Believe In Me

Chapter 1

“I'd lie for you and that's the truth
Do anything you ask me to
I'd even sell my soul for you
I'd do it all for you
If you'd just believe in me.”

* * * * *

Michael’s POV

This is not my story. Perhaps not even my children’s story. Or even Amanda’s. This is the story of normal people living in an abnormal world and trying to keep their sanity. I should probably start at the beginning.

The beginning is a long time ago. I was a kid in the 60’s, working as hard as an adult and this made me different. I also grew up in the public eye as a child star – the lead singer of the Jackson 5. This also made me different. By the time I reached the magic 18 number in age, I already felt old, worn out and disenchanted. And terribly, terribly insecure. Insecure about my face, my nose, my acne and my shyness around girls. Especially the one whom I was crazy about. Diana. Diana Ross. She was a mother figure to me until I hit puberty and she became the object of my erotic fantasies and I was convinced she was my one and true love.

She was my first woman – yes, it happened for real, she taught me to be a man in bed and I was starry eyed, dreaming of marriage and lots of children. But then she taught me another lesson: that women will use a man, use him for sex, for their fun and pleasure, and then toss him away like nothing. And this also changed me.

By the present time – the year 2006, I have changed so tremendously, and not in a good way. I made the biggest selling album of all time, I broke record after record in the entertainment industry and one day I became too important for the big sharks. I broke a taboo – no Black man should go so far and become so important. So around the year 1990 my systematic destruction was started and conducted unrelentlessly. They picked on my Vitiligo and claimed I wanted to bleach my skin.

They picked on every little particularity of my lifestyle and mocked it. They picked on my true and sincere love for children and turned it into something monstrous. I was labeled a pedophile after the Chandler mess.

And right now I have just emerged from my second child molestation case. This time it went all the way to a jury trial. I was acquitted but my life is in shambles. My three children, Prince, Paris and Blanket, are the only ones who still keep me alive.

My relationship with women – yes, I do like women, I like them a lot, actually – were determined by the whole range of changes I’ve been through. I shunned women after Diana for a while. Then I carelessly used them, like she used me. I allowed myself to love Lisa, and she gave me another terrible blow. She refused to have my children. She put her ambitions, her whims before our marriage and gave up on it so easily. So my confidence in true love was finally shattered. There is no true love for me. I can never believe a woman who says she loves me. She loves my fame, my money, the luxury I can provide. Why call it love?

I was a sugar daddy for some women, I got tangled with Lisa on and off for a few years and I shared one honest relationship – with Debbie, who offered to give me children, never expected romantic love from me and when it was the right time, we went our separate way. Add to the list another brief relationship with Blanket’s mother – a woman who lives a comfortable life now after she agreed to be a surrogate and offer me my third child.

Once or twice I felt myself falling for a woman. In those quiet moments after heated sex, when words flow freely and a sense of intimacy builds. But every time I felt that, I shrunk back as if bitten by a venomous spider. Diana’s betrayal still works like a blocking mechanism inside me, preventing myself from becoming vulnerable and exposed.

I am an emotional wreck. And the trial was the final blow. I live my life on anti-anxiety pills, painkillers, sleeping pills and the occasional bout of drinking. I do not use drugs. No, that was never my line of choice. I don’t do marijuana, cocaine, heroin, speed, LSD or stuff. I don’t need to escape into a twisted reality. I just want pain and fear and panic to disappear. I just want to be able to sleep.