My Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson made me eat soap.
I was 8 or 9 years old at the time and an intense fan. We were vacationing in a cabin on Lake Wapello in southern Iowa. There was a TV in the cabin and I was watching it while eating a breakfast of Lucky Charms. We only had Lucky Charms on vacation, so I was on top of the world. Then, whoever was on TV interrupted this beautiful moment by making some kind of Michael Jackson joke.
It had become a pretty popular thing to do at the time ("I pledge allegiance to the flag that Michael Jackson is a ..."), even though every family in America had a copy of "Thriller" and recognized him as an entertainment genius, the type of star who made it seem perfectly reasonable to scream, cry and wet your pants at the very sight of him.
My tear ducts and bladder were never tested, though, because I never got the chance to see him in person. In fact, we were too rural to even have MTV so my parents had to drive me to their friends' house half an hour away just so I could watch the "Thriller" video.
Lack of cable access didn't make me any less of a fan. I had the posters, T-shirts, books and Jackson 5 tapes. In 1988, I wore out the rewind button on the VCR copying the choreography in the video for "The Way You Make Me Feel." I was 12.
To show my devotion in the early years, I used a blue pen to draw little stars surrounding Michael on the "Thriller" cassette cover and wrote "The Stare." What I meant was "The Star," but I realized my mistake too late and was forced to turn the cover inside out for the rest of its life. It wouldn't be the last time I was shamed by my love of Michael.
Michael's fame and odd appearance made him an easy target, but each joke about his sexuality, face, Pepsi burn, Emmanuel Lewis, chimpanzee, etc., deeply hurt me. So when this joker on TV ruined my summer vacation morning with an attack on my hero, without regard for the presence of my parents or a mouth full of magically delicious cereal I gurgled a milky "F*$# you!"
Moments later I was standing in the bathroom, a goldenrod bar of Dial crammed in my mouth, with no regrets.
For someone so haunted by his lack of childhood, he sure made mine a wonderful one. It's such a cliche now, but his music was my soundtrack growing up. We listened to it on Record Day in music class, every day on the school bus, and on vacation with soap in our mouths. I remember playing "Michael Jackson" in second grade, a game which consisted only of me pretending to be Michael Jackson while girls chased me. And every new video or television appearance was an event, a chance to witness the making of a legend.
But from around 1984 on, being a fan of Michael Jackson meant you were always on the defensive. It was hard sometimes. Michael's very being seemed to draw out our society's worst feelings and fears about the big cultural questions of race, sexuality, masculinity and body image. The most famous person in the world during the Reagan '80s was a strikingly slender, baby-faced and effeminate sounding black male who was rapidly changing color and shape before our eyes.
I was the guy who stuck with Michael Jackson a little too long. As a high-schooler in the early 1990s, the coolest thing to do would have been to dump Michael and his sequined-space general uniforms for the flannel shirts and goofy Mexican rug pullovers of the more politically relevant grunge era. But like he once told Paul, I'm a lover, not a fighter, and I just couldn't abandon him like that. I bought "Dangerous" and freaking loved it. "Remember the Time" may be my all-time favorite MJ song.
In college, I had to get "HIStory: Past, Present and Future," but I'd be lying if I said I loved it (there's a Shaquille O'Neal rap on there for the love of God!) or that I didn't hide it more covertly than my roommate hid his bong.
The '80s had conditioned me to defend Michael no matter what, so when the '90s rolled around and the really serious allegations of you-know-what came out, I was as experienced as any of the defense attorneys he could hire. There had always been lies about Michael Jackson. This was nothing new. These were just opportunists trying to take advantage of a strangely naive man-child, was how I would make my closing argument. I was disappointed when he settled out of court, but I understood. He just wanted it to go away. And so did his fans.
I was a full-fledged adult with a real job and a wife expertly trained in identifying cases of child abuse when the second round of accusations -- this time accompanied by real criminal charges and some completely bizarre and damning interviews -- destroyed me. I just couldn't defend him anymore, no matter how great I thought the song "Butterflies" was. I was relieved when he was acquitted, more because the idea of Michael Jackson in jail was unbelievably heartbreaking, rather than any trust in his innocence.
We could hypothesize a hundred reasons for why Michael turned out the way he did. Everyone knows he suffered abuse by his father. They know he lost his childhood to show business. Some know his brothers locked him in a room with a groupie when he was way too young and fragile. We all saw his fame, fortune and scrutiny rise to a level that even the most sane and well-balanced among us would have a hard time protecting our souls against.
A couple of months ago I read about the auction of Neverland Ranch and a bunch of Michael's personal possessions. Four years after giving up my fandom, flipping through the online catalog documenting his video games and toys led me to revisit my feelings for him. I listened to my old favorites again and burned them to a new CD. I thought about his so-called "Peter Pan Complex" and wished he had succeeded in never growing up.
My Michael Jackson, the one I'll bottle up and hold onto, is the 21-year-old Michael, the "Off the Wall" Michael, whose talent was extraordinary while he personally remained somewhat ordinary. His voice was sweet and powerful, his dancing was fresh, incomparable and devoid of crotch grabbing. He was real.

It will be much easier to keep that image of Michael now that he's gone. It's difficult just typing those words.

He's gone.

I hate that this had to happen. It's sad and another American Tragedy.
Still, I have no regrets.

From the final pages of Michael's 1988 autobiography Moon Walk (yes, I still have it on my bookshelf):

"Often in the past performers have been tragic figures. A lot of truly great people have suffered or died because of pressure and drugs, especially liquor. It's so sad. You feel cheated as a fan that you didn't get to watch them evolve as they grew older. One can't help wondering what performances Marilyn Monroe would have put in or what Jimi Hendrix might have done in the 1980s.

"To me, nothing is more important than making people happy, giving them a release from their problems and worries, helping to lighten their load... To me, that's what it's all about. That's wonderful. That's why I don't understand when some celebrities say they don't want their kids in the business.

"I think they say that because they've been hurt themselves. I can understand that. I've been there too."