Michael Jackson: My Home Boy; My Mystery

So I'm reading on a major news website--after having heard the news from several stunned friends via cell phone--that Michael Jackson has died. Died. Staring at words that can't be true, I'm fixated for the millionth time by the pale, ravaged face in the accompanying photo. As always, the face appears to have no relationship to the little boy who lived a few blocks from me in Gary, Ind. The gifted kid whom my friends and I screamed with delight to see slide across the stage, James Brown-style, in local talent shows that he and his four brothers usually won.

Frozen at my computer, I realized that I am mourning two Michaels.
The first was the Afroed kid whose childlike features and pristine voice were adorable, whose older brothers played Little League with my own, and whose family lived in a shoebox-sized house spilling over with kids. That Michael had a gorgeous brother named Jermaine, whom either I or my best friend Sharon thought we would marry (we'd let Jermaine decide which), and performed for Diana Ross at the same Gilroy Stadium where I ran in track meets. Of course, Motown grabbed him. After releasing, "I Want You Back," with the Jackson Five, the first Michael left Gary and became ridiculously famous, forcing me to share him with millions of screaming girls. No matter. I still found it hard to breathe while watching his smoothly acrobatic dance moves; his songs still sent my heart into orbit. I was proud to see him growing more talented, more daring, more attractive -- until quite suddenly, he disappeared.
Replacing him was the man in the photo. The one with half a face, a cadaver's skin, medals-and epaulet-spouting ensembles and an amusement park home complete with a hyperbaric chamber, llamas and young boys whose presence seemed at once sick, sad and a perverse representation of the superstar's long-lost childhood. Every human being finds him- or herself altered by the years. Few become totally unrecognizable. Yet some of the original sweetness of the boy I remembered must have remained, as evidenced by Michael's many charitable gifts.

Staring at the Web site photo, I realized that although the first Michael had died decades ago, I can't believe either is gone. Even as I grieve, I'm struck by how little we knew about the brilliant performer whose image and music once seemed inescapable. Jackson was one of those celebrities who thrust himself on the public even as he coyly pulled more veils over himself. He sometimes suggested that he only felt alive onstage. Is that why we're so mystified by who he was off it?

Because he so rarely gave interviews, we're left mostly with Michael's image. The clipped, white face in the photo took more than a decade to emerge. The whole world watched the transformation, noticing that a bit more nose had been whittled away on one album cover; that the skin seemed fairer on the next; wondering about the cleft denting his chin on yet another. Scrutinizing hair that went from kinky to curly to slick to shoulder-kissing, we wondered what part of himself he might snip, lighten, straighten or rearrange next. Who couldn't appreciate the irony of it: Perhaps the first black performer to totally capture the world's adulation assiduously making himself look less and less black? Why would someone so adored and admired cut himself to pieces?

Jackson didn't change in a vacuum. The public, whose attention he seemed unable to live without, changed, too--morphing from charmed to awed to concerned to pitying to alarmed almost as quickly as Jackson transformed himself. How much did the fame that he loved, but that so often eats people alive, shape his strangeness?

One of my most memorable images was the very first: Michael performing with his brothers at a high school talent show. In those days at a show's beginning or end, performers often dashed from the theater's lobby onto the stage or vice versa. Their sprints down the aisle during these dramatic exits and entrances made audiences go wild. On this night, as Michael rushed from the stage, a much older "woman" of about 16 reached out and swept him off his feet. Pulling him to her chest, she smothered him in kisses. Watching his tiny legs flailing, I wondered: What's it like, to be so small and spark such enormous emotion in near-adults? Wresting himself free, he ran from sight.

Now both Michaels are gone. In time, the sucker punch of his death will fade. I'll get used to the idea that this stranger who was so intimate a part of my growing up has once again left me. I will stare at his photos, transfixed: