The Virgin Prince's War Journal

Fleshlings, one and all,

I've been left thinking about my past, and how Michael Jackson relates to it. I suppose it all started back when I was in pre-school, and every morning, shortly after being dropped off, I, dressed in my red jacket, would promptly begin my daily imitation of Michael Jackson, dancing on the floor and letting out high-pitched "ooh!"s. Michael Jackson was of course huge at the time, and his album was ever present on the floor of my living room, not tucked away in the bottom cabinet with the other albums, but leaning against it, forever engraving in my mind the image of Michael Jackson laying on the floor in his white suit. His video Beat It was played in constant rotation on the television, and on occasion, Thriller was as well. I suppose you could say that aside from my father and a handful of Star Wars characters, Michael Jackson was my first real male role-model. It's not as bad as it sounds, he was still black at the time, resembled a male, and quite frankly, hip. Back then, it even seemed like he liked women.

Every morning I continued my routine of imitating Michael Jackson. I suppose I thought he was pretty cool. There was a girl I liked back then (if it's possible to like girls in pre-school), her name, I think, was Stephanie. It's been too long, I really can't recall. Every time, I would dance like Michael Jackson, and she would be there watching, cheering me on and smiling. That was the extent of our relationship as I recall it, still, it was clear that we were sweet on eachother. I had a lot of fun in those early pre-school days, playing with He-Man figures, Star Wars figures, riding around on a tricycle, imitating Elliot from E.T., emulating Indiana Jones on the swing set, crawling underneath the play area where I wasn't supposed to be, sneaking with my friend Will into the storage closet and painting ourselves green so that we could each be the Hulk, and breathing in the exhaust of passing cars and enjoying it far too much.

Later, it was time for Kindergarten and I was transferred to a new school. It was run by the same people, but decidedly less fun. The staff there always seemed to have a grudge against me, confiscating my toys (as was standard for any student) but then giving them back to everyone else. I never got my toys back. Not that they didn't give them back, they just never gave them back to me. For some reason, I'm not sure why, they'd give my toys to everyone else. Other kids, perhaps they liked better, or the children of teachers. There was only one time I can recall they actually attempted to give me a toy back, however another kid started claiming it was his. I don't know why, whether it was a deliberate lie, or he was just confused, though I think he knew he was lying. I had, after all, brought in the toy and had it confiscated the same day, I knew durn-well what my toy looked like. Eventually, the guy that ran the place sat us both down in his office and questioned us. I told him how it was my toy and I'd brought it from home, the other kid proceeded to make up a big story about how it was his. Guess who got it?

It always has, and continues to, tick me off when I think about all the toys those people stole from me. Had they given even half of them back, I'd have a fortune in old Star Wars figures (yes, they ARE worth a lot), and I'd have the two first Transformers I ever got, which I've been trying unsuccessfully for years to replace. Part of what bothers me the most, is I often didn't get to keep my toys for even a week.

Halfway through the year at my new school, there was a massive influx of new students. One of the kids I remember I immediately noticed, he had a certain swagger to him that I didn't trust. Freddy, I think his name was. Before long Stephanie was hanging around him instead. Not that I minded too much, but one day I started to dance for her, once more imitating Michael Jackson.

"Michael Jackson sucks." She told me, repeating the words of the newcomer. There was a hurtful tone to the way she said it, the comment wasn't aimed solely at Michael Jackson. I went outside to swing on the swing set alone, a strange pain in my stomach. She never spoke to me again.

Not too long after that, I was kicked out of the place. I guess I wasn't feeling too chipper anymore. I pulled out a large clump of another kid's hair after he dumped a large bucket of sand on my head for no apparent reason. I didn't even know the kid. I guess that's why anger took over.

I don't think I was generally too bad a kid there. I didn't steal other people's toys, like they stole mine. I didn't try to be mean. I didn't intentionally swear. I only recall doing a few bad things. My parents took away my cowboy boots because I'd been kicking people with them, though I doubt I was kicking them solely for the sake of kicking them, they'd probably been teasing or harassing me at the time. I remember there was at least one kid at the school that delighted in tearing up the pictures I had drawn, only for the sake of doing it.

Once, I said, “Tina Turner is a bitch” into a microphone connected to a loud speaker. My statement was heard throughout the school. I wasn’t trying to be bad, I was just repeating something my sister had told me, and Tina Turner just happened to be playing at the time. I also deliberately smashed the head of a porcelain doll that had belonged to one of my classmates. The doll had been given to her by her grandmother, I think, and I fear, it was a family heirloom. I hadn't smashed the doll’s head out of pure maliciousness, though perhaps there was some present. The truth was, the doll scared me. Those dolls with the porcelain heads always scared me and caused me nightmares, they often haunted my unpleasant dreams. There was a room in my aunt’s house I couldn’t enter until I was 10 because it was filled with those terrifying things.

I wasn’t really a bad kid I think. I was actually pretty friendly and even affectionate. I remember making a new friend and kissing him on the cheek. He pushed me away and told me that guys didn’t kiss other guys. It was new information to me, I always kissed my father on the cheek after all.

To this day, two of my biggest regrets come from pre-school. I've always felt bad about pulling out that kid's hair, though everyone has assured me it would grow back. As for the porcelain doll, I didn't remember that until later, but upon getting a full recollection of the event, I felt absolutely horrible. I'd aged enough to no longer be afraid of those hideous things, and had developed an understanding of it's actual worth. I'm sorry, truly sorry for it. I'm sorry for it all.

A year later, I was in first grade and going to public school. My Christmas score had been pretty good. I got a kick-ass Transformer that my grandfather broke within an hour of opening, and, strangely enough, a Michael Jackson doll. I suppose my mother put my fan-ship of Michael Jackson before any concerns of giving a boy a doll. She repeated this on a later Christmas when, noting my dream of being an astronaut, she gave me a Cabbage Patch Kid in a space-suit. Still, I was by no means disappointed to receive my Michael Jackson doll. I thought it was actually pretty cool. He was in his early pseudo-military outfit and most likely came with the one white glove. He was an interesting addition to the Sonny and Cher and Donny and Marie dolls already in our household.

So when show-and-tell time rolled around in school, I knew what I was bringing. The Michael Jackson doll of course! But that’s not all. Now, stop me if you don’t get my logic, but isn’t it always better when you have a set of toys that go together as opposed to just one? I mean, a Batman figure is good, but if you’ve got Robin and the Joker too, you can set up way more interesting situations, and if you’ve got the car, well then, you’re set! Anyway, with that logic running through my head, I borrowed my sister’s Barbie car and a few of her dolls, so as to further impress my classmates.

I spent the majority of that day at school walking around with a pink Barbie car sticking out of the top of my backpack. Every so often, a boy would ask me what I was doing with a girl’s toy, mocking me slightly. I’d of course tell them it was my sister’s toy, not thinking much of it. Finally, the time for show and tell came and I walked up proudly with my backpack, dumping out the contents for all to see.

“This is my Michael Jackson doll,” I told the class, “and he fits in this car. But this car’s cool because it’ll hold four people, see?” I’d shoved three other dolls into the seats. I rolled it back and forth once to show off the car in all it’s glory.

The class watched me with mixed reactions. Half of them I’m sure didn’t really think much of it though. The reaction that sticks out in my memory is the teacher’s. She was well aware that something was very strange, at least from her viewpoint. She made no efforts to shut me up and spare me embarrassment however, no attempt to convince the class that I was indeed acting quite normally or that it’s okay to appreciate the toys meant for another gender, the toys of one’s sibling. No, the biggest look of disgust was on her face, and she spoke to me in a mocking tone, joining the class in treating me like a junior pariah. I sat down on the floor once more with my classmates, feeling a bit uncomfortable.

I’m sure it’d been determined then and there in my teacher’s mind, and perhaps the minds of a few of the more socially-aware children that I would grow up to be quite a dandy. That indeed one of these kids was not like the others. Not that I had any concept of “gay”. From the first time I saw a partially-exposed woman on the box for a shower-head at the tender age of 4 or 5, I knew what I wanted. Guys and girls, that’s how I understood it. This is all unnecessary information, the point is, I learned that day that boys play with boy toys and girls play with girl toys and if you go against that, there’s something wrong with you.

Back to Michael Jackson, I continued to appreciate him for the next few years. He was, after all, the epitome of cool. I did the Captain Eo experience at Disneyland, played the Moonwalker videogame, memorized the lyrics to Bad, or, failing that, Weird Al’s Fat, and watched The Wiz over and over throughout my childhood, my favorite character always being the extremely soft-spoken scarecrow. Smooth Criminal constantly echoed throughout the insides of my skull.

Then Black Or White came around and Michael Jackson really wasn’t that interesting anymore. I mean, it was a cool video, but then he followed it up with that really awful video with Eddy Murphy and that was it for him. Career death. So Michael Jackson sucks. Kindergarten prophecy comes true.

Did he touch boys? Who knows? There’s enough reasons out there to not like him. Deliberately outbidding his then-friend Paul McCartney and getting the rights to all the Beatle’s songs, then not answering McCartney’s calls when he decided to sell, and promptly selling the songs to Sony. Well I suppose Linda McCartney is partially to blame, she did give away the song rights in the first place, to a greedy music exec, no less. But then there’s Jackson’s self-appointed demi-god status, his questionable marriages, the two-kids he owns that aren’t his. All this and he’s incapable of even admitting the truth about himself, such as providing a realistic number of plastic surgeries he’s had done, or claiming that his last two kids are his and that the mother was black. Two black parents don’t normally produce white kids.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that Stephanie telling me that Michael Jackson sucks and the hair-pulling incident happened on the same day, which explains a lot to me. Well, it doesn’t matter. The past is filled with unpleasant memories and I think perhaps there are some things better not remembered. Forget the past, tomorrow I’m back to crime fighting. There’s always tomorrow.

Be seeing you,
The Virgin Prince