The Damnwells

I’ve been a performer and entertainer all my life. My first gig was in the living room sometime in the 1980s, my big sister as co-star. We made short plays, usually around Christmas—a confusing time in a house straddling the Judeo-Christian fault line, with my father, the comedic Jew, and my mother, the reluctant Catholic. The plays were mostly improvised, each of us playing a multitude of characters that required little impetus for creation other than pure, unbridled imagination. (My parents were exceptionally patient.) The point of these plays, of course, was the dance number. This was the mid-80s: the dance number was what the world woke up for. Equally improvised, my sister and I spasmodically regurgitated whatever moves were in fashion at the time, most of which—of not all—were authored by Michael Jackson. That year I got a wardrobe of mini Michael Jackson clothing, including a sparkling glove that I wore, much to my grade school teacher’s chagrin, every day until all the sequins fell off.

This is what Michael Jackson meant to me.

Some years later I was performing on Broadway as Gavroche in Les Misérables. My parents had filed for divorce, and though I got to walk out on stage ever other night and perform for thousands of people, I was devastatingly lonely. I don’t remember the year, but I do remember it was winter. I walked into the Broadway Theatre, rested my soaked gloves on the steam radiator to dry, punched in my timecard, and read a note on the announcement board that electrified my blood. “Michael Jackson is in the audience tonight.” Sadly, I wasn’t performing that night (child labor laws required that two boys alternated performances, and I had just performed the night before). During the show I anxiously paced the dressing room with one of the little girls who played Young Cosette. Together we devised a plan to meet Michael Jackson. Before intermission we would go out into the audience and stake out a place next to his seat. We would get his autograph, maybe a picture. Naturally, this was everyone else’s plan as well. At intermission the lobby quickly turned into a melee of sight seekers, each of them armed with sharpened elbows and flashbulb cameras. We couldn’t even get into the seating area. Large men in black suits with opaque sunglasses began clearing a path from the west lobby doors, pushing the throngs of people back toward the wall. Apparently, Michael Jackson had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t get through the crowd. Young Cosette and I waited on the balcony stairs (we had negotiated the spot with a security guard who worked for the theater). When the gilded lobby doors opened, their gold-trimmed handles shining, I saw him amid the blinding barrage of flashes and the cacophony of screams and cries. His jacket was red leather, his hair greased and curled. He kept his face hidden behind white gloves as he was whisked away into the night by his imposing guards. (For safety reasons—his own and the audience—he could not have possibly stayed for the rest of the show). I only saw him for that one moment, an instant really, like a mirage, but it has stayed with me—a shadow on the far side of a dream. I walked back to my dressing room, my face sore from smiling, and put one soggy winter glove on my hand and tired again to move my body like I was walking on the moon.

Michael Jackson was the ambassador of my youth. I grew up with his songs in my head. His was a constant presence, pervading all aspects of life. His voice was wickedly smooth, as if cut from gypsum alabaster, and it carved out new lines in the realm of my creativity. Simply, he was electricity, barely contained in a flimsy human sheathe. He made me smile that night without even having to say a word.

This is what Michael Jackson meant to me.