I Am So Popular: Billie Jean Is Also Not MY Lover!

I was hoping the curtain would provide some motivation for me. Warren and I have been talking about a trip around the world since nearly the day we met two years ago. Our goal departure date is 2010 and back when I had a steady job, saving enough to do a bit of traveling seemed possible. Now, with the economy in the shitter in general and journalism-as-a-career no longer an option, I’m thinking maybe I’m just going to have to sit on the toilet and look at a different country each day and that will have to suffice. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

So it was while hanging this curtain-of-hope I noted the tub stopper. And that made me think about the frog. I had been, as recently as my stroll through the Target aisles, debating whether or not to tell you about the frog. Earlier today I thought it was a swell idea—an image so vivid and graphic you wouldn’t be able to help but see it in your mind, which would make me a powerful scribe and master of my trade, right? Then I thought, No, no, don’t do that to people. Don’t make them get that image stuck in their heads, too. It’s awful. But the sight of the tub stopper so reminded me of the frog that it tipped the scale back the other way, and I decided this was the universe insisting I tell you about the frog.

Warning: The following passage is graphic. Proceed at your own risk.

So the other day, I found myself by a pool that hadn’t been chlorinated in awhile. It was covered in a bright green film of algae. Really a very beautiful color. Upon closer inspection, I saw some lumps and, following a hunch, I looked closer and confirmed my hypothesis that, yes, those were frogs’ backs and eyes poking up, adding some texture to the velvety pond scum blanket. I should’ve stopped there but wait— do you know me people? I did not. Of course I did not. Instead, I looked closer.

And that’s when I saw him, belly up and bloated. The dead frog. And this particular dead frog, no really, had one rigor mortised hand plunging upward, toward the sky. Yes, just like the tub stopper. And in the days since that visual burned itself forever into my mind, I have come to associate it with Michael Jackson. One hand. One glove. One glove. One tragic pop star gone, gone, gone.

Poor Michael Jackson. Like just about everyone else in the world, should I choose to think about him (and how can I not?) speculation is my only tool. The story I create for him is not original and surely drawn in part from bits and pieces of gossip I’ve read over the years and, especially, in the days after his death. He never had a childhood. He worked his whole life. The spotlight ruined him. Something Quincy Jones said really grabbed me—about how when people get a lot of attention they come to either think they really deserve it or that they really don’t. Both, he says, are problematic ways of dealing with fame.

So let’s see, Michael Jackson had the best selling album of all time and had recently sold out, in mere hours, fifty concert dates in London. Spike Gillespie has sold a few thousand books—that’s combination sales of several different books—and has eight hundred and thirty something Facebook friends. My father did not force me to sing at the Apollo when I was little. He did not enslave me into a life of entertainment. But I, too, had some kooky things go down as a kid, and like MJ I grew up amidst a passel of siblings which, invariably says I, leads to multiple people struggling over limited resources (financial and/or emotional and/or physical). My theory is that these factors combined often manifest as a chronic case of Pick Me Syndrome.

Maybe that’s what the frog hand, flung skyward in desperation, was crying out for. Pick Me. Pick Me to be the frog you scoop out with the skimmer. Pick me to hop off into the garden. Pick Me Pick Me Pick Me. Maybe that’s what Michael’s solo glove was about—Look over here, look at me, I’m different, Pick Me!

I was thinking a lot about attention— wanting it, seeking it, courting it, getting it, shying away from it, resenting it—during the couple of weeks I recently took off. Unlike MJ, I don’t have to wear a burka to go unrecognized in public. Oh sure, inside the city limits a trip to Whole Foods can take four hours because I run into so many people I know (but then, I think this is true for most Austinites in this one degree of separation town in which we live).

But when I want to go out in peace, I just toss the dogs in the car and drive to Galveston. Other than my hosts, whom I’ve known for decades, I do not know a blessed soul on the island. Mornings I walk the pooches a few miles, then drop them off and ride my bike for several miles more. I meditate and research and write and read and watch movies. The less email I send, the less email I get. Facebook—I admit this doesn’t surprise me—seems to continue to thrive despite my absence. I enjoy the quiet and the lack of attention and the absence of constant communication very much. I fantasize about staying a little longer down there, like maybe the rest of my life. I find it is terribly refreshing to simply disappear, especially after all those years of chasing after one spotlight or another.

I contemplate the fame I thought I wanted when I started writing—around the same age that MJ was when he was when he started singing. It was a dream that waxed and waned over the years. Then, a year or so ago there was some talk that my little show, The Dick Monologues (which closes this week after a two year run) might have a place on Broadway. Or at least Off Broadway. Just as I had when my first book came out, I entertained exhilarating fantasies that this was it, I’d finally unwrapped the chocolate bar with the golden ticket. But then, through lessons learned hard and at a high cost via many meetings with potential investors and lawyers, I came to realize that yes, it did belong Off Broadway. As in off off off off off. At the little Hyde Park Theatre, presented for friends, just as it was originally intended. Which was more than fine—it was a wonderful relief.

The recent joy of respite aside, I don’t suppose my Pick Me Syndrome will ever fully fade. To a certain extent, I think nearly all of us have it. We want others to bear witness—to our triumphs, our failures, our talents, and our gaffs. To applaud, chastise, commiserate and forgive us. This is, at one end of the spectrum, the force that has imposed Britney and Miley and yes, Michael Jackson upon us. At the other end it is the fuel feeding the growing fire of endless Facebook posts, Tweets, and blogs, all vying for your hits, begging, crying, screeching, singing: This is my story, this is my story. Pick Me Pick Me Pick Me!!

Spike Gillespie blogs at www.spikeg.com and KnitBuzz. She is hosting a writing workshop September 4th - 6th. Space is very limited. Email spike@spikeg.com for details.