I have to admit, I am one of those MJ fans that practically eat, sleep and breathe facts about Michael. I mean when I was a child, it was kind of my mission in life to know as much as humanly possible as I could about Michael--based on the resources available to a twelve-year-old.
Michael in 1976, possibly only seventeen years old!
Anyway, in a nutshell, I pride myself on my knowledge of Michael Jackson and my uncanny ability to tear a hater down to their foundation over him. Intelligence always defeats ignorance.
In any case, though, I am so used to being in the know about Michael and the Jacksons in general that for about three years, I had made an oversight and only noticed it tonight.
I was having an MJ concert night and one of my favorite shows to look at is the Jacksons Live From Mexico.
And it wasn’t really so much Michael that tripped me up, it was his brother, Marlon.
Now the performance is marked as being done in 1975. I have strongly opposed this based on two things:
ONE: Jermaine Jackson is absent from the lineup. Jermaine didn’t leave the group until 1976 and he was replaced by youngest Jackson brother, Randy playing conga drums.
TWO: During the performance, I noticed that Marlon was wearing his gold wedding band.
This is where things got sticky. I had always believed that Marlon had married his wife Carol on August 16, 1976. Hell, I had even been pissed when I learned that Elvis Presley had died the same date a year later, whining that is ruined Marlon and Carol’s first anniversary.
This brings me back to Michael. In 1976, Michael Jackson became a legal man at the age of 18. Based on this young manly Michael, I have penned at least three eroticas, drawing from his persona in the Mexican concert. It also made Marlon nineteen in my mind.
So I’m watching the show, jamming to I Am Love, when something told me to look up the date of Marlon’s marriage. I don’t know why, but it just came to me to do so.
So I turned and picked up Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness, the MJ fact Bible to me.
There’s a section that details all the brother’s first marriages. So I find the picture of Marlon and Carol.
The book said they eloped in Las Vegas on August 16, 1975.
Not nineteen seventy-SIX.
Nineteen seventy-FIVE.
Well I nearly shit myself for lack of a better term. Pardon my French.
I had always assumed that Michael was eighteen years old. It literally made me break into a coughing fit when I realized at oldest, Michael was only seventeen. At youngest, depending on the exact date of the show, he could have even been sixteen.
This may not seem like such a big deal, but it is to me. I’ve always been a girl who preferred older men. I mean WHY do you think I’m hung up on MJ in the first place? It was an idea I had when I was 15, as I upped in age, I would only play Michael’s music/shows from that age on.
Now at 26, I realized it was silly and let some of the oldies back in.
It just kind of bothers me that’s all. I mean…at 18 Michael was legally a man. Could vote, could smoke…could even drink in some states. At 17, he was still a minor under the custody of his mother.
I just keep thinking one thought. If I was out with Michael, at my current age and kissed him on a street corner….at 18, it’d be fine, at 17, it would literally be breaking the law in some states.
I just can’t believe I was looking at him like that. I mean I even giggled when I could make out the outline of his underwear through his pants.
Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of nothing, since if he was alive Michael would be fifty-four years old. (And I’ll be all over him like makeup on his skin)
{I still don’t quite understand how he “dated” Tatum O’Neal when she was 13 and he was older, but it was stuff dreams were made of to me at the ages of 11-16}
But it just kind of caught me off guard a bit and really with Michael at 16/17 in the performance and me at my age, I am in “cougar” territory.
And Michael would have been my little cub. Cause I assume a guy can't be a kitten!
WOW.
