Through the front windows of Pinellas Point Fish Market, past the fish with lips, crab with teeth and a grinning eel, the fishmonger looks like he’s moonwalking – Michael Jackson at the bottom of an aquarium surrounded by walls of blue painted to look like a coral reef on the ocean floor.
He lifts the toes of one foot as the other slides back, giving the illusion of walking forward but moving backward. Customers hoot and clap as he spins and lifts his hat with his sparkling glove; underneath, a mop of shaggy black hair.
“Yeah, I’m Michael Jackson,” he says after his performance, pulling out his driver’s license: Michael David Jackson. Date of birth: 3/09/60. The dancing fishmonger is a year and a half younger than the singer-songwriter, with a receding hairline and two gold teeth. Two nickels are tucked in his ears-a habit he picked up from his brother to represent his “hustler” status.
He doesn’t kick or balance on his tip toes because of his bum knee, nor does he tear his shirt and yell because it wouldn’t be sanitary.
He has no Grammy, no bestselling album of all-time and no pet monkey. He has a suspended driver’s license, seven children and a part-time gig as an amateur imitator. But with a difference. He is Michael Jackson.
On June 16, he displayed his impersonation skills in front of hundreds at Amateur Night at the Palladium Theater downtown, bringing him one step closer to his lifelong dream of performing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
“It’s a step up from the birthday parties and family night summer appearances at the park,” he said.
Man in the mirror
Jackson’s mother, Rosa Lee Jackson, gave him his name, though he can’t remember the reason why. How was she to have known that in Gary, Ind., a Katherine Jackson had given her celebrity-destined son the same name?
“Michael’s a great name,” says the St. Petersburg Michael. “Still is.”
Coincidental as it may have been, from that moment on, the life of Rosa Lee’s son would be tied to that of his doppelganger born half a country away.
Jackson was interested in dancing years before his double made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. He would look forward to elementary school dances so he could show off moves he picked up the way other kids pick up cuss-words. He did the funky chicken, the camel walk and the bump.
“Anything anyone can dance, I can dance,” Jackson said. “I study it for a minute, then go in front of a mirror and just go to work.”
It was only natural for him to mimic the Michael Jackson on TV, he said. The singer was popular, the kids loved him, and the St. Petersburg Jackson could share a bit of fame by copying a twirl or two.
“When I get on that dance floor it’s like magic,” Jackson said. “Young or old they love to see me dance like Michael.”
Jackson can cut up the dance floor and keep up with any modern moves at clubs, said his girlfriend, Taisha Holmes, 28.
“But people only really want to see him dance like Michael.”
When women hear his name they are immediately interested, Jackson said.
“It’s an easy pickup line,” Jackson said, adding that there are many ladies who will dance on the floor in the round with him.
But there are drawbacks.
“Anytime he gets in trouble that’s definitely bad for me, because that’s all I’ll hear about,” Jackson said.
There were times when people would taunt, calling him “Michelle,” and other times when people would ask when he was going to bleach his skin or begin molesting boys.
“I’d go to a job interview and they’d say, ‘Oh, you’re going to court soon, right?'” Jackson said. “I’m like, ‘No, that’s Michael Joseph Jackson. I’m Michael David Jackson.'”
It never occurred to the man who as a child kept a scrap book of every Teen Beat and Jet article he could find on the King of Pop to change his name or shorten his name to something like “Mike” or “Mikey.”
Other people have a harder time with it than he does, to the point that someone once accused him of not being “the real Michael Jackson.”
“Are you real?” the fishmonger responded, jabbing a finger at his accuser, who had to pause before nodding. “Well, I’m real, too. I’m St. Petersburg Michael Jackson.”
“Man, I think the world of him even though people always be bothering him,” Jackson said. “I know he’s run into some problems, but damn, who hasn’t?”
Smooth criminal
As much as Jackson loved to dance growing up, as much as he loved to entertain, he never got the chance to hit it big or “break out.”
He couldn’t seem to keep himself out of trouble. He was 21 when he was caught by police with a bag of marijuana in his back pocket and spent 18 months in jail for cocaine possession. In 1987, Jackson pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and was sent back to prison.
“We was playing cards and I caught the guy cheating, so we got our money back,” Jackson said.
The Apollo Theater, the venue that helped launch the careers of James Brown, Etta James and the Jackson 5, never seemed so far away as it did from his bunk at River Junction Correctional Facility. Jackson went into construction to support his seven children with four mothers. He fell into debt.
His last offense occurred five years ago, when he was caught driving with a suspended license. These days, Jackson’s girlfriend transports him in her Pepto-Bismol pink Oldsmobile.
“I was young and I made mistakes,” he said. “I paid for it, so it’s dead and gone and that’s how I want to leave it.”
Jackson said he spent a total of 23 months in jail, which he described as “a college with stricter rules,” complete with dorm rooms and armed guards. He joined the basketball and softball teams that competed in town nearby, and danced in five penitentiary talent shows.
“I won three times,” Jackson said. “Man, they loved me.”
Don’t stop ’til you get enough
Now Jackson is a full-time fishmonger: he makes peeled crab smothered with garlic butter sauce, gutted mullet doused in ice pellets and blue crab boiled in a secret family recipe that customers come from miles around just to gobble up with “tears coming out of their eyes and their noses running.”
Still, Jackson will pause from time to time to step in front of the counter to cut a few moves if people ask him to. He keeps a homemade purple and silver glove in a milk crate nearby to give the full effect of the impromptu performance. And he waits for the Apollo Theater to call about the audition tape he sent them last October.
Interested in more? Click here to see the related multimedia project “More than just his name,” or click here to see the related design project “My name is Michael.”
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