Here are some stories:
www.voiceseducation.org/category/tag/nancy-j-caldwellNancy J. Caldwell | Voices Education ProjectQuote:
Case Study: Street Bum, Angel or . . .
Detroit, Michigan; Summer of 1981. I was with two of my long time friends at our local dance club where our favorite band plays most weekends. We are regulars there. I ordered a coke and both of my friends were appalled and demanded I purchase a real drink. What would people say if they knew I wasn't drinking? My reply was, “who cares, people can think its Rum and Coke. What difference does it make?” They insisted on buying me a real drink but I declined. I was getting tired of their discussions as if I somehow wasn't there hearing them pass judgment on me.
Just then a man came up to the table and asked me to dance. He had an Afro-style haircut, wore a long coat and rumpled clothes and looked like a bum. His voice was soft despite his rough appearance. I had a feeling this guy was someone special and my thoughts jumped to the Good Samaritan story. With absolutely no hesitation, I said “yes.” He helped me out of my chair and I led the way to the dance floor.
I'd started dancing when I was three years old and throughout my childhood I performed in dance recitals, talent shows, in hospitals and retirement homes. When I wasn't performing I was taking dance classes or practicing. I love to dance.
It has been my experience that most guys don't dance well and I usually lead on the slow ones. So I was doing my thing on the dance floor when I looked over at my partner and realized this guy was nothing short of an amazing dancer with moves I've never seen before (and I went out dancing a lot!) I was excited to find someone who could challenge me, so I stepped up my moves. Who was this guy; and how lucky was I to be dancing with him?
The song ended and I hoped we would stay for another but he walked me back to my table, thanked me for the dance with a slight bow then disappeared. My exhilaration turned to disappointment. It was too fast. We didn't even talk. I wanted more.
My reverie was cut dramatically short when both of my friends took turns reprimanding me for not only dancing with a bum but a bum who was a Black man. ‘What was I thinking anyway? I should stick to my own kind. Didn't I notice his flapping shoes?’
They told me it was embarrassing for them to be with me. I thought: “who are these people I thought were my friends? We are so very different now and I no longer seem to have anything in common with them anymore.”
Through my life, I have often thought about that evening—sometimes because of my now ex-friends' behavior and the criticism about my choices in drink and my dance partner. Mostly I think about the fact that whoever I danced with that night was someone special. It was obvious the guy was in disguise and I wondered why he would do that. Was it God testing my ability to accept people as they are and not to judge? I believe that was the case. The guy didn't smell like a street person at all.
Although his clothes were worn and rumpled, they were clean. I never even noticed his floppy shoes. And you have to get past a bouncer and show your ID to get in to the place and they didn't have a problem with him. I felt very safe with this person.
His energy was magnetic and he had manners far better than most guys who ask me to dance. I really wish the experience had lasted longer. It was a highlight in my life that I have returned to many, many times since and wondered who this person was and why it happened.
Cut to July 7, 2009, Staples Center; Los Angeles, California—Michael Jackson's Memorial.
His brother, Marlon, is on stage relating a story about this guy he saw in a record store. He described him as dressed in rumpled clothes, an Afro . . . I froze. He was describing the man I danced with that night in Detroit so many years earlier.
He continued his story ... ‘So I said, Hi Mike, what are you doing here?’ In that moment I had absolutely no doubt whatsoever who I had danced with that night so long ago. I had danced with Michael Jackson!
I told myself it was crazy: ‘what would Michael even be doing in Detroit?’ Then I found out that in that very time frame he was on his Triumph Tour, and one of the stops was Detroit. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found out they were performing on August 29th (Michael’s birthday but he and his family did not celebrate birthdays at this time) at the Joe Louis Arena which was an easy drive to the club. So it was possible. Later I saw a picture of Michael dancing with Tatum O'Neal where he was in mid-move—that distinct move. He also did it in the Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough video where first there is one of him doing it, then two and finally three. He leans back a certain way with his leg in a specific position. That was the move I saw across from me on the dance floor back in Detroit.
Now that I know it was him, I wish more than ever we had danced longer, exchanged a few words, and that he might have revealed himself. That evening when I left the club, feeling a bit down from the treatment from my so-called friends, and the all too short time with the mystery dancer, the bouncer made an odd comment to me that made no sense at the time. I remember this because he rarely spoke to me beyond "ID please" and "go on in" but whatever he said was something about my dancing that lifted my spirits a little even though it was cryptic. Now, knowing who I danced with that night, I realize his comment must have been something about me dancing with Michael without coming right out and saying it given the man’s desire and need to be in disguise. He had to have known since he checked everyone's ID in this small place and he had a bird's eye view of the action, including the dance floor.
I don't know why I chose not to have alcohol that evening but I think none of this would have happened if I had indulged, especially now knowing that at that time, Michael did not drink. No matter how short that moment when I didn’t know who I was with, it was already tucked away as a standout experience in my memory. Now it is something I will be eternally grateful for having in my life. It fits with the message Michael Jackson told repeatedly: “It doesn't matter what we look like, we are all a part of each other. Don't judge, accept and above all L.O.V.E.”
Quote:
Description of Michael
Click the image to open in full size.
illustration by the Author
www.voiceseducation.org/sites/default/files/images/mj.jpg Large Afro wig, large oversized eyebrows and moustache (An Afro haircut was a style in the 1970s characterized by a bushy head of hair shaped like a bubble usually worn by African Americans that connoted pride in one’s race. The racial pride movement began with James Brown’s song I’m Black and I’m Proud)
When the author got up to go to the dance floor, she looked into his face which is how she identified he was in disguise; she saw a smaller face hiding under the large Afro and excessive facial brows and moustache. His face seemed a confirmation that he was someone safe, kind and trustworthy – which was unusual for her as she rarely trusted anyone.
He wore a long duster type coat, below the knee in length; the color was a faded grey or brown
The duster and pants worn were baggy and rumpled but clean. They were definitely too big for his frame; the person was almost swimming in them.
His shoes were tattered and the soles were loose.
Kissing a fan, Triumpth Tour Kiss, Jet Magazine, October 15 1981How Michael Jackson, sexy lead singer of the Jacksons, surprised a female fan who broke through a line of security guards at the Forum in LA to give him a gift while he was on stage singing a love song. Although Michael apparently wondered how she had managed to outmaneuver the security muscle men, he accepted the gift then pulled her into his arms and kissed her tenderly.
www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/06/26/70838/commentary-even-at-21-michael.htmlLeonard Pitts Jr., interview August 29th 1979I got to interview Michael Jackson only once, at the family home in Encino, Calif.
This was on the occasion of his 21st birthday, and I remember thinking that for a guy approaching a milestone, he didn't seem very happy. Truth is, he seemed tired. Not from fatigue or exertion.
It was an existential tired, as if he felt worn down by the simple act of being.
I remember Jackson did not walk about the place so much as haunt it, slumping from room to room as a great weight rested upon his sparrow shoulders.
He complained to me that he was lonely, told me how he wandered the streets outside the security gate sometimes, late at night, just looking for someone to talk to. I took it for image-making hyperbole until a friend of mine, singer Sam Moore of the old duo Sam & Dave, told me about driving through Encino one night and finding Michael, just walking.Ebony, December 1982Michael turned 24 in August. He says he has finally taken charge of his life and career (“I pay people and I tell them what to do”). There’s a new lady he likes a lot, and he’s as happy as he has ever been.
ET, February 25 1983MJ: I’m just now beginning to enjoy friendship, which is new for me.
ET: Friendship?
MJ: (smiles) Mhmmm.
ET: With people other than in show business?
MJ: Yeah.
ET: With ladies?
MJ: (grinning) Yeah, oh yeah.
ET: Is there someone very important in your life at this point?
MJ: Mmmm, yes. (grins)
Steve Manning, Long time Michael friend and publicist, Right On! December, 1983Second, most young women want to know about Michael romantically. Again, the answer in a word is private. Very private. Michael has a personal life very few people ever see. He likes it that way. He has always been concerned with the effect his tremendous popularity might have on those he most cares about. He does everything in his power to shield people from any sort of public intrusion. He is very caring and protective, and this is a first for all of your Right On! readers, Michael is presently involved with a young lady he cares about a great deal. However, he is doing everything he can to protect her from the glaring eyes of his adoring public. This is one thing Michael intends to keep to himself.
Q: Do you think that is fair to all of his fans?A: Yes, I believe it’s fair to his fans and Michael as well. You have to realize how much work Michael does. He is a compulsive perfectionist who spends a great deal of time and energy on all his projects. I’m sure his fans would never begrudge him a little privacy or a little quiet romance.
Q: Do you think Michael enjoys the reputation he has of being Hollywood’s “last innocent”?A: I really don’t think Michael is that aware of being “a last innocent.” Besides, I think the description is not at all accurate. Michael is quite aware of what is going on around him and since he turned 21 he has handled all of his own private business affairs. All financial reports, contracts, etc go directly to Michael. He has total control and final approval on everything. You have to be pretty shrewd to handle all that. So the “last innocent” reputation is a little difficult to accept, for those of us who really know Michael.
Q: Does Michael ever go out alone?A: Yes, he travels around quite a lot in LA going back to forth to the Jackson’s studio, keeping various appointments and seeing his friends.
Michael, Focus Magazine, February 1984RO/CLASS: How is your personal life? Is there someone special?
Jackson: It’s wonderful and I am in love…
⇑ Rolling Stone, while finishing recording of Thriller, visiting Hayvenhurst and Michael and Freddie Mercury, 1982Over the last decade my tape recorder has been unfailing in catching the weirdness of a moment: Bruce Springsteen doing Ed Norton imitations at 3:00 a.m. The whir of bat wings over Eddy Grant’s Bajan plantation. Sting howling at the moon. But even my hypersensitive Sony was not up to capturing the steady flick of a snake tongue a few inches from my ear during that first long session with Michael Jackson. That whole trip was quietly strange; not menacing, just out there.
The reptile in question was Michael’s eight-foot boa constrictor, Muscles. For more than an hour, Muscles lay perfectly balanced on a banister beside me, head erect, beady eyes fixed on the small veins doubtless throbbing in my throat. Michael set him there when I declined to have Muscles lounge around my torso. It seemed a fair compromise.
Young Mike wasn’t being naughty. He explained it as an exercise in trust, and he was most convincing. If I was scared of snakes, he had a mortal dread of reporters – and maybe we should both get over it. Michael hadn’t done an interview in years without one of his sisters screening questions. And in the nearly ten years since our remarkable sessions in late ’82 (conducted as he was finishing Thriller), he has never again done an interview of this depth. Not that things went badly. It just was . . . hard.
Michael shocked everyone – his family, his management and his record company – by deciding to go it alone. He opened the front door of his rented Encino condo looking like a street whack. His corduroys were dirty and rumpled; the scuffed dress oxfords were untied. No socks. No makeup. His hospitality was touchingly inept; having run out of the proffered lemonade, he filled the other half of my glass with warm Hawaiian Punch. There was no food in the refrigerator, just juice. He explained that he was camping out there while his manse on Hayvenhurst was being rebuilt. But as she breezed through to her bedroom upstairs, sister Janet announced that he lived like a beggar, all the time; never ate except for some old lettuce leaves; wore raggedy-ass clothes. A disgrace . . .
“Right,” big brother shot back as she climbed the stairs. “At least I don’t have a booty like YOURS.”
Ten minutes into it, I could see his point. As he explained the tea party of garden statuary around his coffee table – including a Narcissus figure named Michael – I could hear how it would read. It nearly made me bawl. He was trying so damned hard.
We did agree to leave one part of our conversation out of the story, for his protection at the time. It came up as we sat in the condo dining room, and I noticed the school portrait of a young black woman tucked into the frame of an etching. The photo was one of the few personal touches in the place. The face looked like any .
“That’s the real Billie Jean,” Michael said. Quincy Jones had just played that cut for me in the studio; I knew the song was about a woman accusing the singer of fathering her child – which was what this woman’s letters insisted. Michael explained that he put the photo she’d sent in a central spot so he could memorize the face; it seemed she wanted him dead in a big way. He said she’d just sent him a gun in the mail with detailed instructions on killing himself. In a barely audible voice, Michael explained that the police had told him the gun was rigged to fire backward into the person doing the shooting. Later his mother would tell me that the woman was in an institution, under psychiatric care. When I saw the “Billie Jean” video a few months later – all disappearing tigers and pinpoint choreography – I kept seeing some girl in a green hospital gown.
“You deal with it,” Michael had told me. “You just deal.”
Over the next couple of days, Michael continued to deal with me, gamely, politely and with increasing humor. Janet shook her head in warning as he offered to drive us over for a tour of his house.
“Ray Charles drives better,” she cracked.
Strapped into his gold Camaro, I found myself longing for the relative safety of Muscle’s fond embrace. The motor skills were there, but Michael admitted that concentration was a problem. Horns were still honking at us as we pulled into the drive of the magic kingdom he was building for himself.
“You want go out tonight?”
Another surprise. Michael was going to a slam-jam Queen concert at the I.A. Forum. He wouldn’t mind the company. He felt he had to go. Freddie (the late Mr. Mercury, who died of AIDS in November 1991) had been calling him all week. He really should. . . .
Dusk was falling as we left for the show, Michael and his bodyguard Bill Bray walking point through the condo shrubbery toward a waiting limo. I thought they were being a bit silly – this was months before he hit monster status with Thriller. But they sensed the girls before I heard or saw them, made a dash to the car as a spiky red tangle of Lee press-on nails drummed against the windows.
“Lock it down!” Michael yelled to me, pointing to a panel at my knees. Limo savvy as I am, I hit the skylight button. Before it was half-open, arms reached in, clawing blindly.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeee. The keening drew blue-haired condo dwellers peering from behind their Levelers. Bray was twisting back from the front seat, prying fingers with surprising gentleness. Michael was helpless with giggles. I was flat scared, looking for Billie Jean in those contorted faces stuck against the windows.
When at last we pulled away, I turned to look at Michael. He had “dressed” for this public evening in jeans and a turquoise terry blazer, black loafers and just a tinge of blusher. This precept Michael looked great – healthy, handsome and robustly African American.
We stopped to pick up Michael’s one true friend – a blond teenage skier who was then his partner in Jehovah’s Witness fieldwork – and just as much of a Lost Boy. When Bray piloted us into Mercury’s dressing room, the boys shrank back until fib Freddie bounded over like a dizzy Rottweiler and damn near crushed tiny Mike in a hug. They fell against a big trunk that opened, releasing a terrifying avalanche of Freddie’s industrial-strength jockstraps. Michael’s jaw dropped.
“Ooooooooh, Freddie. What are those?”
A gold football helmet fell out and came to rest on the mountain of cups.
“Rock & roll’s a man’s job, little brother,” Freddie thundered. Michael smiled and wanted to know if his host had really spent his last birthday hanging naked from a chandelier. The skier blushed. We all had a swell time until Freddie’s trainer called him over for a little pre performance spine cracking.
As it turned out, we didn’t see much of the concert. Things got too spooky again once Michael was recognized in the beery dark. Hands, notes, eyes, surrounded us. When an unidentifiable liquid began raining on our heads, Bray stood up. “That’s it. We’re gone.”
We spent more time together, in the studio with Quincy Jones, rambling through Michael’s unfinished pleasure dome and visiting his menagerie. Toward the end, while we were bottle feeding his twin fawns, he turned suddenly and looked me in the eyes. Finally.
“You know something? You’re no better than I am. I mean, you’re just as sneaky.”
“How do you figure that?” I asked.
“You tap-dance in public. Sure you do, all over the page in ROLLING STONE. You need to perform, too. But when you’re done, you can run away and hide. Nobody’s after you.”
Michael had me there, dead to rights. He laughed and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Believe me when I tell you – don’t know how lucky you are.”
⇑ Michael riding motorcycles, In Search of Neverland by Gloria Rhoads, 1983“When he was about 24 years old, Michael was given a big, shiny, black Harley Davidson in return for a favor he had done for someone. The motorcycle was a fancy one, worth around $35,000, and it was placed in the foyer of the house on Hayvenhurst, right below the staircase.
(The author says she has a talk with Katherine and she tells her she’s worried about MJ riding because he’s inexperienced.)
Later on, I went over to the music studio where Michael was working. He was writing some new lyrics and creating new arrangements for a song. When Hw as finished I visited with him and he told me he was going to ride the motorcycle.
“Are you sure? I don’t think you should risk it in town. There’s too much traffic.”
Michael replied,”I ride very early in the morning, when there’s little or no traffic. Sometimes when I ride, I ride around the park.”
(The author explains that the park is the 2,500 acre Encino Glen Park)
I said,”Michael, now you’re sure you want to do this? You need to take care of yourself.”
He said, “Well, I want to feel the wind. I need to fill my lungs up with fresh air. And I like the purity of the park, and the smells of the park.”
“Well, you know best what to do,” I replied.
Eventually, he persuaded me to take a spin with him. I reluctantly got on the back of the bike and put my arms around Michael’s chest.
Suddenly, he zoomed off at such a speed that I was holding on for dear life and screaming like crazy. That only made Michael laugh-and go faster! We sped around around the park, me scared out of my wits but loving it in a way, Michael going faster and faster and enjoying the whole ride.
Of course, he returned me safely to where we had begun, but what a ride.
After that day, I understand he only rode the motorcycle about six times. Everyone was concerned for his safety because he really had to be careful. Michael Jackson was insures by his record label and by the companies that employed him to do commercials. If he took unnecessary risk, their policies might cancel.
People have also spoken about how Mike would just up and vanish around that time and they wouldn't know where he'd be. Though you'd have to speak to his family members about that.