This Weekend

Went to see the vigil at the former Jackson house in Gary on Friday, the saddest sack of shit this side of Pine Ridge. The town with a literal facade. Two blocks of nice looking convention center facing the South Shore line and the Indiana Tollway. Step into the downtown and you'll quickly notice the lack of a shop that isn't boarded up for six blocks. Liz told me to be careful via text and I promised her I would be back to the city by dark. This was a half truth. Crumbling apartment buildings, vacant lots that haven't been mowed in years, some with footpaths tempting the suicidal into the brush.

A man named Big Sweat drove me the last mile or so to the place in exchange for seven dollars and than twelve. I think it was the mild hustle that innoculated me from getting more seriously jacked. I had three hundred dollars in my pocket. Don't ask me why. It's okay to let the world know now.

All the marquees and electronic sings proclaimed Gary's love for Mike Jack. The Jackson family got the hell out of course as soon as the Motown checks allowed them to, and they are of course the only people from the place to ever strike it rich in any way. Sad doesn't begin to describe. They still have the signs up celebrating the town's 2006 centenial. Mayor Rudy Clay sprays his name and acheivements about the place more shamelessly than a Kim, and of course the city still boasts loudly about being of the fuck-ugly U.S. steel plant along the lakefront. The same U.S. steel that went moribund and took the town with it. Gary takes daddy's beatings as obediently as Micheal and LaToya did.

And it's abundently clear that the Jackson's are a tribe of Black crypto-Catholics. It may even be that Micheal's famous color change reveals betrays them as Sicilians trying to pass as African. The abuse they suffered is apperent in the entire clan's social and sexual stundedness. I'm confident that it was no mere occasional slap from drunken daddy's belt that they suffered. They have the sort of hangups that can only come from ritual sadomasichism of the Papist school. The house where they lived in is obscenely too small for seven kids and their folks. It could of been built for migrent grape pickers. I could go on and on with this.

Every network news van in the metro was there. On the corner facing the house was a man selling ice cream and on the other was a man selling vienna beef dogs. The mourners were busy cramming themselves in front of hand held cameras and singing "I'll Be There" for Youtube. There was a stack of filthy used teddy bears and roses by the front door and some wag left a cardboard tribute to the actual Billie Jean 'Jackson'. I'm afraid that none of it gets to me anymore. How absurd I guess. Yawn.

I took a side street back towards the South Shore that started in what was a clean-enough looking neighborhood before quickly changing back to Bogata once I crossed a set of frieght tracks. I stopped by a liqour store and bought a 40 of "Wildcat" which wasn't at all distinctive. I reached the station to find I had just missed a train by ten minutes and would have to wait an hour and a half to catch the last one inbound for the day. I texted Liz to tell her I was safe and asked her to send me a pic of her legs. I napped mostly until I got back to Millenium Station and met her there.

Saturday we slept until three and watched the FOD's below my window celebrate Pridefest 09. I live just off of Broadway and Halstead and was unsure of just who's ethnic enclave this was until I got here. We lounged until five until the unmistakable strains of "Shake Your Love" reached my room.

My sister was thriteen when Debbie Gibson was hot. I'm familar, and it was pitiful to see her face stretched and dried out by cocaine or surgery or both. Still she put on a hell of a show. Drag queens were rushing the stage like rapists at an ICP concert. After her came Crystal Waters, (La da de,la de da.) The gay night scene is every bit as much of a time warp as any Motley Crew bumping dive in the Nebraska sticks. Thursday night at this place called Bobby Love's they played a newish video from old Gibson rival Tiffany, catering to the glass dick and Eurotrash set now. It was several minites of delirium before I could finally believe that it was THAT Tiffany. My sister dug her too.

I missed the actual pride parade on Sunday as I was in a vein search for a TV showing the USA/Brazil soccer match, which we naturally lost in the most calculatingly painful way imaginable. I called Liz to ask her is she could skip work on Tuesday. She said no and asked why. I said it was nothing and I'll let you know on the when.