"Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary, Ind. His mother, Katherine, would say that there was something special about the fifth of her nine children. "I don't believe in reincarnation," she said, "but you know how babies move uncoordinated? He never moved that way. When he danced, it was like he was an older person."
The story about the mouse also really moved me. That he had a mouse he used to feed when he was really little, this house mouse, after everyone went to bed, he would crawl under the table in the kitchen and bring crackers and stuff and feed the mouse. He tamed it and wrote the song "Ben" about it. He said the mouse was a friend he could tell things to, that no one else wanted to or cared to hear.. You know he had a viciously abusive father, Joe, who beat them all and so terrified him, Michael, that he would throw up in terror when his father was looking for him.
Joe killed the mouse on purpose and it devastated him.
I'm trying to think of something more horrible, and coming up empty. No wonder the poor kid was so fucked up. Someone else was saying that after MJ died, his father was holding court outside the Encino house and smiling like a maniac. This was a guest on KABC who said this, a woman named "Crystal Ball" who said she grew up playing with the Jackson kids: she said Joe Jackson "never" smiled and that she couldn't get over how much he was smiling after MJ died. You could hear the anger in her voice.
Now as for the kids. It seems pretty clear he was a molester. There's no reason to be sleeping in bed with kids when you're a grown man. Not if they're not your own, man. It's just a thing. That's just a line you don't cross. But besides that, he really did do inappropriate sexual things. And parents didn't care, they brought their kids, got paid off or whatever, everyone was cool with it----Not, I'm sure. Someone's going to write a book about it. Just wait.
Having been in a family with a molester at its head, not my own family but one by marriage, I can tell anyone that molesters are not evil people; they are sick. What's evil is standing by and letting it happen. What's evil is anyone who doesn't stand up and confront shit that's wrong. And it's wrong. It causes so much unhappiness and fucked up emotional static that my own life still reels from the repercussions that affected everyone in the family. I'm blessed and lucky I didn't have that lot in life, but this person's crap did get passed down to me in a big way. Abuse takes different forms. And what almost always happens, if it's not stopped, is that everyone suffers.
And life's too short and too beautiful to suffer, you know? There's enough to suffer without having someone put their shit in a big wagon and hitch it to your ass to haul. And make you feel guilty if you don't want to haul it.
I know I'm talking in circles. What moves me is that this particular victim was a great entertainer. I dug that all night long last weekend, people driving through Hollywood honked all night outside my windows and blasted MJ music and honked and honked til the wee hours. I love living around that kind of respect for performance and entertainment.
The other stuff is tragic. It's tragic because it's kept such a secret and as such is not dealt with and healed properly.
Secrets kill.
That guy could have had a longer life. If ever someone's face showed that he couldn't carry the load of psychic pain alone, that would be MJ's face. He should have had treatment. Maybe his story will open up a dialogue about child abuse, who knows. Because God knows it's far more common than anyone ever thought. It's freaking everywhere. And it's not the end of the world. Things can change. But first someone's got to pay attention to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment