At the height of his career, when Thriller was selling faster than any album in history and his face was on every magazine cover on the planet, Michael Jackson would do something that almost nobody knew about.
HE WOULD LEAVE HIS ROOM, WALK OUT INTO THE STREET, AND APPROACH COMPLETE STRANGERS. NOT FOR AUTOGRAPHS OR PICTURES. HE WAS LOOKING FOR A FRIEND.
In his own words, spoken during a rare interview, he was painfully lonely. So lonely that he filled his room with mannequins simply to feel a human presence nearby. So lonely that he would cry upstairs by himself and eventually decide he could not take it anymore.
He would walk out the door and go looking for someone, anyone, who would just talk to him like a normal person.
Michael Jackson’s voice crumbles as he describes his loneliness
The report says he would approach strangers on the street and ask them directly. Will you be my friend?
And every single time, the answer was the same reaction. Shock. Excitement. The name. Michael Jackson. And that was exactly what he did not want.
He said it himself. He wanted someone to be his friend. Not for the name. Not for the fame. For the person underneath all of it.
This was not a man struggling at the bottom. This was the most famous entertainer on earth, at the absolute peak of everything, wandering the streets at night hoping a stranger might treat him like a human being.
His trial took away everything from him
He also said something even heavier in a separate private conversation with his friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.
HE SAID THAT IF IT WERE NOT FOR CHILDREN, HE WOULD CHOOSE DEATH.
That the innocence and unconditional acceptance he found in them was the only thing that gave him something he had never been able to find anywhere else.
The people spent decades questioning why Michael Jackson wanted to be around children. He told them exactly why. They were the only ones who saw HIM, not “Michael Jackson”. But that distinction cost him everything.