Review of Welcome to my World
Here is my review of WtmW! I read the whole thing in one sitting; I kept wanting to stop and savor the experience and save some for the next day, but I have no self control. :D I decided to go ahead and post this here because I know some people are unsure if they should buy it, in case it sucks or it doesn't "sound" like Johnny wrote it.
Just finished Welcome to my World, and boy, talk about exceeding my expectations! I mean, I know he’s a decent writer from reading his blogs, but writing a 262 page book is much more difficult than writing a couple thousand word blog entry. Add the fact that he wrote the whole thing in a matter of months, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was afraid that the publisher and editors may have taken liberties with the manuscript, cleaned it up because his writing style was informal or sloppy, and it would have “sounded” like someone else had written it entirely. But that wasn’t the case, thankfully. You can tell these are his words, because he certainly has a very distinctive way of speaking and by extension, writing (“my public life is such a constant peacock display of insanity”—that’s pure Johnny). I could hear his little voice in my head the whole time, which isn’t always the case when reading autobiographies. I only have a few stylistic quibbles (over use of subordination, in my opinion, and he describes his skin as “porcelain” once or twice too many) and problems I need to take up with his copy editor (Torturous is not a word! It’s tortuous, only one “r”!).
Anyway, Johnny is brutally honest, not just about the people in his life but himself; he’s very self aware, and unashamedly and bluntly discusses his shortcomings and mistakes. Like talking about the year before the Disaster in Dallas, when he went through his “rebellious” teenager phase and felt like he needed space, and figured he’d worked hard enough that he could afford to get by on talent alone for a while. But he also has a very—flowery, I guess you’d call it, descriptive style, and there are times when he veers sharply away from the strait talk into what I think of as “story mode”, where his voice gets sort of detached and the book becomes not so much about him as the things that happened to him. Sort of like his writing style is mimicking his personality, big and bold and over the top.
There was some confusion about timelines, since in the People article he talks about Kristi Yamaguchi being his inspiration to skate. Well, Kristi is the one who inspired him to go out and skate on the cornfield in ‘92, and Oksana in ’94 is what made him eventually choose figure skating over equestrian. It was…not hard, exactly, or sad, but just knowing how everything was going to end when reading about those early days was…emotional to say the least. His head has always been his biggest obstacle, and he may have been an amazing figure skater, but it took him a long time to learn how to be a competitor.
I’m one of those people who was more excited for him to talk about his childhood than his sex life, and little Johnny was just so precious (those baby pictures, omg!). I was really able to relate to him because I was also very introverted and imaginative. But he seemed to always have that self confidence and daring, which is pretty amazing, really. He doesn’t talk too much about his father (Johnny is always quick to say that both his parents were wonderful, but his dad doesn’t want to give interviews or be on the TV show, which is understandable, but I’m curious!), except to say that he was a demanding taskmaster and never let him leave things half finished, and that he built Johnny and Boz tree houses and forts, and was a supportive, loving dad. I love that Patti and John didn’t just love and support their kids, but Johnny says they respected him and his brother as well, and let them do things on their own and make their own decisions. They weren’t afraid to let their kids experience failure, because we learn from failure, after all.
Johnny does talk very frankly about his love life, and those of us (myself included) who were a little disappointed that Johnny “officially” came out will be pleased to know that he really doesn’t spend much time talking about it. Not that he glosses over it, exactly, but he’s very matter of fact about it, and doesn’t dwell on it overmuch—the book is mostly about his journey as a skater, not his discovery of his sexual side. And there is a lot more detail in the book about his reasons for not coming out than we got in the People article, and as I read those parts, I thought “I knew it!”. We were dead on, most of us, about our speculation over why he’s never said the words. First of all, that he didn’t really need to (and I will be amused forever at the image of Johnny and Paris discussing various things Johnny could come out as), second that it wasn’t anybody’s business anyway (and really stop to think about this: how would you feel if a bunch of journalists wanted to write articles and blogs about your love/sex life, no matter how vanilla it may be? Is that really something that you would want total strangers reading about? It makes perfect sense he would wait this long, and that he would dish about it in his own words, on his own terms), third that he was just plain stubborn, and if he wasn’t going to let the USFSA make him into the perfect little figure skater they desperately wanted him to be, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to let the gay community turn him into some sort of poster child/activist.
We also get the exact details of his breakup with Priscilla. It wasn’t comfortable to read, and Johnny makes it very clear that he was just as culpable as she was. He would deliberately schedule his practices early, and leave just as Priscilla arrived, and sometimes Priscilla would just walk out of their training sessions if she got fed up with him. I felt kind of guilty reading it—like I was eavesdropping or spying. And I feel a little badly for Priscilla, because it’s pretty clear that by the end of the ’06-’07 season she was willing to wipe the slate clean and try to make the relationship work, even after she began to realize Johnny was leaving her.
When he talks about when he began training with Galina, some things about his skating started making sense to me. I honestly don’t know much about figure skating; I’ve only been a casual, off-and-on fan of certain skaters. But even I noticed Johnny’s skating—his jumps, especially—changed after he started working with Galina. I used to wonder if he was just getting old and starting to loose his edge, because they just seemed, well, prettier before Galina. But Johnny says that Galina made him relearn all his jumps with “proper technique”, whereas before he just sort of winged it. Like I said I don’t know anything about the technical aspects of skating, but I’m not sure how I feel about how Galina changed Johnny’s skating. Some of it, I’m sure, is because of the ISJ, but I’ve read how Galina changed his choreography and tried to make him skate like strong man. I just wonder where Johnny would have ended up if he’d been able to train with Tarasova like he’d originally wanted. She really seemed to appreciate his style, not just his amazing talent (she gave him The Swan, after all).
And yes, I cried, after making it almost all the way through. The moment that got me wasn’t when Johnny talked about breaking up with Alex, or when he described his Olympic experiences, or being left off the World team in ’09, or the bitterness he feels towards the federation. It was reading about the reason he gave the famous press conference, which for me personally was when I really fell in love with Johnny.
My speaking out was not just for the gay world, not at all. At the Olympics, I had received bucketloads of hand-drawn cards from kids, and I thought if there is one out there like me, but who doesn’t have a supportive family and friends, then I owe it to him. So it was for gay kids, but also for the kids who like science if it’s not cool, or kids who like to stand like a flamingo with one leg tucked up underneath for hours, as I did as a child. My message was for all the “weirdos” of the world.
I am 25 years old, only a year younger than this man I absolutely look up to and idolize and adore. And if there was any way to tell him that his message isn’t just for kids, but for everyone, no matter their age or background, who have been told no their whole lives, who live in fear of being rejected or falling short, who always play it safe, I would tell him that my life is so much better now that I’ve heard his message, and seen how fearlessly he lives his life, how tenaciously he claws his way back from defeat. Johnny is a beautiful, flawed, inspirational human being, and everyone who refuses to see past his sparkly exterior, who want to believe that there’s not one ounce of authenticity in what he says and does, well, sucks to be them.
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