This Is It

It is so tragic that This Is It was It. I was in Korea during the funeral of Michael Jackson and didn’t really register the loss until I saw the film today.

I have been feeling particularly lonely this past week. Perhaps it is because Day of the Dead is approaching. Perhaps it is because my dead gay best friend’s birthday is approaching. Perhaps it is because grief is a vortex that never stops spinning, no matter how much time passes.

When Thriller came out, my sister and I videotaped it off of Friday Night Videos. We watched it over and over again. I talked about it at show and tell in third grade, acting out the part where he chopped down the tree with his hand. Michael Jackson inspired me in that moment to become a performer, entertaining my peers, making them laugh.

My sister bought a vinyl red jacket from K-Mart and used electrical tape to trim it so that she would have the Thriller jacket. When his death was announced, I thought about that jacket for the first time in years, just like I thought about the video, how we watched it together. I thought about his family losing their brother, their son, their father.

The concert would have been amazing. The clips are artistic genius. The dancers popping up like toast out of the stage, the ghouls flying through the audience, the songs that have been part of our history growing up.

I am just one of the masses pissing in the ocean trying to put down words for something that has no words. He was different. He made being different okay in a small town in Michigan.

He made a vinyl jacket from K-Mart cool and a memory dear to my heart just by having a good heart.