Dangerous times: Michael Jackson made me cry
Dangerous times: Michael Jackson made me cry
White-glove-arm-type-thing
Like most of members of my generation (early Y for those keeping score), I grew up listening to Michael Jackson. I’m not ashamed to say that I not only owned a pair of those hideous LA Gear sneakers that were released when Dangerous dropped, but I fashioned a white arm-glove-type-thing that I wore when my mom bought me the Pay-Per-View of his concert. I was a fan; a sentimental nut who cried while listening to Give In to Me. Sure, Thriller was awesome and probably his best album, but my heart belonged to Dangerous.
Sometime later, Nirvana’s Nevermind hit the shelves of Musicland and I suddenly turned into a grunge kid with gross hair and an affinity for plaid. My Jackson addiction went into the closet and, no, Naomi Campbell was not there to great me. It was just me, Dangerous and my shoes with the metal bolts falling off.
“Dude, you are so gay,” they would tell me. I didn’t listen. I knew in my heart that my love for Michael Jackson was not homosexual (sidenote: I feel compelled to inform you that I had a mammoth crush on Madonna at the time. One doesn’t strap on a cone-bra, gyrate and not snatch the heart of a chubby 12-year-old). It was a budding bromance. Me and Michael Jackson. I’d take Mike with me across the country. He was an easy companion and didn’t eat much. I’d test out dance moves in the backyard and when passers-by would stop to point and guffaw, I would tell them that I was just raging against the system and I was terribly depressed. They understood and left.
As the molestation allegations grew, my attachment to The Gloved One disappeared. My tapes were lost presumably for the same reason my secret stash of Playboys vanished. I found Soundgarden and Michael Jackson was gone from my life. It wasn’t until his death that I went on iTunes like everybody else and downloaded some tracks I remembered from my youth. I listened and felt a keen sense of nostalgia. Later, I moved on about my day while humming Gone Too Soon.
Thanks for the memories, Jacko. The gossip pages won’t be the same without you.
