Michael Jackson (6 page)

‘Hey, guys, did you know 'bout this tree thing?’ Michael then asked his brothers. ‘Touch this tree and we'll have good luck.’

‘Nah. I don't believe in luck,’ Tito deadpanned.

‘Well, I sure do,’ Michael countered. ‘Wish I could take that log home with me. Then I'd
always
have good luck.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the announcer said as the boys pulled themselves together backstage, ‘here they are, The Jackson Five.’

The lights went up. It was time for The Jackson Five to take their rightful place in history. Joseph watched proudly as each
of his sons touched the plaque of the Tree of Hope: First, Jackie; then Tito; Jermaine; Marlon; Michael; then, ‘cousin’ Johnny.
The group ran out on to the stage as the audience offered its applause. Michael, though, was the last one at the footlights.
He ran back to touch the Tree of Hope one more time… just to be on the safe side. It must have worked; the boys won the contest,
an enthusiastic audience response sealing their victory.

Ever since Michael Jackson was a teenager, the public has speculated about his personal life. Straight, gay or even asexual,
it is fascinating that the sexual proclivity of a performer with as much on-stage sexual appeal as Michael has always been
such a mystery.

At an early age, Michael received mixed signals about sex. The message from Katherine was loud and clear; with her strong
faith as a Jehovah's Witness, lust in thought or in deed was considered sinful. According to 1 Corinthians 6:9, none of the
unrighteous – ‘neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate men, nor abusers of themselves with mankind’ – would
inherit the Kingdom of God. Therefore, physical intimacy was reserved for marriage.

However, from Joseph, who shunned the religion Katherine had embraced, the boys received a message that came more from his
actions than from his words. In the group's early days, Joseph booked the boys into dives and strip joints. Ordinarily strict,
he apparently gave his sons free rein at those times, allowing nine-year-old Michael to stand in the wings and watch as the
male audience leered and whistled at voluptuous women who stripped until naked on stage. Once, Michael watched in fascination
as a well-endowed stripper took off everything but her underwear. Then, at just the ‘right’ moment, she pulled two large oranges
from her bra and took off a wig to reveal that ‘she’ was actually a he.

When the boys played the Peppermint Lounge in Chicago, there was a peephole in their dressing room through which they had
a clear view into the ladies' bathroom. They would each take turns peering into it. ‘We learned everything there was to know
about ladies,’ Marlon recalled. (Some years later, the group was performing in London when Michael, thirteen, and Marlon,
fourteen, discovered a peephole that looked directly into an adjoining dressing room occupied by theatre star Carol Channing.
‘Look, she's naked!’ Marlon said excitedly as he peered through the hole. ‘I can't look,’ Michael protested. ‘But she's naked,’
Marlon enthused. ‘Carol Channing is
naked.
’ Michael took a quick look. ‘Ugh,’ he groaned. ‘She
is
naked.’)

It's safe to say that these kinds of experiences would impact on Michael for the rest of his life. At nine, Michael was not
psychologically equipped to fully understand any sexual stimulation he may have received from what he had witnessed, such
as the strip teases. He
must
have been conflicted: he had an overly rigid view of the world from his mother and an overly promiscuous view of the world
from his father.

One of The Jackson Five's early performance numbers was their rendition of soul singer Joe Tex's raucous ‘Skinny Legs and
All’. As part of the act, Joseph encouraged young Michael to go into the audience, crawl under tables, lift up women's skirts,
and peek at their panties. No matter how embarrassed Michael was by this gimmick, he embellished each performance by rolling
his eyes and smiling wickedly. He knew that the audience members loved the bit enough to throw money on to the stage afterwards.
The boys would then scramble for the loose change. After a show like this one, the boys would go home to their religious mother,
who would then tuck them into bed and remind them of the virtues of being a good Jehovah's Witness. She truly never knew anything
about the nightclub act until many years later.

Of course, when the Jackson boys were on the road, Katherine remained at home with the younger children. Her absence gave
Joseph carte blanche to date other women – mostly groupies. The boys were well aware that he was exploiting their talent for
the purposes of having sex. Marlon has recalled his father coming into his sons' hotel rooms with shapely beauties on both
of his arms. ‘G'night, fellows,’ he would say. The boys, in bed in their pyjamas, would watch silently as their father and
his lady friends closed the door behind them. They could then hear laughter and other sounds from Joseph's room, next door.
It was as if he
wanted
them to know what he was doing behind Katherine's back. What was he thinking? Who knew? He'd become an enigma, just as much
a mystery then, in his thirties, as his son, Michael, would be at the same age.

However, a few things about Joseph seemed clear: he was an insecure man with crippled judgement. Also, he never felt fully
appreciated by his family. No matter how successful and popular Joseph would make his sons, or how much he gave to his wife
and daughters, he always felt a lack of gratitude and respect from them. They rarely showed him affection. Tender moments
between any of them were uncommon. Perhaps it was because he had stopped being a demonstrative person once his focus in life
completely shifted to the success of his sons (and he had never been that effusive, anyway). His family did not know how to
relate to him, and he couldn't understand them either. Therefore, Joseph wandered outside the household for appreciation,
for validation.

‘He used to do the meanest things to us,’ Michael once told me of his father. He said he was revolted by the thought of whatever
was occurring in Joseph's room with his girlfriends. (The lyrics to his song ‘Scream’, come to mind: ‘Oh, father, please,
have mercy 'cause I just can't take it/Stop fucking with me!’.) At such a young age, Michael was forced to wonder how Joseph
could repeatedly betray Katherine and, apparently, not be the least bit ashamed of his actions. Decades later, he is still
conflicted by his father's actions. ‘I loved Joseph,’ he said during a break from his 2003 interview with Martin Bashir. Unexpectedly,
tears welled in his eyes. ‘At the same time, I hated him for what he did to my mother.’ He swallowed hard, trying to push
back the emotion. ‘My poor mother,’ he said. ‘My poor family,’ he added, sadly. ‘My poor, poor family.’

None of her sons would ever hurt Katherine by revealing to her what her husband was doing while they were on the road, and
they certainly didn't dare betray Joseph in that way, either. Having to lie to their mother was an additional burden. ‘Katherine,
of course, has never had a lover. She's always been faithful to Joseph,’ recalled Susie Jackson, who was married to Johnny
Jackson, the group's drummer. ‘This only made them love their mother even more. The kids just had to learn to lie to heir
mother, be hypocritical, and be very good at it. She would ask, “Well, what does Joseph do while you guys are out there working?”
And they would say, “Nothing. He just lays around.” It was true, but not by himself.’

Dr Carole Lieberman, a Los Angeles-based psychologist, who has not treated Michael, speculated, ‘The father's infidelity would
certainly have hit the youngest child exposed to it the hardest. [In this case, that would have been Michael, since he was
the youngest member of the group privy to Joseph's indiscretions. It would be years before his younger brother and sister,
Randy and Janet, would know about their father's philandering.] He would have thought that by not telling the mother he had
betrayed her the most. Of course, this would have impacted him in many ways, and lying about it at such an early age obviously
just taught him, simply, that it was okay to lie.’

‘I may be young,’ little Michael used to say while introducing the Smokey Robinson song ‘Who's Lovin' You’ in the group's
act, ‘but I do know what the blues are all about.’ Though the line was just a part of the group's stage patter, the truth
of it was more accurate, and more painful, than anyone in the audience ever could have guessed.

*

The Jackson family was ecstatic over the boys' tremendous success at the Apollo Theater, and with good reason: this success
marked a defining moment for them in terms of their future. ‘I'm so damn happy, I could fly to Gary without an airplane,’
Joseph said afterward, his grin wide. Elated at their performance and proud of their determination to be the best, Joseph
was determined to continue doing whatever was necessary to ensure his family's fortune in a tough, competitive business. To
that end, he decided to work only part-time at Inland Steel so that he could devote more time to his sons' careers.

In 1968, Joseph would earn only fifty-one hundred dollars rather than his usual eight to ten thousand. He would give up relative
financial security in order to gamble on his family's future. However, the gamble quickly paid off; the boys started making
six hundred dollars per engagement. With the influx of money, Katherine and Joseph were able to redecorate their home and
buy their first colour television.

Now flushed with success, the Jacksons continued to work on their performance in daily rehearsals that would often become
emotional. Once, when Joseph tried to convince Michael to execute a dance step a certain way, Michael refused. According to
Johnny Jackson, Joseph smacked Michael across the face. Michael fell backwards.

‘Now, you do it the way I told you to, you hear me?’ Joseph hollered at the nine-year-old.

Michael began to cry, his right cheek red and sore. ‘I ain't doin' it that way,’ he said.

Joseph glared at him and took one step forward, his hand raised to strike again.

Michael scrambled up off the floor. ‘Don't hit me,’ he warned his father. ‘'Cause if you ever hit me again, it'll be the last
time I ever sing, and I mean it.’ Father and son exchanged angry stares. However, Michael must have said the magic words because
Joseph turned and walked away, muttering something about his ‘ungrateful’ son.

Michael has recalled that as Joseph got older, he became more violent. It became a running theme in his young life: his father
was a bully, and he would have to live with it. ‘If you messed up during rehearsal, you got hit,’ Michael would remember,
‘sometimes with a belt, a switch. Once, he ripped the wire cord off the refrigerator and whooped me with it, that's how mad
he was at me.’ It was a vicious cycle: the more his father beat him, the angrier Michael became at him. The angrier he became,
the more he antagonized him…and the more he got beaten by his father. The beatings were fierce, recurring and traumatizing.
‘I'd try to fight back,’ Michael would recall, ‘just swinging my fists. That's why I got it more than all my brothers combined.
I would fight back and my father would kill me, just tear me up.’

Once, Michael was late arriving at rehearsal, and when he walked in, Joseph came up from behind and shoved him into a stack
of musical instruments. Michael fell into the drums and was badly bruised. ‘That'll teach you to be late,’ Joseph said.

At about this time, 1968, when Michael was almost ten, the Jacksons faced a family crisis. Eighteen-year-old Maureen had fallen
in love with Nathaniel Brown, a devout Jehovah's Witness. She announced that she wanted to marry him and move to Kentucky.
Katherine, happy for her daughter, encouraged her. In Katherine's view, there was no more important role for any of her daughters
to play than that of being a wife and mother.

However, Joseph was against the marriage. ‘It was all cooked up by Maureen and her mother,’ he would later explain. ‘I wasn't
happy about it at all.’