Welcome to My World

by Johnny Weir

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Don’t worry, Johnny. No one’s going to kill you. But I still think you should take the fur off.”

  “Why?”

  “Stephanie picked the fur out of some trash bin at a fabric store,” she said. “Johnny, that fox is very bad quality. It’s a fox that’s been dead thirty, forty years.”

  14

  The Last Stand

  When I walked into the church late at night, the air felt as thick as honey. The interior’s only light source stemmed from dozens of yellow wax candles, which added mystery and emotion in their reflections off the walls’ stunningly intricate gold details. There was a weight to this place where so many supplicants had come before, just like me, asking for divine intervention.

  I had arrived in the beautiful Russian Orthodox church four days before leaving for the Olympics to receive a blessing after Galina had gotten the idea into her head while watching the Russian Olympic team on TV get similarly blessed by the Russian Orthodox patriarch in Red Square. In our own corner of New Jersey, she had heckled the local priest (and probably greased a few palms) into giving me a special ceremony reserved for more typically members of the armed forces than athletes.

  With the majority of our training team behind me, I stood motionless at the front of the church. In the dark, hushed place, the priest intoned a long series of prayers on our behalf in an esoteric language similar to Russian. Clad in a long ominous black robe, he placed a solid twenty-four-karat gold-covered Bible on my forehead. The coolness of the precious metal sent shivers down my spine as if to jolt me into the rarity of the moment. Then he shook holy water over me, and I felt the emotional magic, a brilliant cleanse of spirit.

  I’m not religious, nor am I an atheist. I wouldn’t even call myself agnostic. I think there is wisdom to be had in organized efforts toward holiness, but I know there is also wickedness. So I believe in all the good in every religion. Around my neck I wear a chain adorned with a Star of David, a hamsa, a Russian Orthodox protection ring, and more that symbolize good and also hold my “powers.” I’ll take whatever blessings I can get.

  Despite my far-reaching dabbling in the ways of God, I had never experienced anything like I did during this ceremony. I could feel everyone standing behind me, trying to push me up. It was a stunning array of love. The priest sweated with emotion as he made me strong for competition and confrontation.

  In the last and most glorious preparation for the Olympics, I relieved my soul of all the trials I had gone through in the last four years. I was now ready to head into battle.

  Galina popped out of the overloaded van at the Olympic Village in Vancouver wearing a pair of heels and a long mink dyed the color of merlot. I followed her in knee-high, pointy-toed boots and a big, black, furry jacket that screamed ta-da! One of the helpers deposited our luggage (we each had something like six pieces) and then sped off to another area.

  Passing us on all sides were Russians in their Bosco Sport uniforms, Americans decked head to toe in red, white, and blue, and Italians in sleek Lycra courtesy of Mr. Armani. Literally every single person ran around, all day, every day, wearing a patriotically inspired athletic ensemble. Even their underwear had flags on it.

  With everyone in sneakers and sweats, they stared at us in our fanciest (and perhaps most ridiculous) getups and most likely thought, Whose team are they on?

  Answer: we weren’t part of any team. Not really.

  Despite all the usual stress and strain of an Olympic season, Galina and I managed to maintain a great relationship and spent the entire games on the same wavelength, which was completely independent. We didn’t feel a part of the Americans because of all the bad blood, and yet we couldn’t get too cozy with the Russians for political reasons. So it was always just the two of us—decked in our finest amid a sea of sportsmen.

  During team processing, Galina, in Russian, mocked the American team uniforms, saying that they looked like an exact replica of the jackets worn by construction workers in Moscow. Adding to the improbability that any of those clothes would touch my body, there were no uniforms available in my size. Instead, one of the officials handed me a jacket and pants with Day-Glo detailing in size extra-large, which sent Galina off on a stream of untranslatable and unprintable insults. She didn’t like the uniforms but wanted to be the one to reject them.

  After the team processing meetings, we went to find our accommodations. Newly built, million-dollar condos right on the water that had yet to hit Vancouver’s real estate market housed members of the Olympic teams during our stay. In the building reserved for the American team, Galina and I headed up to the sixth floor, and as soon as we stepped off the elevator almost had a heart attack. The walls looked like they were bleeding.

  One American team leader from Kansas had decorated the entire hallway with hundreds of small plastic American flags and red-white-and-blue streamers. It was very festive and rah-rah in a blinding sort of way.

  Galina and I split up as one of the coordinators showed me down the dizzying hall and around the corner to my room. The door opened to a gigantic apartment with magnificent floor-to-ceiling windows that boasted a view of the harbor as well as the planetarium, which had been taken over and decorated for Russia House. Huge signs saying “Sochi,” the Russian city hosting the next winter Olympics, covered the domed building. I found the sight incredibly cheerful.

  I grabbed the bigger bedroom because my roommate, Tanith Belbin, wasn’t going to be arriving for a few days, and flopped down on the bed, letting my pointy boots hang off the end. Soaking in my palatial surroundings (way better than the five-women-to-two-bedroom ratio Galina faced down the hall), I felt empty.

  My slightly depressed state was so different from that of my first Olympics, when I’d found myself bouncing off the walls with excitement. In the back of my mind a sobering thought loomed: my innocence was almost over. I would soon have to grow up and become a real person whose life isn’t planned out from morning to night. It was as foreboding as the harbor’s black, choppy water that I stared at from my bed. This Olympics almost certainly marked the end of my competitive career. My entire identity, the thing that I had breathed almost every moment of my life since the age of thirteen, would suddenly change. And yet I had no idea what lay ahead. What would I do without skating?

  That heaviness remained with me for the opening ceremonies. As I’ve said, when it comes to parties and anything where there’s an enforced protocol, I’m not a big fan. And there’s nothing more enforced than the Olympics’ opening ceremony. The American team members had a very specific costume we had to wear (explained in detail on a printed handout), and if you didn’t follow it, you couldn’t walk. While wearing the sweater, hat, pin, and other mandatory garb, I tried my best to make myself look like I wasn’t part of the masses as I gave my cheekbones extra definition and let my hair peek out from under the hat.

  Even though Vancouver hosted the first indoor opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics, all the athletes still wore sweaters, parkas, hats, and boots. It was the winter games, after all, and we had to look the part. But with balmy outdoor temperatures in the forties and fifties, it became excruciatingly hot with thousands of bundled-up bodies waiting in a concrete sweat lodge beneath the stadium. It got pretty disgusting.

  When they released us from burning up in the pen into a winter wonderland with fake snow raining down inside the stadium, I walked the whole lap, trying to soak up the spirit from the crowd screaming with enthusiasm. Once I finished the lap, I told a helper from the organizing committee: “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Back in my room, I took a bubble bath to clean myself up from my sweaty mess. Relaxed after a nice long soak, I walked out onto the balcony, which afforded a bird’s-eye view of the stadium and the opening ceremonies still going on. Sitting for a while alone, I could hear the roar of the crowd and see the ending display of fireworks that looked from a distance like nothing more than a child’s sparkler. When the cold began to penetra
te my clothes, I went back inside and spent the rest of the night doing laundry.

  The day of the short program, I felt so confident and so good it was bizarre. I had slept well and even taken a nap comfortably—shocking for a bad sleeper like me. But Canada is good for sleeping. I didn’t get sweaty palms doing my hair and makeup. I was so prepared for battle that nothing could affect me, not even the debacle of my practice the day before.

  I was the only one of the three American men who chose to do the late-night practice, which was published in the official schedule for everyone to see. The practices, like everything else at the Olympics, are an extremely formal affair because it’s required for at least one official and one doctor to attend whenever an athlete is on the ice.

  But when Galina and I got to the rink that night, we were the only ones there. After a few minutes I turned to Galina and said, “Nobody’s here.”

  It was a shocking oversight in a place where, for random drug-testing purposes, athletes can’t even leave a building without alerting an official.

  “Well, Johnny, you knew coming into this we’d be alone,” she said.

  I did know that, but it had never been so in my face. The night before one of the biggest performances of my life, my country couldn’t even show me the respect of coming to my last practice. I had done my part, giving great practices, interviews, and the publicity they wanted for the team. Still, they couldn’t even do the basics of their job when it came to me.

  As a sign of respect, I had worn to practice one of the jackets from the team processing—although, in keeping with my vow after the Nationals, this one didn’t say “USA.” But I immediately took it off and threw it on the other side of the boards. I was my own team, representing my fans and my country but not the federation.

  Galina told me to get on the ice. “Our doctor’s here,” she said, pointing to the Russian doctor standing right behind her. Two Russian officials, who had come for Evgeni Plushenko’s practice before mine, kindly stayed to monitor me.

  The next day at the competition I thanked them again for their help, choosing not to engage in any way with my own team officials who made no excuses for their absence at my practice. Yes, the Olympics could be a little like high school.

  Alas, the ridiculousness wasn’t over. As we warmed up, the organizing committee had decided to air mini bios of each skater, flashing portraits of us on a jumbo screen and broadcasting thumbnail sketches of our lives through the stadium. As part of the second to last group, I skated with five other big contenders. Everyone’s string of credits—like Brian Joubert’s titles that included world champion and two-time European champion—sounded formidable over the booming loudspeaker.

  And then came mine. I got on the ice and as my picture popped up, the announcer read: “Johnny Weir from the United States of America. Johnny speaks French and Russian. He has a TV show and enjoys fashion.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Why do I have that?

  While everyone else had their hometown and skating credentials, my description sounded like a fucked-up singles ad. Johnny loves Bordeaux and long walks on the beach. No mention that I was the three-time United States national champion, world bronze medalist, or Grand Prix final bronze medalist. Nope, my whole life of dedicating myself to this sport boiled down to this fact: “Oh, he likes fashion.”

  Galina was laughing when I got off the ice, and I’m pretty sure a lot of other people were, too. But nothing could shake me. I was ready to literally show my life’s work to the world.

  I took my starting position for my program, which I had titled I Love You, I Hate You, a fairly accurate description of my relationship to the skating world. The music by Raul Di Blasio started out slowly in a reflection of my classical side, and feeling the beauty of the melody, I nailed my first three jumps. After I went into a spin, the music flipped into a dirty rumba, where I could showcase a spicier side. I wiggled my butt and started giving major face, flying through the steps and actually having fun. I flirted with the audience and the judges, and before I knew it, the whole thing was over.

  After months and months of single-minded determination in the lead-up to the Olympics, my first moment on the ice was over, and it had been perfect. My astonishment gave way to excitement and a tremendous sense of accomplishment. Even Galina was happy. “Poker Face” came on the loudspeakers as I moved to the kiss and cry, and I danced in my seat to my celebratory anthem.

  Then my scores came up and they were anything but a celebration. I had placed a shocking fifth, and there were still six more skaters after me. That meant I could wind up in a stomach-churning eleventh place. What had I done? What was wrong? I thought my skating had been podium worthy, and there were only a few times in my career where my perceptions and scores had not matched up. Galina, sensing my quickly surfacing outrage, said between smiling teeth for the camera: “Of course they did this to you. Don’t be shocked. Just deal with it. The people love you and respect you.”

  The audience started booing and whistling. It was an incredibly harsh moment on the heels of such a feeling of triumph. While the fans may have loved and supported me, those in charge of the medals, and pretty much my value as an athlete, weren’t buying it.

  I ended up in sixth place after everyone competed in the short program. But it could have been a lot worse. Despite my poor placement, I still had a fighting chance for a medal. The pressure was on. In the long program, I would be the second to last skater in the entire competition, the opening act to Plushenko’s finale.

  But my scores were so low, I was barely ahead of people that had made mistakes and nearly fallen. It was a depressing hole to dig out of from a competitor’s perspective.

  I wasn’t happy. What Olympic athlete, even one as weird as me, doesn’t want to win a medal? Going into the long program, however, my main objective was no longer winning. How could it be? Instead, I wanted to take everyone watching me—in the building, on the judges’ panel, on TV at home—on a journey. I wanted to make them all cry, or at least feel something. Making people cry was the goal of my free program from the beginning and the first way I described what I wanted to do to Galina.

  The journey was my own. I had conceived of my long program, entitled Fallen Angel, as my life story on the ice. Throughout my career, there were high moments when everyone loved me, but the minute I fell, I plummeted to the lowest depths of hell. Soaring or broken, spinning or still, this was me for everyone to see.

  Right before I took the ice for my final Olympic competition, I certainly had enough emotion in me to share with every member of the crowd. In quite possibly my last moment in the spotlight, the stress and passion of the last thirteen years turned into pure energy; my life flashing before me faster than a boy on skates.

  “You can do this,” Galina said. “You’re the prettiest, the smartest, the strongest. Just let yourself do this.”

  Then there was just ice and the lights, and nothing else mattered.

  Every arena is very bright and has its own special aura. But in Vancouver it was as if I were skating in a bubble of light. Like a moth to a flame, the light, which I normally shunned, drew me in and made me feel gorgeous.

  Angelic voices sent me off on my final journey. The movements that I had honed in countless hours on the ice, and in countless more of deprivation off of it, carried me through the steps. Artistry took me to the end. Every person in that arena held his breath until the music and I stopped in a big flourish. As I lay upside down in a backbend, the ice became the sky, my trapped version of heaven.

  I remained on my knees for a few moments, forever the supplicant, but when I stood up, I saw people were also standing, as well as crying. I got exactly what I wanted. At that point it didn’t matter what result came up. It didn’t matter what place I got. It didn’t matter who was ahead of me. In that moment I felt like I was the Champion, the only one.

  The rest is history. I placed sixth overall to boos and cries of outrage, and Evan took home the gold, the first American to win the Olympi
c title since 1988.

  In sports, you have to come up with your own concept of victory, because you won’t always win. Yes, I wanted recognition in my sport through medals. It hurt when all the years I had spent falling, hurting, bleeding, and crying got chalked up to my liking fashion. In the last four years of my career, the problem of my appearing like a flake worsened. People never talked about my skating. Instead, they talked about the crazy things that I enjoyed or said. I’m colorful and entertaining, but that’s not all I am. As an athlete, I’m extremely competitive.

  But I was able to leave any bitterness behind for my last Olympic performance. For whatever reason—and I’m not a big believer in a personal god—I felt that God was with me and all I had done up to then was leading me to that very moment. Having been beaten down so many times, I proved one more time that I always rose back up.

  So this was no longer a competition. At least not for me. Obviously, realizing you aren’t going to win is a hard thing for an athlete to accept. But as a person you have to take the victories where you get them. And my victory was showing my face. The Olympic champion got to where he was because he worked very hard, as I did, and played by the rules, as I did not. People that win may not always win on their own terms. Looking out at the Olympic ice, I had the honor of having arrived there on my own terms.

  After the public and private outcries, shock, and ultimately acceptance, I left the stadium, and a chapter of my life, returning to my room in the quiet of late night. Tanith was already sleeping, so I tiptoed through the apartment and went into the bathroom.

  As I began wiping the makeup off my face, I had my first chance to really look at myself. The eyes looking back at me almost seemed like they belonged to a different person. When they started watering, I thought the makeup remover was the culprit. I tried wiping them with a tissue, but soon enough I realized these were tears of emotion.

  All I wanted to do was scream to release whatever was growing inside me. But I couldn’t because Tanith was sleeping. So I got into the big stone shower, and, sitting underneath the stream of very hot water, let myself yell and cry as loud as I wanted. I was in there for more than an hour because I couldn’t stop the flow of aggression, frustration, and happiness that I had pent up as a warrior.