Okay, Michael. What the fuck is going on? I don’t know, and I am afraid for you. I am a fan from back in the day. There were these girls who would hang out with me, and I spent weekends at their home in San Bruno, far from the battlefields of my parent’s bunker in San Francisco. They were mean girls, the kind who put salt on snails. Their names were Eunice and Genie, and I worshipped them, because they seemed to have a kind of power and mystique that sisters have, in their togetherness, which threw my loneliness into relief. They would make fun of me, but I was too unaware or overwhelmed with awe of them to understand what was going on. Later, sometime in summer camp, they decided that I wasn’t their friend anymore and filled my sleeping bag with dog shit. Eunice grew up to be fat, like in a scary and inexplicable way, not that fat is bad, but for her it spelled disaster, and she treated it as such. She became a shut in and an extremely nice neighbor. Genie had broken out with the worst adult acne in medical history. These are not concrete facts, but hearsay from my brother, who maintains a friendship with them both. But I digress.
How we loved Michael Jackson. We played that record more than it was reasonable, just taking the needle and putting it right back to the beginning. “Off the Wall” was a favorite and of course “Thriller.” He sang with the tenderness that a young girl needs to get by in the world. He sang the way that makes the little girls no longer afraid of men, or bad experiences with boys playing doctor in the woods by the old train tracks, the uncles who touched us when we were not yet women, and were not to be touched as if we were. Michael Jackson eased the relations between the sexes, and the inappropriate actions of adults against children at the very sound of his voice. If the allegations against Michael Jackson are true, irony is the true lord and master of all that is. His androgyny built in me a kind of trust, later reinforced by the relationships I would have with a few very important gay men, who parented me and made me who I am today. Michael Jackson was the comforting manchild, who would hold your hand, who you could laugh and sing along with. I remember the song, “Human Nature.” It seared me from the inside out, and the softness of his falsetto whisper, that was beauty, unbearably sad, and “four walls won’t hold me tonight.”
“If they say why? Why? Tell them that it’s human
nature. Why? Why? Do they do that way?”.
Oh my God, remember the video for “Thriller?” It was seventeen minutes long, directed by John Landis, fresh after the accidental helicopter beheading of Vic Morrow and two Cambodian children during the filming of “Twilight Zone,” weird factoid being is they say that the footage was used in the actual film because it was such a good take, but that is a rumor and I don’t believe it as much as I believe there is a ghost boy in “Three Men and a Baby” – and it had the disclaimer in the beginning that made sure that it was not in any way condoning the occult. He was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I guess that was an important thing to put in there. It was an amazing video, but I didn’t really associate the undead as part of the occult. To me the occult is Alistair Crowley and the Thelema and Dick Cheney, but I guess zombies are associated with it somehow. I wear my Thriller jacket everywhere, and people freak out on me, as if to say “What are you thinking?!” The only people who do not get upset are Black people, who recognize, touch the coat, laugh, call each other over to ask me about it, where I got it, if it is old, what my favorite song is, what their favorite song is. I know the Thriller dance. It is a really good dance, with a lot of pointing and the head bobbing back and forth. The video is hilarious because the zombies dance along with Michael and keep up just as well as they can, but their limbs are disintegrating and falling off. Back in the day, Michael gave me strength to go on. That kids hated me, that my family really didn’t want me to be in the world, that they would let molesters touch me in their presence and say nothing rather than ‘lose face,’ that I sometimes went to school with black eyes that I didn’t explain, that I almost never slept from age eight to about sixteen, that I was told over and over by my father that I was ugly and therefore would have to develop a good personality to overcome my handicap. Michael Jackson was there to sing to me, and “we gonna ride the boogie. I want to rock with you all night dance you into the sunlight. and you know that love survives.”
He helped me survive because I was gonna rock with him someday. I got older, and so did he. He changed. The hyperbolic chamber, the Elephant man skeleton, the plastic surgery, the nose that was not there anymore, the race erased by the vitiligo, the disease that made him whiter and whiter and made him look more like Lesley Ann Downe every day. Michael – what happened? You were there for me. I don’t know if I can repay my debt to you, to what your music gave me. I hope Liz Taylor is there for you. I hope that monkey is still around, or is he dead? I can’t remember. I don’t know what you did to those children. I ask nothing, I accuse nothing. I only say that you helped this child to grow up into a woman, to be fully alive, to not only survive, but to thrive. Thank you for that. I dare anyone now to go listen to “She’s Out of My Life” and not cry like a bitch.
[1st Verse]
She’s Out Of My Life
She’s Out Of My Life
And I Don’t Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry
I Don’t Know Whether To Live Or Die
And It Cuts Like A Knife
She’s Out Of My Life
[2nd Verse]
It’s Out Of My Hands
It’s Out Of My Hands
To Think For Two Years She Was Here
And I Took Her For Granted I Was So Cavalier
Now The Way That It Stands
She’s Out Of My Hands
[Bridge]
So I’ve Learned That Love’s Not Possession
And I’ve Learned That Love Won’t Wait
Now I’ve Learned That Love Needs Expression
But I Learned Too Late
[3rd Verse]
She’s Out Of My Life
She’s Out Of My Life
Damned Indecision And Cursed Pride
Kept My Love For Her Locked Deep Inside
And It Cuts Like A Knife
She’s Out Of My Life