Robyn Crawford and Whitney Houston met as youth counselors at New Jersey's East Orange Group Heart -- and fell for one another.
Courtesy of Robyn Crawford
Whitney Houston was the right face for the MTV-dominated Nineteen Eighties, “a glamorous showgirl formed by a Svengali” – the highly effective Arista Information producer Clive Davis.
However she additionally possessed a deep, darkish secret: she was a closeted lesbian, writes writer Gerrick Kennedy in his new ebook, “Didn’t We Nearly Have It All: In Protection of Whitney Houston” (Abrams Press), out Tuesday.
Feeling stress to evolve to her strict spiritual upbringing and the norms of the time, Whitney hid her sexuality from the general public until her tragic dying, which occurred 10 years in the past this week.
“As a result of her music didn’t match squarely within the bins anticipated of a Black lady making music within the ’80s, she was seen as not Black sufficient. She was ridiculed. Brandished ‘Whitey’ — and endured infinite hypothesis on her sexuality,” the writer notes.
Raised in Newark, NJ, Whitney was underneath the thumb of her mom, Cissy, a religious church member of Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church and a member of the gospel singing clan, the Drinkard Sisters.
The Drinkards performed the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” acting at black venues all through the South. Cissy was a star in her personal proper — singing backup to the King himself, Elvis Presley, and Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.
At the same time as a bit of lady, Whitney felt totally different. She was a tomboy and bristled at sporting the frilly garments and hair ribbons chosen by her mom. She most well-liked denims, t-shirts and operating observe along with her two older brothers, Gary and Michael.
The three youngsters floated between the houses of family members when the mother and father had been working and Cissy was on the highway. Quickly, Whitney was swept up in Cissy’s all-consuming need to push her into the singing enterprise.
“Cissy knew Whitney was destined for greatness and she or he may get her there. She rode her exhausting at church and inspired her little lady to sing alongside to the data she and Aretha made. She didn’t take no shit,” Kennedy writes.
Cissy’s solo profession didn’t take off and though she was in demand as a backup singer, the recording trade was fickle. Whitney’s cousin, chart topping R&B singer Dionne Warwick, additionally helped encourage the younger lady’s vocal expertise, seen because the household’s ticket out of poverty.
On the similar time, Whitney was exploring her id. In the summertime of 1980, when she was 17, she launched herself to a shocking, slender 19-year-old, Robyn Crawford, after they had been each working as youth counselors on the East Orange Group Heart in NJ.
“It was a bond that shaped nearly instantly, and so they had been inseparable that summer time. Should you noticed one, you noticed the opposite,” writes Kennedy.
Crawford, Whitney’s first shut buddy, confidante and companion outdoors of her brothers, had Whitney’s again and was “unyieldingly loyal.”
With Crawford, Houston may very well be the tomboy who most well-liked smoking Newports, getting excessive and cursing.
Within the Houston lounge that very same 12 months, Whitney and Robyn got here collectively. “Their lips met, sure by all that had been unstated between the 2. That first kiss was lengthy, heat like honey,” Kennedy writes.
“It was free and sincere – loving and tender,” Robyn wrote in her 2019 memoir, “A Tune For You: My Life With Whitney Houston,” after many years of silence. “We each needed to the touch and discover one another, and we did till we fell asleep in one another’s arms.”
Collectively that summer time, they sunbathed on the Jersey Shore, went to homosexual golf equipment, and made out in a rental automotive earlier than being instructed to maneuver alongside by a cop.
Robyn drove Whitney to membership reveals, Whitney attended Robyn’s school basketball video games. They additionally trekked to Harlem to purchase a dime bag of weed and rating cocaine, Robyn wrote.
“They had been companions in a standard sense however by no means had an actual dialog about labels — lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, girlfriend,” Kennedy writes.
“We had been pals. We had been lovers. We had been the whole lot to one another. We weren’t falling in love. We simply had been. We had been one: that’s the way it felt,” Robyn wrote in her ebook.
In mattress, they plotted songs Whitney would sing — and their future.
In that very same summer time of 1980, they bought an house collectively and Whitney promised to take Robyn wherever she was headed, Kennedy writes.
However when whispers of the girl-girl relationship reached Cissy’s ear, she had a match and tried to maintain the 2 from even strolling subsequent to one another in public.
‘We had been pals. We had been lovers. We had been the whole lot to one another.’
Robyn Crawford, on her relationship with Whitney Houston
The church and the document trade had been each so homophobic, Whitney knew the affair needed to finish when Clive Davis gave her a document deal. She broke the information to Robyn.
“You understand how I really feel about you and we are going to all the time have that,” Whitney instructed her sweetheart, Kennedy writes.
Along with her 1985 debut single, Whitney Houston was “on hearth out the gate.” Her first album soared to No. 1 in 1987 and by the early Nineties, she had 10 No. 1 singles.
The love affair with Robyn was over the summer time it started however Whitney made her an government assistant — “a task that expanded over time,” Kennedy writes.
That position did nothing to quiet the rumors. When Whitney needed to fly Robyn out to hitch her at a black radio conference in 1985, radio DJs and the tabloids caught wind of it — and the chatter was deafening.
“Was she homosexual?” they needed to know.
“The general public concluded that Whitney was a closet lesbian and she or he and Robyn had been star-crossed lovers doomed by the oppression of society and Whitney’s spiritual household,” Kennedy writes.
When the Washington Publish requested the singer concerning the nature of her friendship with Robyn, she snapped, “She is now my worker however we’re nonetheless the most effective of pals.”
Whitney ultimately turned to Bobby Brown, a singer from the tasks of Roxbury, Mass., who preferred the funk of James Brown and Earth, Wind and Fireplace, and shaped a bunch referred to as New Version. His “loud, ghetto fabulous” black music made him an R&B king and ladies threw their panties at him on stage.
Their partnership made sense: Bobby wanted to class up his unhealthy boy picture and Whitney wanted to flee the homosexual rumors. They tied the knot in 1992.
“White America checked out Whitney and Bobby and noticed a pop princess and an R&B thug…The princess and the frog, that’s how we talked about their relationship. That’s the picture that lingered for everything of their 15-year marriage,” Kennedy writes.
And but, 4 years after they wed, Katie Couric requested Whitney about Robyn and the homosexual rumors as soon as once more. This time, she responded awkwardly.
“This wasn’t her world,” she stated of Robyn. “I introduced her into this insanity. She goes, ‘Why am I the goal? What did I do?’
“I stated, ‘You’re my buddy…You play basketball. They assume you’re a person.’
“She’s a rattling good basketball participant. She will beat any man there may be. I like it,” laughing nervously.
For 15 years, Robyn stayed shut by as Whitney’s government assistant and buddy.
It was Robyn who went to Cissy nervous about Whitney’s cocaine dependancy again within the ’80s. Cissy confronted Whitney who brushed it off and instructed her mom Robyn was simply overreacting.
However her drug abuse was rampant and spiraling uncontrolled.
On February 11, 2012, at age 48, the star was discovered face down in a water-filled bathtub on the Beverly Hilton Resort.
The forensic toxicologist reported on the time she was “acutely intoxicated from cocaine.”
Seeing the bruise on Whitney’s left brow, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht believed it was an unintentional drowning and “this woman fell into the water, she was unconscious, useless or dying when she fell into the bathtub.”
On the time of her dying, a brown wig was tightly affixed to her head and she or he was sporting dentures. (Tooth decay is widespread amongst routine drug abusers.)
Robyn, now 61, didn’t talk about her romantic historical past with Whitney for practically 40 years till she printed her memoir.
Ultimately, she discovered stability with Lisa Hintelmann, 49, an government director at a expertise search agency. They married and later adopted twins.
“I spotted that I wanted to avoid wasting myself,” Robyn wrote in her memoir.
Of her time with Whitney, she stated, “Sure, in the long run it was tragic, however the dream and the rise had been stunning. I owe it to my buddy to share her story, my story. Our story. And I hope that in doing so, I can set us free.”
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