It’s funny though. When that movie came out, I worked in a movie theater and most everyone that came to see it called it Specific Heights, but that’s a different story altogether. Basically, Pacific Heights is about this guy that moves in to a San Francisco townhouse and wants it, so he destroys the place from the inside out along with the marriage of Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine. However, my Michael Keaton didn’t have that much ambition. He was just a nasty slob who destroyed the house, but totally not on purpose – because that would have taken energy. Anyway, when we cleaned up the shit hole he left behind, there was stuff everywhere. Like personal stuff, and I’m not just talking about the teeth.
There were boxes and boxes of his family’s effects. In particular, photos. These pictures went back a loooooong time and Mark felt really bad about throwing them out. I however, did not. After having to clean the toilets of Specific Heights, I would have thrown out his mother’s wedding dress given the opportunity. I took the attitude of, “open a window and throw this shit out so we don’t have to carry it down the stairs.” Mark ignored me and decided to go through the pictures anyway, because according to him, he "might find something interesting." But personally, I think that it's because he’s becoming a hoarder in his old age.
Braving the wasp-ridden loft (that's another story for another post), armed with only a can of insect killer, he sifted through boxes and boxes of framed family photos. Usually the type of thing that people don’t leave behind when they move, unless you are a asshole junky. But then I guess when the majority of your time is spent getting high, keeping precious family memories intact isn’t exactly at the top of your to-do list. When Mark finally emerged from upstairs, remarkably un-stung, he carried one lone picture in his hand. He said that there really wasn’t anything thing up there worth keeping, unless we wanted a life-sized poster of the former tenant during his glory days of high school baseball to throw darts at, which I declined.
I pointed to the picture in his hand and said “what’s that?” Mark gave me a sarcastic smile and said “oh I found something. And we’re keeping it.” I just assumed that it was something completely stupid like a funny baby picture or the family sporting white people Afros during the 70s or something. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. Like, recently dead wrong. When he showed the picture to me it elicited the same emotion that everything else in this house has. The first stage was confusion followed by anger. I was like, "how did he get his picture, because I'm pretty sure he's never ventured out of this town! How'd it get here? What is with this guy, he's not even in the picture? What the fuck!?
Mark left the picture sitting on some shelves until about two weeks ago, when I came home and it had been moved to a spot front and center on the dining room table. When I saw it staring back at me, I thought, "here it is, the Universe is laughing at me." How else can one explain a picture of Michael Jackson, with a group of unknown people, left in my house by some junky that's not even in the damn picture, who now is probably going to come back for the one thing that we kept out of all his possessions, because he probably thinks it may be worth something?
So now, not only am I stuck with Michael forever on my television, he is firmly planted in my life. Mark will never let him go, and more than likely he's going to be a permanent fixture. He and his team of random unknowns, like ghosts, will forever haunt us. And when people ask us "who are they?" we will have to answer "I don't know," and look like the idiots we are.
Well played Michael, well played. Chamon indeed.
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