The Michael Jackson Tapes (28 page)

It would be nice if the people who now own and run Neverland would consider honoring Michael's wish and build the child star museum that he envisioned. Perhaps it would be a valuable lesson to all those parents who push their children into early acting careers.

In New York Michael took me to a dealer whose entire showroom was crowded with original Norman Rockwells. Michael ran from paintng to painting, excitedly explaining every detail to me. I have rarely een him so animated.

Elizabeth Taylor: A Special Bond

Michael Jackson: Elizabeth Taylor is very childlike. There's nothing that you can do when she'll say, “I don't want to do that.” When
Bug's Life
came out, she bugged me over and over to fix my schedule so we could see the cartoon. So we had to go to a public theater at about 1:00 o'clock. She makes me go out every Thursday because she says I'm too reclusive. Everybody's at work, so there's no one there and we never pay. . . we come with nothing and they always say, “Oh, my God, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson.” We get free popcorn, everything. She loved
Bug's Life
and loves Neverland. She'll go on the carousel and the Ferris wheel, but not the scary rides.

There are other childlike qualities of Elizabeth Taylor. She was in
Jane Eyre
around eight or nine. Our fathers were very much alike, tough, hard, brutal. She's playful and youthful and happy and finds a way to laugh and giggle even when she's in pain. She's ready to play any game, go swimming. She's very good with children. She loves toys and cartoons. I get to learn so much from her. She'll tell me about James Dean and Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey and Montgomery Clift, because she did movies with all these people. She tells me what they were really like, the ones who were nice people and the ones that weren't.

We were in Singapore—she came on most of the
Dangerous
tour with me—and we decided we wanted to go to the zoo. And we hung out and had our own private tour and we had fun. She's Prince and Paris's godmother and Macaulay's their godfather. She's just retained that little girl quality. That little child you see in
Jane Eyre
and
Lassie Come Home
, that's still in there. It's in her eyes. She has this glow like a child. It's so sweet. But Shirley [Temple Black], too. She says, “You get it, don't you. You're one of us.”

[Elizabeth Taylor and I] we're like brother and sister, mother and son, lovers. . . it's a potpourri. . . it's something special. We go through this whining thing on the phone. . . “I need you. . . .” “Oh, I need you, too.” We can talk about anything. She's been my most loyal friend. She says she adores me and would do anything for me. She says Hollywood has to write a movie for the two of us. We just have to do something together.

Shmuley Boteach: Do you get jealous when she dates other men? She got married in your backyard.

MJ: Do I get jealous? Yes and no. I know that if we ever did anything romantically, the press would be so mean and nasty and call us “The Odd Couple.” It would turn into a circus and that's the pain of it all. You know, I push her in a wheelchair sometimes, when she can't walk. It's none of their business what we have together. I have to be with people like me. Some rappers will say to me, “Let's hang out. Let's go down to a club.” And I'll say, “What? Let's hang? I don't think so.” That kind of thing's not a party for me.

On that tour [
Dangerous
], she fed me because I wouldn't eat. When I get upset, I stop eating, sometimes until I'm unconscious. [The molestation allegations had just been lodged against Michael while he was on tour in 1993. Hence, the reason for his upset.] She took the spoon and opened my mouth and made me eat. She said she wouldn't let me go without her, and her doctors advised her not to go. She went to Thailand and followed the tour all the way to London. I ended up at Elton John's and he was really sweet hiding me. He's one of the sweetest people you could meet on this planet. He and I took care of Ryan White, all his medical expenses.

Then they started doing it intravenously. I go through these serious food crises when I could go weeks without eating. I take stuff to keep weight on. What turns me off is that I don't like eating anything that used to be alive and now it's dead on my plate. I want to be a strict vegetarian, but my doctors keep trying to throw in chicken and fish.

ON CHILDREN AND INNOCENCE

Can Children Teach Us Love?

Many of you reading this are no doubt of the opinion that Michael gravitated toward children for all the wrong reasons. But it is worth hearing his words here. Michael would tell me constantly that he loved innocence. Now, remember. Michael was performing in clubs from the age of five. He shared with me that he used to see strippers and other adult scenes as a small child. As I've consistently maintained, it is very possible that he came to associate sex with something perverted and corrupt. He was seeing things that no child should witness. Hence, his love of innocence. Children were innocent. They provided a refuge from this prurient world into which Michael had been immersed. There is a powerful lesson here for all the parents out there. Be careful of exposing your kids to adult content. It can scar and damage them for life.

Why Michael Remained Childlike

Indeed, when we met Michael amid having every animal under the sun, including tigers and elephants, he had no family dog. Michael asked me why we didn't have a dog either, and I said that I was concerned the children would not take care of it. Then, just before my daughter Chana's
tenth birthday, Michael called from Neverland. “Shmuley, will you be angry if I get the kids a dog, just a real little one?” “Well Michael, that's real nice of you. But as I said, I'm concerned that the kids won't take care of it.” A day later, the door bell rang. There was no one there. But on the doorstep was a beautiful toy Maltese puppy. The kids were thrilled. Marshmallow, as the children named her, has been a member of our family ever since. A few weeks later, when Michael came for dinner with his kids, his children played with the dog and begged him for a dog as well, a request that Michael finally granted, telling me that our puppy had helped him get beyond his own fears of dogs. But then, our pet was his gift.