Every Little Step: My Story (10 page)

When she got into the room, Whitney brought out some champagne for us to drink. It was the first time I ever saw Cristal. We drank the champagne, talked for a while, really enjoying each other’s company. I liked being around her. I didn’t try to sleep with her that first night. I wanted to approach this situation differently than a normal conquest. But when I went back to my hotel room I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Over the next couple of months we would talk on the phone maybe every other week. We were both incredibly busy. I was still on the
Don’t Be Cruel
tour while Whitney was working on her next album, which when completed was called
I’m Your Baby Tonight
and featured productions by LA Reid and Babyface. After the success of
Don’t Be Cruel,
everybody wanted to work with those two guys. After
I’m Your Baby Tonight,
which was the top R & B album of 1991 on the
Billboard
charts, Whitney wouldn’t release another album for eight years—though she did do some groundbreaking work in 1992 on the soundtrack to her movie
The Bodyguard
.

Around this time, Eddie Murphy invited me to the set of
Harlem Nights,
the movie he was filming with comedy legends
Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx. I had gotten pretty close to Eddie in the last few years. He had been a friend of New Edition since our early days, when we first started going out to LA. Eddie was the first major entertainer who took us under his wing. He’d invite us over to his crib, where he’d barbecue and we’d play basketball and hang around. We were all from the East Coast, we were all young (though he was about eight or nine years older than us), but he had already become a superstar. We got along really well with him.

I knew that Eddie had dated Whitney, so I thought I would casually ask about her. He didn’t know why I was asking about Whitney—probably because he was so busy asking me about Janet. It was during a break in the filming when he made his way over to me. He had just finished filming a hilarious scene in the movie where he apologizes to Della Reese for shooting her in her pinky toe, after she had whupped his ass. While Della Reese is in the kitchen making a sandwich, Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor persuade Eddie to apologize to her. All the while, Foxx and Reese are yelling at each other, exchanging funny put-downs filled with every curse word in the book.

After filming opposite Della, Eddie came over to me, pleased to see me on the set. So I took the opportunity to ask him about Whitney, trying to be as casual about it as possible. We were kind of huddled in the corner. My brother and my security guy were nearby.

“She’s cool,” he said. “She just smokes too much weed for me.”

“What? She smokes weed? I didn’t know that,” I said.

Whitney Houston was too wild for Eddie Murphy? That sure opened my eyes. But instead of chasing me away, it actually made her more attractive.

Eddie leaned in and asked me what Janet was like.

“She’s good people,” I said.

But Eddie wanted more.

“What about that ass? Is it as soft as it looks?” The man had his priorities.

I nodded. “Yeah, it is.”

Eddie leaned back. His mouth dropped open a little bit and I think he even shook his head.

“Damn.”

That’s all he said. That’s all he needed to say. And he had heard what he needed to hear.

I wasn’t trying to sneak behind Eddie’s back or anything with Whitney. I just wanted to gauge his level of interest in her. Was he in love with the woman? Did he see a long-term relationship with her in his future? Clearly he didn’t. I had heard what I wanted to hear too.

Soon Whitney started popping up at my shows in different cities and countries. Unannounced. It was almost like I was being stalked, but in the best way. She booked a show at a festival in Japan, a Dick Clark event, because I was headlining the show and she wanted to be there. And I’m pretty sure she took less money than she would normally have gotten.

In my camp, Whitney’s unannounced arrival was greeted
with about the same level of enthusiasm as a venereal disease. Not only did I have my baby LaPrincia with me, but her mother, Kim, was also there, as was my son Landon. But Whitney didn’t seem to care. She made it perfectly known that she was interested in me; she didn’t pull any punches. On the other hand, Kim didn’t care that it was Whitney Houston—she would have been upset no matter who it was. In addition, I was dating one of my dancers at the time. So when Whitney breezed in, I could see the sadness on the dancer’s face. It was all in her eyes. I felt kind of bad about that—but certainly not bad enough to send Whitney away.

As for Kim’s face? All I saw was anger. Blistering, hot anger.

Usually everybody hung out in my dressing room, eating my food, and I usually didn’t care. But this night I made everyone go to their own dressing rooms, and I had Kim put in a different room altogether. So when I got offstage, Whitney was in my dressing room by herself, waiting. It was all pretty crazy and, frankly, awkward as hell for me. I introduced her to LaPrincia, who was still a baby. In all honesty, Whitney wasn’t too interested in the baby. She was there for me. She tried to play with baby girl a little bit, but LaPrincia wasn’t having it. It didn’t take long before she said, “I want my mommy.” So I had her taken back to Kim. I wasn’t yet thinking that Whitney would one day be the mother of my child, so I should pay attention to that sort of thing. I was still young. I was still playing.

Whitney and I hung out after the show. We still hadn’t slept together, but the sexual tension was crazy. She followed us back to the hotel. As I knew would happen, I had an argument with Kim about Whitney. I had previously told her I was in love with Janet; now Whitney Houston had popped into the picture.

“Okay, I can’t take this!” she yelled. “I can’t believe you would just put it in my face like that.”

“But I didn’t know she was coming,” I tried to explain.

There really wasn’t much I could say. I had already told her that she and I couldn’t be together because I was in love with Janet. But because we had so much history, we had a baby together and she was still spending a lot of time with me, I could understand if she was hoping that things might change between us. Now, all of a sudden, into the scene sweeps the biggest pop star on the planet? And an incredibly beautiful one, at that? I could see why she was so angry.

After things ended with Janet, they accelerated with Whitney. I knew the time had come for us to take it to the next level.

It happened in London. That was the place where we got to know each other on the most intimate level. Whitney made another unannounced visit, calling me the day she got into town to let me know she was coming to my concert. After the show, I was pretty excited about what might happen that night. When I got back to my hotel, I found out that she had taken the entire suite on the top floor. I was in the
suite right below her, but hers was bigger, fancier. Hey, this was Whitney Houston.

When I walked into her suite, from the very first second everything was magical. We talked. We kissed. We played the piano together. We drank wine. It was heaven. It was wonderful.

Sex with her was different. She caught me by surprise, because she initiated everything. That never happened with Janet or most of the other women I was with. She was the aggressor, but in a smooth, ladylike way. I was playing the shy guy at the time; I didn’t want to push up on her.

As we played the piano together, our hands touched. Then we shared a long, soft kiss. It was like a scene straight out of
Casablanca,
some old romantic flick. I knew what was about to happen. My thoughts at the time? I’m embarrassed to say they were maybe not the most, uh, gracious.

Damn! I’m about to fuck Whitney Houston!

We found our way into her bed, where the passion was intense, incredible. From the very beginning, it was clear that our sexual chemistry was explosive. Obviously I had been with a lot of women up to that point, but this felt different, deeper, more intimate and hotter than it had been with any of the others—even Janet. From that moment on, at least in our minds, we were together.

Whitney started telling me her private thoughts, letting me really get to know her. I started doing the same. She told me how Randall Cunningham, the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, was trying to get at her, but she said he was
too much of a punk about it. She told me about a lot of the other dudes who were trying to get at her, but they didn’t know how to go about it. They didn’t know what to do or what to say. They assumed she would be interested in them because of who they were.

I think Whitney was taken with me because I wasn’t what she expected. I was supposed to be this big wild and crazy guy. The bad boy. But that was my persona onstage. Offstage, I’m a totally different person. She was surprised by how humble I was. She expected raunchy but instead she got gentle, courteous, gracious, gentlemanly. Always that. I was taught that by my mother and father.

I have always been truthful with every woman I’ve been with. If they can’t handle that, well, that’s another story. But I believe honesty is the best way to conduct a relationship. That’s why I had been able to tell Kim about Janet. I knew she’d eventually come around and would understand, even if she wasn’t happy about it.

After that night in London, it seemed like Whitney and I were together all the time. She would even come out on the road with me on tour sometimes. Up to that point, Ralph Tresvant still didn’t believe I was dating Whitney.

“Nah, I don’t believe you!” he said when I told him about our relationship.

“You watch!” I said. “She’s coming by tonight.”

He saw her when she came by my hotel room to surprise me and I didn’t answer the door because I was in the shower.
Ralph came upon Whitney pounding angrily on the door. He sure believed it then.

But Whitney still wasn’t eager to go public with our love affair. It wasn’t like we were sneaking around, but we would spend most of our time together alone in hotel suites, or in fancy restaurants where we could have some privacy. It can be difficult for celebrities to conduct a relationship if they don’t want everybody all up in their business.

I think one of the reasons Whitney wasn’t too keen on going public was because she was still sort of stringing Eddie Murphy along. I remember him inviting me to the premiere of
Harlem Nights
and Whitney having to juggle both of us without Eddie knowing what was going on. We spent the early part of the night staring at each other across the room. I still remember what I was wearing that night—a maroon suit and a white fedora. Yeah, I was killing it. Finally Whitney and I saw an opening and we snuck away to a secluded corner for a little while to talk. Eddie was oblivious to everything. All these years later, I’ve still never had a conversation with him about those crazy days.

A FEW WORDS FROM RALPH TRESVANT

At first I didn’t believe him. Bobby and I were sitting around one day, just talking, and he started telling me he was dating Whitney Houston. I knew he had just stopped dating Janet. Now he was telling me, “I’m really seeing Whitney like that. We’re tight now.”

“Get outta here, man!” I said.

“For real!”

But I still didn’t believe him. I think my response was, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

Whitney was a whole other level to me. I just couldn’t see it. It didn’t seem like Bobby Brown could pull that. But then again, I knew she was an East Orange girl. Still, I didn’t really know that side of her. In retrospect, maybe a part of me didn’t really want to believe it. I think that might be what was really going on.

But I found out the truth one day when Bobby and I were staying at the Waldorf Astoria in New York with the rest of the guys. We were on tour together, Bobby Brown and New Edition. We were all staying on different floors. I was going to pick up B; we were planning to move around the city, shop, look around. I went to his floor to get him. As I turned the corner, walking toward his room, I noticed three people in the hall. One was sitting on the floor and one was standing nearby, kind of pacing up and down the hall.

I thought they were maybe some fans or something.

“Excuse me,” I said. “What’s the problem here? Y’all can’t be here in front of my man’s—”

Before I could finish the sentence, the one who was pacing turned around to face me. I saw it was Whitney.
Oh snap!

“Yeah, I know that motherfucker is in there!” she said. She started banging on the door again.

I’m thinking,
Aww man, the same day I’m about to find out his relationship with her is real, he’s about to mess it all up
. I
thought he was about to lose her. But luckily when he finally opened the door, he wasn’t in there with anybody else. He had been in the shower. I was relieved. I really thought I was going to see the beginning of the relationship and the end at the same time. When he didn’t open the door, I was thinking,
He must have known she was coming.
But she had caught us all off guard. And that’s how I found out he was really dating her.

When I saw how pissed she was, that told me a lot. It showed me she was scared. And that showed me the connection. And then he was pissed that she was pissed. I knew my girl wouldn’t get pissed at me for not opening the door unless she cared about me. I saw that what they had together had moved beyond casual dating.