Michael Jackson, R.I.P.

[kitchen_kink]

wurmwyd, I know you thought you were my first love. I love you, and I'm so sorry to disappoint you, but I have to confess: before you, there was Michael Jackson.

Thriller came out when I was about seven years old. It was the first record album I ever owned, but I was not to possess it until the ripe old age of eight. I remember long hours staring at the beautiful young man inside the cover, which I don't think I've actually seen in years, but which I recall vividly: Michael, his hair kinky and falling in short curls around his perfect face, lounging in a pinup position in a white suit. I think there was a tiger involved as well.

I played that album over and over. Yes, even "The Girl is Mine." I was one of those who stayed up late to watch the premiere of the "Thriller" video - fifteen minutes of pure genius. (It was scary. I couldn't watch the part where he turned into a werewolf.)

Even before this I'd been dancing to Off The Wall in the family room of the shabby ranch house we shared with another family, and I remember wondering idly about that Michael Jackson, the one with the afro and the wide nose. I didn't think that picture was as cute as the one for Thriller, which I suppose made me a kind of tiny racist. But such niceties were very unclear to me at the time. All I knew was that my mother would never buy me the "Beat It" jacket.

When I first learned how to drum, my cousin taught me that if you can do the beat of "Billie Jean," you can play the drums. If you can't, well, you're kind of doomed. Tap your right foot to every quarter note; strike the table with your left hand on two and four; tap the air with an imaginary drum stick in your right hand, crossed over your left to hit the imaginary hi-hat, to the eighth notes. I would never learn how to moonwalk, but I could drum.

As Michael got older and weirdly whiter and less human-seeming, as his music diminished in funk and quality and became tepid pop as sung by highly compassionate aliens, I lost interest in him, but still felt defensive when he was accused of child abuse. When I got the news last night I hadn't really thought about him in years, but his sudden death struck me strongly nonetheless. I know that the blogosphere will be riddled with jokes, and I've been avoiding it until I could write this: a pure, simple memorial for the man who first made me feel something like lust, something like idol-worship. A man that a truckload of boy bands can never replace.

Sleep well, King.