The Last 24 Hours of Whitney Houston’s Life

Illustration by Angie Sullivan

I think we’ll all remember where we were, and what we were doing, the moment we learned that American pop diva Whitney Houston left her earthly vessel and was carried up to heaven in the arms of angels. I was sitting next to my lover in a darkened theater in Manhattan, enjoying a pornographic film festival. The movie had just ended and, like every other moron in the place, I reached for my phone because it had been a whole hour and a half since I had checked it for important, life-altering transmissions.

A text from a friend who I have listed as “Lindsey Lesbo” said, “WHITNEY HOUSTON DIED,” just like that, in all caps, and then another friend Tweeted at me saying that the minute she heard the news, she immediately thought of me and how I pretty frequently enjoyed calling out “BOBBY B!” whenever I think someone deserves a beat down (in my best Whitney-on-crack voice, of course). Yeah, I just mentioned crack, but I refuse to be like every other soulless bastard on the internet who’s been going on for the last 24 about crack this, and smoking glass dicks that, and oh, “Whitney smoked crack out of her butthole once.” So tacky. So wrong. Let’s please let this diva RIP in peace. Double the peace for Whitney. Actually, triple it and sprinkle a bit of ground-up rock on top. That’s how much I love her.

In honor of the only black lady who made more money singing Dolly Parton’s most-famous song than Dolly did herself, this is a real life, 100-percent true recollection of the last 24 hours of Whitney Houston’s life, as told to me via a dream I had after banging a couple grams of rock and passing out this morning at 5 AM.

February 11, 2012, 9:12 AM:

“Ohhh damn, I sweat the bed so much I just can’t even believe it,” Whitney says to the ceiling as she wakes up in her lavish but way too brightly lit hotel room in Beverly Hills. She’s been busy the past few days doing voiceover work for her upcoming film Sparkle. The director keeps complaining that her voice sounds phlegmy in many scenes. Whitney thinks he’s full of shit.

“Ohhh damn, the director of Sparkle is full of shit. Big shit!” Whitney says into her vanity mirror as she dabs the beads of moisture from her brow, chin, and chest with a number of Kleenex tissues. “Whitney Houston does NOT have phlegm. Anybody will tell you that. Phlegm is whack! But you know what isn’t whack? Crack.” She pauses, picks up her pipe, and take a sweet, sweet hit. The rest of the day is filled with picking at scabs, taking apart a gold metal watchband, peering out the window, and prank calls to Kevin Costner (“WILL YOU BE MY BODYGUARD, BITCH? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”)

Later in the evening, Clive Davis hosts a very fancy pre-Grammy party a few floors down from Whitney’s room, and she is very much looking forward to it. She had sent her assistant to Forever 21 and a few other popular clothing shops to pick out an assortment of stylish, tasteful, but youthful party attire in breathable fabrics. Whitney plans to try them all on and make the hotel guests on her floor vote on which outfit they like best. No official invites were given to the hotel guests on her floor, Whitney plans to just run out and yell, “Hey! How does THIS MOTHERFUCKER look?” at whoever happens to be standing around or walking by outside her door after she’s dressed.

Whitney has some time to kill before the party, so she sits down at the desk in her room and powers up her laptop to tweak out on the internet for a bit. She checks her Facebook, accepts a few invites to some Grammy afterparties, and then updates her status with “God has blessed me with a clear mind and a full stomach today. I gotta take a poo-poo! LOLOLOL You know Whitney’s so crazy.”

She attempts to answer a few work related emails, but then remembers that she has 25 assistants and forwards them on with the message “Answer these. Too sweaty. Ya hear?”

Before putting her computer away, she catches a Yahoo News blurb saying that Maya Rudolph will be the host of SNL next week. This makes Whitney very paranoid and distressed because she knows that Maya Rudolph has made a name for herself as “the comedian who makes fun of Whitney Houston being crazy and on crack.”

“OH OH OH OH OH OH OH!” Whitney hollers out while doing a series of body rolls. “I will not watch that Show-whoa! Will. Not. Watch. It! Watch watch with the what what ya’ll.”

Somehow ten hours have gone by and now Whitney has to get ready for the party. She tries on outfits, watching out the peephole in her door for people to near her room so she can run out and ask them how she looks. The consensus seems to be that she looks best in a salmon colored pantsuit with white leather ankle boots. She lays the outfit on the bed and then goes into the bathroom to draw a bath. And then she smokes crack and dies.

@WolfieVibes