Just Look Over Your Shoulders, Honey

I once again had the tragic reminder today that the most important lesson in life was taught to me when I was nine and in Cub Scouts for three weeks. "Be Prepared." I've tweaked it a bit, though. I believe now that it should be changed to "Be Careful." With a dirty paw in the air, it is my Rabbit Scout motto.

I got sick after my Rod Stewart and two Lemonheads concerts. More on that in another post, hopefully. This was a drag because I had to cancel my Monday Summer School classes, meaning there would be a painful and difficult make up. This happened today. Nine hours of break free teaching. On the last day, this means nine hours of unadulterated hell. The students are always the worst on the last day, even after my pleas of, "C'mon, it's the last day, guys!"

Today was no different. I was pissy from the start with the prospect of having to tame the wild shrews. My first class was great, though. No problems, save one kid that kept asking, "When's the pizza coming" and proclaiming how dumb he was. That's something I can deal with, though. He became obsequious after an idle threat in the hallway.

Another mistake was dreadful, though. The worst part of being a teacher is that one minor indiscretion or fuck up becomes a kid's story for the rest of his life. Every adult has a handful of memories of injustice from high school. This kid hadn't even started. I gave him his first. And his parents weren't happy with me. There were no dodgy Neverland Ranch moments, but I did accuse a kid of doing something he didn't do, told him to go home, and left him wandering the school for two hours. Major mistake. I apologized and hopefully will be forgiven. It's a shitty way to end a nine year career at The Mootini.

After grasping the extent of my fuck up, I opened my computer to discover that Michael Jackson had died. Millions around the world realized it simultaneously or soon after. My reaction, "hmmm..."

In the car, I received a text message from Dave B. "Dude Michael Jackson just died in LA and is dead! And so is Farrah Fawcett. Wow." Many messages of this nature have been sent through cyberspace. I'm sure it's on the news right now. Poor Michael.

Bloggers are blogging away about it as I am right now. It's rather profound to me.

I scoured the airwaves for some MJ songs. I got a few. "I'll Be There" was the first I heard. I like that song. My favorite moment in the Jackson family biopic was when Michael ad libbed "Just look over your shoulders, honey". The producers loved it. The rest of the Jackson Five, not so much. They thought Michael was trying to upstage the rest of them. He did, but he wasn't trying to. That was the point the biopic made. He had more without trying than a thousand Titos had burning at all cylinders. Though Michael had a brilliant mind and a rock solid work ethic, he didn't need to create charisma.

I thought about his life, and how much I enjoyed hearing, watching, and reading about it. Being obsessive with The Catcher in the Rye--it's easy to make Michael Jackson a paradigm of lost innocence. He was a good natured soul that couldn't escape an obsession with the childhood he never had.

Some of my former students even made a film version of The Catcher in the Rye that featured Michael Jackson. They had him play Mr. Antollini--another "character" that often gets lumped into the raging pedophile category without much proof to go on. This is where I find his life so depressing.

I went out with Jane tonight. It was wonderful to see her--she made me feel so much better about my shit day. I talked her into having dinner with me rather than a drink, and we talked nicely the whole time. It's so hard to be around her, but I really need it right now. It's absurd, but being comfortable and happy is worth it.

She hadn't heard that he died. "He's the King of Pop!" I told her the few details that I knew and made a few up along the way for good measure. We traded stories over an Italian dinner. Oddly, a mural of Michael Jackson having a glass of wine with Prince overlooked us. The waitress took pictures of us next to it--awkwardly--while we laughed.

We were both terrified of the "Thriller" video. Again, stories like this have been going around since four o'clock today.

I drove Jane home--and I brought up what I had written about in a previous blog entry. This was foolish. I wasn't careful for the second time today. I said too much, she asked questions, emotions were out there, and it was uncomfortable for the first time the whole night. She threw out the line that she says every time we're together. "We just get along better." By this she means that she gets along better with the champ than she ever got along with me. I need to ask "how". But I'm too big a pussy. This comment always gets to me, and she knows it.

She said, "I'm sorry, but it's true." God, if the shoe were on the other foot, that comment would destroy her. She's manipulating me because I'm lonely.

"You'd know what a drag it is to see you!"

"One More Night" took me home for one more night. Over and over and over. That's definitely her song. It could have belonged to a cornucopia of different ladies, but she's most certainly claimed ownership.

I wasn't careful. And neither was Michael Jackson--ever. His career was defined by breaking the simple Rabbit Scout Motto.

Michael Jackson caught his hair on fire during a shoot for a Pepsi commercial. Michael Jackson dangled his child out a window (I saw that building in Berlin--during a tour, it was the moment when the most photos were taken). Michael Jackson allowed children to sleep in his bed. Michael Jackson potentially fucked Macaulay Culkin and Corey Feldman. Michael Jackson climbed a tree like a seven year old while being filmed for a shameumentary. Michael Jackson destroyed his face with plastic surgery. Michael Jackson bought several llamas.

All of these reveal a man that is not careful. Yet all of these (save the hair on fire incident) seemed semi-calculated. It's like he thought through them and then did it without the ability to use proper reason.

The moment that struck me the most during one of the documentaries was when he was accepting an award and came out at the wrong time. He lost the look of bewilderment that he normally had on his face and he looked--well, he looked like a seventy year old man sitting alone at Denny's that just realized he shit his pants (thank you, Henry). He looked like I looked when I realized I totally fucked up with that kid today. He looked like I looked when I realized I totally fucked up with Jane tonight. He became human to me. He was ashamed of his miscues and wondered how he could be so stupid.

The thing is, he didn't get over his misnomer for days. It really got him down. On television it was awkward, but awkward is something that television doesn't do very well. Awkward has to be lived. Awkward must be slept with (or tossed and turned with) overnight. We can't fully grasp how Michael dealt with all his fuck ups. It obviously took a toll on his heart, and it clearly wasn't something he was oblivious to.

I'm just eighteen years away from 50. I've got to be careful with everything I do so that I don't have to have those traumatic moments of stress like I did today and tonight. It's what killed "The King of Pop".

When I was listening to "I'll Be There", it struck me as sort of ironic that through his life he had no one to be there for him. He grasped at straws for love and affection and never found it outside of the superficial. "Just look over your shoulders, honey" isn't so much a call that, "I'll be there to help you", but rather, "I'll be there to fuck you over double whenever you fuck up in the slightest." That's why you've got to be careful--always. As I sip away at my gallon jug of Carlos Rossi Jesus Juice, I need to keep my shit in check. Just like Michael Jackson, I can't get away with acting like a nine year old forever--the excuses die, and so do we.