Concrete and Clay

On his 87th birthday, he invited me to dinner. When I arrived, Micheal Jackson was wearing a dressing gown instead of his usual snappy zipped red leather jacket and one glove. His colour was a peculiar grey, his customarily groomed hair was slightly untidy and there was a peculiar smell of methylated spirits in the air.

He was not wearing his prosthetic arm.

After cocktails, his man-servant announced dinner and that he was sick of all the hatred in the world. As usual, I pretended to look at the large water colour of ground zero so that he could be helped to the table unobserved. While he was being moved I thought I heard him cry out in pain, I was comforted in realising he had simply broken out into a verse of Billie Jean. Suddenly, he pushed away his helper, twisted, struck a pose, then fell to the floor. Later I learned he had fractured his hip in a similar fall that morning.