Elvis Returns, Pence Crucified
We knew it would get crazy in this rabbit hole, but still …
I was on a street in Memphis where a fat man makes blue light. He does neon bar signs blue, but don’t think he’ll do pink for you. “Fuck that,” he says, whereas, if you tell him to hook you up with a neon swizzle stick the color of Pepto Bismol on the lounge window, he grins like a cat contemplating sin (he thinks he looks like Tom Waits) and laughing an old man’s laugh he cocks his head in that Tom Waits way and says,
“What you want the sign to say?”
It wasn’t me talking to this guy, I was just passing by and he caught my eye when I passed, he was a fat man with a checkered past and a checkered suit which is suicide for a man that size. “What color is this he asked me so I stopped and said in a raspy voice, “The color of Pepto Bismol,” thinking it would cause trouble to say pink.
I got to talking to these guys about neon signage and Tom Waits when in what seemed like a minute or two there was a hullabaloo of women and men carrying signs that said Elvis Presley has risen from the dead. “I figure he must be in pretty rough shape,” Leon Neon said. “He’s been a long time dead,” the man with a diamond on his pinkie said. I said, “He’s dead, but they kept him alive in their heads.”
“This is why I keep the streets of Memphis cobalt blue,” Leon Neon said.
“I’m in mourning for the minds of women being kidnapped by the minds of men. A woman might be like her mother, but she might be more like her father instead.” I said, “And her father might be like his mother, so she’s like her grandmother.” “Who might be like her father and not much like her mother,” Pinkie said.
At the head of the lumbering mob there was a cross on which was lashed Mike Pence, who obviously was in for a pound, being carried around like Christ but he was just tied up there, not nailed, and his crown of thorns was some kind of Walmart trash they made do with.
Pinkie said, “You can’t be serious.”
It turned out Elvis didn’t come back, he was right where he lived and died, like everybody else, and these people were just passing through events on their way back to when they were young and in for just a pence.
“I could have been a contender” somebody shouted. “But my heart is arrhythmic and my sugars are off, my mouth gets dried out and I chronically cough.”
This set off a clangor of grievance and anger at people who are dangerously different, the fury rose and guns were drawn and crosses burned on the liberal lawn, the crowd was mad and what they said they wanted was the wizard himself, now being indicted for chronic grand theft.
Then we saw Elvis, but not dressed for Vegas. He was young and raw and real. He was a knight in service to the queen, he’d never seen a woman as pretty as she was, and she was preserved perfectly in his face, and she looked out through his eyes, a woman with both arms missing in an unfortunate domestic incident.
“You will know the messiah because the messiah can sing.”
“Grown people don’t cry; beggars don’t cry.” The Rebbe added, “Crying is for children. Are you still a child, and is your life a child’s dream? No, crying is no use. You must sing.”
A voice so pure it comes from the vibrations before manifestation of thought. The voice is Brando, as Valentine, the Fugitive Kind, doing a Tennessee Williams soliloquy about a bird that lives its life in the air, coming to ground only when it dies.
It is the voice of Elvis before he was fed to the Lord of the Flies.
And all these lost souls in the street are throwing bitcoin at his feet, the messiah is killed and killed again, there are semi tractors of sin coming in at all hours of the night and day, he can’t keep up but Mike is here to help, and as the crowd approaches the holy vision of Elvis, dark and brooding, Mike looks even whiter by contrast and the ghost of Pat Boone skitters across his face and slips into the back door of the Pink Neon Lounge.
“This is some crazy shit,” Leon says, lifting his fez and scratching his scalp.