I was buying a book at the Strand on 12th and Broadway yesterday afternoon at around 6:00. A couple of cashiers were talking about rumors that someone in addition to Farrah Fawcett had died, but I didn’t hear who they were talking about and I didn’t give it another thought.

Then I walked down to Astor Place to get a haircut, and as the guy started cutting my hair, he asked an employee passing by if it was true that so-and-so had died. The place is filled with barbers cutting hair and using blowdryers, so it was too noisy for me to hear who they were talking about. But I was pretty sure I heard “Jackson.”

I swear to God the first name that popped into my head was Andrew Jackson, former U.S. president, but as that thought was rising, a neuron from the opposite side of my brain rose up and shot it down like a heat-seeking missile, since Andrew Jackson has been dead for more than 150 years.

So the first serious thought I had was that Jesse Jackson had died. Then the guy cutting my hair told me that no, the rumors were that Michael Jackson had died.

I’m a news junkie, especially when it comes to dead celebrities, so I pulled out my phone to check the news, but since the barber shop is in a basement, I didn’t get any reception.

But a radio was playing, and over the sound of the blowdryers and electric razors I strained to listen to the deejay. He confirmed in somber tones that Michael Jackson was, in fact, dead. Then “Man in the Mirror” began playing. I hadn’t heard that song in years.

After my haircut I walked up Broadway and turned onto 10th Street, reading the news on my phone as I walked. The streets were crowded with young people out and about on the first summery afternoon of the year, and Michael Jackson was dead.

I was eight or nine years old when the Thriller album was big. My family had it on cassette tape — it’s weird to think that my parents bought it, but they did; didn’t everyone? — and I remember us listening to it in our big early-80s portable boombox. I have memories of listening to it at Jones Beach, or on a drive to Jones Beach, or maybe during a summer vacation on Long Beach Island.

There was little red-haired white kid in my elementary school who liked to dress up as Michael Jackson and wear a single white glove. It was 1984 or 1985.

I will never understand why Michael Jackson did what he did to his face. The plastic surgeon or surgeons who turned him into a monster according to his wishes should be ashamed of themselves. How do you develop dysmorphia so extreme that you turn yourself into Skeletor? How could he ever look in the mirror? How could he find himself attractive? I look at photos and videos of him and I feel revulsion. He became an alien. I woke up in the middle of the night last night because it was too humid, and at 3:00 in the morning I had disturbing visions of him, this person who hated himself so much that he turned himself into a monster.

The odd thing is that despite all the self-erasure, he kept his given name. There was Prince and Cher and Madonna, but through everything, he kept the rather ordinary name Michael Jackson.

I don’t think I know any of his songs after the 1987 Bad album. His music on that album is catchy but hard for me to listen to, because I can’t hear the high-pitched voice without seeing the horrible face.

I feel sorry for what he became.