Michael

Recently, someone asked me to try to remember the girl I was at 12---to get in touch with that time. In order to do that---and I really wanted to put the effort in---I started listening to Jackson 5 songs, the soundtrack of those years for me. I can remember vacationing in Florida with my family in seventh grade and how I barely took off my Walkman the entire trip, flipping my Jackson 5 tape from side A to B and B to A, over and over and over again.

When I hear those songs now---specifically Michael's voice---I remember the longing that I felt while listening to it. It wasn't the fun and dancing of ABC that got to me, but the melancholy of Never Can Say Goodbye and I Wanna Be Where You Are and Maybe Tomorrow. I listened to that boy, that soulfulness---to me, the very definition of true soulfulness in music---and felt tortured that I could not know him; that I could not be his friend; that I could not love him. I couldn't stand that there was a boy my age that could ever feel like that and now he was a man and I had missed my chance. He sang how I felt. To hear a young voice---not a crooner or Broadway songstress---sing so achingly, made me feel understood if only when my headphones were over my ears.

So, in the years that followed, I did what I do: I obsessed. I bought as much of his music as I could, I hung his posters on my walls, I read biographies about him, I carved the words "Michael Jackson" above "Thriller" on the stool I made in Wood Tech. (This stool has moved with me to every apartment I have ever lived in and I use it daily.) I learned about his eccentricities (then, it was just the stuff of hyperbaric chambers and Elephant Man bones) and about his lost childhood. I read about the abuse he endured from his father and how he hated his face. And when people spoke of his strangeness, I thought about how much sense he made, this sad Peter Pan. Of course he was broken. But I would listen to Man in the Mirror or Heal the World or Will you be there and understand how he tried to make sense of it himself; how he tried to unbreak or dreamed of being unbroken. I would listen to those songs and hear that soulful boy. And in his music, if only for the duration of a five minute song, I am sometimes able to sense that longing, hopeful girl.

So through the plastic surgery and skin lightening and sham marriages and baby danglings, I forgave him. With the molestation, I chose a different route: denial. I was 12 when the accusations started piling up. Then, I honestly thought that this man child was just not a sexual being and his motives for surrounding himself with children, misinterpreted. I'm not sure what I believe now. (Even Holden Caulfield, another boy whom I was tortured not to know, ended up an old man who preyed on the innocence of young girls---at least as I read it.) As an adult I understand that even Peter Pan gets boners and that repressed sexuality never ends well. Still, the extent of MJ's fame and wealth opens him up to exploitation and that's always been enough of a plausible scenario for me to hang on to him.

Which is why, when he announced earlier this year that he would be doing a limited number of farewell performances in London, I felt that I had to go. Tickets went on sale at 7am in London so I had to set my alarm to get in the cyber-line at 3am our time. The next day, huge crashes of the Ticketmaster website were reported, leaving thousands of people ticketless after hours of waiting at their computers. My tickets were bought and paid for only 20 minutes after they went on sale. It was meant to be. It was written. I would see Michael Jackson before I died. (No thought was given to his dying.) To cross this off my life's to-do list would not only be a thrill for me as an adult, but it would also be an act of honoring dreams born from a child. I think it's important to do that once in a while.

So a London trip was planned around this concert. And then there were rumors of cancer. And then shows were canceled and a nagging fear that the concert would not be, was rising in my chest. But when Dan called me and told me that Michael Jackson had suffered a cardiac arrest I didn't give it much thought. At this point, I have a pretty high boiling point when it comes to Michael Jackson scandal. He was ill again, I thought, and just moved on.

An hour later I was driving home, the convertible top down, enjoying the first sun I'd seen in weeks. A Jackson 5 song came on and, having totally forgotten the quick conversation regarding Michael's cardiac arrest (indicating the extent to which I thought it was just another headline), I instead thought of the assignment I had been given to get in touch with that 12-year old girl. So I listened and felt the sun on my face and the cooling evening air and I thought about that innocent yearning and Michael Jackson's haunting voice. Before I made it home, Dan called to tell me that reports were coming in saying he was dead. During this phone call with Dan, another friend beeped in and yet another texted me. Now I knew something was going on. When I got home, I sat in my car unable for a minute, to even move. For that minute I felt the deep throb of sadness. Inside, I saw the words "Michael Jackson dead at 50" on the television. I sat down on the floor in front of the screen and watched.

There were still some unknowns then and I was convinced it was a hoax. A publicity stunt. Dan and I talked about how if anybody was going to fake his death it would be Michael Jackson. The hospital hadn't commented yet. This wasn't real. Dan and I went out to dinner, our first chance to sit outside at our favorite local spot. Dan made a toast to Michael Jackson and I thought it was so strange---the night, his toast. I ate a poached pear salad and a cup of chowder and felt uncomfortably full. I couldn't finish my glass of wine. I looked at the sky and heard the birds and thought, "Is this really the night of Michael Jackson's death? No, that's too big a thing for this night."

We got home and the news crews were still "waiting for comment." I did a yoga video and held lunges longer than I normally would have and liked the pain. I reached and pushed for physical strength. "I need to move," I said to Dan.

If you had told me that after hearing about Michael Jackson's death I would go out for dinner and do a yoga video, I would have thought otherwise. It still doesn't really feel like how I spent the night. I got out of the shower and saw Jermaine Jackson explaining the details of his brother's death and only then did I know it was true.

Now, I am numb. I have been watching hours of news coverage and video clips and celebrity call-ins to Larry King. I have been listening to my iPod. It is almost 3 in the morning and I don't want to go to bed without feeling this but my thinking mind tends to shut down the feeling sometimes.

So many friends and loved ones called or wrote or texted and that's been the most real part of this. I thought I was crazy for feeling so affected but the concern from everyone felt validating, if not bizarre. I did really love him, the notes confirmed it. Like it was a relative or something, they apologized for my loss. I never knew him. I believe that you can feel connected to an artist, that you can even grieve such a loss, but I don't know that this is that.

I just received a text that one of my oldest friends gave birth to a little girl tonight. And, like that, perspective shifts. Real.

Real is not what I am watching on TV right now. I need to turn it off. Real is what I felt listening to my Walkman lagging behind everyone else on my family vacation.

Still, I wonder what that concert would have been like and I am deeply saddened that I will never know.