Last night at the Viper Room was a real turning point for me. I was elated and was feeling extremely close to myself… I’m happy, I realize that, even though the guilt is major… I realize how much better my life is without [my abusive boyfriend]. How free I feel. It’s wonderful. How much time I have to take care of the important things in my life. Even though I am exhausted today… my heart burns with so much love for my life. And so it is.
…
It’s too bright and patient
For us to wallow.
So let us be grown
Let us all blossom and sit
Under the Apple tree.
Sometime in 1995, I joined a show at the House of Blues called the Choreographer’s Ball. All the choreographers in Los Angeles and beyond would put on a huge, beautiful dance production. It brought a real dance culture to Los Angeles, which at that time was not a thing. I remember performing to “Black Coffee” and a Prince songcalled “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” It was a wonderful chance for me to express myself through dance, something I’d done all my life, but not always to an audience.
Through friends I ended up meeting Robin Antin, a dancer and choreographer. We hit it off—she even moved into my house for a while—and out of that friendship came the Pussycat Dolls. Robin had been toying with creating a mixture of Bob Fosse,The Rocky Horror Picture Show,and burlesque, with some fake striptease thrown in for good measure.
But mostly it was Fosse, Fosse, Fosse.
Initially there were no singers, and we didn’t even have a name. We’d dance to anything from Eartha Kitt to the music fromKiss Me, KateandSweet Charity.I described it back then as “a cross between Ann-Margret and James Bond girls.” We would head to the dance studio I’d built in my house and work out the choreography. The Pussycat Dolls weren’t taking any clothes off, but we were giving the illusion that we were taking something off, layers upon layers leading to more layers. It was suggestive in all the right ways.
To me, dance wasn’t sexual: it was a spiritual expression of pain and glory and all the things in between. It was church. And I certainly never thought of myself as sexy. In my early twenties, we’d all go to Flaming Colossus, a club on Bonnie Brae near MacArthur Park in a seedy corner of downtown Los Angeles. (My drink of choice those nights was Southern Comfort because that was Janis Joplin’s drink and I was obsessed with her, and still am.) One night, some guy said to a friend of mine, “God, Christina is theunsexiestperson I’ve ever met.” Why my “friend” thought she should pass this on I’ll never know, but once again, a random comment from somebody I should have been able to ignore played directly into my insecurities. I was on the cover ofPeople’s 100 Most Beautiful once, and Iremember coming across a comment that said I wasn’t beautiful: I was just chosen because I’d had cancer. Those feelings ran deep into my relationships and into the bedroom.
Not one time have I looked in a mirror—even all done up—and thought,Oh, I look good.Not once, never, swear on my life, from the first day I could think until writing this sentence. Sure, I’ve seen okay pictures, but I’ve always put it down to the hairpiece or the lashes or the lighting or the airbrushing. It’s never me.
Over the years I have scrawled multiple phrases in lipstick on my bathroom mirrors so I don’t have to look at myself. I read the words instead. If I fail and catch a glimpse, I feel sick. I’ve lived my whole life onscreen, but if I ever catch the shows or movies on TV, my familiar internal monologue of “Fat, ugly, old” pushes its way in.
But dance… dance takes me out of my head and into my body. It’s about being me.
Eventually, my friend Shannon, the manager at the Viper Room, thought that the Pussycat Dolls would be a perfect fit for her Thursday speakeasy night. Thursdays at the Viper already had a fun Prohibition-era feel—DJ Dean R. Miller had been playing early-twentieth-century music every Thursday for months, and folks would dress in fedoras and suits—it was gangster, but in the original meaning of the word. Shannon told Johnny about the Dolls, and he invited us to audition for a Thursday-night spot.
While he smoked his smokes, we did our thing. I remember dancing to the Eartha Kitt track “My Discarded Men.” The Dolls werevery old-school Fosse, making people think that they were seeing something risqué, when they were really seeing only the magic of dance. We had rhythmic gymnasts in our group and ballet dancers on point. There was one girl named Sia who would do her entire performance on point while holding a cigarette, taking her leg up high above her shoulder.
“This is so fucking cool,” Johnny said when we were done. “This is why I opened this place. This is so Thursday.” And that was it. He loved it. We were part of the Viper Room’s Thursday-night entertainment for the next decade.
We quickly became a phenomenon. It got so big that we would feature guest stars like Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera. Back then we were still lip-synching for fun, dancing to 1940s songs. So many women wanted to be part of it. It was empowering. They wanted to do new things, unexpected things. They wanted to feel something that they had never felt before without it being blatant or for someone else. And then the next thing we knew, we were at the legendary Roxy nightclub, and we were selling out shows everywhere we went.
That’s when Jimmy Iovine told Robin that the Pussycat Dolls should really be a singing group, not just a dance group. And Robin, the businesswoman that she is, took the idea and ran with it.
We’d gone from playing the Viper Room to the Roxy. If you can create a singing group that becomes number one on the charts, hell yeah, Robin, go for it. I’m proud of her. I really am.
But I was also disappointed. The dancing had subtly changed—suddenly, there was a lot of butt, if you get my drift. The line to see us would be around the corner. I remember saying to Robin during one Christmas performance, “There’s a lot of booty-touching goingon.” Things were off, but empire’s got to empire. Robin arrived places in a Bentley now. Good for her, but it wasn’t what I’d originally been a part of.
But hey, man, we got “Don’t Cha” (“Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me”). This was never a sentiment I thought of for myself, but Nicole Scherzinger and a few OG Dolls dominated. How cool is that?
By my mid-twenties, things were changing everywhere I looked. Being free and single and doing your thing was one thing but going to a club most nights was something that didn’t entirely appeal anymore. Many of us left and never went back.
My life was altogether way too complicated by my mid-twenties for me to even think much about the Viper Room. I was all over the place, veering from dating to tending to my mother’s health to God, of all things!
February 15, 1996
Wow, it’s been a long time since I took the time to reflect. Since the last entry I’ve been through a lot. Men, shit, etc. I’ll start with the name list. Derek, Richard, Ryan, Dennis, Reo, Ashley… Once again I might have gotten myself into a bit of a drama. Not too bad, though. Oh yeah, Troy NYC New Year’s. There might be one more. Although I can’t really remember.
…
Mom went through a lot with the cancer but she’s okay now. I found God and it’s the best thing to ever happen to me. AGAPE! My life, my breath.
I take too many classes, do too many things. I think I’m happy. I don’t really know anymore. My house is beautiful. Can’t think.
