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M.J.
This is true.
It was 1991, and I was in third grade. I was at my cubbyhole, fiddling with my backpack, preparing to go home. My teacher asked us if we heard Michael Jackson’s new song, Heal the World. “It’s so good,” she said.
I was still largely a foreigner to American music. I was eight at the time, and although I had heard of the singer’s name, I was not at all familiar with his work. But, being a kid, I took the teacher’s words as infallible, and shortly after, I bought the cassette tape of Dangerous.
The tape was played nonstop in our family car, and my brother and I would be in the back seat, holding out the lyrics so we could sing along. My father was impressed that his children could follow the English, but I secretly just enunciated the first and last words of each line, and mumbled the rest. It may not have fooled anyone, but at the time, I thought I was genius.
The next few times we were at the music store, my brother and I snapped up Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad. We were still at an age when we were reluctant to share, so if I remember correctly, Off the Wall was his, Thriller was mine, and Bad was his. To date, it’s still hard to say who got the better deal.
It was 1992, and I was in fourth grade. Our aunt learned about our fascination with Michael Jackson, and was kind enough to lend us her laser disc of Jackon’s full-length music videos. My brother and I argued over whether that lean in Smooth Criminal was real.
My brother told me about his classmate who knew how to moonwalk. During recess, I asked him to show me, and having watched him, I practiced at home in front of my parent’s room-length mirror. One day, a house guest saw me and told me I was just like Michael Jackson. That was a good day.
It was 1993, and fourth grade was coming to an end. A classmate borrowed the laser disc, then left the country without returning it. My brother gave me shit.
It was 1995, and I was in seventh grade. I was vying for the attention of a particular girl, and a friend told me she was in love with You Are Not Alone, listening to it on repeat the entire day. As hard as it was for me to believe, Michael Jackson became my rival. In the end, I won out only because she had no chance with him anyway. (Do not insert your own joke here).
Around the same time, there was one night when, as we turned into the parking lot below our apartment, our mom asked us to replay track number nine, the same song. “I thought you said you didn’t like Michael Jackson,” my brother said.
“I never said that.”
I don’t remember any other time when our mother requested to hear an English song.
It was 2004, and I was in college. My roommate would play his music out loud, and as a courtesy, would occasionally ask me what I want to hear. Our playlists barely overlapped, but he would ask, “Michael Jackson?” and smirked, knowing nobody refuses Billie Jean.
The story of Michael Jackson became too bizarre from then on, and we watched him gradually become whatever he became. But even as the accusations of child molestations mounted, I thought it was fairly clear he was in some entirely different realm of existence, one that did not fit with our own. Watching the infamous 2003 interview, how could anyone not feel he was a kid trapped in an adult and insanely privileged body? Mentally ill, maybe, but deliberately criminal? I don’t know.
On Thursday, I received a call from my girlfriend while at work. I had told her not to do that, so when she did, I knew it was something important. “Michael Jackson died,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll call you back later.”
Only when I hung up did I repeat it in my head: did she just say Michael Jackson died?
I searched Wikipedia, and nothing was mentioned. I checked IMDb, and it only said he went into a coma. Then I received a text message from a friend on the other side of the country: “Did you hear Michael Jackson died?”
Then on the website, in no unclear terms: Michael Jackson dies at 50.
Two hours later, I was on the bus home, remembering his music in my childhood. A man near me was talking into his phone. About what, I don’t remember. Then he said, “Yea, Michael Jackson’s dead.”
I looked around. The bus was quiet. The man paused. I had no doubt one thought occupied our minds: Holy. Fuck.
The King is dead.
Man Meat
Getting stranded on an island with my best friend gave me the perfect excuse to try cannibalism. When our ship overturned, and our lifeboats drifted out of reach, I knew this was a dream come true. And as we draped ourselves on a nearby buoy, determined to kick our way to that piece of land in the distance, all I could think was that my dinner was currently being marinated in the freshest sea salt.
Once we were on the island, I knew I had to act quickly. At any moment, we could be rescued and brought back to the mainland where sympathetic crowds would clamor around us, offering me tissue as I sobbed. They would shake their heads, each imagining what fate had befallen me during the ordeal, but the truth would be that I cry only because the tissue I really wanted was biological.
My friend, however, refused to cooperate.
“Hey buddy,” I cooed, waving at him below the boiling sun. “Wanna check out that cave with me?”
Being the type that planned ahead, I had set up a makeshift kitchen in a nearby cave. A stack of flat rocks became my table, a row of sharp rocks became my knives, and a large, round rock became my chair. It is indeed true what people say about caves: there are a shit load of rocks.
“Uh, I think I’m gonna go over there instead,” he said, pointing somewhere away from me.
I was a tinge disappointed that he seemed to remember that late-night chat we had many years ago when after a few drinks I mentioned that given the chance, I would like to eat human meat. He also knew that I never called him “buddy” unless I wanted something. My approach at this point was not helped even when I altered my strategy.
“Come on, ol’ fella, what say we chaps go have tea in that splendid cavern!”
I suspect you’re wondering why I had to get him into a cave at all. With no one around, I could get away with anything. But this exposes you as an amateur. First, caves are cooler than the sunny outdoors and would allow me to store the meat for a much longer period of time. As for getting the meat first and then transporting it into the cave, the problem arises when, during the chase, the prey leads me away from enclosed spaces, making the meat too far to be carried. The human body is also much heavier than you would expect, and having spent the energy in acquiring it, I fear not much would be left to carry it. The fact that this paragraph was written with a straight face is evidence of the thought I have to put into it, and the respect I think it deserves.
Days passed without progress. I looked at my friend longingly as my vision of him was gradually replaced by a roast chicken. This may seem alarming to the casual castaway, but I was well-versed in this phenomenon from watching Saturday morning animated documentaries.
“Hey,” I said, now so drained of energy I could no longer afford to be wordy. “Bud.”
My friend turned around. He sat next to me and was in much better shape than I was, having ate fish that he caught earlier in the day. He had offered me some, but I declined. I did not travel to an uninhabited island thousands of miles away from civilization to eat fish.
“Dude…” I said, my voice now trailing. “Sure don’t want cave?”
He sighed. He pushed some more fish towards me, urged me to take a bite, but I declined once more. My friend was not a gentleman and did not understand that no means no.
“Cave…”
He stood up, looked down at my withering body, and said, “If you’re going to die, you might as well be where you want.”
He reached down to grab my arms and began dragging me across the ground. I was fairly certain we were going to the cave. In between moments of unconsciousness, I smiled, dreaming of the forthcoming man meat.
When we arrived at the entrance, I thought I sprung to attack, nimble like a ninja, striking all his pressure points with deadly accuracy to inflict mortal damage without ruining the meat. In actuality, however, I had fainted.
My friend shook me, and my eyes slowly widened. He had found my makeshift kitchen.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“Kitchen…”
He began laughing, and said how stupid I was. At first I was confused, because I may be many things—tall, dark, handsome—but I was most certainly not stupid. Then I suddenly remembered that same night when I told him I would like to try human meat. He had said, “Me too.”
“Nooo!” I screamed into the cave.
But in the end, the joke was on him. He had his mouth on my thigh.
Which makes him gay.
PDA
The comics archive looks mighty empty, so I’ll be trying to put one up every day this week!
