Sometimes things really take me by surprise.
I haven't given any thought to Michael Jackson - well - ever, really. I enjoyed his music. I could watch him dance forever. Gene Kelly had nothing on Michael. When his hair caught on fire, it never occured to me that he would be in pain for the rest of his life. When he was on trial for child molestation, I assumed he'd done it and was irritated by the wall to wall television coverage. I thought he was weird and didn't care.
Well, I'm a television watcher. This past week, there has been no way to get away from Michael Jackson. And slowly but surely, I have grown to grieve for him.
I had never seen him interviewed. And there he was talking about the way his father would watch him practice while holding a belt in his hand and beat him and his brothers to the point where his mother would scream for his father to stop because he was going to kill them if he didn't.
I didn't get beaten as hard or as often as Michael, but to this day, if someone in my presence whips off a belt quickly and I hear the leather pop through the pant hoops, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and break into a cold sweat.
He talked about walking into a rehearsal studio beginning when he was five and watching other kids on a playground across the street and desperately want to join them, just for a little while, so he could laugh and play, too.
I listened to his attorneys during the molestation trial, feeling free to speak now that he's dead, say that they genuinely believe he was innocent. That Michael's emotional growth seemed to have stopped at about age twelve; that while he was brilliant, he was painfully shy around adults and well aware that he was being used. Everyone around him had an angle. Except children. He enjoyed their company. He enjoyed their innocence. He enjoyed that they didn't want to use him. But that made him a target. His attorneys said he was horrified that anyone would ever think he would do harm to a child. And I believe them.
I watched the interview where Michael said he would never, ever harm a child and watched his face. And I believed him.
This child/man couldn't trust anyone. Not even his own family.
His own father, when told of his son's death, never referred to Michael as his child, but as "the greatest superstar the world has ever known", then was on the red carpet of the BET Awards a couple of days later promoting his latest venture.
I saw an interview with Michael where he said his father made daily fun of the way he looked, in particular his nose. He would say, "Damn, boy, you're ugly. Didn't get that from my side of the family." He said his skin got bad, but he still had to go out in public and appear on television every single day. It was the worst nightmare possible for a shy boy. And there was the time they were walking through an airport as the Jackson Five and a woman, all excited, said, "Oh, where's little Michael?" Well, little Michael was a teenager. The brothers pointed out the not so little Michael and the woman looked at him in distaste and said, "oh, what happened to you?" This happened when he was fifteen or sixteen, and he was telling this story with as much pain in his forties as though it had happened the week before.
I think Peter Pan resonated with Michael because of what his attorneys said; that lack of emotional growth. That chronic abuse.
When I saw a camera doing wide views of Never Land, there were sculptures and wood cut outs of Peter Pan flying all over. As a dancer, Michael did seem to fly. But something I noticed that no one else seemed to. If you look closely at Michael's facial transformation, he is making himself look more and more like Peter Pan. Look at a picture of Peter Pan and then look at one of the last profiles of Michael Jackson.
I don't know how Michael died, but I heard a nurse say he was begging her to get him a drug used only in the operating room to knock out patients for surgery. He was pleading for eight hours of sleep. Just eight hours of sleep.
Only someone with chronic insomnia can understand this. I've had it for years. You get three hours of sleep here. Two there. On a good night, maybe four or five. Actually that's a spectacular night. It takes its toll. I have found myself in my own doctor's office sobbing, begging, for something, anything, to make me sleep. Just for one night.
Michael supported his family and one can only imagine how many other people from the time he was eight years old.
I think he just needed to be hugged by someone who didn't want anything from him.
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