NYFW note: Johnny's collaboration with Adrienne Landau,
revealed in her show yesterday at the conclusion of Fashion Week,
is stunningly gorgeous! See tons of fab photos here! The HAT! The COAT! The EVERYTHING!
Love all his designs!
Johnny prepares to perform his "Fallen Angel" free skate
at the Vancouver Olympics, one year ago today,
I sat on the couch with my two kids, wearing a small beaded good-luck bracelet that I had ordered from a friend I had met on the US Johnny's Angels site. The bracelet said, "Team Johnny" and "Go USA."
About six weeks earlier, a Twitter friend had retweeted a link from someone else with this message: "You HAVE to see this!"
It was Johnny's Poker Face exhibition from Festa 09.
I had never seen anything like it.
I was utterly transfixed the very first time I watched. And every time after that.
I remember thinking, "OMG. THIS is what skating should be. THIS is performance art. And THIS is what watching skating should always feel like."
I had to know more immediately. I Googled him and found his Wikipedia and the US Angels website, a treasure trove of photos, videos, and competitive history.
And then I realized who he was. I remembered him from the 2006 Olympics. I remembered thinking at the time that there was something very different about him, that he outshone all the other skaters. I also remembered feeling bad for him that his free skate didn't seem to be the performance he had wanted to give, and that he took a lot of unjustifiably harsh criticism for it.
But now, four years later, it was as if my whole world had been completely shattered by a deliciously dangerous, ethereally erotic beauty and passion and light and brilliance that could not be contained by the misplaced boundaries I had known all my life.
I watched the US National Figure Skating Championships for the first time ever in January 2010, and was thrilled that he made the Olympic team. Now I had a real reason to watch the upcoming Winter Olympics, which, until that moment, I had considered to be just an intrusion into my normal TV schedule.
Leading up to that week in February, I read everything I could in the Angels archives, found his Facebook fan page and Twitter account, and started chatting with a few other fans. And also began to dimly grasp that I was having an experience that was very very far out of my ordinary life up to this point.
I realized that God was showing me something really important. And that I should pay attention.
I realized that Johnny was very likely a gay man, though he remained publicly circumspect about the issue at that time—but thus someone that all my family and my church associates would have judged as less than a man, and really, less than human. The kind of person that every one of my pastors had preached against my whole life. The kind that all of my relatives would whisper darkly about, like that odd little man who had been one of my mother's English professors. They would speak in innuendo and code, shaking their heads with just the slightest hint of revulsion. The message was very clear.
And I realized how very very very wrong they had all been.
This man was beautiful, inside and out. To me. And, more importantly, to God. He was everything that God had made him to be, bursting with being exactly who he was, created with an extraordinary gift and doing everything he could, with almost otherworldly focus and determination, to fulfill the promise of that gift. And, along the way, being everything else God had made him to be: Kind and petulant, loving and arrogant, gentle and obnoxious, sensitive and insensitive, forgiving and grudge-holding, and just very very flawed and real and human.
Born this way. And so amazing.
I talked about it with my kids, about how I was undergoing this spiritually transforming experience brought on by figure skating, of all things, and how I was discarding these ridiculously misguided and hateful beliefs like ill-fitting clothes, to be stuffed in a garbage bag because they were not even good enough to donate, and that I was feeling like I had been completely broken to pieces in order to be rebuilt, for which I was truly, humbly grateful, because everything we had been taught up to this point was just WRONG. And they listened intently and then, with great kindness and patience, said, "Mom. We always knew all this. We were just waiting for you to catch up."
So we three sat on the couch that night, now waiting for his long program.
The other skaters seemed to take forever. I was so nervous for him I couldn't eat or drink. I felt that he had been terribly underscored in his short program, but I had so much hope for this performance. If he was as brilliant tonight as he had been on Tuesday, clearly he would be a champion.
And then finally.
With the first few notes of music, his first few gliding moves, I was transported.
About halfway through, I became vaguely aware that tears were streaming down my face.
And then, the finish—that incredible pose, and his reaction, his soul laid bare on the ice, and the roar of the crowd as they stood up for him.
And I thought: "When God looks at my life, I want it to be as beautiful to Him as Johnny's skating is."
And then.
The scores.
The crowd roared again, this time with overwhelming disapproval.
Suddenly the mood in the entire coliseum grew restless and dark.
And then Johnny stood, acknowledging the support, but gesturing—with almost unbearable grace and dignity—for everyone to please stop.
I whispered to my kids:
"See that?
Now that.
THAT is a real man."
And a true champion.
Thank you, Johnny, for this amazing journey. Thank you for teaching me to be fully myself, which is really the only thing God wants any of us to be, but I didn't get it until you. Others may win medals, but you win medals and you win at life. I can't wait to see where you'll go next. Whatever you choose to do, wherever your path takes you, I am a fan always.
~ with love from Binky
Fallen Angel
To see an angel, you must see another's soul.
To feel an angel, you must touch another's heart.
To hear an angel, you must listen to both.
~ anonymous
When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings,
nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove;
but we know their presence by the love
they create in our hearts.
~ anonymous
OK, I know it's a few months away, but you can get tickets NOW to see Johnny (Same weekend as the Annually Awesome
And yes, a VIP package is available!
"Buy my single,'Dirty Love' via iTunes.
Tell all your friends to as well. The more copies sold
takes me one step closer to making a video! №1!"
THE WORLD NEEDS THIS VIDEO
IN THE SAME WAY THAT IT NEEDS AIR.
You know what to do.
Please buy the song from Johnny's website, or just click the "Buy" button on the player
at the top of the blog!
Hey, Welcome to My World also is available
as an eBook! More info on Johnny's website!
Yes! You can own a fine art print of Johnnyperfect for any/every room in the house! Prints of artist Peter Jurik's "Showtime!" are available for purchase from his website.More info here!
