Here are the MJ-related excerpts from the book:
Of course, I knew who Michael Jackson was even before the launch of MTV. <i>Sort of</i>. I had heard “Rock with You” and “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” though at the time I hadn’t realized they were by the same person. Actually, I hadn’t even realized they were by a <i>man</i>. The Michael Jackson of the late 1970s, I didn’t really get. But the Michael Jackson I watched—mouth agape, standing stock-still in the middle of my grandparents’ living room—in May 1983, <i>that</i> was a guy I wanted to know more about.
<i>Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, and Forever,</i> the concert at which Jackson debuted his now legendary dance moves, is one of those iconic moments in history, like the moon landing or the day President Kennedy was shot; everyone knows exactly where they were when it happened. It is etched in my memory, indelibly printed on the film reel of my mind. That jheri curl! The glittery glove! The moonwalk! I had never seen anything like it. Even my grandfather, admittedly something of a racist (throughout my entire childhood, he referred to black people as <i>schvartzes</i>), was impressed. And that performance marked the birth of an infatuation for me just as it did for so many others. I immediately went out and bought the album; it was the first LP I purchased with my own money. Not long after that came the debut of “Thriller,” the greatest music video of all time. Fourteen minutes of pure magic directed by none other than the great John Landis.
The “Thriller” campaign, of course, was monstrous, and a then-burgeoning MTV was playing it round the clock. So every hour—on the hour—I would drop what I was doing and jump in front of the television. I studied that video until I had learned every beat, every breath, every bit of dialogue and, of course, every single second of that dance.
My mother had enrolled me in a dance class, briefly, back when I was seven. It was a tap class, a lot of “shuffle, heel” and “kick, ball, change.” I spent the majority of the time staring at the wall or looking at my feet. When I emerged, my mother took one look at me and shook her head. “God, you must be the most uncoordinated kid in the world,” she said. It was just like being made to sing “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” during all those auditions—I couldn’t carry a tune. Clearly, I wasn’t much of a dancer, either.
But there was something about watching Michael, the way he moved, so smooth, so fluid, as if sliding across the ice; I guess I sort of got the fever. Because suddenly, I could dance. Just like Michael Jackson. Not that I was prepared to show anybody (not yet at least). But locked in my room, practicing the moonwalk in front of the mirror, I felt good about myself. I had this newfound self-confidence. That’s part of the magic of Michael. Somehow, just by striking a pose, just hearing that opening drumbeat of “Billie Jean,” he made you feel better about yourself.
By the time I was finishing up <i>Gremlins,</i> in the winter of 1984, my love of Michael Jackson had turned into a full-blown obsession. Someone, I no longer remember who, bought me one of those glittery Michael Jackson gloves, a cheap little thing, a crappy little glove dipped in glue and covered in glitter. In the mid-eighties, they were <i>everywhere,</i> but I adored it. I used mine as a sort of change purse, twisting the top and sticking it through my belt, like an extra-sparkly version of a fanny pack. I bought all the fan magazines, spent hours staring at pictures of him performing, and decided—improbably—that we were destined to meet. I can’t really explain that. But I was eleven, and more than a little incorrigible.
One day I was working with Joe Dante, wrapping up a few days of ADR (also known as “automated dialogue replacement,” the process by which actors re-record bits of dialogue in order to improve sound quality, clarity, or, sometimes, to make minor alterations to the script). During every break in the recording session, I went on and on about Michael Jackson. I couldn’t shut up about him. Until Joe, exasperated, turned to me and said, “You know he came to the set one day?”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “What?”
“Yeah, yeah, he came and visited us.”
“He <i>did</i>?”
“Yeah, well, you know, he’s a friend of Steven’s, so he came down to check out the set. Spent the whole day with us. He came to my house, actually. Steven brought him over.”
“Did you get to <i>see him DANCE</i>?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah, he moonwalked for us.”
I imagine Joe told me all this to, once and for all, shut me up. It had the opposite effect.
By the time I began work on <i>The Goonies,</i> about a year later, it was widely known that Steven Spielberg and Michael Jackson really were friends. (Jackson even performed the theme song for <i>E.T</i>., called “Someone in the Dark.”) I started to put two and two together: if Michael Jackson had visited the <i>Gremlins</i> set, why wouldn’t he come to see the <i>Goonies</i>? All I had to do was ask Steven. So I did. Every day. About 150 bagillion times. I pestered him for the entire three months we spent in Oregon, and every day we continued to shoot in L.A. I couldn’t help it. I was going to meet Michael Jackson if it killed me.
* * *
<b>Not long after </b>[…], I was in the school trailer, working away with the other <i>Goonies</i> cast members, when we were interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. We had a delivery, a giant cardboard box addressed to all the kids in the cast. Inside were seven satin jackets, emblazoned with the words “The Jacksons Victory Tour.” I realized, right then, that my dreams were about to come true.
The Victory Tour was, not surprisingly, the biggest thing happening in music. I had been hounding Steven for tickets, as well as calling in to KIIS-FM hoping to win one of their daily giveaways, but a box of tour jackets from Michael Jackson was beyond even my wildest dreams. The tickets came soon after that, along with an invitation to meet Michael after the show. I believe there were sixteen passes in total; enough for the principle cast and one of each cast members’ parents, our two on-set tutors, and Mark Marshall, Steven’s assistant at the time. Mark was used to wrangling child actors, so it seemed only natural that he would lead us all on the trek to Dodger Stadium. It would be one of the last times all six Jackson brothers performed together; it was December 1984, the final stop of the six-month tour.
At that point, the only concert I had ever been to was to see Styx at the Forum, around the time “Mr. Roboto” started climbing the charts. The Victory Tour was something else entirely. You could feel the energy of the crowd pulse through you in waves—even from our seats all the way at the back of the stadium. We were in the nosebleed section, so high up that the Jacksons looked like ants on the stage. But it didn’t matter. I had dreamed of this moment. […]
The rest of the concert is mostly a blur to me now; what I remember most was how desperately I wanted it to be over. That’s when it would happen—that’s when I would meet Michael. But as the lights came on and the stadium started to empty out, there was a sudden change of plans: Michael would go back to his hotel. It was suggested that we would meet him there. As we filed back on the bus, however, word came that we were going home. This was not the plan. We were supposed to go to the show, then Michael and I would meet, and then we would become friends. What in the hell had happened?
Back at Warner Brothers on Monday morning, I wasted no time finding out. Who knew what Michael would be up to next? Maybe he would go off to tour another part of the world. Maybe he would go into seclusion to work on his next album. I was not going to let this chance slip through my fingers, so as soon as I got to set, I ran right up to Steven Spielberg.
“What happened? We didn’t get to meet Michael!”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that.”
“What? Why are <i>you</i> sorry?”
“Well, I didn’t think it was appropriate. Michael wanted to invite everyone back to his hotel room, but I told him no.”
I stared at him.
“I thought it would be a little overwhelming,” Steven continued. “All sixteen of you, stuffed into his hotel. He’s just finished a pretty major tour, you know. He’s probably pretty tired.”
I scoffed. Michael Jackson—I ridiculously assumed—did not get tired.
“Corey?” Steven said, obviously sensing my frustration. “I do have some good news.” He waited a moment, until I had picked my head up and looked him in the eye. “He’s going to come to set.”
“When?”
“Not sure yet. We’re looking at a day two weeks from now, but it’s not a hundred percent. Check back with me next week.”
I did check back with him the following week, and every day after that. But every time I asked, something unexpected had “come up” or Michael’s schedule had changed. I was afraid I had been duped, that maybe the meeting would never happen. I was constantly in a state of agitation, the excitement and anticipation rumbling below the surface, but I was afraid to get my hopes up. I had been disappointed so many times before.
* * *
<b>Waiting for Michael </b></span>to arrive was agony. I have no idea what I was supposed to have been studying in school that day; I certainly couldn’t concentrate. Mostly I just prayed that his schedule wouldn’t change again, that he wouldn’t back out at the last minute.</span>
Whenever I had a break, I would run across the lot to Steven’s set, because it seemed like the most likely place for Michael to show up. I watched as Sean, Ke, Jeff, and Steven worked on a scene in one of the caves, positioned all the way at the back of stage 15. I was standing near the mouth of the cave, letting my imagination wander, when I suddenly felt a chill. My skin broke out in goose bumps. It was him. I could <i>feel</i> it. I turned around slowly and there, all the way at the other end of the stage, was Michael Jackson, walking directly toward me with his longtime head of security, Bill Bray.
It was like he had stepped right out of a music video—he had the black military jacket with the giant gold buttons, the glittery belt buckle, the penny loafers, and the exposed white socks. (Later, I would realize that I had also noticed his smell. Michael always doused himself in cologne; in those days it was Giorgio Beverly Hills. I hounded my grandmother until she took me to a fragrance store and I was able to take home a free sample.) I took off at a full sprint from my spot outside the cave—halfway there I managed to get my composure; I didn’t want his bodyguard to think I was about to bum rush him—until I was standing right at his feet. That’s when I realized I had no idea what to say. I was standing there, right under his nose, right in front of his face, and then I stuttered. “Um … excuse me? Are you Michael Jackson?”
He looked down at me from behind those giant Ray Ban aviators, tinted so dark you couldn’t see his eyeballs at all, and said, very quietly, in that famous falsetto, “Yeah, who are you?”
“I’m Corey Feldman,” I said. “I’m a Goonie.”
“Oh, hi, Corey. How ya doing?”
I felt a smile creep across my face, squeaked out another “Hi,” and then sort of scampered off so I could watch him more comfortably from afar. I had made the introduction, we had finally, officially, met, but I was too nervous to say much else. I hovered close, and watched as Michael said hello to Steven, as they gave each other a hug, as a production assistant sidled over and offered to get him something to drink.
“Apple juice,” he said. “I’d love some Apple juice, please.”
Huh. He didn’t ask for a Coke, or a water, or anything I would have considered a remotely adult sort of beverage. That’s interesting, I thought. He seemed—I don’t know—relatable.
* * *
<b>All that afternoon, </b>I was back and forth between stages, in and out of the school trailer. I couldn’t just follow Michael around; I still had responsibilities on set. Finally, I was summoned back to Steven’s stage, this time to film the scene where we match the skull key to a set of “triple stones” on the wall of the cave.
Someone had set up a director’s chair for Michael. After we finished blocking the scene, Steven went over and sat down next to him. As I stood in the cave, idly chatting with Sean and Jeff, I noticed that Steven and Michael were laughing, joking, and whispering to each other. Then, Michael was pointing directly at me. Suddenly, Steven was ushering me over.
“Did you have a different haircut in <i>Gremlins</i>?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
Steven turned to Michael. “Well, there you go. You were right.”
“I knew it!” Michael laughed. And then something incredible happened—Michael turned and spoke to me. “Corey, you were so great in that movie.”
“You saw it?”
“Oh, yeah. My brothers and I used to get out early from rehearsals for the Victory Tour so we could watch it over and over. We used to sneak in and sit in the back of the theater. That was my favorite movie that whole summer.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah! You were so good. I think you’re one of the best kid actors in the world. I think you’re the next Marlon Brando.”
The greatest entertainer in the world had just told me he thought I was good. I almost fainted.
Moments later I found myself posing for a picture—someone had arranged for the cast to take a group shot with Michael—and then I reluctantly went back to the school trailer. When I later returned to the set, he was gone.
* * *
The phone was ringing.
I had already brushed my teeth, put on my pajamas, and slid between the sheets on my bed when I heard it. I wondered if it could be him. Then I laughed. That was ridiculous. I lay down, tucked my arm behind my head, beneath the pillow, and closed my eyes. Then Boobie opened the door to my bedroom, throwing a wedge of light across the carpet. “Corey?” she whispered. “Michael Jackson is on the phone for you.”
I sat up. <i>Oh my god, it was happening</i>. I threw off my blankets and scrambled out of bed, down the hallway, past the kitchen, where my grandfather was finishing his cigarette, smoking it down to the filter. He flashed me a look. I knew this look. This look said, “You’ve got five minutes, kid.” I knew, too, that I had already broken the rules, stayed up way past my bedtime waiting for the phone to ring. I wouldn’t be able to get away with that forever, but there was no way this was going to be a five-minute phone call.
* * *
<b>I never got </b>to say good-bye that day, now more than one month earlier, when Michael visited the <i>Goonies</i> set. I felt like I didn’t have closure. Everyone around me, including Steven, was placating me, saying things like, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” or “I’m sure you’ll have another chance.” But I couldn’t understand why everyone was so cavalier. Did nobody realize this was, for most people, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? It’s not like every day you walk down the street and bump into Michael Jackson. How, in their estimation, was this going to turn out fine? How was I supposed to “not worry?” It was terrible advice to give to a twelve-year-old.
I desperately wanted to see him again but, on some level, I had assumed that that was it. I <i>had</i> been given the chance to meet him, after all, to take a picture with him, to exchange a few words, to say hello. I did fulfill that goal. So I did the only thing there was to do. I went on with my life. We had recently transitioned from a five- to a six-day workweek. It was a hectic schedule for a kid. I was able to lose myself in the work.
One day I was finishing up lunch in the Warner Brothers commissary, which is divided into two distinct sections: the main, public room, where the food is served cafeteria-style, and the VIP dining room, which has reserved seating, a waitstaff, and a smartly dressed maître d’. Of course, we never ate on that side. That side was for the suits.
When I finished, I began making my way back to stage 16. Suddenly, I noticed a huge swirl of people milling around outside. Someone was standing, alone, in the middle. As I walked closer, I could just see the corner—the sleeve—of a white leather jacket, the coils of someone’s curly black hair. This, I immediately realized, was not just any hair, however. This was <i>Jackson hair.</i> That’s when I realized the person I was staring at was actually Michael’s big sister. I ran up alongside Mark Marshall, also making his way back from lunch.
“Is that La Toya?” I asked.
“Yeah. Didn’t I mention they were coming by today?”
“<i>They?</i>“
“She’s here with Michael.”
“He came back? What for?”
He looked down at me, a sly smile tugging at the corner of his lip. “Why, to see you, of course.” (This is just one example of the epic kindness of Mark Marshall; he was not above telling little white lies if it meant making a young kid’s day.)
“Nobody told me they were coming!” I called out, already running off, pushing my way through throngs of people until I had made my way to the middle. There was La Toya, and Michael, and Steven. Steven, with a wave of his hand, said, “Come on. Let’s show you guys some stuff.”
We had been working on the scene in the organ chamber, when Andy (Kerri Green) must play a series of chords to unlock a secret door. If she played a chord incorrectly, however, the floor beneath us would crumble, leaving us dangling in the air, holding on for dear life and, perhaps, plummeting to an untimely end. When you looked at the set from the outside it resembled a sort of funnel; wooden boards formed the cone, and the entire structure stood high above the ground.
Shooting this scene became the height of our do-your-own-stunts experience. Steven had been positioned below us, his camera angled straight up, while we stood on a ledge above him, tethered to the organ by heavy cables and a harness fastened underneath our clothes. When the floor fell out, we were supposed to cling to the walls of the cave and try not to fall into the abyss. This was actually sort of terrifying. If you looked down, you could see Steven, his crew, and a sea of expensive lighting equipment. Not exactly a soft landing if one of those cables were to snap.
This was all terribly fascinating to Michael, who started asking if he could walk up the exterior stairs and stand inside the moveable set. The special effects team sort of stared at each other—this was not exactly something the production was insured for. What would happen if Michael Jackson fell and seriously injured himself? The kids, however, immediately started begging, and eventually Steven decided it would be fine.
I positioned myself right next to Michael, told him I’d help him navigate through safely, that he just had to “follow me.” Once I saw that it was working, that he was comfortable chatting, I realized now was the time. I summoned every bit of strength in my preteen body, took a breath, and said, “You know, I was really sad last time you left. I thought I would never see you again.”
“You should have known I was going to come back,” he said. “Of course I would come back and visit you guys.”
“Well, right … but…” I thought of all those pictures I had seen of Michael with kids like Emmanuel Lewis. I wanted to be one of those kids. “I don’t know why,” I said, “but I feel like we’re supposed to be friends. I know you’re friends with kids … Do you think that, if I gave you my phone number, maybe you could call me sometime?”
“Sure.”
Well, that was easy. “Really?” I asked, making sure I’d heard him right.
“Sure, yeah. No problem.”
I was emboldened. “So, if I give you my number, you <i>promise</i> you’ll call me?”
“I promise.”
“When?” I asked.
“I’ll call you tonight.”
* * *
<b>By the time </b>I got back to my grandparents’ house, I was wired, bouncing around the house, drunk with anticipation. But when I told my grandmother that Michael Jackson was going to call me, she gave me a quizzical look.
“Don’t you think he has better things to do with his time?”
She had a point. Still, I sat by that phone for hours. I refused to come to the dinner table. I refused to move out of the living room. I was going to wait all night for that phone to ring, or at least until 11:00 P.M., when my grandparents finally forced me to go to bed. As I trudged down the hallway to my room, my grandmother laid her hand on my shoulder. “He’s a very busy man, Corey. You can’t expect him to just drop everything, you know.”
I did know. Which is why, when he finally called, I nearly passed out.
We talked for two-and-a-half hours, until a little after one in the morning. What I remember most is that it was like talking to another kid. He did speak a little about Paul McCartney, and though I loved “Say, Say, Say,” that was really the extent of my Beatles knowledge. Then he told me that McCartney had written another song for him, back in the late 1970s.
“It’s called ‘Girlfriend,’” he said. “Do you know it?”
“Uh, I’m not sure.” I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “How does it go?”
Then he sang the hook for me. My God, I thought, Michael Jackson is singing to me on the phone.
When the conversation ended, around the time I could no longer hold my eyes open, I asked him if we would stay friends.
“Of course we’re going to stay friends,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have your phone number now. I just added you to my little black book.”
That’s something that sticks out in my mind, too.
* * *
<b>Befriending an already </b>legendary entertainer was improbable enough. Staying in contact with him was a whole other matter. These were the days before cell phones and the Internet, after all, and Michael was a person who traveled the world, lived in a sort of self-imposed (if also necessary) bubble, and was something of a paranoid. He had his phone number changed every few months.
The first time I figured this out was when I called him and got an automated recording telling me the number I had dialed had been disconnected. <i>That’s it!</i> I thought. <i>We’re never going to talk again!</i> Eventually he explained this was just a matter of course.
“No, silly. I’m not changing my number because of <i>you,</i>“ he said. But I soon learned that when Michael changed his number, he changed <i>all of his numbers</i>.
At the time he was living at Hayvenhurst, the Jackson family compound in Encino, which by then had been outfitted with a recording studio, production facilities, and multiple offices, including space for his personal assistant. All of these “departments” had their own private telephone lines, but the numbers themselves were sequential. So, if Michael’s private number was, say, 788-8234, it stood to reason that the other numbers—to the main house, to the recording studio, to his production offices, and to the security gate—would be 788-8235; 8236; 8237; and so on. If I hadn’t yet been given his new private line, I could usually figure it out. I’d just punch the numbers on the keypad—each time someone would answer “MJJ Productions” or sometimes just “MJJ”—until I found the one that rang in his bedroom.
The thing about Michael is that, once you were <i>in,</i> he was just like anyone else. He didn’t have his personal assistant answer his private line. He didn’t have some sort of elaborate screening process. What he had was a great sense of humor.
Michael had many voices. One of his favorites was an imitation of what sounded like an uptight, conservative Caucasian; not unlike the way comedian Dave Chappelle sounds when, during some of stand-up routines, he pretends to be white. Sometimes Michael answered the phone that way. If you didn’t know this game and you asked to speak to Michael, he might say, “There’s no Michael Jackson here. I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.” But for those on the inside, you’d recognize this voice and introduce yourself accordingly. Then he would immediately switch back into that familiar, high-pitched falsetto. “Oh, hi, Corey,” he’d croon. “How are you?” I figured it was a clever way to avoid talking to people he didn’t want to.
Sometimes he would answer the phone but he wouldn’t say anything at all. You could hear the receiver pick up, and you’d call out, “Hello? Hello, Michael? Are you there?” but there would be no one at the other end of the line. This used to drive me nuts. Usually, after quite a long pause, he would eventually start talking. But sometimes that silence would drag on for, literally, ten or fifteen straight minutes. Most people, of course, would have hung up the phone. Not a tenacious twelve-year-old.
Occasionally, I would hear this strange tapping, as though someone were banging the receiver against some hard surface. When I finally asked him about it, he told me it was probably Bubbles. “If he gets out of his cage, he sometimes tries to answer the phone.” This, however, didn’t sit right with me. I felt like he was toying with me, and I didn’t appreciate it. It made me wonder who the <i>real</i> Michael might be, behind those dark glasses and all the glitter.
By the time production of <i>The Goonies</i> was drawing to a close, Michael and I were speaking regularly, about once every two weeks. Around that time, I decided that I wanted to invite him back to the set, this time as my personal guest. “There’s so much more for you to see,” I told him. “You still haven’t been through the full adventure.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to take you on a private tour. Show you inside the pirate ship, all of the secret places. I want to show you how everything works.” I also wanted to show him my dressing room. I guess, when you’re a kid and you have a friend over, you can’t wait to show him or her your room. My dressing room at Warner Brothers was a close second to that.
There was a long silence. I started to get nervous. Had I overstepped? Had I said something I shouldn’t have? Finally, he spoke.
“What should I wear?”
It would be years before I realized that part of Michael’s magic, part of the reason he was such a genius performer, was that he was always, always <i>on.</i> Between the glasses and the costumes and the sparkles, even the way he smelled, he was completely devoted to his craft. He was never out of character. He was never not “Michael Jackson.” It wasn’t until later that I started really paying attention to those details. It’s sort of natural to want to emulate your idol. Everything he did would become a mold for me to try and fit into. But back then, I just didn’t get it. I thought it would be cool to see him in normal clothes.
“Don’t you have just jeans and a T-shirt?” I asked him.
“Oh, sure, I’ve got that,” he said.
The plan was for him to visit on a Saturday, when things on a Hollywood lot aren’t quite so hectic as usual. I took it upon myself to make all the arrangements; I informed Steven’s office at Amblin of Michael’s impending visit. I spoke with Richard Donner. I made sure there was a drive-on pass waiting for him at the main Warner Brothers gate. But when he showed up, in a black Mercedes with heavily tinted windows, he had on the whole getup—the black penny loafers, white socks, black pants, and some ridiculous jacket with all the rhinestones and sparkle. His hair was perfectly curled, his sunglasses were in place.
“What happened to the jeans?” I asked him.
He looked down at his pants. “These <i>are</i> jeans.”
“Oh,” I said, skeptical. “Is it okay if they get dirty?”
“Sure!”
That’s around the time I noticed he had brought along Emmanuel Lewis. Everything seemed to be working just as I had planned—I was being introduced to his other underage friends. I was becoming, finally, a part of Michael Jackson’s inner circle.
* * *
Michael Jackson and I had been friends for nearly a year when he called me up, shortly after filming on <i>Stand by Me</i> wrapped, to invite me to a party at his home. I had never actually been to Hayvenhurst, the sprawling mock-Tudor mansion Joe Jackson purchased for his family in the early 1970s, but stories about the compound were already the stuff of legend: Michael bought his father out of the house in the early ’80s, and immediately staged a two-year-long renovation, adding a thirty-two-seat theater, a Japanese koi pond, a zoo, a Disney-style candy shop, and—as reporters so often love to point out—a “six-foot-tall <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> diorama.” (To my dismay, the Pirates of the Caribbean did not live in a subterranean lair beneath the backyard—that turned out to be just a rumor.) Still, Hayvenhurst was, in many ways, Michael’s first attempt at creating his Neverland. But when he called to invite me to the party, I had yet to see the place with my own eyes.
The estate was crawling with kids—I believe Sean Astin and Ke Huy Quan were there (I may have even invited them)—as well as other random people in some way affiliated with the Jackson family. I was introduced to Dr. Steven Hoefflin, Michael’s plastic surgeon, who was there moonlighting as a magician, and Steven’s son, Jeff, who would one day become <i>my</i> plastic surgeon. (He had a cameo in the second season of <i>The Two Coreys,</i> when I had liposuction performed on my abdomen.) Elizabeth Taylor, however, turned out to be a no-show.
As for Michael, he was busy balancing atop a unicycle, dressed in some kind of antique vaudevillian ensemble.
Beyond the living room was a first-floor game room; there was a spiral staircase in the corner, and an exterior staircase that ascended to a balcony. It’s the exterior staircase that Michael took on his way back down to the party, entering the game room from the backyard patio. (He was always appearing and disappearing, and he was always, perpetually late. He loved making an entrance. Sometimes one just wasn’t enough.) I noticed then that his hair was longer than usual; he had already started experimenting with new looks for the <i>Bad</i> album.
“Corey!” he said when he saw me. “Have you met the magician?”
I started to indicate that I had, in fact, met the doctor, when I realized that Michael was gesturing now to someone else, apparently a second magician. Later, I would discover that there were actually three different magicians at the party.
“I’d like you to meet Majestik Magnificent Magician Extraordinaire,” he said, holding a hand out to his friend. “Majestik, this is Corey Feldman. He’s a Goonie.”
Majestik chuckled.
In recent years, Majestik has spent a fair amount of time in the public eye, in particular after Michael’s death in 2009 and during the subsequent trial of Dr. Conrad Murray. He often appears alongside Joe at events and interviews and sometimes even speaks on the family’s behalf. The true nature of his relationship to the Jacksons, however, is something of a mystery. I’ve often wondered if he’s actually a blood relative. All I know for sure is that he’s been around for decades, intertwined among the Jacksons for as long as I can remember.
As the party dragged on, I was free to wander through a number of rooms on the ground floor. That’s when I happened upon piles and piles of boxes, all labeled “Jackson Victory Tour,” stacked up in a room down the hall. I couldn’t help but look inside. I pulled out a rhinestone glove and put it on.
“You like it?” Michael asked as he came around a corner and walked farther into the room.
Michael had many, many different sequined gloves—he’d been wearing them for years. Some were blue, or red, or covered with rhinestone netting, but this one was a white glove emblazoned with tiny Swarovski crystals. I couldn’t believe it—I was wearing a piece of history on my hand.
Michael, however, was disarmingly casual about the whole thing. To him, these items weren’t historical artifacts, they were just pieces of his wardrobe. If you admired a pair of his famous Ray-Bans, he might pluck them from his head and give them to you, to <i>keep.</i> Or, if you asked about the letterman jacket he wore in “Thriller,” next thing you know, you’d be trying it on. The jacket, after all, was just hanging there in his closet. The Hayvenhurst party was the last time I saw Michael for a matter of months.
More to come...