If anyone had the money and the crazy to fake his own death, it was Michael Jackson.
June 25, 2009. Walking home from work, down Fordham Road, through heat that’s more than heat, I hear it, again and again: the bassline from Billie Jean. From the insides of stores, from the rolled-down windows of cars stopped at red lights. Is everyone listening to the same radio station? Is every radio station playing the same thing? Did everyone spontaneously dial their MP3 players to the same song? Is Billie Jean on the MP3 player of absolutely everyone in the Bronx? It’s on mine.
And what a brilliant bassline it is: insistent, steady, coiled, lurking, like a rattlesnake whose venom causes an exquisite sensation between ecstasy and despair. This is the 1980’s, stuffed into seven repeating notes. Moving through the Bronx end-of-day crowds, I can see it in all of our faces: adapting to a world without Michael Jackson.
A gossip site everyone used to make fun of broke the most important entertainment story of the summer. Everyone’s texting everyone. Michael Jackson is dead. Everything is over. Tina’s Facebook status sums it up best, something along the lines of: “Michael Jackson was the kid everyone was mean to. And now he’s dead and everyone feels like shit.”
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