Whatever You Want (Say Say Say)
Jul. 7th, 2009 06:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jheti
You may see a lot of Michael Jackson flail on your flist today.
Some of us were actually raised with his music and will, perforce, have more to relate than others.
(I grew up thinking of CDs as "little plastic 45s". DVDs are just CDs that play videos. BluRay is DVD VHS, kiddo. *Snap.*)
These are the memories that really stand out.
There was some family we met out in the boondocks somewhere and fuck if I can remember why, we were going to be rich or famous or better people and they knew some people who knew some people--that's the way it goes, with families you meet only once.
The grandparents had the kids; parents couldn't keep them for a web of the usual reasons.
Bro and I got to play babysitter while the adults talked faith and fame and this time we'll be rich.
The girl was ten and wide-eyed with that skittish, hollow look that comes from flinching out of the way. She wore acid green knee socks and whitewashed shorts and a glitter jacket.
I was seventeen and hadn't seen clothes like those since before I was her age. But I remembered the Jacket and every knuckle to the face I took for it, to fight and keep it and be who I wanted to be.
She literally clung to my knees and begged me to be her older sister within fifteen minutes of us joking around.
"I don't think he did it," she blurted, rapid stacatto. "I don't think Michael Jackson is a bad man I like him but my friends don't do you like Michael Jackson?"
I smiled. "Honey, Michael Jackson is the King of Pop. Don't ever let anybody tell you different."
She beamed, vindicated by a teenager. "I knew it!"
I couldn't protect her from her friends or her parents or her life.
I asked a question instead. "What's your favorite song?"
We spent the next three hours flailing around whitely to Black or White at neighbor-annoying volume.
We did a lot of walking. We did a lot of talking about music. The true classics and the new shit, mostly. We came up with this and this on such sojourns.
We spent our last Halloween walking in the dark by choice, ducking trick-or-treaters and thinking we were mad awesome hot shit.
I was getting bored and my feet were hurting and we still had to walk all the way back.
"It's close to midnight," he crooned, and made The Hands.
There is only one rejoinder for such a remark: "Demons closin' in on every side!"
'Cause it's a thriller, thriller night.
We went arm-in-arm down the street and sang the whole way home.
It was years ago, right before the first case, and we were young but she was older--god boys are gross, look what they did, jesus do these things ever stop hurting?
Here, I can show you.
She probably doesn't remember. No one else ever does. She only met me once.
Every time I played The Way You Make Me Feel I thought of her.
Years later, reversed roles, different circumstances, different girl, same tune, alright.
I listened where he wouldn't, stopped where I found out later that he didn't, snuck a drink with Dirty Diana blaring and tried to really shave for the first time.
I was eight or so, and just hit Stateside for the first time in a long time, still all hi-topped with curls pluming a foot high off my head. My hair was made for spray, baby. <3
This and that and they were changing the guard at Disney World later that year. But I was there in time to catch the captain playing yet.
They'd updated it some, smoke and lazers to go with 3D showing its age. And the ride attendant had an awesome jagged scar on the top of his scalp. He knew we were looking and smiled, laughed it off.
"I shoulda sat down, obviously," he said, and we laughed with him. "Blew my mind, I tell you what."
I was still young enough to believe him.
Mine is probably still We Are Here To Change The World.
Some of us were actually raised with his music and will, perforce, have more to relate than others.
(I grew up thinking of CDs as "little plastic 45s". DVDs are just CDs that play videos. BluRay is DVD VHS, kiddo. *Snap.*)
These are the memories that really stand out.
There was some family we met out in the boondocks somewhere and fuck if I can remember why, we were going to be rich or famous or better people and they knew some people who knew some people--that's the way it goes, with families you meet only once.
The grandparents had the kids; parents couldn't keep them for a web of the usual reasons.
Bro and I got to play babysitter while the adults talked faith and fame and this time we'll be rich.
The girl was ten and wide-eyed with that skittish, hollow look that comes from flinching out of the way. She wore acid green knee socks and whitewashed shorts and a glitter jacket.
I was seventeen and hadn't seen clothes like those since before I was her age. But I remembered the Jacket and every knuckle to the face I took for it, to fight and keep it and be who I wanted to be.
She literally clung to my knees and begged me to be her older sister within fifteen minutes of us joking around.
"I don't think he did it," she blurted, rapid stacatto. "I don't think Michael Jackson is a bad man I like him but my friends don't do you like Michael Jackson?"
I smiled. "Honey, Michael Jackson is the King of Pop. Don't ever let anybody tell you different."
She beamed, vindicated by a teenager. "I knew it!"
I couldn't protect her from her friends or her parents or her life.
I asked a question instead. "What's your favorite song?"
We spent the next three hours flailing around whitely to Black or White at neighbor-annoying volume.
We did a lot of walking. We did a lot of talking about music. The true classics and the new shit, mostly. We came up with this and this on such sojourns.
We spent our last Halloween walking in the dark by choice, ducking trick-or-treaters and thinking we were mad awesome hot shit.
I was getting bored and my feet were hurting and we still had to walk all the way back.
"It's close to midnight," he crooned, and made The Hands.
There is only one rejoinder for such a remark: "Demons closin' in on every side!"
'Cause it's a thriller, thriller night.
We went arm-in-arm down the street and sang the whole way home.
It was years ago, right before the first case, and we were young but she was older--god boys are gross, look what they did, jesus do these things ever stop hurting?
Here, I can show you.
She probably doesn't remember. No one else ever does. She only met me once.
Every time I played The Way You Make Me Feel I thought of her.
Years later, reversed roles, different circumstances, different girl, same tune, alright.
I listened where he wouldn't, stopped where I found out later that he didn't, snuck a drink with Dirty Diana blaring and tried to really shave for the first time.
I was eight or so, and just hit Stateside for the first time in a long time, still all hi-topped with curls pluming a foot high off my head. My hair was made for spray, baby. <3
This and that and they were changing the guard at Disney World later that year. But I was there in time to catch the captain playing yet.
They'd updated it some, smoke and lazers to go with 3D showing its age. And the ride attendant had an awesome jagged scar on the top of his scalp. He knew we were looking and smiled, laughed it off.
"I shoulda sat down, obviously," he said, and we laughed with him. "Blew my mind, I tell you what."
I was still young enough to believe him.
Mine is probably still We Are Here To Change The World.
