Bobbi Kristina Finally Getting Life Support

As of this date, 21-year-old Bobbi Kristina, the daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, is on life support and, according to the press, her family have gathered around her hospital bed to say their last goodbyes. Such a short and troubled life. It's not known yet what happened, whether suicide attempt or accident.

Firstly, this article does not set out to denigrate Whitney Houston's talent, nor her legacy as one of the most spectacular singers of all time, but a comment on the sad circumstances of her personal life and the resulting emotional fallout of her daughter. Over the past few years there have been indications that Bobbi Kristina was following down the crackpipe-strewn path of her parents, including pictures of her sucking from a bong at a friend's house, snorting lines of coke, and then evidently again using cocaine before her mother's funeral. It's no surprise. In her short life, she had poor role models, Whitney wasn't a role model, nor was Bobby much of a father figure. Kristina had little emotional security and was a lonely and sad child.

We're all familiar with Whitney and Bobby's gritty storyline - their years of drug use, his incarceration for DUI convictions and her stints in rehab. Some suggest it was Bobby who introduced Whitney to drugs, but in an interview with Oprah, Whitney's brother Michael Brown asserts that it was he who first introduced her to drugs. 'You gotta understand at the time ... the '80s ... it was acceptable,' he told Winfrey. 'It's painful ... I feel responsible for what I let go so far.' It's also suggested that Whitney married Bobby to put to rest the rumors that she was having a lesbian relationship with her best friend Robyn Crawford. Nevertheless, two years after marrying Bobby, she was pregnant with Bobbi Christina.

The television reality show that Whitney and Bobby starred in, Being Bobby Brown, debuted in 2005 and lasted for nine painful episodes. For the first time, the blinds were open on the chaotic life of the Brown family and if there's any doubt as to why Bobbi Kristina is in the hospital now, toss it aside. Loud, abrasive, rude, drug-addled parents, constantly moving and trashing hotel rooms, lavishly spending, shouting, arguing, cursing or making out and heading to the bedroom for crack. Bobby is a self-centered, hyper-active, alcoholic lout who draws his family into the public limelight at every opportunity, yearning for the fame and recognition of Whitney's magnitude, while Whitney hides behind scarves and sunglasses and shoos people away. Brown even goes so far as to mention sticking his fingers up Whitney's ass 'to dig out a doodie bubble,' while Whitney responds 'that's black love.' Could any show be more excruciatingly bad? In many scenes, a cringing and embarrassed Kristina can be seen trying to make her escape with a handful of her father's money to help balance out the crazy. In another scene, while Whitney and Kristina are shopping for clothes for Kristina, Bobby comes crashing into the shop, knocks and breaks the arm off a mannequin and creates a large kerfuffle yelling for someone to 'COME AND FIX THE ARM ON THIS THANG!' A crowd forms to take pictures as Whitney and Bobby start arguing. Finally, Bobby reels out of the store pissed off at Whitney's lecture. 'FUCK THIS, Y'ALL! I'M GOIN' TO THE BAR!' The episode ends with the focus on Kristina looking wistfully off into the distance, despondently hugging her teddy bear.

In 2009, Whitney admitted in an interview with Mother Confessor Oprah Winfrey that she lived in her pajamas for seven months while doing drugs and Bobby, in another interview, said that he was an alcoholic and also addicted to heroin. Al Bowman, Whitney's chauffeur for years, has spoken recently to say he witnessed Bobby and Whitney get wasted almost daily in the back of the limo, but a pivotal point for him came when he saw them smoking crack cocaine in front of a five-year old Kristina. Bowman also took Whitney trolling into the dark neighborhoods where she met up with her crack dealers where estimates have it she blew millions and millions of dollars on her habit. That Kristina was able to survive the chaos of her parents' relationship is nothing short of miraculous.

In 2012, soon after the death of Whitney, the Houston family were again filmed in another reality show, The Houstons: On Our Own which thankfully was cancelled after one season and which thankfully did not include Bobby Brown. Mostly, the show centered around Bobbi Kristina's erratic behavior, her self-medication after the death of her mother, and her turbulent relationship with her adopted brother/boyfriend Nick Gordon. Bobbi, after watching these tedious television shows, it's obvious why you didn't want to be here anymore.

A Narrow Escape - Perverts in Montreal

 ten years old

Are we living in a world with more sexually deviant men than we ever realized? Or have we just taken the shade off this subject?  Sexual deviancy was never a topic of conversation before the 80's.  However, over the last several years many sexual scandals have been unearthed - the Roman Catholic Church; the Franklin Affair; Jimmy Savile; Dolphin Square; Ian Watkins; the Jerry Sandusky scandal; Jeffrey Epstein; and Bill Cosby - all vilified in the press. This is the tip of the iceberg - there is a prolific number of perverts and baby snatchers out there, too many to mention.

As a child growing up in Montreal, Quebec, I was flashed numerous times by naked men in cars who were handling their wankers as they sat waiting for me to walk by, either by myself or with girl friends. It happened so many times, in fact, I thought it was a normal part of growing up. However, one day I was almost kidnapped. This is the story of what happened to me and my friend Elizabeth when we were ten years old:

One morning, Elizabeth and I decided to go get an ice cream at the shopping center which was located beyond a large field behind my house. We biked through the field until we reached a service road that ran behind the shopping center.

To get on to the road, we had to stop and lift our bikes over a metal guard rail that ran parallel to the road for about 50 feet. Nobody was around. Elizabeth lifted her bike over and rode away towards the shopping center,the front of which was down the service road and around a corner, about 50 feet. I was about to mount my bike and follow when a light blue delivery truck stopped. I looked over as the driver's door opened and a short, bald man with a pot belly climbed down and walked towards me.

“Hey,” he said as he started towards me. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me and turned to see if anyone else was there. When I turned back I froze. The zipper to his pants was open and bobbing up and down between his fingers like a flagpole in a Fourth of July parade was his penis. He fondled it and continued towards me. He doesn't know his dink in his hand! I thought. I froze and stared at his penis.

“Can you tell me where Morgan's is?” he said, as he stood three feet away. I gawked at his penis and remained silent.
“I asked, can you tell me where Morgan's is?”
“It's over there,” I said, pointing up towards the other end of the road.
“Okay, thanks,” he said, moving towards me. Suddenly, I gripped the handlebars of my bike and ran as fast as I could around the corner of the shopping center to where Elizabeth was waiting.

I told her about what happened but we went into the drugstore anyway, ate ice cream, bought comics, bought some gum and wandered around the other stores. An hour later, we decided to go back to Elizabeth's house.

“There he is.” I pointed to the blue truck in the parking lot across from our bikes.
“Where?” she asked. I pointed again and as we looked, he waved.
“Right there. The blue truck. That’s him! He waved!” Elizabeth looked and he waved again.
"What are we going to do?" I said.
"I don't know. Let's wait until he goes."

We waited and returned half an hour later. He was still there, sitting in his truck.

“Let's go really fast,” said Elizabeth.
“I don’t want to go.”
“I have to go home.”

Elizabeth got on her bike and I followed her around the corner of the shopping center to the guardrail where she lifted her bike over. I started to lift my bike when the blue truck drove around the corner and stopped in the same place as before. This time, he quickly got out of his truck, looking around as he hurried towards me, his penis in his hand again.

“Hey,” he said. I stared at his dick, my knees shaking.

“I want to show you something. I just have a little thing I want to show you,” he said, coming towards me. Just as he reached for my elbow, I dropped my bike and leaped over the guardrail and ran back towards the corner of the shopping center. He ran after me.  I stopped and crouched against the wall of the shopping center, putting my hands over my head as he loomed over me.

Suddenly, we heard “Hey! Hey!” coming from the field and we both looked up. Some older boys were running towards us,waving their arms. The man hesitated before running back to his truck and raced off.

The older boys ran up, out of breath, as I told them what had happened. 

Back at Elizabeth's house, the police were there asking questions and I didn't know what was more excruciating, the pervert with his dick in his hand, or answering the questions that the policeman fired at me.

A few days later, we were taken by a detective to downtown Montreal. 

I got in the car with the him and we picked up Elizabeth. It was a rainy night and the wipers scraped back and forth across the windshield as we sat silently in the front of the car. Finally, the detective parked the car in an underground parking lot, leaving his headlights and windshield wipers on as he  pointed over the dashboard to a vehicle.

"Is this the truck?" he asked. I pulled myself up and looked over the dashboard.
"Yeah, that’s it.“  My heart pounded. Elizabeth nodded.

I looked at the license plate and thought how amazing it was that Elizabeth had thought to memorize the number before she ran away, something I would never have thought to do.

The detective drove us back home. The house was still dark when I went into the living room; everybody had gone to bed except for my mother.

“Did you see the truck?“ she asked.
“Yeah, we did.“
“Okay, get ready for bed. It‘s late.“

My father didn't mention it again, nor did my mother, but I suppose they knew what happened in the end to the man in the blue truck. There were times when I started to ask my father what happened, but every time I did the image of that man making time with his penis loomed up and stopped me. The whole thing was just too embarrassing for any of us to talk about.