I will never forget the day Michael Jackson died. June 25th, 2009.
I was at work, running on the little hamster wheel, when I get a text from sister: “Michael Jackson has been sent to the hospital segun dice CNN.” (Segun dice is Spanish for “so says” [your spanglish lesson of the day]).
For the next few hours I told work to eff off and checked every news source incessantly.
I started to think about MJ, and his sad, successful life.
Finally, TMZ broke the news: “Michael Jackson, age 50, has died.”
I kept looking at that line over and over, agape. Michael Jackson was a peerless icon. But he was more to me than that. As a kid, I watched MJ’s performances ad nauseum, I memorized all of his lyrics, and I used his songs to learn English. I even tried to moonwalk–and failed miserably, many times–on my kitchen floor. Because I grew up in Mexico, Michael Jackson was probably the most influential American I knew.
For the next few days I was in a quiet funk. Something was off, there was a disturbance in the Force.
I dug through some old boxes to find my Bad, Dangerous, and Thriller cassettes*. I played them over and over again while I cars drive by blaring P.Y.T, and eulogies popping up across the internets. I even watched his cameo on The Simpsons on YouTube.
But then I thought: what the fuck, man? I never met him, or knew anybody who did, or saw him even from afar. Why am I all frowny face right now? This was my brain talking, being its rational self, but my soul wasn’t hearing any of it. My soul just put its headphones back on, waved off my brain, and kept on nodding along to Off the Wall.
I actually did know MJ. I never sat down and had a chat with him, but everyday I heard about him. I knew about his childhood, his family, his successes, his failures, his bleakest hour, and his failings. Some of it was true, some of it was false, but everyday I had access to his life. I knew his fashion, his face, his voice; I probably knew more about him than I know about most casual friends I have.
That’s celebrity in a nutshell. It’s a personal connection with the a remote entity, and a community that shares that with you. It’s like religion, actually.
I think that’s why his death struck such a sincere chord. I felt like I had lost a connection built over years and years. Like losing a friend or family member, things got unnervingly quiet.
Some people believe Michael Jackson was an evil man. I see their point, but that doesn’t jive with my belief.
Young Michael was always in the spotlight, living in an adult’s world. He never had a childhood like you or me– able to waste days away playing at the beach or eating Dunkaross–and we have seen what that can do to most child stars. I really think he tried to recreate that childhood for the rest of his life. That’s why Brooke Shields says that while the world kept talking about her dating Michael as teenagers, they were actually playing board games on Friday nights. That’s why his security details talks about MJ egging them on to play hide-and-seek with him at Neverland Ranch.Whatever he allegedly did was definitely stupid, but he meant what a 10 year-old boy would’ve meant by doing it.
He never left the state of mind of a young boy trying to have fun and never wanting to grow up, and that was both his charm and his ruin. Believe me, I knew him, and I miss him.
* Little known fact: the Oxford English Dictionary removed ‘cassette tape’ from its inventory in 2008, but added ‘sexting’. Is nothing sacred?!
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Tags: celebrity, childhood, michael jackson