Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (44 page)

La Toya ran after him. She had an urgent message. "The First Lady of the
World is on the phone, and she wants to speak to you," La Toya said.

"You mean, Nancy? I've already been there, accepted that award."

"More famous than Nancy," La Toya said.

"That could be only one person," Michael replied.

Racing back into the house, he nervously picked up the receiver. In a
whispery voice, he said, "Hi, this is Michael."

On the other end of the phone, an even more famous whispery voice greeted him. "Michael, you dear. It's been far too long. As they say in the Garment
District, have I got a deal for you. This is Jackie Onassis!"

"I think Michael appeals to the child in all of us. He has the
quality of innocence that we would all like to obtain or have
kept. I think he is one of the finest people to hit this planet,
and, in my estimation, he is the true King of Pop, Rock and
Soul. I love you Michael. "

--Elizabeth Taylor

"When I met him, it was really love at first sight. I think when
you get to know Michael, you understand the nature of his
charisma. He looks at the world with the innocent eyes of a
child. "

--Sophia Loren

"Jackie twisted my arm to make me write Moon walk."

--Michael Jackson on Jackie Kennedy Onassis

"To many people Michael Jackson seems an elusive personality, but to those who work with him, he is not. This talented
artist is a sensitive man, warm, funny, and full of insight.
Michael's book, Moonwalk, provides a startling glimpse of the
artist at work and the artist in reflection. "

--Jackie Kennedy Onassis

"I expected it to be difficult, and it was. Michael's a perfectionist. "

--Colin Chivers, director of the 'Smooth Criminal' video

"I ripped off a couple of solos, and he liked the first one. It
was my choice too. He seemed to go on emotion rather than
technique, which is how I've always worked. "

--Steve Stevens, guitarist for 'Dirty Diana'

In 1984, after the "Victory" tour, Michael returned to Encino's
Hayvenhurst, which by then had become the best-known celebrity mansion
west of Elvis's Graceland. From there, he would launch friendships with three
of the most celebrated people of the 20th century: Jackie Onassis, Marlon
Brando, and Elizabeth Taylor, while still hanging onto friendships with such
media events as Katharine Hepburn, Liza Minnelli, and Jane Fonda, and such
minor celebs as the much younger Sean Lennon.

When Michael accepted the call from Jacqueline Onassis, she was working for Doubleday in New York and was at the time the most celebrated editor in publishing. Her boss had given her a budget of $300,000 to offer
Michael for his memoirs, although in his mid-twenties he was a bit young to
be penning an autobiography. One editor at Doubleday told Jackie, "If
Michael agrees to this, we should call his memoirs An Unfinished Life."

After exchanging pleasantries about their few previous meetings, Jackie
got down to business and pitched the offer of a memoir.

"My life has only begun," he protested.

"There's such a great interest in you-millions of fans around the worldthat we at Doubleday wanted to hear your story as you saw your life. The early
years. The struggles. The incredible success. What it's done to you."

"If memoirs are such a great idea, then why haven't you written one?" he
asked provocatively.

"Doubleday has a standing offer with me of $5 million for my autobiography, but I possess too many secrets. A memoir from me couldn't be honest,
and therefore I won't write one."

"I know you must have many secrets-not only your own but the intimate
details of so many other famous lives. But what secrets do I have? I'm still a
virgin. Never been kissed. At least not on the mouth."

"That's a unique story in itself," she said with a slight sense of mischief.

"Imagine a man living for a quarter of a century and still a virgin. You and my
late husband, Jack, had a lot in common.

"Now you're pulling my leg," he said. "I'm told that when you let your
hair down, you have a wicked sense of humor."

"If you only knew," she said. "One time at the White House, I was doing
this really horrendous impersonation of Lady Bird Johnson. Guess what? In
flies Lady Bird herself."

"I'm also told you like gossip."

"I don't deny that."

"Then I think you'd be very disappointed in any memoir I wrote," he said.
"I have no gossip to share."

"Perhaps I would be disappointed," she admitted candidly. "But I don't
really expect you to tell everything. But because you're the biggest star in the
world, we at Doubleday want your story."

"I don't know..."

She'd later recall that he seemed so hesitant, yet wavering. "Let me fly to
the coast and pitch this idea to you in person. As you know from having met
me, I'm very persuasive."

"That you are." He hesitated again, leading her to conclude that he was
one of the least articulate men she'd ever encountered.

"I'm not going to debase myself in any book," he warned. "The tabloids
already do that for me. Do you know a good libel lawyer?"

"I never sue for libel," she said. "Let the jackals write what they wish. Just
tell your story from your heart. Just be Peter Pan. That's all you have to do."

"I'd like that!" He agreed to a meeting in Los Angeles.

"I'm packing my bags," she promised.

After putting down the phone, he was eager to tell family and friends of
this remarkable offer he'd just had from Jackie. "I remember every word of
the dialogue," he claimed.

Privately he confessed that he had little or no interest in writing a memoir. "As for that $300,000 advance, that's peanuts in the music business," he
said. "We count in the millions." He confided to his family that if he agreed
to do the memoir, he would have a chance to solidify his friendship with
Jackie. "Imagine me, Michael Jackson, born in a bungalow in Gary, and growing up one day to be friends with Jackie Kennedy Onassis. She gave me her
private phone number in New York. Imagine that!"

Jackie and her assistant, Shaye Areheart, flew to Los Angeles in the
autumn of 1983 to convince Michael to write his autobiography. Their initial
meeting was to be a luncheon at Chasen's, a posh Los Angeles restaurant.
Jackie and Areheart arrived on time and were kept busy as well-wishers came
to their table. In a city known for famous movie stars, Jackie outdazzled all of them-all except Michael. Their meeting was scheduled at one o'clock. By
two-thirty, he hadn't shown up, and Jackie and Areheart went ahead and
ordered lunch.

Jackie Onassis, hailed as the world's most desirable woman, wasn't used
to be being stood up. Initially embarrassed, she decided to forgive Michael.
"He's very shy," she told her colleagues. Privately she was enraged.

The woman who'd charmed Charles de Gaulle and Nikita Krushchev didn't give up that easily. She called Michael the following morning, using her
most seductive voice. At first he seemed intimidated and didn't want to take
her call. Finally, he relented. He came to the phone and pleaded for her to forgive him for his rudeness. "The idea of writing an actual book devoted to my
personal life paralyzed me," he said. "I changed costumes three times that
morning and was ready to go. Then at the last minute I got cold feet."

Before the end of their conversation, he invited her to tea that afternoon
at Hayvenhurst. When a chicly dressed Jackie arrived at Encino, she found
only two staff members. Michael had ordered the rest of the household to
leave, including photographer Steve Howell, who wanted to capture the historic coming together of this famous pair on film. "He kicked us out. We didn't get to see her. All of us were horribly disappointed and mad at Michael for
his insensitivity."

Michael was awed by Jackie, considering her the epitome of grace, style,
and charm. Once he'd held Diana Ross in such awe, but seemingly had graduated from that, moving on to bigger game. "And what bigger game could
there have been than Jackie Onassis?" Howell asked. "My God, she was the
most famous person on Earth meeting the second most famous person on
Earth."

"It was a lovefest," said a staff member who was allowed to remain
behind to serve tea. "Jackie and Michael were practically cooing at each other.
I couldn't tell where Jackie's whispery voice
ended and Michael's whispery voice began."

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

As Jackie would later reveal, "I didn't end up
interviewing Michael. He ended up interviewing me."

"How do you live with the dread that every
time you walk out your door fans or the
paparazzi are waiting to take your picture?" he
asked her.

"I consider the alternative," she said. "Life as
a recluse. A Georgetown widow peering out
through the draperies at throngs gathered on
the street in front of my house. That wasn't an option for me, so I moved to New York. Of course, I can't take the rush of people at times. Perhaps that's why I married An. He could almost guarantee my
privacy when he wasn't invading it himself." She was referring, of course, to
her second husband, Aristotle Onassis.

"How do you handle being a celebrity?" he asked.

"I don't know anything else," she said. "It comes easy for me. I couldn't
imagine being unknown. Almost from the beginning of my life, I was on stage
or being exhibited somewhere. Of course, not the kind of notoriety that came
later. Actually, I've often pondered your question myself. Maybe I would miss
the fame. At first anonymity sounds wonderful, at least the freedom it would
give you. Imagine going shopping on Fifth Avenue without the gawkers and
the paparazzi. I've asked a few movie stars what it was like to have known
world adulation, then neglect. Gloria Swanson once told me, `It's like the
parade has passed me by.' She said she missed the adoring fans and the hysteria they once generated for her."

At the end of the afternoon, Michael still hadn't agreed to write his memoirs. Instead he proposed The Michael Jackson Scrapbook. "You know, a picture of my boa constrictor, Muscles. My first report card. The first song The
Jackson 5 ever recorded. Stuff like that."

"I once compiled a book devoted to memorabilia of an early trip to Europe
with Lee," she said, obviously turned off by the idea of a Jackson scrapbook.
She was referring to Lee Radziwell, her sister.

The next day Michael invited Jackie on a tour of Disneyland, with him
serving as her personal guide. "He knew all the hidden corners, the names of
all the animals, the thrill of every attraction," she said. "I found it boring, but
he was mesmerized. I think he has the heart of an eight-year-old."

After that day at Disneyland, Jackie seemed fascinated by the subject of
Michael's sexual orientation. For such a worldly woman, this was out of character. Among others, she discussed it with J.C. Suares, who would become the
book designer for Moonwalk. According to Suares, "She repeatedly asked me
if I thought Michael liked girls."

She even discussed it with Peter Lawford, thinking that as a Hollywood
insider he might know something. "I have never known Jackie to be so
intrigued with someone's sexual orientation," Lawford later said. "She was
one of the most sophisticated women in the world. Both she and Lee included many homosexuals, especially those in the arts, among their best friends.
Truman Capote. Rudolf Nureyev. Jackie even had a distant kinship with gay
author Gore Vidal."

She confided to Lawford, who was to die the following year, that, "When
I first met Michael in New York in the late 70s, I just assumed he was gay, but
hadn't admitted that to himself yet. After seeing him so many years later on his home turf in Encino, I think he's figured out he's gay. But his gayness, I
suspect, has a strange twist to it."

"What do you mean exactly?" Lawford asked her.

"I mean, it's not gay like two handsome men who look like Paul Newman
and Rock Hudson getting together. I have great intuition about these matters.
Michael is gay, but his gayness is different. There's something fishy going on
here. Something he's hiding from the world, something that will never be
revealed in Moonwalk. The book will hardly be a candid confession, but a
glossy, glitzy thing. Michael's mythology of himself. But in spite of what I've
said, I predict it'll be a bestseller."

The staff at Doubleday was eager to hear Jackie's impressions of Michael
even before she eventually landed the deal to publish a memoir, not a scrapbook.

"He seems to have no perspective on his life" she claimed. "That's understandable. He's only twenty-five. Of course, I've met men his age who ruled
kingdoms. I think he's more interested in projecting an image of himself than
he is in telling any truth. Maybe his truth would completely destroy his
image."

It took Michael two weeks to make up his mind to go ahead with his book
and accept Jackie's offer. "Of course, I'll need a ghostwriter," he told her.