Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (62 page)

Margaret Maldonado

Eliza was photographed by the press in front of
Randy's Wilshire Boulevard condo carrying a sign
that accused him of being a "Dead Beat Dad." She
needed money to support their daughter, Steveanna,
and Randy wasn't making the payments a judge had
ordered. In the midst of all this turmoil, according to
Margaret Maldonado, Randy launched an affair with
the beautiful model, Paula Barbieri.

This Florida-born woman, who like La Toya herself, would pose for Playboy magazine, later became famous because of a
romance she conducted with another black man. Paula broke up with O.J.
Simpson on June 12, 1994, the day that Nicole Brown, the athlete's ex-wife
was murdered. Nonetheless, Paula stood by Simpson through his fifteen
months in jail, and she later wrote a confessional, The Other Woman: My
Years with Of. Simpson -A Story of Love, Trust, and Betrayal.

It is not known whether Michael was even aware of Randy's involvement
with Paula, but he avidly watched Simpson's televised court case. Later, when
news of his own trial was broadcast on TV, he remarked, "O.J. drew better ratings than I did."

Randy's affair with Paula would not last long. But his affair with
Alejandra Loaiza, a Colombian, would have far-reaching implications for the
Jackson family. The attractive young woman had already had a traumatic life
before arriving at the Jackson compound. Her mother had served time in a
California penitentiary as a convicted cocaine dealer.

One day Alejandra confessed to Margaret Maldonado that she'd already
had "several abortions" at Randy's request. Apparently, he preferred unprotected sex but didn't want to have a "bunch of babies" running all over
Hayvenhurst. "My brothers have already brought enough kids into the world,"
he said. After an on-again, off-again affair, Randy finally married Alejandra in
1992 and would eventually sire three children with her.

To complicate matters even more for America's most dysfunctional black
family, Jermaine would later marry Alejandra following her divorce from
Randy on March 18, 1995. Jermaine and Alejandra were married in a secret
ceremony at the Hotel Bel-Air. Della Reese administered the vows.

Reese, who toured as a teenager with gospel
great, Mahalia Jackson, is an ordained minister of
the Church of Understanding Principals for a
Better Living in Los Angeles. Katherine could
only have been horrified at the choice of Reese as
the presiding minister at her son's wedding.
Reese's church has come under fire from the
Christian Right, since it refers to itself as
"Christian," but does not accept the divinity of
Jesus Christ.

Diane Sawyer

Margaret later said, "I tried to figure out how
I was going to explain to my children that their
Aunt Alejandra was now their stepmother, and
their cousins, Randy Jr. and Genevieve, were now
their stepbrother and stepsister. And that their
Uncle Randy's girlfriend was now sleeping with their father. Talk about family values run
amuck." Reporter Diane Dimond, on
Court TV, raised a provocative question,
"Do the children call Jermaine Uncle or
Daddy or what?"

Alejandra Loaiza and her children

Even Tito wasn't immune from marital discord. His 1972 marriage to Delores
V. Martes ("DeeDee") would also end in
divorce in 1990. DeeDee discovered that
Tito, following the Jackson pattern, had
been unfaithful to her. He had three sons
with DeeDee. As they grew older, they
formed a group called "3T," releasing two
albums, Brotherhood in 1995 and Identity in 2004. The first album included
the hit, "Anything and Why" which they performed with their uncle, Michael
himself.

Many of the Jackson family's domestic dramas unfolded without making
headlines in the tabloids. Instead, the media continued to focus on Michael,
who could always provide some kind of hot, sensational story. He rarely spoke
to his associates about his family problems. Weeks before he fired Frank
DiLeo, Michael told his manager, "I hate confrontations, and I abhor violence."

Obviously the private lives of the Jackson family members weren't going
well. And for the most part, their professional careers weren't going anywhere
either.

From Neverland, Michael told his siblings they had to "go it alone" with
their album, 2300 Jackson Street, named after their small bungalow in Gary,
Indiana. Janet and Rebbie joined their brothers-all except Marlon-in the
album. Like Michael, La Toya also refused to
join the group. Released in 1989, the album
fared poorly, reaching only 59 on Billboards
charts. "I always told my brothers that without
me, they're headed for oblivion," Michael once
told Frank DiLeo.

Della Reese

Some of Michael's brothers, notably
Jermaine, blamed him for "sabotaging" sales of
the album, although how Michael did that was
never made clear.

With the release of 2300 Jackson St., the
Jackson brothers' contract with Epic Records
was fulfilled. It would not be renewed. No record company seemed interested in committing
themselves to an expensive contract with the Jackson
brothers unless Michael was part of the deal.

Paula Barbieri

In distinct contrast to the failure of his brothers,
Forbes Magazine in September of 1989 listed
Michael as the number one highest-paid entertainer
for the second consecutive year, with a two-year estimated earnings of $125 million. By December of that
year, Entertainment Tonight had named Michael "The
Most Important Entertainer of the Year." Rolling
Stone proclaimed Thriller the number one album of
the 80s, and the best-selling record album in the history of the music industry.

Michael Jackson would go down in music history as the undisputed star
of the 1980s. His triumphs, both artistically and financially, stunned the industry. He had become the 1980s' most enigmatic entertainer, a man of mystery.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Margo Jefferson, stated it this way:
"Was he man, boy, man-boy, or boy-woman? Mannequin or postmodern zombie? Here was a black person who had once looked unmistakably black, and
now looked white or at least un-black. He was, at the very least, a new kind
of mulatto, one created by science and medicine and cosmetology. Biology
defines a mulatto as the sterile offspring of an animal or plant species. Michael
Jackson's sperm count, I'm relieved to say, is one of the few things we know
nothing about. We are reasonably certain he chose not to produce offspring by
traditional means: here again, science joined nature to do his bidding."

The 80s were drawing to a close. Michael would never again experience
such heady days of glory. The 90s were coming, a decade so dreadful for
Michael that he would on several occasions contemplate suicide.

Diana Ross's early prophecy was about to come true for him in a very personal way: "The world likes to build a star up to tear him down," she said.

"Michael Jackson loves children-but mainly if they're dropdead gorgeous, and in some cases even ready to drop dead.
If Michael Jackson would just agree to be a pedophile, we
could have our kook and eat him too. "

--Michael Musto

"Forget about the superstar, forget about the icon. If he was
any other thirty-five-year old man who was sleeping with little boys, you wouldn't like this guy.""

--La Toya Jackson

"It was a child's dream, with every kind of soda in the world
there, every kind of candy. A two-floor arcade, a carnival and
a movie theater.""

--Macaulay Culkin, on Neverland

"He never had a childhood. He is having one now. His buddies
are twelve-year-old kids. They have pillow fights and food
fights. "

--Bert Fields, a former attorney of Michael Jackson

"We had very similar experiences in childhood. We're both
going to be eight years old forever in some place because we
never had a chance to be eight when we actually were. "

--Macaulay Culkin

"Michael Jackson is just a successful pop singer, after all.
Maybe this particular American life is just too strange to stand
as anything other than its once-glorious, now-pathetic self.
But in the end we walk away, shaking our heads in befuddlement. Maybe it's better to just put on 'I Want You Back/smile
sadly and leave it at that."

--Martha Southgate

In his mind at least, Michael's "affair" with Princess Di lasted until her
tragic death in the summer of 1997.

"I had a concert on the day the news broke," Michael said. "My doctor
woke me up to tell me Diana was dead. I collapsed. I fainted. He had to give
me smelling salts to revive me, and I cancelled my show because I simply
could not perform. I just broke down. I wept and wept for weeks afterward."

He spent all the day watching news reports of the death of the princess
with her lover, Dodi Fayed, his other friend, in a car crash in a Paris tunnel
while they were being chased by paparazzi on motorcycles.

"She used to confide in me," Michael told his friends. "She'd just call me
on the phone, and we would talk about everything that was happening in her
life. The press was hard on her in the same way they were hard on me, and she
needed to talk to someone who knew exactly what she was going through. She
felt hunted the way I feel hunted. Trapped!"