Mike and me.

So my mother calls me and leaves this message on my voicemail, "Your youth is officially over. Michael Jackson is dead. Wondering if you'd heard."

Of course, I'd not been able to answer her call because I was fielding millions of phone calls and text messages and emails and facebook poignance. It's an understatement to say that our generation is taking this kinda rough. We all have a lot to share about our relationship with Mike.

When I was six years old, the only thing on my list to Santa was Thriller. I cared about nothing else, and talked about it incessantly at school. When the flat, roughly 12" x 12" square appeared in tacky paper beneath the tree, I swore it was something else. I had built it up in my mind to be as big as my entire torso, enough to actually wrap my arms around. My sister, Louise had worked at Camelot Music in Bel-Air Mall and brought it home for me. To tell you the truth, I actually spotted it in a bag hanging on her bedroom doorknob prior to the Big Day, but couldn't really believe it was actually about to be mine to behold.

I learned to use our multiple record players at around four years old, having been taught how to lay the needle down ever-so-gingerly on the smooth line in between songs. Albums were something to be handled like china, and respected. I remember learning to hold them between my finger tips on the edges, fearing for my life if I dropped one. Already in heavy rotation at this age were Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits Vol. 1, Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 Fool on the Hill, and Prince Controversy. I spent countless hours alone in my room listening to these and learning every little bit of the space between notes and the scant breath here and there. But these were my family's records, and Thriller was mine. All mine.

I gazed at Michael with the big kitty and fell in love with him. Spending so much time alone in my room with this record at such a young age, he was literally one of my friends. Thriller always scared me a little, but I did huge can-can girl kicks to the bit he ripped off from Manu Di Bango in Wanna Be Startin Somethin. I dreamed over he and Paul McCartney (as my sister had taught me all of the Beatles' names and their reverence not long ago), and wished I was the girl they fought over. Human Nature cultivated my first fantasies of a big city, and Lady In My Life just made be feel warm. I honestly felt I knew him. I decided he was my boyfriend, and when I announced it to my mother she discouraged me. So I decided he was my cousin, and I told everyone at school.

Whenever someone's sister or brother would buy the album, I was notified. The kids in first grade at St. Ignatius in Mobile, AL were mystified. I received them graciously. And today I heard from schoolmates that I haven't spoken to in years.

Yeah, we shared a last name. But the intimacy I had with this first album of my very own can only describe the void a child can fill spending countless hours alone in her room, gazing out of the window and petting her Doberman, waiting to go play in the graveyard.

My Christmas Gift.

This year I had a big schedule. I was to make an appearance in Tuscaloosa, AL for a friend's family gatherings, and then immediately depart Mobile to Charleston, SC to join my sisters, mother, father and his wife. We weren't too sure how this was going to go over, as it hadn't yet been tried with this particular wife of Dad's. As it turns out, I have no good material to report. Everyone behaved, and it was a total disappointment. We all ate well and laughed and drank and were merry as shit. I haven't had that functional of a family Christmas maybe ever, and it made me nervous.

But the fun part of the story is this small nugget of humor: prior to departing for Tuscaloosa I happened to experience the mad breaking of a months-old levy with a rather fetching young gentleman, and it left a visible toll on my face. Unfortunately I am a delicate flower. The skin on my chin could not bear to stay around to watch all of that crude sucking any longer, and simply left. My lips were indignant to the abandonment and swelled to a bright red anger, the one closest to my chin even throbbing with fury. So I wake to depart to meet my friend's family for the first time, and I have a nickel-sized patch of skin missing from my chin, and a mouth more opulent than a baboon's swollen, beckoning vagina. I do what I can for the chin, which is moisturize and apply concealer (the effect is something like wet tissue paper on silly putty), and liberally apply lip-plumping gloss. Because I just had to see what would happen. And what happened was massive, shiny, porn lips that I wished would stay forever (they returned to normal size by the next morning).

So I'm in a great mood, it's a beautiful day, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the drive. I'm just outside of Tuscaloosa, and it dawns on me that I have a ton of crap on my floor board. Not wanting to embarrass myself in front of my friend and her family, I stop at a gas station to throw all of the junk out. It's a glorious day in the mid-seventies, and I'm comfortable in jeans and a tailored t-shirt. I gather a full armload of junk into my chest, as I don't want to make more than one trip to the trash bin 7 feet away, and step out of the car to drop it in. Wanting to make this as expeditious as possible, I leave the car running and don't have any hands to close the door behind me. I drop the trash in the basin, wind blowing my hair into my thick coat of lip gloss. As I pivot around, trying to delicately remove the strands of hair from the sap on my lips without breaking the hair or leaving lines of color across my cheek, I watch the car door shut. I'm frozen. Please, don't be locked. Oh, please. But sure enough, that bad boy is barely engaged, but firmly locked. My cell phone and purse inside, and engine purring like a fat cat in the sunshine.

Some bystanders watch as I go through the first several stages of loss; anger, bargaining, depression, yadayada. I finally hit acceptance and walk inside to call Rape-A-Lock. I ask the girls behind the counter if they know anyone who might have a slim jim, because it is the kind of town where Billy might have one in his truck or something. They look at me blankly and shake their heads. But then the blood starts to flow, and the one one wearing large, plastic, vintage floral earrings with her BP golf shirt suggests that I ask the gentlemen at the car wash next door. The light goes off with all of us, and I burst out of the glass doors. I'm bounding across the parking lot with lips shining like-- I have to use this one again-- a baboon's swollen, flushed vulva, my giant hooters grazing my chin every other step, and smiling my ass off at the knights in shining chrome before me. As I slowly become aware of their probable perception of this, I stop the jogging. In fact, as I came to a stop, I found myself standing in the dirt surrounded by about seven men that you might not want to be surrounded by, say, alone at night. I've already called to them about the slim jim, suddenly realizing I was running at them begging for a freaking SLIM JIM. Merry Christmas, fellas.

Two of them take to the task, and they produce very quickly several objects with which to break into a car. This was not to my surprise. They had it open in seconds, and refused to take a dime from me. They saved me from losing $50 and an hour or so to Rape-A-Lock. Merry Christmas to me. The most meaningful gift by far this year.

KJ