Whitney

Whitney by Stephane Dunn | special to NewBlackMan
I'm at some once a year fancy gala –the kind of thing that makes you suffer through three inch heels and a bitterFebruary wind to see and be seen. Half into the spinach with arugula and pecanssalad with orange sesame dressing, a whisper builds and people begin to forgetthe discrete lap level text check and their holding the blackberries and i-phonesup close, squinting and reading, texting, and sighing then look up across thetable at a stranger formerly of little interest who looks back asking the samequestion: Is Whitney really dead? 
And soon, the Facebook posts and twitterfeeds confirm it, and I keep eating bread and butter and there are voices inthe background. There's a program and distinguished people are getting awardsand people are clapping, but in my head I'm screaming with clenched fists likeFlorida Evans: Damn, Damn, Damn! Whitney Houston is dead. I wantto scream it really and stop the program just for a second, just to confirm,something momentous has happened. The awards and the chatter go on and a movieis running through my head. 1978's Sparkle, a pretty, sultry brown girl startsto sing her way out of the ghetto with her little sisters. She falls for a userand an abuser and then she's on drugs and bruised and dead. The remakemarks Whitney's return to the big screen only Whitney doesn't play Sister butnow she's dead too.
By three am, I'm sitting on the samecouch in the same spot where I was sitting on June 25, 2009 when a part of myyouth passed away with a headline: Michael Jackson has died. And now, anotherheadline takes another part, my young adult life. I flashback to college, lastdance of the school year, end of April, and my heart is breaking. My firstadult love is crashing. I don't want to let go, but it's over. He asks me todance. I want to be close to him, but I want to say no. Whitney's singing: Wheredo broken hearts go, do they find their way home . . . and I know it's hisgoodbye, and we're not going to make-up ever again.
I see her glimmering like golden brownsand in the sun on album covers and on stage and I like her 'cause she's skinnylike me and utterly gorgeous and she can saaaaang. She makes me wish I couldsing too and I do [in secret] and when I'm struggling with classes and billpaying and just trying to find my way and make it to somewhere, I hum andsometimes wail, badly, alone, in my little efficiency apartment, . . . becausethe greatest love of all is happening to me, I found the greatest love of allinside of me . . .
I think about me and my sister friendsgoing to check out Waiting to Exhale and wearing out that soundtrack andlip syncing and I think about Whitney, sitting there pregnant and fine in thatvideo singing that Dolly song from earth to heaven and back and wondering, howcan the girl sing like that and then I glimpse myself cranking up the radio 'causethey're playing Whitney's song, and I gotta marvel all over again. And Iwill always love youuuu. I see me cringing every time somewannabe-the-next-Whitney dared take on one of her songs and arguing folkdown who don't know better. Nobody sung that national anthem like Whitney.Nobody. Period. 
It's after four am, and I keep thinking and remembering andhearing that voice, and how much it hurt over the years to think of her hurtingand not singing and people talking about her and judging and her becoming oneof those stories of the wayward star gone the way of drama and drugs. I nevergave her up. I claimed her survival and her triumph. I'm tearing up. CNN isplaying that damned too beautiful song . . . bittersweet memories . . . Ican't stand it – headlines, reflections, tributes, 'we'll always have her music'.I don't want it to be the same old story. It shouldn't be the same old story.
I want real talk about how folk can beprepared for being inside of fame and how they can be saved before they losetheir voices. I want new ways to protect and arm those ambitious geniusesagainst the snares on the way to fame and fortune. I want her not to belike those other too surreally phenomenal songstresses from Billie to Judy andAmy.
Whitney Houston dead at forty-eight.
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StephaneDunn, Ph.D., a writer and assistant professor at Morehouse College, specializesin film, popular culture, and African American Studies, and creative writing.She is the author of Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power ActionFilms (University of Illinois Press 2008) and her work has appeared in suchpublications as Ms., TheRoot, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and BestAfrican American Essays.