Anyway, a few years after the first grotesque, untrue claims, Arnie Klein’s birthday came around and he invited us to Michael’s Neverland Ranch to celebrate this event with Arnie’s multi-bear clan. It wasn’t clear whether or not we were going to see Michael, or even if he was there. We were there as Arnie’s guests. But then that night we got called into the house. Or maybe it was more like summoned.
We found ourselves walking into this dark, cave-like room with dark sofas, curtains drawn, an enormous sound system—all that seemed to be missing was a crystal disco ball. And in the midst of all this was Michael, clad in white pajamas with animals on them. He told us that he had stayed up all night in this room, dancing. That being one of the few things that gave him pleasure. He’d go to this gigantic dark room at his ranch and stay there by himself, dancing to music all night long. I think that for Michael, this was a way to be okay. Among other things, I think it was one of the ways people could not get at him. When he was inside his music, it all made sense. The music took care of him. It was one of the few things that didn’t want something from him. It wrapped him up in sound and sailed him away to where he could be safe. Music may have been his truest friend, the only one he could truly trust. Pretentious? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it any less true, does it?
Cut to another night, the following year. I was up at Elizabeth Taylor’s house where we would then head off to an AIDS benefit in Beverly Hills. Our little group was composed of Elizabeth and Michael with their double-date happening to be… Shirley MacLaine and myself.
Part of Michael’s relationship with Elizabeth was to buy her jewelry—you might say it was even a big part of their relationship. Elizabeth liked getting jewelry. But then really, who doesn’t? I remember coming into her dressing room one time and she was wearing this diamond as big as a doorknob that she always wore—the famous diamond Burton had given her. “What did you do to get that?” I asked her. And she smiled sweetly and softly said, “I was loved.”
So there we were, Shirley, Elizabeth, Michael, and me in a limousine driving to the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Our car drove up to the entrance, the car door opened, the four of us spilled out in front of the paparazzi, and Shirley and I were instantly rendered invisible. We were rendered unrecognizable. Michael’s and Elizabeth’s combined celebrity was just so incredibly intense. It was shine squared. And in a way it may have been comforting for each of them to have found someone with equivalent unimaginable celebrity. A rare species—endangered, protected, shiny—shared an uncommon denominator. And after all isn’t that something we all want—community?
This, I think, is largely why Michael would spend time with Elizabeth. They had something amazingly unique in common. They were both stars from a very early age. Which is tantamount to being pulled out of the general community really early on and taken away from anything relatable. Obviously this is a high-class problem, but that doesn’t make it any less of something to deal with, does it?
So if that happened to you, who knows, you might want to be around children, too. Children who don’t understand enough to get weirded out by you. Who just know people are people. Who knows?
That night, at the AIDS benefit, Shirley and I ended up being spectators to the spectacle of Michael and Elizabeth. All you can really do in a situation like that is watch. And both Shirley and I are celebrities who write, who document, who observe, who in a way feel pulled out of situations that pull you out anyway. Sort of like war reporters on the front lines of celebrity.
But whatever we were like, perhaps one of the reasons Michael was comfortable with me was that, in a way, we could understand a part of each other that nobody else could. The Princess and the King. Leia and Pop. Maybe. Or maybe we never knew each other at all. Who knows? And who maybe even gives a shit, ultimately.
On Christmas Eve 2008—Michael’s last—I went over to his house, which is located just down the hill from me and a few blocks over. He was giving his children the childhood that he never had. A childhood outside of celebrity with people who didn’t objectify them. Because normally, for Michael, life was like being an animal at the zoo. An endangered species forever behind bars. I could get in the cage with Michael and not get freaked out, and there weren’t that many people who would’ve known how to, or known that it was even something they might actually be required to do when with him. But I did.
So I joined Michael after hours at his zoo. We took pictures and ate cookies and decorated the tree.
And then, to change it up, Michael asked me to do the Star Wars hologram speech for his kids. I didn’t mind. Someone actually had to remind me what a big Star Wars fan Michael was.
While I was there, though, we weren’t really experiencing the situation for the most part, we were taking pictures of it. Arnie took pictures of me and Michael and the kids, and I took pictures of Arnie and his friends and the Michael family package. My favorite was taking a picture of Michael reading my book Wishful Drinking.
I will always cherish that weird Christmas configuration of ours. Looking back, it was as if Michael didn’t know how to just be in a situation without recording it on a camera. The thing is, he was just so used to being documented. But the main reason the documentation came up this time was mostly for Arnie’s friends, who wanted to take pictures of their meeting with Michael so they could carry his shine around. The encounter elevated them. It became, “Oh, I had Christmas Eve dinner with Michael Jackson. What did you do?” Anyway, we all fucked around holiday style and having fun, and it was fun. We took pictures, we acted childish (at least I think that’s what it was). At some point, Michael said, “Okay, I’m letting you take my kids’ pictures because I know that you won’t show them to anyone because you know I don’t want anyone to see my children.”
He wanted his children to be as unrecorded as possible. If the Africans believe that you lose a piece of your soul each time you have your picture taken, then Michael hadn’t had one for a very long time. But he was trying to arrange things so that his kids could keep theirs. And his children are very sweet, good children. And that’s because whatever else he was or wasn’t, I think Michael was a really good father. I mean, his children are kind, really polite, even-tempered, and essentially unspoiled kids. And that can’t come from a nanny. You can’t fake that stuff. It has to come from the parent. And that parent was Michael.
Soon after that, Michael sent me a present—a phone. And just like with the soap I stole from Neverland, I lost it.
Michael couldn’t do any of the things that normal people do because as soon as he got involved with them, they became toxic with focus pulling, contaminated with shine. And I guess the only times where he could not feel pulled at and objectified was when he listened to the music all night and danced, or when he was being a father.
Michael was this creature that entertained us and then baffled us. I don’t think he was a drug addict in a conventional way. I think he just wanted out sometimes. And “out” could be dancing by himself all night to music. Or “out” could be anesthesia, which in my vast experience is not a drug. It provides no high, just nothingness, which must have seemed tremendously appealing to him. To sleep, perchance not to be misunderstood, get used, have your privates photographed by the police.