to do and landed flat on my back where I stayed, crying, of course.
This year’s Nationals was an even bigger deal than usual because it decided the U.S. skaters that would go to the upcoming World Championships, held in our backyard. No matter how international I felt or how many of my fans came from abroad, I wanted to compete against the world on American soil.
All I wanted to do was make the World Championship team whatever way I had to do it. But it was going to be tricky. Going into the Nationals, I knew there was no way I would do well. I was a total mess. And the U.S. Figure Skating Association,unlike most other countries, based their world team almost strictly on placement at the Nationals. Even if I was third, I’d be fine with it. I just wanted to be on that team.
Once we arrived for the event in Cleveland, Ohio (where I’d had my disaster in the National Championships as a junior-level skater), Galina forbade me from telling anyone—media, fellow skaters, and, God forbid, officials—about my sickness. This wasn’t a new policy. She had always been very strict about not discussing illnesses or injuries. “Nobody’s going to care. It doesn’t matter if you’re sick, if your mom just died, if your leg is falling off,” she said. “If you show up and you’re planning to compete, you compete. Nobody cares about the backstory.”
So I went in for my short program looking inexplicably shaky, white, and as emaciated as a heroin addict. I wish I had been on drugs after the performance I gave. Although Galina and I had worked back from the basics to rebuild the jumps I had lost, instead of a planned triple axel, I only did a single axel, among many other minor mistakes, all of which landed me in seventh place. I had never been lower than sixth place in a senior National Championship, and that was at my very first.
People were bewildered. Conspiracy theories for my terrible condition abounded: I had a drinking problem; I was on drugs; I was having orgies.
I screwed up the network programming—television had to air the event for the long program earlier because I was no longer in the last group of the top six competitors. When I took to the ice for my long program, many of the audience hadn’t yet filed into the building. I was skating to crickets.