( 2 Votes )

Written by Andre Grant

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Ok. I’m not gonna lie. I lived a sheltered life for a long time. I didn’t start to listen to MJ until just a few years before his passing. But, this little tale of woe is not about me and my lack of ability to appreciate mind altering talents. This story is about a friend of mine who was beyond just an MJ fan. She was in love with Michael Jackson.

And, not in that petty human I love you, you love me kinda way. No, she would have laid down her life for Mike. "She loved Mike the way people love their fucking country." She internalized him.

So, we’re in Chicago this time last year for the Taste. It’s a zoo. The city is a buzz. And we hear that MJ’s on the ropes. The reports are conflicting though. Is he gone? Isn’t he? No one really knows. We’re all sort of looking around trying to keep the reports from her. But it’s 2009. She’s got a phone but she’s not looking at it. She can’t bear to hear the news. We’re in Lawry’s enjoying the best steak and a side of mash we’ve ever had. And, the guy who’s serving us knows we’re from out of town and knows we have no idea what we walked into. He hooks us up. Takes like 50% off the overall tab. It’s a good thing he did too because I think I’d still be washing dishes for that meal. But, alas, this is not my tale of woe. It’s hers. She already knows. I know that she knows. I’m sitting next to her and breathing is getting funky. It’s getting all fluttered like how breathes get when you know your life is gonna change. That girl stood straight up after that meal. Stood straight up and walked outside. She looked at me and said, “I’m going around the corner for a second and I don’t want anyone to come looking for me.” Now, she’s a feisty one. She’s complicated and she’s prone to doing these sorts of things. She’s like your favorite person you love to dislike. She’s moody as all fuck but she comes through in the clutch. It makes it so that no one broke a sweat when she pulled it. No one even looked at her. We’ll just let her go on her merry way. But I knew what she was doing. She was going around the corner to die. She thought in that blank Chicago sun that her eyes were gonna turn to dust. She knew. She knew like we all knew. Something great had died. And, it wasn’t just the reports and excuse my hippie oneness shit for a second and work with me. We all knew he had passed away. We felt it.

While in that moment of interconnectedness I felt her crying too. I went around the corner after her. I mean. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I’d of let her cry alone. I go around there and she’s crying and she’s looking at me all crazy as if to say, “I didn’t want you to see me like this” or some old bullshit. But, here you are in the middle of Chicago letting perfect strangers see you shed tears without rhyme or reason and you can’t let me see you cry? Rubbish, right? I grabbed her though and held her close to my chest for a few moments and I’d never seen anyone cry that hard for anyone else. She just stood there pouring tears into my plaid linen shirt. The tears themselves were hotter than any sun, hotter than any love. I could only think I hoped someone would cry over me like that one day. We’ve never talked about it and never will.

There are rules to this shit and we’ve got reputations to keep but there’s no sense in denying the obvious. That when MJ left this earth on this day last year a little bit of the magic still left in the world died with him. He absolutely cannot be replaced. We’ve no desire to. We still don’t know if all that stuff that was said about him were true. We do know how he made us feel though. How he made us hope and stand in awe while he shone for us his talents. We also know how all of us who cried for him that day were crying the same damn tears. He was the greatest. And I’ve only just recently begun to appreciate his talents (I’m a late bloomer) but I know greatness when I see it and MJ was out of this world. Long live Michael Jackson. There will never be another.