Category Archives: elvis works

Everything that happens will happen today

Posted on August 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

Emma Lee has been cheating on Elvis. The last few weeks she’s been dreaming about another, a man in a white linen suit. He’s lanky and wrinkled, casual and always happy to see her. Each night, she tries to quell her nervous, assuage the butterflies with a chant of “down, buddy, down.” He’s always coming towards her with a smile and a calloused hand stuck out, treading  across  wide, old hardwood floors in nice shoes. She sense they are in a downtown loft, but the walls are different each time, as are the chairs–wicker one day, Knoll the next. He’s not with his guitar and she not with her resume; theirs is an exchange of mutual interest and quiet excitement.

Today, she got a postcard from Elvis in Hawaii and the news that the man in the white linen suit would not be hers. The flip, the flop, she is back to the familiar territory of square one.

Elvis welcomes her back with open arms, and puts her to bed. Falling asleep, she wonders what will happen tomorrow.

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Posted in elvis thinks other people's music is okay too, elvis works, strangers on a train

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Life is short, wear sunscreen.

Posted on March 17, 2010 | 1 Comment

While lacking the soundtrack and retro graphics of Baz Lurman’s Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen), Elvis learned a perhaps more prescient reason why we should wear sunscreen on Friday. The scene was Amity Hall, a new, decent burger joint on West 3rd; largely empty except for a table of coworkers at the corner booth.

A woman Emma Lee’s mother’s age revealed she has a small, irregular cell on the side of her nose.   “You’ll just knife it out, right?” Emma Lee asked, having experienced a few moles in her day. The woman explained, to the contrary, that a malignant sesame-seed sized speck, on a hamburger bun-sized nose, would require the excision with a circumfrence of  most of the bun. She demonstrated on the open face of her burger, her  knife held perpendicular to the table, Anthony Perkins style. Emma Lee swallowed hard, and waited for her to complete the circle.

She lifted the bready disc, not accidentally dipping it in some ketchup. “See? Don’t I wish I put that stupid white stuff on my nose?”

Emma Lee nodded.

Okay, Brooklyn. The sun’s a’coming. Get those zinc tubes.

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Elvis, the professional

Posted on June 12, 2009 | Leave a comment

Elvis crossed the line. He said he wouldn’t, he swore he wouldn’t, but he did: he’s working full time. Some mornings he wonders how he gets dressed:

elvis_briefcase2_small

The transition from working in bootyshorts to working in pantyhose reminds him a little bit of the first day of the session at Camp Sealth. It happened the same, just about every summer from 1989 to 1994. After a stop at the cabin for bunk selection, it’s straightaway to the bottom of duffel bags, to dig out your suit and head for the beach.

It’s nice on the rocky beach–nice to watch the tide come in, and to throw stones poke at sea anemones in the shallows, and to stick your toe into the scummy surf. But that’s not why you’re there. Within a minute, it’s off with  sweatshirts, then a crumpled pile of shorts and towels form on the damp sand. You walk the plank of the dock, west towards Juan de Fuca. It’s getting breezy as you get towards the end of the stretch, cold on pale thighs and skinny shoulders. Pretty soon you’re to the last piling and its the moment of truth.

The shock of the cold is fierce. It’s lung shrinking, jaw clamping, cold. It’s for the best, a necessary step to getting boating privledges for the rest of the week, but as you watch girl after girl wail on contact, your cabinmates not emitting a shriek of surprise but one of pure, screaming pain, you wonder: do I really want to get wet?

The answer, summer after summer is yes. So you jump.

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