A Cry over Michael

Written in June 2009

I just can’t listen to Miles Davis.
Ever since I read that he bragged about beating his wife
Cicely Tyson, I just can’t listen to him.

I don’t know much of Davis’ music. I didn’t grow up
listening to much jazz, but I’ve heard his name all my life.
I know he’s considered one of the greatest musicians of all time.

But because he admitted to being a proud, unrepentant domestic violence
perpetrator, I can’t even bear to give his music a chance.

I used to like R. Kelly, but I can’t anymore.
The sex abuse tape —no, I haven’t seen it, but my best friend did
and she says it’s him doing everything I heard he did to a girl of about 15 —
eloping with Aaliyah, a 15-year-old girl entrusted to him by her family to start
her recording career…
I just can’t listen to him anymore.

Michael Jackson has been twice publicly accused of sexually abusing
adolescent boys —
one took a $20 million payoff
the other and his mother were discredited in court

But I saw Michael Jackson with that second boy on TV, before the court case.
I saw Michael Jackson holding that boy’s hand.
I heard Michael Jackson say that the boy spent the night with him
in his bedroom
in his bed.

This is a man who had paid $20 million to make child abuse allegations go away.
This is a man who should be scared to death of ever being close to unrelated children again.
I saw on TV a man doing something that he can’t stop himself from doing.

Yes, I suspect him —the operative word is suspect
I don’t know. Nobody knows except those two boys
(and maybe the second boy’s mother)

There’s no gleeful confession in an autobiography or interview
There’s no license of a fraudulent marriage or a video of abuse

There’s no proof

But I believe my eyes
And I suspect.

But then Michael Jackson died.
And I cried.
I’ve never cried over the death of someone I never met.
Never before Michael.
I cried at 4 am that night after an evening of disbelief.
And the next day, one of my best friends posted on
a social networking website that his death was good riddance to
a child molester.

I cried again.
And I fretted.
I can’t listen to Miles Davis.
I can’t listen to R. Kelly
but I cried over Michael.
He wasn’t even one of my personal favorite singers.
I don’t own any of his records or CDs.

Why?

My friend might call me inconsistent, even accuse me of being
a hypocrite.
My friend is a sexual assault survivor.
So am I.
And I’m a childhood sexual abuse survivor.

Yet I cried over Michael.
Even though I suspect —
And not because I don’t know.
I cried over the boy I grew up hearing sing and seeing dance
all my life.
He’s been famous almost literally since I was born.

I cried over that boy with the angel’s voice and the devil’s dance moves
who had my sister, her friends and me singing to an old 45 of “Who’s Loving You.”

I cried over the teen sweetheart with the big Afro who got my whole family
shaking our bodies down to the ground.

I cried over the young man who when asked by a reporter if he was gay,
asked the reporter to turn the tape recorder off — and then said he wasn’t gay,
but he didn’t want to answer on the record because he cared about putting off
his gay fans.

I cried over the young man who had my brother go to the store to steal the lyric sheet
from a Thriller LP because the tape my brother had didn’t have the words to the songs.
And my brother, my sister and I had to know and sing every word of “Beat It,” “Billie Jean”
and all those other hits.

I cried over how much we loved him, and we — Black folks, gay folks, my mom,
my siblings, my 20-year-old niece — we loved him so much.

I don’t love the man Michael later became, but I still cry over that man —
that man I suspect —
because I pity him.

His parents brought a little boy to the altar of fame and fortune;
His sanity, and now his life, was the sacrifice.

I pity the man who may have become a predator.

I cry over the love of that magical boy whose singing and dancing
ruled the musical and visual world I was born into.
And the music I grew up with was the bright light in the bleakness of
my own childhood of abuse.
I know that’s very ironic.

Yes, I cry over Michael. And damn anybody who would dismiss my tears.