It's taken me a few days to really process what's gone on this weekend. I guess I've decided to sit down and write this, because I really need to wipe the slate clean, so I can get back to the real world on Monday. We've spent the last four days talking about the man, playing his music, watching his videos, and dammit, I want to hear about something else.
Of course, like everyone, I'm sad that he's gone. But then, at the same time, it's not even that big of a deal. I know that's contradictory, but Michael Jackson was a contradictory man. He was a "man in a child's body" who grew up to be a "child in a man's body," and all the while, he was a "shrewd businessman," who died $500 million in debt. The man just doesn't make any sense. So, neither do the first two sentences of this paragraph.
What I mean, though, is that the Michael Jackson that I grew up with had long since left us. The Michael Jackson I grew up with was a good looking black man with a pointy nose that a normal person could actually breathe through. Whatever left us on Thursday was not Michael Jackson. Let's face it, when a man changes as radically as he did, sometimes, you need a to invent a wild theory or two just so the pieces fall in place a little easier. So that's what I did.
I personally believe that Michael Jackson left us sometime after 1986, because he was still black when his hair caught on fire. "Bad" came out in 1987, and he was beige. He also appeared to be sexually frustrated, because this was the beginning of his intense phase, where he screamed a lot, mean mugged, and grabbed his crotch a lot. There was a lot of pent-up aggression there.
And we've all see the evolution of his face since. His nose disappeared, his cheek bones rearranged themselves, and he grew a cleft in his chin. Plus, he kept getting whiter. Now, the common theory is that he was getting a lot of plastic surgery, but I can't believe that any plastic surgeon could do all of that to a man's face and still have a license, which means he was either getting back-alley plastic surgery, or he was kidnapped by aliens and replaced with this poorly done replica.
I'm not making that up. I seriously thought all of this out, and shared it with others.
The thing that amazes me is how we accepted it. No one bought the second Lionel or the second Aunt Viv, but we swallowed this like we were appearing in a "Booty Talk" video. If I showed up at your house in a year, only I was white, with perfectly straight hair, no nose, and completely different facial features, would you really believe it was me? If so, I'm going to start getting random white people to pass themselves off as me, just to see what happens.
But that's all beside the point, because even if it was really him, the Michael Jackson we all loved was gone right after he stopped releasing singles from "HIStory." We didn't know the man anymore, because every time he was in the news, it was for something fucked up. The police were taking pictures of his penis, or he was accused of showing his penis to little boys, or he was paying off little boys, because they accused him of touching their penises. Everything about him after 1997 was sexually related, and let's face it, no one ever wants to associate "Michael Jackson" with "sex." He didn't even have the good sense to distract us with good music. R. Kelly could figure that much out, and he can't even read.
So, by this point, I wasn't even able to connect this guy to the zombie-dancing, gang-war stopping, spaceship-transforming superhero from my youth. That guy was awesome. This guy was a complete mess. He became that friend that you had to write off. The one that made you think to yourself, "I can't roll with them no more."
Sure, you'd been close friends since Saturday Morning Cartoons, but now, he's smoking cigarettes and stealing cars. Yesterday, he showed you that he's got a gun. With no serial number. He asked you to hold it for him until he came back and got it. The metaphor works if you replace "Saturday Morning Cartoons" with "Thriller," and all of the bad stuff with "accusations of child molestation," "going to court in your pajamas," and "continuing to chop off large portions of your face until your ethnicity is completely unverifiable."
But at the same time, you still miss that friend. You want them to do well, get better, whatever. You continue to wish them the best. And sometimes, you sit around and think about the good ol' days when you two were tight like skinny jeans fresh out of the dryer; when the other one was never too far away. Sometimes, you really miss that friend and wish that things could be like they used to be. Something will spark a good memory, and suddenly, you just want to go over to their house, give them a hug, and forget whatever split you two up to begin with.
That was Michael Jackson to me.
Like everyone, I was a huge Michael Jackson fan. Like everyone, I knew his songs, I tried to dance like him, wanted to dress like him, wanted to be like him. I loved Michael Jackson. And I still do. But after I certain point, I had to let him go, because I couldn't defend him anymore. I mean, who gets accused of child molestation TWICE?
There was a stage where I wanted to believe in him, then a stage where I wanted to just put him in a car, and drop him off at someone's grandma's house, so he could get right. All of that gave way to a sentiment like, "Yeah, that's my junkie/alcoholic/thieving cousin. Keep an eye on your purse." You just give up and accept that this is what he is now. The greatness that was once there is gone forever. He's enjoying his visit at the Extended Stay in "Crazy Town" too much to come back to us.
That's the reality, and that's been the reality for more than a decade. So when I look at it like that, I was kind of prepared for this. When that much crazy surrounds your life (ripping off the prince of Bahrain, trying to pass off white kids as his own, joining the Nation of Islam), the end coming up like that isn't that much of a surprise. We've had time to prepare for it. And I completely separated the being who left here from the person I grew up idolizing a long time ago.
I think the hardest part of it all is that, it's a huge change in my personal world order. Michael Jackson has been a fixture in the world for my entire life. For my entire life, he's been there as an omnipresent figure, and always as the biggest star in the world. I can't remember a time when I didn't know who he was. Hell, I can remember where I was when four of his videos premiered on MTV. There are muliple years of my life that I can't remember, but I remember the first time I saw "Thriller," "Bad," "Black or White," and "Scream" like it was yesterday.
Thanks to its bowel-loosening terror, "Thriller" was mostly watched from outside.
I have memories of him as far back as I can remember. Other than my immediate family, I can't think of anyone else I can say that about. And now, he's gone. The words "Michael Jackson is dead" still don't even look right to me as I type them. The words together look like gibberish, as if I typed, "flat Joe with leg phone these hi. Serendipity." My brain just isn't able to process the combination.
But I'm able to reconcile all of the feelings I have about him. Some people might think I'm a hypocrite for kissing his ass while I talked shit about him for so long, and I'm not taking back anything I ever said about him, because I still believe it. That doesn't mean that I wasn't a fan of his. Hell, Dave Chappelle said far worse than I ever thought up, and he was a fan, too.
Just because I'm a fan doesn't mean that I have to accept everything that he does. Just because I love his music doesn't mean "he didn't do it (whatever "it" may be)." Mostly because I believe that blindly following anyone is setting yourself up for trouble. Just look at the Republicans. But sometimes, you just have to take the good with the bad.
I hope that Michael Jackson has finally found the peace that he was unable to find in life. Goodbye, MJ. Thanks for making "Off the Wall," giving Travis a job, and for letting Sega make the "Moonwalker" video game. The "Smooth Criminal" long-form video was awesome.
And to the crazier MJ fans...don't try to kill the doctor.
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