the lonesome death of michael jackson auditorium

we were the kids who walked to school, past the hookers on sunset boulevard. they sipped 7 11 coffee and smoked. their day ending as ours began.

they’d wave, “mornin’ babies.”

we’d wave back “morning, sparkles. morning valencia.”

most of the kids i went to school with didn’t have much of anything; cash, promise, home-life, beauty. mostly we ate a lot of government cheese. there were a few bright, affluent kids there, too. but we could never figure out what the hell they were doing at gardner. punishment? cosmic joke?

we didn’t have much, but we did have the gloved one. michael jackson. he was the apex. and we could claim him. years before any of us were born, he went to our school. briefly. (i found out later it was only for 11 months) but so what? he was the most famous man in the world, and he went to our school. And then he came to our school.

among a chorus of kids singing “we are the world”, he dedicated the michael jackson auditorium. festooned on the outside with huge silver letters. it was shiny and new and forever linked our lives to the shooting star that was mj. if all the world was a stage, then we were suddenly players on an elevated one.

i wasn’t ever a big fan of his music. prone to melancholy, i preferred the clash, the cure, the Smiths. jackson's deal was awfully optimistic. awfully american dreamy. even still, i was sincerely, un-ironically proud of that auditorium.

i moved away to a small town in utah and worked the auditorium story into the mythology of my hollywood upbringing. it helped to create a mellow glow of celebrity around me. i may have lived in the only apartment building in town (which also happened to be welfare housing). i even exited my divorced dad’s pickup truck each morning reeking of his pot smoke. i should have been a social pariah in the land of the squeaky clean and bland. ah, but i was the girl from tinsel town. i had stories to tell. thank-you, mr. Jackson.

by the time college rolled around, my friends were too smug and ironic to be impressed by the story. now it was good for a laugh. how funny, how ridiculous.

“michael jackson, my god. too bad you couldn’t get someone good.”

“yeah, like that dude from benson.” even so, every time we took a trip to la la land, i squired my mates by the old school. showed ‘em the fabled auditorium.

the intervening years have been sad, strange chapters in the michael jackson story. he’s become a bizarre circus mirror image of himself. i moved back to l.a. this Christmas, my visiting cousin asked to see the auditorium. i agreed to drive him by, even though i felt kinda weird about it.

and then, it wasn’t there. the words “michael jackson” had been covered with plywood and painted brown. i heard that parents complained. they didn’t want creepy mj associations linked beloved kids.

i understand that. but I also remember a time when we welcomed the association. when it meant promise and possibility. and i don't mean the possibility of inappropriate groping. what do the kids at gardner have now, instead of the michael jackson auditorium? a good story, i guess.

same as me.


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