The music scene in 2001 was just as fickle and topsy-turvy as it had always been in the 30 or more years Barbra Streisand had been a major player in the pop culture scene. Even though she hadn't garnered a chart hit in over two decades, her legions of dedicated fans still hung on every move she made.
Why she was easing out the back of her long sleek limousine and walking up the red carpet of Los Angeles's Staples Center, to attend this year's Grammy Awards, was more about her celebrity and need to promote an upcoming Pay-Per-View special than it was about any contribution she had made to the recording industry during the past year.
Even with the dozens of other younger and more hip artists assembled, when Barbra strode up the walkway in her $5,000 custom made evening gown, the blinding flash of the paparazzi focused on her put most of the other 'in' celebrities to shame.
Strutting up the plush red carpet at a snail's pace, waving and smiling as if she was completely at home with the crush of attention, Barbra thrust her chest out with pride, realizing she had the world by the tail. As night fell on Los Angeles and Bab's and her entourage disappeared inside the Staples Center, the 58 year old singer was on the top of the world.
Shaking hands and making small talk with the litany of other celebrities littering the hall, an hour and a half before show time, Mrs. Streisand's mood took a sudden downturn when she arrived at her dressing room.
Looking at the door of the room Barbra's agent told her was going to be reserved especially for her, when Bab's saw the star on the door, a gnawing deep seeded bitterness billowed inside her belly.
"WHAT IS THIS!" Barbra yelled out, flailing her arms out in an exaggerated show of disgust.
The glitter laden name of Jennifer Lopez, accentuated by a very large and shiny star, stared Barbra Streisand directly in the face as she stewed noticeably.
Award shows were old hat for the aging crooner, so she totally understood how mistakes and misunderstandings could come about. It wouldn't have been so bad for Barbra if it wasn't for the internal embarrassment she felt, getting mixed up with such a complete no-talent like Jennifer Lopez.
"Look..wait..wait," Barbra heard her agent stammer when he sensed his client's outrage. "Just wait right here Mrs. Striesand..I'll be right back..I'm going to straighten this right up," he added, taking off in a blazing dash.
All of the sudden alone in a sea of much younger, plastic people, Barbra felt entirely out of place. Fuming, she tried plastering a fake smile across her face, waiting for her agent to return after clearing up the confusion.
Standing her ground, trying her damndest not to be run over by the cattle like flow of people going in both directions, the opened sore of Barbra's insecurity was infected further when she realized the surrounding clamor was not intended for her.
All Barbra kept hearing echo in her head was "Ms. Lopez...Jennifer..Hey J. Lo..."
It hit Barbra Striesand like a club to the stomach that none of the attention was for her, all she was to the passerby's hounding Jennifer Lopez, was a well dressed lamppost standing in front of the younger singer/actress's door.
Feeling as if Mt. Vesuvious was about to erupt inside of her, Barbra simply couldn't bring herself to stand out in the hall any longer. Wrapping her dainty hand around the knob to Jennifer Lopez's dressing room door, Barbra twisted it and was a little surprised when the door opened for her. Before she could even gather her thoughts, the brutish passerby's nudged Barbra through the unlocked entrance, into a situation chalk full of severe uncertainty.
Once Barbra was able to stabilize herself and scan the room, she felt as if she stumbled into some sort of giddy sorority house.
Three of Jennifer's backup dancers were converged around the row of makeup mirrors in various stages of undress, looking back at the older singer in the doorway as if she were something that had just fallen from outer space.
"Who the fuck are you?" one of the dancers asked bluntly, causing the Grammy veteran to visibly simmer.
Gazing quickly to her right, Barbra saw several of Jennifer's male dancers off to the side of the cramped room. Bab's instinctively clutched her purse to her chest when she saw them licking their lips sarcastically as they sized up the immaculately dressed, classy looking visitor.
"Who the fuck am I?" Barbra muttered to herself.
"You should know who the fuck I am," Bab's hissed back at the twentyish dancers. "I am the one that is supposed to be here..IN THIS dressing room. Now all you..little..little..litle tramps..get your stuff together.... AND GET OUT!"
A chorus of, "What?", "Who the fuck do you think you are?", "Shut up you old Bitch!" ,rained down on Barbra from the male and female dancers as she stood her ground, disgusted by the lack of respect and dignity she was being shown.
Guided by the power of knowing she was never wrong, Barbra angrily strode up to the group of Latin girls that were mocking her, and stood right in front of their faces, re-affirming her order to leave.
"I said this is my dressing room..GET UP AND GO.....NOW!!" Barbra hissed in her rudest New York accent.
"Shut the Hell up you old Skunk," one of the Latin girls immediately replied, burning a hole through the Jewish Diva's frame with her fiery midnight eyes.
Barbra felt her anger burn to the point of nuclear fusion as the girl, that was over half her age, succinctly put her in her place. When Barbra's internal restraint gave way under the deepest amount of disrespect she had ever been subjected to at such an event, she rared back with her well manicured right hand and prepared to slap the saucy young dancer right across the face.
As Barbra Striesand rared back, looking strangely like Nolan Ryan getting ready to throw a fastball, she could see the young girl's expression freeze from the sudden expectation of getting hit. Just as Barbra allowed her right arm to spring forward, out of nowhere, something grabbed her arm like a grappling hook, preventing her from following through.
Barbra instinctively pulled away from the clutches of what was holding her from behind, preventing her from inflicting the damage she had intended to do. Hyperly, Barbra spun around and confronted the asshole that had stopped her.
What Bab's saw was the same, all too familiar, face that had been on every edition of Entertainment Tonight, MTV and news programming for seemingly 6 months, the glaring face of Jennifer Lopez.
Mumbling as if she had marbles in her mouth, Barbra simply couldn't string the words together to enunciate her futile anger.
Keeping her vice-like grip clamped around Barbra's upper arm, Jennifer stood there staring straight back at the angrily blushing older woman, wondering why she was in HER dressing room, trying to slap one of HER dancers.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Jennifer hissed in her own jagged accent.
"Let go of me," Barbra hollered, trying to twist herself free like an animal held in a trap.
Unaccustomed to feeling like a caged rat, every nerve in Barbra's being quivered with vile wrath as she summoned all the strength in her aged body to squeeze away from Jennifer's cinched fingers.
When Bab's finally succeeded in ripping her arm free, for just an instant, she felt vindicated. When everyone in the room froze in hushed silence and fixated their eyes on her, Barbra felt a strange sensation of vague uneasiness wash over her. Looking back at Jennifer behind her and the wide eyed expression covering her face, Barbra felt as if time had stopped. When the cool air-conditioned air filtering through the dressing room gradually felt too close to her skin, the Jewish diva hesitantly looked down and discovered why the room had suddenly come to a hushed standstill.
Seeing the black and red sequined material of her dress sleeve still in Jennifer's hand, Barbra numbly looked down to see that elegant evening gown had ripped like nothing more than cheap K-mart garment when she had desperately tugged herself free from Lopez's clutches.
Realizing that her heavy, sagging tits were in clear view, tucked tightly into a lacy black support bra for everyone in the room to see, Barbra felt her eyes water with tears of shame as the young girls and guys in Jennifer's entourage looked at her half naked body with petrified glee.
Barbra felt an overwhelming desire to run as fast as she could out of the dressing room but cold, hard reality kept her feet planted right where they were. Knowing if she did make that mad dash, all that would be waiting on the other side of the door was every media outlet in the free world, all the industry bigwigs, as well as too many life long friends to count.
"So you really think this is YOUR dressing room...huh," Bab's heard a male voice from behind her insinuate.
"Just how bad do you really want this room... Bitch?" Barbra heard Jennifer's familiar voice add.
Before she could even find the fortitude to formulate a response, Barbra felt Jennifer's hands dig into the remaining material of her expensive party dress, and with one fell swoop, rip it all the way down to her quivering ankles.
Clad in nothing now but her black bra, matching black panties and thigh high hose covering her goosebumped legs, Barbra clasped her arms loosely around her torso in an attempt to conceal her near nakedness.
"MMMHHHMMM..so you really think this room belongs to ya...Huh...you washed up has been," Barbra could hear Jennifer hoarsely whisper down, her hot breath causing the hair on the back of Bab's bare neck to stand on end. "If you want this dressing room so bad Bitch..then you can have it..just get down there....AND EARN IT!"
