Michael Jackson (35 page)

Instead of growing up, Michael actually seemed to be regressing – buying toys, playing childlike games and, for the first time,
actually surrounding himself with children. Young fans who gathered at the gates of the estate to catch a glimpse of a Jackson
coming or going were now being invited to spend time in the inner-sanctum with Michael. It was odd behaviour. Jackie now called
him a ‘Man-Child’, explaining, ‘He's a man, but still a kid, a wonderful combination.’ When asked about the possibility of
having his own children, Michael shook his head, no. He'd like to raise a child, he said, but it would be one whom he would
adopt, ‘in the far future’. He would not procreate, he said. ‘I don't have to bring my own into the world,’ he said uneasily.
‘It's not necessary for me to do that.’

He continued, ‘One of my favourite pastimes is being with children – talking to them, playing with them in the grass. They're
one of the main reasons I do what I do. They know everything that people are trying to find out, they know so many secrets,
but it's hard for them to get it out. I can recognize that and learn from it. They say things that astound you. They go through
a brilliant, genius stage. But then, when they become a certain age…’ Michael paused. ‘When they get to a certain age, they
lose it.’

I was scheduled to interview this extraordinary ‘Man-Child’ on 3 October 1981, an encounter that was arranged by a publicist
at Epic. In advance, I was warned not to mention Gina Sprague or ask questions about ‘the incident’ or the state of Michael's
parents' marriage.

I was at my desk compiling a list of questions when the telephone rang. It was Michael. He got to the point, quickly. ‘There's
a certain way I want to do this interview,’ he told me.

‘Sure thing, Michael. Whatever you like.’

‘Well,’ he began slowly. ‘I'd like for Janet to help.’

‘Help?’

‘Yes. See, Janet is going to sit in on our interview,’ he told me. ‘You'll ask
her
the questions, and then
she'll
ask
me.
Then, see, I'll give
her
the answers, and then she'll give them to
you.
How does that sound?’

‘It sounds strange, Michael. I don't even think I understand it. Could you explain that to me, again?’

He repeated the scenario and said that it was the only way he would consent to the interview. ‘So, I hope you understand,’
he said, briskly. ‘Okay, bye.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I don't get it, Michael. You're giving me an interview, but you're not talking to me? What kind of madness
is that?’

‘It might seem like madness to you,’ he said. ‘But there are reasons for the things I do. You just have to try to understand.
If you're willing to do it my way, I'll see you tomorrow. Okay? Bye, now.’

I wondered if I could conduct an interview in that manner. Did it make any sense? Of course, I had to try. How could I turn
down the opportunity to engage in, no doubt, the strangest interview I'd ever had with Michael, or with anyone else, for that
matter.

The next day, I arrived at the Encino home in time for the interview. ‘Sure glad you could make it,’ Michael said as we shook
hands. He was wearing a black T-shirt and matching jeans. His feet were bare. I noticed that his nose was thinner and more
defined than it had been the last time I saw him, which was about six months earlier backstage at a Patti Labelle concert
in Hollywood. His falsetto whisper of a voice seemed even softer than it had been at that time.

After Michael and I exchanged pleasantries in the living room, Janet, age fifteen, walked in wearing a red leather miniskirt,
black boots, and a plaid sweater. She did not greet me. Rather, she sat at Michael's side in a robotic fashion, not even acknowledging
his presence.

Michael introduced me to her, as if we had never met. (Of course, we had.) We shook hands, but she never made eye contact
with me. I sat opposite them.

‘Now, you'll do the interview the way you promised, won't you?’ he asked.

When I said that I hadn't ‘promised’ anything, he rose from his chair. ‘Well, then, we can't do the interview,’ he said, his
words clipped.

‘Wait,’ I told him, motioning for him to be seated. ‘Let's try it. Let's start with the new album,
Triumph.
How do you feel about it?’

Michael pinned me with his dark eyes and nodded toward his sister. I redirected my question. ‘Janet, would you please ask
him how he feels about the album.’

Janet turned to Michael. ‘He wants to know how you feel about the album,’ she said.

‘Tell him I'm very happy with it,’ Michael said, his tone relaxed. ‘Working with my brothers again was an incredible experience
for me. It was,’ he stopped, searching for the word, ‘magical,’ he concluded.

Janet nodded her head and turned to me. ‘He told me to tell you that he's very happy with the album,’ she repeated. ‘And that
working with his brothers was an incredible experience for him.’

There was a pause.

‘You forgot the part about it being magical,’ Michael said to her, seeming peeved at her for not doing her job properly.

‘Oh, yes.’ Janet looked at me with apologetic, brown eyes. ‘He said it was magical.’

‘Magical?’ I asked.

‘Yes.
Magical.
’

As I tried to think of another question for Janet to ask him, I scrutinized Michael carefully for the first time that day.
It suddenly struck me that he was wearing makeup; his brows and lashes were darkened with mascara, his eyelids coated with
soft pink shadow. Rouge emphasized his cheekbones and… was that lipstick? Yes, I decided, scarlet lipstick. Today, the notion
of Michael Jackson wearing makeup in day-to-day living (as opposed to onstage or on camera, where practically all men in show
business wear it) is certainly not novel. Back in 1981, though, it would never have occurred to anyone that Michael would
wear makeup in his home for an interview. It was applied subtly and with great care. He looked exotic.

The ‘interview’ went on for about thirty more awkward minutes. Occasionally, Janet would inject a comment of her own, in an
effort, it seemed to me, to keep the conversation alive. ‘Michael, remember when that girl got upset because she had heard
you had a sex change?’ she said to him. ‘Do you remember what happened to her? She got so upset, she jumped right out a window.
I think she died,’ Janet said. ‘Poor thing.’

Michael looked into space, blankly.

Finally I decided that I'd had enough of the odd exchange and said I'd rather not continue with the interview. ‘But why not?’
Michael wanted to know. ‘Wait. Janet will tell you what happened when I visited Katharine Hepburn last month,’ he offered.
‘It's a good story.’

‘I'd rather
you
tell me, Michael,’ I pressed.

‘Well, I can't…’

There was a small silence between us.

‘Then, look, just forget it,’ I said. ‘Let's just forget the whole thing. Michael.’

‘Okay, cool,’ he said. Smiling somewhat ruefully, he rose. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he remarked, not connecting with my frustration.
‘Let's do this again, sometime.’ Then, he left the room. Janet threw me a look and extended her hands at me, palms up, as
if to exclaim, Now, look what you've done.

Once alone in the Jacksons' living room, I tried to figure out what had just occurred. As I was putting my tape recorder and
notes in my brief case, Katherine walked in. She looked disheartened. ‘Did you just interview Michael,’ she asked. ‘Please
be nice to him. The press is so mean these days.’ She shook her head, at a loss. ‘I don't know what to tell you,’ she said.
She slumped into the chair opposite me, practically speechless with fatigue. It was disconcerting. In the past, she always
had such dignity and poise.

‘I'm worried about him,’ she said, finally looking at me. Her eyes were full of warmth and concern. ‘There's so much pressure,
things are so… difficult.’ When she realized she was, perhaps, saying too much, she stopped herself. ‘Would you let yourself
out?’ she asked me, abruptly.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I walked out the front door. What is going on in this household? I wondered. While
walking down the driveway, I looked up at the mansion and saw a face peering out from one of the upstairs windows. It was
Michael. When he realized that I had spotted him, he ducked out of sight.

The next morning, I received a telephone call from Joseph. Just before I had pulled out of the Jackson estate's gates, I had
seen him in the driveway. I stopped to tell him what had happened. His cocoa-coloured, weather-beaten face broke into a wide
grin. He shrugged his shoulders, ‘Well, that's my boy,’ he said. Now, on the telephone, he could not have been more apologetic.
‘I'm sorry about that, man,’ he told me. ‘I was thinking about it, and I wanted to explain.’

According to Joseph, Michael had told his record company that he no longer sought direct contact with the media for fear of
questions about ‘that girl, you know, the one we got that problem with.’ I knew he was referring to Gina Sprague. ‘Plus some
other stuff that's going on,’ Joseph continued. ‘But when he said he didn't want to do no interviews, the label [Epic executives]
forced him to. Me, too. I told him he needs to talk to you and the other guys in the press. It's the right thing to do,’ Joseph
said. ‘So, what can I say? He did it his way. Sorry. Guess he wanted some control in his life, huh?’

‘Guess so, Mr Jackson,’ I said. We spoke for about fifteen minutes. He seemed fine, as if nothing unusual was going on in
his life. ‘Come on by sometime and do a story on LaToya,’ he told me. ‘We got some plans for her. Just wait till you see what
we're going to do. Girl's gonna be a big star. Huge, I'm tellin' ya.
Huge
.’

When I hung up, I thought about Joseph's explanation. Michael's tactic might have been ludicrous, I thought, but it's true
that desperate people take desperate measures to make a point… especially when nobody will listen. I felt a grudging admiration
for the way Michael had gotten what he wanted. He had manipulated the situation in order to make a mockery of the promised
interview. I never wrote about the episode. Instead, I cancelled the feature. Michael got what he wanted: no story.

By the summer of 1982, Katherine Jackson simply couldn't take any more of Joseph's unkind behaviour. Whatever had happened
with Gina Sprague, it had certainly been a nasty bit of business. Joseph wouldn't learn, however; either his appetite for
women was insatiable or he simply couldn't fill whatever emptiness he felt in his heart. Looking back on it now, it seems
he may have been inflicting his own pain on Katherine to make her identify with him, so lonely and marginalized did he feel
in the family. Whatever his hidden motivation – and maybe even he didn't understand it – Katherine suspected he was having another
affair.

One day, after a series of ‘hang-ups’ – when she answered the phone there would be no one on the other end – Katherine walked
into the kitchen to tell Joseph that she was leaving the estate to go shopping. He kissed her goodbye, on the top of the head.
As she walked down the driveway, the telephone rang again, just as she suspected it might. She calmly walked into the guest
house and, once there, took a deep breath and picked up the extension. She listened in as Joseph spoke to the woman with whom
he was apparently having a romantic relationship. He sounded sweet, happy. Katherine later recalled her heart tightening in
her chest. She felt unsteady and breathless, as if she'd been punched in the stomach.

Once the conversation was over, Katherine's steps carried her down the driveway and back into the front door of her home.
She found Joseph in the living room, his feet up on the couch, as if he hadn't a care in the world. Holding him with her eyes
for a moment, she couldn't believe, as she would later tell it, that he would do this to her… again. She cleared her throat,
loudly.

‘Oh. Hi, Kate. I thought you were gone,’ he said, springing to his feet.

‘I'll just bet you did,’ she responded. ‘I heard your conversation with your little
girlfriend
,’ she remarked, spitting out the words. ‘You bastard, you.’

Then, she let him have it. She pummelled him with her fists. She pulled his hair. She threw a vase at him. When he ducked,
she lunged for him, again. There was no stopping her. ‘I don't want you any more, Joseph,’ she screamed at him. ‘I don't
need you,
any more. I want you out of this house. You're nothing to me, now.’

Joseph was floored, at least for a moment. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, his hands up in defence. ‘Not even going to give me a chance
to explain, huh?’ he asked. Now, his tone was even, well-controlled. It seemed as if he was trying to act unconcerned. How
upsetting, Katherine would later say, for him to act as if he didn't have enough invested in the moment to even be troubled
by it.

‘Doesn't anything ever get to you?’ she asked, angrily.

‘Of course,’ he said, sadly. ‘You did, Katie. When I first fell in love with you.’

‘Get out!’