《滾石》雜誌，Thriller錄音結束後，1982
中文來源：mjjcn.com 編輯翻譯：stroller
過去的10年中，我的錄音帶忠實地記錄了不少怪異的時刻：Bruce Springsteen在淩晨3點模仿Ed Norton、Eddy Grant的Bajan的種植園上空蝙蝠翅膀呼呼作響、Sting對著月亮嚎叫。但即使是敏感的索尼也沒準備好拍下我和Michael Jackson第一次長談時，那條離我耳朵只有幾英寸距離的蛇信。我的那段旅程整個都很奇怪，不是險惡，而是超乎想像。
我所說的那個爬行動物就是Michael那條8英尺長的大蟒蛇Muscles。大約有一個多小時，Muscles完全平衡地躺在我身邊的一根扶手上，頭高高地昂起，豆大的眼睛緊緊盯著我喉管處明顯搏動著的小血管。我不肯讓Muscles盤在身上，於是Michael就讓它待在那兒。這看來是個公平的妥協。
年輕的Mike不是在淘氣。他解釋說這是一種信任練習，他說得煞有介事。如果我怕蛇，那他對記者也有致命的恐懼——所以我們兩人都得克服恐懼。邁克爾很多年都沒有單獨接受採訪，以前一直有他的一個姐妹幫他篩選問題。自1982年末（剛剛錄製完Thriller）我們難得的採訪以來。差不多10年裏，他再沒有做過如此深度的訪談。不是說什麼發生了什麼不好的事情，反正就是……困難。
Michael讓所有人都大吃一驚，包括他的家人、他的管理團隊和唱片公司，他決定單獨接受採訪。他打開租住的位於恩西諾的公寓大門時，看起來就像一個街頭流浪漢。燈芯絨褲子又髒又皺，舊舊的牛津鞋沒系鞋帶，沒穿襪子，沒有化妝。他的待客之道令人感動的笨拙：提供的檸檬水倒完了，他就給我的杯子裏倒了半杯溫的夏威夷賓治。冰箱裏沒有食物，只有果汁。他解釋說，他在Hayvenhurst的房子正在重建，在此只是隨便住住。可當他的妹妹Janet飄然而至去往樓上她的臥室時，她宣稱Michael活得像個叫花子，一直都是，除了些老菜葉以外什麼都不吃、穿得破破爛爛。真是丟人……
“沒錯。”在她上樓時哥哥回擊說，“至少我沒有你那樣的屁股！”
LA.” That is so country, I’d tell him kiddingly, and he’d tee-hee (p. 242).]
Rolling Stone, while finishing recording of Thriller, 1982
Over the last decade my tape recorder has been unfailing in catching the weirdness of a moment: Bruce Springsteen doing Ed Norton imitations at 3: 00 a .m. The whir of bat wings over Eddy Grant’s Bajan plantation. Sting howling at the moon. But even my hypersensitive Sony was not up to capturing the steady flick of a snake tongue a few inches from my ear during that first long session with Michael Jackson. That whole trip was quietly strange; not menacing, just out there.
The reptile in question was Michael’s eight-foot boa constrictor, Muscles. For more than an hour, Muscles lay perfectly balanced on a banister beside me, head erect, beady eyes fixed on the small veins doubtless throbbing in my throat. Michael set him there when I declined to have Muscles lounge around my torso. It seemed a fair compromise.
Young Mike wasn’t being naughty. He explained it as an exercise in trust, and he was most convincing. If I was scared of snakes, he had a mortal dread of reporters – and maybe we should both get over it. Michael hadn’t done an interview in years without one of his sisters screening questions. And in the nearly ten years since our remarkable sessions in late ’82 (conducted as he was finishing Thriller), he has never again done an interview of this depth. Not that things went badly. It just was . . . hard.
Michael shocked everyone – his family, his management and his record company – by deciding to go it alone. He opened the front door of his rented Encino condo looking like a street whack. His corduroys were dirty and rumpled; the scuffed dress oxfords were untied. No socks. No makeup. His hospitality was touchingly inept; having run out of the proffered lemonade, he filled the other half of my glass with warm Hawaiian Punch. There was no food in the refrigerator, just juice. He explained that he was camping out there while his manse on Hayvenhurst was being rebuilt. But as she breezed through to her bedroom upstairs, sister Janet announced that he lived like a beggar, all the time; never ate except for some old lettuce leaves; wore raggedy-ass clothes. A disgrace . . .
“Right,” big brother shot back as she climbed the stairs. “At least I don’t have a booty like YOURS.”
Ten minutes into it, I could see his point. As he explained the tea party of garden statuary around his coffee table – including a Narcissus figure named Michael – I could hear how it would read. It nearly made me bawl. He was trying so damned hard.
We did agree to leave one part of our conversation out of the story, for his protection at the time. It came up as we sat in the condo dining room, and I noticed the school portrait of a young black woman tucked into the frame of an etching. The photo was one of the few personal touches in the place. The face looked like any .
“That’s the real Billie Jean,” Michael said. Quincy Jones had just played that cut for me in the studio; I knew the song was about a woman accusing the singer of fathering her child – which was what this woman’s letters insisted. Michael explained that he put the photo she’d sent in a central spot so he could memorize the face; it seemed she wanted him dead in a big way. He said she’d just sent him a gun in the mail with detailed instructions on killing himself. In a barely audible voice, Michael explained that the police had told him the gun was rigged to fire backward into the person doing the shooting. Later his mother would tell me that the woman was in an institution, under psychiatric care. When I saw the “Billie Jean” video a few months later – all disappearing tigers and pinpoint choreography – I kept seeing some girl in a green hospital gown.
“You deal with it,” Michael had told me. “You just deal.”
Over the next couple of days, Michael continued to deal with me, gamely, politely and with increasing humor. Janet shook her head in warning as he offered to drive us over for a tour of his house.
“Ray Charles drives better,” she cracked.
Strapped into his gold Camaro, I found myself longing for the relative safety of Muscle’s fond embrace. The motor skills were there, but Michael admitted that concentration was a problem. Horns were still honking at us as we pulled into the drive of the magic kingdom he was building for himself.
“You want go out tonight?”
Another surprise. Michael was going to a slam-jam Queen concert at the I.A. Forum. He wouldn’t mind the company. He felt he had to go. Freddie (the late Mr. Mercury, who died of AIDS in November 1991) had been calling him all week. He really should. . . .
Dusk was falling as we left for the show, Michael and his bodyguard Bill Bray walking point through the condo shrubbery toward a waiting limo. I thought they were being a bit silly – this was months before he hit monster status with Thriller. But they sensed the girls before I heard or saw them, made a dash to the car as a spiky red tangle of Lee press-on nails drummed against the windows.
“Lock it down!” Michael yelled to me, pointing to a panel at my knees. Limo savvy as I am, I hit the skylight button. Before it was half-open, arms reached in, clawing blindly.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeee. The keening drew blue-haired condo dwellers peering from behind their Levelers. Bray was twisting back from the front seat, prying fingers with surprising gentleness. Michael was helpless with giggles. I was flat scared, looking for Billie Jean in those contorted faces stuck against the windows.
When at last we pulled away, I turned to look at Michael. He had “dressed” for this public evening in jeans and a turquoise terry blazer, black loafers and just a tinge of blusher. This precept Michael looked great – healthy, handsome and robustly African American.
We stopped to pick up Michael’s one true friend – a blond teenage skier who was then his partner in Jehovah’s Witness fieldwork – and just as much of a Lost Boy. When Bray piloted us into Mercury’s dressing room, the boys shrank back until fib Freddie bounded over like a dizzy Rottweiler and damn near crushed tiny Mike in a hug. They fell against a big trunk that opened, releasing a terrifying avalanche of Freddie’s industrial-strength jockstraps. Michael’s jaw dropped.
“Ooooooooh, Freddie. What are those?”
A gold football helmet fell out and came to rest on the mountain of cups.
“Rock & roll’s a man’s job, little brother,” Freddie thundered. Michael smiled and wanted to know if his host had really spent his last birthday hanging naked from a chandelier. The skier blushed. We all had a swell time until Freddie’s trainer called him over for a little preperformance spine cracking.
As it turned out, we didn’t see much of the concert. Things got too spooky again once Michael was recognized in the beery dark. Hands, notes, eyes, surrounded us. When an unidentifiable liquid began raining on our heads, Bray stood up. “That’s it. We’re gone.”
We spent more time together, in the studio with Quincy Jones, rambling through Michael’s unfinished pleasure dome and visiting his menagerie. Toward the end, while we were bottle feeding his twin fawns, he turned suddenly and looked me in the eyes. Finally.
“You know something? You’re no better than I am. I mean, you’re just as sneaky.”
“How do you figure that?” I asked.
“You tap-dance in public. Sure you do, all over the page in ROLLING STONE. You need to perform, too. But when you’re done, you can run away and hide. Nobody’s after you.”
Michael had me there, dead to rights. He laughed and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Believe me when I tell you – don’t know how lucky you are.”
年輕的Mike不是在淘氣。他解釋說這是一種信任練習，他說得煞有介事。如果我怕蛇，那他對記者也有致命的恐懼——所以我們兩人都得克服恐懼。邁克爾很多年都沒有單獨接受採訪，以前一直有他的一個姐妹幫他篩選問題。自1982年末（剛剛錄製完Thriller）我們難得的採訪以來。差不多10年裏，他再沒有做過如此深度的訪談。不是說什麼發生了什麼不好的事情，反正就是……困難。
Michael讓所有人都大吃一驚，包括他的家人、他的管理團隊和唱片公司，他決定單獨接受採訪。他打開租住的位於恩西諾的公寓大門時，看起來就像一個街頭流浪漢。燈芯絨褲子又髒又皺，舊舊的牛津鞋沒系鞋帶，沒穿襪子，沒有化妝。他的待客之道令人感動的笨拙：提供的檸檬水倒完了，他就給我的杯子裏倒了半杯溫的夏威夷賓治。冰箱裏沒有食物，只有果汁。他解釋說，他在Hayvenhurst的房子正在重建，在此只是隨便住住。可當他的妹妹Janet飄然而至去往樓上她的臥室時，她宣稱Michael活得像個叫花子，一直都是，除了些老菜葉以外什麼都不吃、穿得破破爛爛。真是丟人……
“沒錯。”在她上樓時哥哥回擊說，“至少我沒有你那樣的屁股！”
10分鐘後，我明白了他的意思。他向我介紹放在咖啡座旁邊的一組茶會雕像——裏面有一個Narcissus（水仙，古希臘傳說中眷戀自己水中的倒影而淹死的美少年）的雕像名字也叫Michael。這讓我差點叫了出來，他真是太追求完美了。
為了保護他，我們同意在文章中去掉一部分談話內容。這是我們在公寓的餐廳裏的談話，我注意到一個蝕刻鏡框裏的照片，裏面是一個年輕的黑人女學生。這是房間裏不多的帶些個人色彩的東西，而那女子的臉看起來和路人沒什麼兩樣。
“那就是真正的Billie Jean。”邁克爾說。Quincy Jones剛剛在錄音室給我放過這首歌，我知道它唱的是一個女人指認歌手是她孩子的爹——那女人的信裏也這麼說。Michael說，他將這張她寄來的照片放在顯眼位置是為了記住她的臉，看起來，她想要殺死他造成轟動。他說她曾經在郵包中給他寄過槍，還附帶自殺時的具體使用說明。Michael用幾乎聽不見的聲音說，員警告訴他，槍是被做過手腳的，開槍人一扣扳機就會走火。後來他母親告訴我，這女人現在在一家療養院接受精神治療。以至於幾個月後看Bellie Jean的錄影帶時，那些消失的老虎和踮著腳尖的舞蹈以外，我總是想著某個穿著醫院綠袍子的女孩。
“你得應付那些事。”邁克爾告訴我，“你只能應付。”此後幾天，邁克爾繼續應付我，堅強地、客氣地，但幽默也與日俱增。當他提出開車帶我參觀房子時，Janet在一旁警告地搖著頭。
“Ray Charles（盲人歌星）都開得比他好。”她嘎嘎笑著。
困在他的金色Camaro車裏，我發現自己渴望著Muscles的溫暖懷抱，至少那裏要相對安全些。雖然開車的技術都會，但Michael承認他的注意力是個問題。當我們出發在他為自己建造的魔幻世界裏行駛時，汽車喇叭依然在響個不停。
“今晚想出去嗎？”
為了保護他，我們同意在文章中去掉一部分談話內容。這是我們在公寓的餐廳裏的談話，我注意到一個蝕刻鏡框裏的照片，裏面是一個年輕的黑人女學生。這是房間裏不多的帶些個人色彩的東西，而那女子的臉看起來和路人沒什麼兩樣。
“那就是真正的Billie Jean。”邁克爾說。Quincy Jones剛剛在錄音室給我放過這首歌，我知道它唱的是一個女人指認歌手是她孩子的爹——那女人的信裏也這麼說。Michael說，他將這張她寄來的照片放在顯眼位置是為了記住她的臉，看起來，她想要殺死他造成轟動。他說她曾經在郵包中給他寄過槍，還附帶自殺時的具體使用說明。Michael用幾乎聽不見的聲音說，員警告訴他，槍是被做過手腳的，開槍人一扣扳機就會走火。後來他母親告訴我，這女人現在在一家療養院接受精神治療。以至於幾個月後看Bellie Jean的錄影帶時，那些消失的老虎和踮著腳尖的舞蹈以外，我總是想著某個穿著醫院綠袍子的女孩。
“你得應付那些事。”邁克爾告訴我，“你只能應付。”此後幾天，邁克爾繼續應付我，堅強地、客氣地，但幽默也與日俱增。當他提出開車帶我參觀房子時，Janet在一旁警告地搖著頭。
“Ray Charles（盲人歌星）都開得比他好。”她嘎嘎笑著。
困在他的金色Camaro車裏，我發現自己渴望著Muscles的溫暖懷抱，至少那裏要相對安全些。雖然開車的技術都會，但Michael承認他的注意力是個問題。當我們出發在他為自己建造的魔幻世界裏行駛時，汽車喇叭依然在響個不停。
“今晚想出去嗎？”
又一個驚喜。Michael要到I.A.Forum看一場Queen的演唱會。他不介意我帶我一起去。Freiddie（Freddie Mercury，皇后樂隊主唱，1991年11月因AIDS去世）一個禮拜都在給他打電話，所以他必須得去。他真的該去……我們出發時已是黃昏，Michael和他的保鏢Bill Bray穿過公寓的灌木叢，朝等候著的豪華轎車走去。我覺得他們有點傻——這還是在他出Thriller專輯、登上霸主地位的好多個月之前。但他們在我看到之前就已經察覺到了那些女孩子們，在一團紅色的指甲敲打車窗中，全速沖進了汽車。
“鎖上窗！”Michael指著沖著我膝蓋上方的控制板大喊。我對豪華車瞭解只有這麼多，按到了天窗的鍵。天窗剛剛被我半打開，好幾隻胳膊就伸了進來，胡亂地亂抓亂舞。
噫～～～～～～～。哭喊聲讓公寓裏的住客都忍不住透過百葉窗看稀奇。Bray從前座扭過身來，出奇溫柔地想要撥開那些手指頭。Michael咯咯笑個不停。我真的被嚇著了，在這些貼著窗戶的扭曲的臉裏面尋找著Billie Jean。
當我們終於可以出發時，我轉頭望著Michael。他為晚上的公開活動打扮了一番，穿著牛仔褲和青綠色的毛巾運動外套、黑色的便鞋，只上了薄薄一層腮紅。這個規規矩矩的Michael看起來很棒——一個健康、英俊、結實的非洲裔美國人。
我們中途停下去接Michael的一個好朋友——一個十幾歲的金髮的滑雪運動員，父母也在耶和華見證會裏，這孩子也是個迷失的男孩。當Bray護送我們到了Mercury的服裝間時，兩個男孩縮成一團，直到Freddie像一隻羅威納犬一樣跳過來給了Mike一個擁抱，幾乎快把小小的他壓扁了。他們倒在一個打開的行李箱上面，Freddie的一堆高強度的護襠像雪崩一樣倒了下來。Michael的下巴頦兒都快掉下來了。
“哦～～～，Freddie，這是什麼？”一個金色的橄欖球頭盔掉了出來，落在那一堆罩杯上。
“搖滾是男人的活兒，小兄弟。”Freddie轟隆隆地說。Michael笑了，想要知道freddie上次過生日的時候是否真的光著身子掛在吊燈上。滑雪的男孩臉都紅了。我們聊得十分歡樂，直到Freddie的訓練師過來叫他去做演出前的準備活動。
結果，我們還是沒看多久演唱會。一旦Michael在昏暗中被認出，事情又變得可怕起來。許許多多手、鼻子、眼睛環繞著我們。當某些不明液體灑到我們頭上時，Bray站起來說：“可以了，我們走吧。”我們在一起渡過了更多時光：和Quincy Jones一起在錄音室裏、在Michael未完工的娛樂室裏閒逛，或是拜訪他的小動物園。最後，當我們一起用奶瓶給他的那兩隻雙胞胎小鹿餵奶時，他突然轉過頭來看著我的眼睛。這一刻終於到了！
“你知道嗎？你不比我好多少。我是說，你和我一樣鬼鬼祟祟。”
“你怎麼知道的？”我問。
“你是踢踏舞演員。你當然是跳舞的，滾石的裏面一整頁都是你。你也得去演出。但你跳完了，就可以走開躲起來。沒人會去追著你。
Michael說中了，對得不能再對。他大笑起來，將一隻手搭在我肩膀上。
“請相信我的話——你不知道自己有多幸運！”
“鎖上窗！”Michael指著沖著我膝蓋上方的控制板大喊。我對豪華車瞭解只有這麼多，按到了天窗的鍵。天窗剛剛被我半打開，好幾隻胳膊就伸了進來，胡亂地亂抓亂舞。
噫～～～～～～～。哭喊聲讓公寓裏的住客都忍不住透過百葉窗看稀奇。Bray從前座扭過身來，出奇溫柔地想要撥開那些手指頭。Michael咯咯笑個不停。我真的被嚇著了，在這些貼著窗戶的扭曲的臉裏面尋找著Billie Jean。
當我們終於可以出發時，我轉頭望著Michael。他為晚上的公開活動打扮了一番，穿著牛仔褲和青綠色的毛巾運動外套、黑色的便鞋，只上了薄薄一層腮紅。這個規規矩矩的Michael看起來很棒——一個健康、英俊、結實的非洲裔美國人。
我們中途停下去接Michael的一個好朋友——一個十幾歲的金髮的滑雪運動員，父母也在耶和華見證會裏，這孩子也是個迷失的男孩。當Bray護送我們到了Mercury的服裝間時，兩個男孩縮成一團，直到Freddie像一隻羅威納犬一樣跳過來給了Mike一個擁抱，幾乎快把小小的他壓扁了。他們倒在一個打開的行李箱上面，Freddie的一堆高強度的護襠像雪崩一樣倒了下來。Michael的下巴頦兒都快掉下來了。
“哦～～～，Freddie，這是什麼？”一個金色的橄欖球頭盔掉了出來，落在那一堆罩杯上。
“搖滾是男人的活兒，小兄弟。”Freddie轟隆隆地說。Michael笑了，想要知道freddie上次過生日的時候是否真的光著身子掛在吊燈上。滑雪的男孩臉都紅了。我們聊得十分歡樂，直到Freddie的訓練師過來叫他去做演出前的準備活動。
結果，我們還是沒看多久演唱會。一旦Michael在昏暗中被認出，事情又變得可怕起來。許許多多手、鼻子、眼睛環繞著我們。當某些不明液體灑到我們頭上時，Bray站起來說：“可以了，我們走吧。”我們在一起渡過了更多時光：和Quincy Jones一起在錄音室裏、在Michael未完工的娛樂室裏閒逛，或是拜訪他的小動物園。最後，當我們一起用奶瓶給他的那兩隻雙胞胎小鹿餵奶時，他突然轉過頭來看著我的眼睛。這一刻終於到了！
“你知道嗎？你不比我好多少。我是說，你和我一樣鬼鬼祟祟。”
“你怎麼知道的？”我問。
“你是踢踏舞演員。你當然是跳舞的，滾石的裏面一整頁都是你。你也得去演出。但你跳完了，就可以走開躲起來。沒人會去追著你。
Michael說中了，對得不能再對。他大笑起來，將一隻手搭在我肩膀上。
“請相信我的話——你不知道自己有多幸運！”
Rolling Stone, while finishing recording of Thriller, 1982
Over the last decade my tape recorder has been unfailing in catching the weirdness of a moment: Bruce Springsteen doing Ed Norton imitations at 3: 00 a .m. The whir of bat wings over Eddy Grant’s Bajan plantation. Sting howling at the moon. But even my hypersensitive Sony was not up to capturing the steady flick of a snake tongue a few inches from my ear during that first long session with Michael Jackson. That whole trip was quietly strange; not menacing, just out there.
The reptile in question was Michael’s eight-foot boa constrictor, Muscles. For more than an hour, Muscles lay perfectly balanced on a banister beside me, head erect, beady eyes fixed on the small veins doubtless throbbing in my throat. Michael set him there when I declined to have Muscles lounge around my torso. It seemed a fair compromise.
Young Mike wasn’t being naughty. He explained it as an exercise in trust, and he was most convincing. If I was scared of snakes, he had a mortal dread of reporters – and maybe we should both get over it. Michael hadn’t done an interview in years without one of his sisters screening questions. And in the nearly ten years since our remarkable sessions in late ’82 (conducted as he was finishing Thriller), he has never again done an interview of this depth. Not that things went badly. It just was . . . hard.
Michael shocked everyone – his family, his management and his record company – by deciding to go it alone. He opened the front door of his rented Encino condo looking like a street whack. His corduroys were dirty and rumpled; the scuffed dress oxfords were untied. No socks. No makeup. His hospitality was touchingly inept; having run out of the proffered lemonade, he filled the other half of my glass with warm Hawaiian Punch. There was no food in the refrigerator, just juice. He explained that he was camping out there while his manse on Hayvenhurst was being rebuilt. But as she breezed through to her bedroom upstairs, sister Janet announced that he lived like a beggar, all the time; never ate except for some old lettuce leaves; wore raggedy-ass clothes. A disgrace . . .
“Right,” big brother shot back as she climbed the stairs. “At least I don’t have a booty like YOURS.”
Ten minutes into it, I could see his point. As he explained the tea party of garden statuary around his coffee table – including a Narcissus figure named Michael – I could hear how it would read. It nearly made me bawl. He was trying so damned hard.
We did agree to leave one part of our conversation out of the story, for his protection at the time. It came up as we sat in the condo dining room, and I noticed the school portrait of a young black woman tucked into the frame of an etching. The photo was one of the few personal touches in the place. The face looked like any .
“That’s the real Billie Jean,” Michael said. Quincy Jones had just played that cut for me in the studio; I knew the song was about a woman accusing the singer of fathering her child – which was what this woman’s letters insisted. Michael explained that he put the photo she’d sent in a central spot so he could memorize the face; it seemed she wanted him dead in a big way. He said she’d just sent him a gun in the mail with detailed instructions on killing himself. In a barely audible voice, Michael explained that the police had told him the gun was rigged to fire backward into the person doing the shooting. Later his mother would tell me that the woman was in an institution, under psychiatric care. When I saw the “Billie Jean” video a few months later – all disappearing tigers and pinpoint choreography – I kept seeing some girl in a green hospital gown.
“You deal with it,” Michael had told me. “You just deal.”
Over the next couple of days, Michael continued to deal with me, gamely, politely and with increasing humor. Janet shook her head in warning as he offered to drive us over for a tour of his house.
“Ray Charles drives better,” she cracked.
Strapped into his gold Camaro, I found myself longing for the relative safety of Muscle’s fond embrace. The motor skills were there, but Michael admitted that concentration was a problem. Horns were still honking at us as we pulled into the drive of the magic kingdom he was building for himself.
“You want go out tonight?”
Another surprise. Michael was going to a slam-jam Queen concert at the I.A. Forum. He wouldn’t mind the company. He felt he had to go. Freddie (the late Mr. Mercury, who died of AIDS in November 1991) had been calling him all week. He really should. . . .
Dusk was falling as we left for the show, Michael and his bodyguard Bill Bray walking point through the condo shrubbery toward a waiting limo. I thought they were being a bit silly – this was months before he hit monster status with Thriller. But they sensed the girls before I heard or saw them, made a dash to the car as a spiky red tangle of Lee press-on nails drummed against the windows.
“Lock it down!” Michael yelled to me, pointing to a panel at my knees. Limo savvy as I am, I hit the skylight button. Before it was half-open, arms reached in, clawing blindly.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeee. The keening drew blue-haired condo dwellers peering from behind their Levelers. Bray was twisting back from the front seat, prying fingers with surprising gentleness. Michael was helpless with giggles. I was flat scared, looking for Billie Jean in those contorted faces stuck against the windows.
When at last we pulled away, I turned to look at Michael. He had “dressed” for this public evening in jeans and a turquoise terry blazer, black loafers and just a tinge of blusher. This precept Michael looked great – healthy, handsome and robustly African American.
We stopped to pick up Michael’s one true friend – a blond teenage skier who was then his partner in Jehovah’s Witness fieldwork – and just as much of a Lost Boy. When Bray piloted us into Mercury’s dressing room, the boys shrank back until fib Freddie bounded over like a dizzy Rottweiler and damn near crushed tiny Mike in a hug. They fell against a big trunk that opened, releasing a terrifying avalanche of Freddie’s industrial-strength jockstraps. Michael’s jaw dropped.
“Ooooooooh, Freddie. What are those?”
A gold football helmet fell out and came to rest on the mountain of cups.
“Rock & roll’s a man’s job, little brother,” Freddie thundered. Michael smiled and wanted to know if his host had really spent his last birthday hanging naked from a chandelier. The skier blushed. We all had a swell time until Freddie’s trainer called him over for a little preperformance spine cracking.
As it turned out, we didn’t see much of the concert. Things got too spooky again once Michael was recognized in the beery dark. Hands, notes, eyes, surrounded us. When an unidentifiable liquid began raining on our heads, Bray stood up. “That’s it. We’re gone.”
We spent more time together, in the studio with Quincy Jones, rambling through Michael’s unfinished pleasure dome and visiting his menagerie. Toward the end, while we were bottle feeding his twin fawns, he turned suddenly and looked me in the eyes. Finally.
“You know something? You’re no better than I am. I mean, you’re just as sneaky.”
“How do you figure that?” I asked.
“You tap-dance in public. Sure you do, all over the page in ROLLING STONE. You need to perform, too. But when you’re done, you can run away and hide. Nobody’s after you.”
Michael had me there, dead to rights. He laughed and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Believe me when I tell you – don’t know how lucky you are.”
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