
My favorite new designer handbag, fourfour, brings up the latest Whitney Houston picture and all of the debate, and, as things too typically do it brought me to thinking about my own life. Once upon a time there was a friend with a roommate that we all really liked, at the beginning. In fact the two had been introduced by me. But one day the roommate, upon return from a trip from one of the meth-states, abruptly started smoking crystal. He dropped, like, 50 pounds and wore the same clothes perpetually. Eventually that crystal-head phase started of doing eight guys an hour and never taking a shower. (Hey, that rhymes!)
We were all sort of close at one point, but being the distanced New Yorkers we are, nobody talked to him about it. It was sort of decided that he was a bright boy and that at some point he would wake up and realize that his life was pretty pathetic. There was this deeply inbred desire for me to sit him down and say, "You smell like ass and poppers and it is freaking people out in all the wrong ways," but it never happened. And now, that guy, a talented, if a touch self-involved, sweet spirit is ...
fine. Yeah, you were expecting dead, I know, but he met this guy, fell in love, got off the pipe and drugs in general and he's fine.
So should we give Whitney some trust and some love and hope she'll come back to us? Do we just write her off as a lost cause? Has she truly learned that loving yourself is the greatest love of all? Does she just want to dance, with somebody? Or maybe she just doesn't photograph well without makeup. Is it just some racial thing?
Cameron Diaz acts the fool in public, had a regrettable reality show, and needs the love of an entourage to keep her photographable and no one is saying she is on the pipe.