The Man in the Mirror

As we all know by now, Michael Jackson--who apparently was reading Tagore poems in his last days--is dead.

It is sad and strange, and though it feels a little odd, I wanted to put up a sort of Harriet "open thread" about it here just in case anyone wants to vent over the weekend.  Myself, I've felt mostly numb about the whole thing, mainly, I think, because the King of Pop had been dead for me twenty years or so, ever since I was eight years old.

Then--summer of '87--I had the Thriller poster up in my room, the weird plastic "Beat It" doll, the records, stickers on my school folders . . . I was a fan.  No, seriously.  I was a fan.  Not quite a lunatic fan, but an eight-year old pop music fan, which is quite enough already, don't you think?

Yes, well, case in point: I decided that summer that I wanted to get my haircut EXACTLY like Michael's.  I told my mom on the way to the barber (Okay, actually, a confession here: it was not the barber.  It was the salon.  Michael Jackson had made it okay to be feminine, marvelous and not-so tough, right?  So I 'll admit now to the world that I went with my mom to the salon to get my haircut when I was eight.  Think of that what you will.).  My mom seemed to take the news in stride.

"Okay," she said.

Okay?!  Holy shit!

I sat in stunned silence.  I could suddenly picture it so clearly.  That strange, curly, flingable wetness, how would I exist with such amazing glamour on my head?  At school!  At baseball practice!  Out in the streets of Iowa!

It would be the best.

I strode into the salon and told the lady straight away what was happening.  "Exactly like Michael Jackson's hair," I said, pointing at my head.  She looked over at my mom who just sat there, casually flipping through a magazine.  The lady shrugged, spun me around to face the center of the room and--I couldn't believe it--began cutting my hair!

She snipped, brushed, combed and spruced and the whole while I had the magic of "P.Y.T." coursing through my little eight year old veins.  I'm sure my eyes looked crazed.  Could this really be happening?  Michael Jackson's hair! On my head!

A little whisk of the brush at the back of my neck, and then the lady spun me around to face the mirror.   It was like Christmas on a roller coaster with a million puppies.  I felt a huge  anticipatory smile--all teeth and mania--spread across my face as I came into focus in the mirror, and there, above my little face smiling all crazy, was, yes, the exact same bowl-cut I always got.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson.