The Crush
The Crush
“The Crush: He was our first love, the one you never forget. Karen R. Good remembers falling hard for Michael”
Essence Magazine
Karen R. Good
September 2009
I don’t remember exactly how we met. Maybe it was “Rockin’ Robin,” maybe “ABC.” All I know is that the first time I heard Michael Joseph Jackson sing, I believed him. He was the lead singer in a group of brothers called the Jackson 5. To me, he was the cutest—brown-skinned and beautiful with soulful eyes and a pretty smile.
In that fairy-dusted time, Michael and I shared a young, sweet love. He serenaded me on 45s that I listened to on my portable Winnie the Pooh record player. I watched the Jackson 5 cartoon. My heart ached for him when he played the Scarecrow in The Wiz; he was so vulnerable. A year later, in 1979, when I was 9 years old, Michael gifted me with a new album he called Off the Wall. There he was on the cover, Afroed and smiling. His depth startled me, made my heart beat fast. Michael was less singing than allowing something—spirit—to come through him. Never had I heard him sound like this: the yelps and cries on “Get on the Floor,” the tears on “She’s out of My Life.” So pure was his surrender that I had no choice but to close my bedroom door and dance—on-my-knees-sweating-and-crying dancing.
And then came Thriller. Playing the album for the first time I was so excited I very nearly fainted. When he sang, Lay back in my tenderness… on “The Lady in My Life,” I felt as if he was singing only to me. On the inside fold of the album cover, a Jheri-curled Michael lay on the floor in a white Hugo Boss suit and a black shirt, cradling a baby tiger. I was so in love.
I made scrapbooks filled with photos and articles pulled from Right On!, Black Beat, BOP, and Rolling Stone. I could copy his signature. I had the Michael Jackson doll, and I didn’t even play with dolls. I knew that he wore his right-hand sparkly glove made of 1,200 Austrian crystal-rhinestones because it made him feel “never offstage.” My feelings were a little hurt when he took Brooke Shields to the 1984 Grammy Awards. Meanwhile, he had moonwalked into the hearts of millions.
Michael was now “Michael Jackson, the King of Pop.” He had catapulted into a celebrity akin to touching the sun. He was Bad. Dangerous. Invincible. He also began to look…odd: his nose blown off like the Sphinx, his skin unnaturally pale. I sensed rage in him, white hot—at the tabloids, at the criminal accusations, at his daddy and maybe even himself. By then he always had on shades. I missed his trenchant eyes.
The last time I saw Michael was at his televised press conference this past April. He looked like a rock star, a bit muddled, eyes still hidden, but excited to announce his upcoming This Is It tour. “This is the final curtain call,” he promised. But two weeks before the shows were to begin, he died. I did not cry at first. All I could think was, Poor baby. I left work in search of souls who knew the meaning of this. The king was dead. A bright star had burst into a trillion bits of light.
The first tears came when I called my mama. I cried for him, his mother, his children, the silliness and mercy of his death. That night, in Michael’s honor, I danced, feeling strangely infused, as if Michael had given up the ghost and passed it to me. Michael. Before he was the icon. Before he was the King of Pop. When he was just Michael. Mine.
