The Last Elvis Impersonator
Cee didn’t get it, why they wanted him dressed like this.
Media Round-Up
God Save The Streets - Avelino [2023]: Technically skilled as hell and emotionally compelling, A hell of an album with very fun cover art!
Swan Song [2021] - This is almost a stroke of brilliance, with Udo Kier giving a completely left field performance, but the movie is cut off at the knees by Todd Stephens refusing to decide what this movie is about, or maintain the flashes of righteous anger and abberance that bring out some of its most powerful moments.
SCARING THE HOES - JPEGMafia and Danny Brown [2023] - I love when talented people come together to really just have fun on a record. Shout-out to the boys!!
Hey! I wrote a fun(?) short story, here's a first(-ish) draft of an adventure
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The Last Elvis Impersonator
Cee didn’t get it, why they wanted him dressed like this.
He was cycling to the gig in full costume, if you asked him why he’d say something about artistic process or disconnection from the self, in reality it’s because clients would get funny about a greying sweaty man using their en suite.
So there he was, giant wig pulled over greying hair dyed green. Almond skin painted a perfect porcelain. A hidden corset hidden under the white jumpsuit with the flares that kept getting caught in the gears - he’d tighten it before they ever had to see him. A pale imitation wading through the glaring streets of this picture-fucking-perfect neighbourhood - and suddenly he noticed a blemish. Some kid had sprayed a neon green “FUCK YOU, DIE SLOW” with some symbol on the positively pristine pavement. Cee couldn’t hide the smirk and put a quick middle finger up to the world, for a little moment ignoring the repeated identical doorbell cameras watching his every move, then holstered it quickly - it was probably gauche to spit on the dead.
When he finally got to the house it was almost overwhelmingly quiet. One of many semi-detached new build fortresses made to look almost-Victorian, its gates loomed large and made this already short man feel miniscule. In the garden there were a few sculptures, one vaguely ancient Greek-looking sprite of a man with faux-marble muscles and windswept hair frozen in time and a giant glittering rock that looked vaguely not-of this world. Tallest of all was a bronze fairy horse with a magenta glimmer in its eye that seemed to follow him as he fumbled for his phone. He eventually found it and put it up to the QR code scanner, then was allowed in after an uncomfortably long and not-quite-lonely pause. As he pushed the battered postman’s bike out of sight, Cee wondered how much they paid the poor fuck who had to keep things looking like this.
Then he swiped the doorbell and waited. It was always weird to him that these houses still had doorbells when their cameras already sent a notification to their phone as soon as someone entered view. Strange or not, he honoured the ritual, feeling the magenta glare take his entirety in. He heard a few notes of Jailhouse Rock faintly through the door, then a deep but catty voice tell the house’s speakers to “turn that shit off!”. The door eventually opened.
“Oh are you the guy he called here for - “
The man at the door paused as he looked down and met Cee’s eyes properly. This stranger’s eyes were a kind of deep oak that you barely found anymore and Cee had pale blue contacts in. Those pale eyes couldn’t help but drift down to the salt and pepper tuft of hair quietly escaping the gaps between the buttons of the man’s battered floral shirt. In the moment-too-long of looking he resumed -
“Yeah everything’s running a bit late, you know how little ones are. They’re in the basement watching a cartoon or some shit like that, they’ll be an hour or so”
Cee nodded awkwardly and shuffled his weight on the Welcome mat.
The stranger raised a brow.
Cee stayed silent, gazing into the middle distance.
“What are you…oh shit, come in! Sorry I thought I’d said you could come in! Umm, follow me, I’ll show you where you can drop your gear”
Cee murmured a vaguely American thanks and stepped through.
The stranger continued “What is it that Ryan always says? ‘Shoes off, coats off, and the rest is drag?’”
Cee shrugged. The stranger shrugged in return, then smirked and started up the stairs. As Cee followed boots in hand, he took in more of this unfamiliar man, with his frankly-impressively maintained locs that had glints of grey throughout, and cane that seemed to be made of the same oak as his eyes. The pair struggled up two sets of stairs, past a wall covered in digital photo frames which glinted fuschia as they switched between first-person POVs at various striking locations, as he reached the top the last frame flicked to the hungry jaws of a caged shark. Soon enough, they were in a stuffy converted loft that reeked of cigarettes and liberally sprayed air freshener. None of this would help him feel less sticky, he thought to himself. The stranger gestured to a couch, then opened a window, maybe noticing they both had sweat dripping from their brows. Cee gazed for a second past the man’s scarred hands and out of the window, the sky was so…clear? It’s as if somehow reality reached into its dusty pockets and let a long-forgotten crumb of beauty fall out - maybe it was almost worth all the bullshit it took to get into a place like this.
“Do you want something to drink?”
The stranger was at a mini-fridge tucked into the corner.
“I’ve got stout, lager…that’s basically it”
Perched on a cream couch which still had the plastic on, Cee wondered if this was some sort of test. Sometimes the clients would try and see if he’d break character or violate the terms of service so that they could report him on the app.
“Do you have any water?” Cee murmured
“Huh…I mean I could probably go downstairs and get some of Ryan’s, but he’s real precious about that filter, and this is some good stuff! He doesn’t even know it’s up here!!”
Hm. Still felt like a trap, but the stout would at least give him something to do with his increasingly anxious hands.
“Stout please”
“That’s more like it! I’ve got to keep my secret supply of stuff because Ryan always tells me that it doesn’t quite fit in with the aesthetic of the rest of his drinks collection. Right now he’s in an Elvis phase” he chuckled and then kept going “and the man didn’t even really drink!! So all we’ve got in the house is peach brandy, and I love a peach as much as the next fruit but that shit gets old real quick!”
Cee just nodded, it was never a good idea to get involved in the home lives of clients. When the stranger finally found the perfect pair of bottles he slumped on to the couch next to Cee just a little too close. From here, he could smell a fresh hint of nicotine and that this maybe wasn’t the strange man’s first drink of the day. He wished he could say this made him inch away, draw a firm line between him and the client but instead he asked:
“What’s your name?”
“Oh shit I didn’t..fuck…I’m such a dick - I'm Brandon…but you can call me Bree" and the not-quite stranger now looked at Cee expectantly
"it's Cee"
"Bree and Cee it's like po-e-try"
Bree was clearly pleased with his little ditty, smiling as he took a swig then raised his bottle, spilling a few drops on Cee's costume and bringing his face even closer.
"A toast to names!"
The bottles came together in the air. More microdrops fell on both of their faces. Not enough to mess with Cee's ever-reliable setting spray but he started to worry regardless.
"You know, this is the only room in the place without one of those little Things that will try and finish the song as soon as you start singing it. My own little paradise!"
Suddenly, a devilish look crept in behind the oak of Bree's eyes. "Sing something for me!"
"Huh?"
"You're a performer right? Ryan told me all about you! All singing! All dancing! Hit me with a tune!"
Cee rose to his feet, only now realising his knees had been touching Bree's this whole time. Two coughs and a jump and he was in the zone, then started "Hound Dog", just like Presley did live in October 1956, imagining an old mic in front of him, leaning and moving with micro-gestures, accent and expressions remembered, even the little moments of waiting on the band for assurance. He knew it all perfectly, and now he was coming to the climax -
"Boooo" heckled Bree, "Give me something you give a shit about"
Cee paused. Was this the test? People always asked him this and never liked the answer. If people wanted truth they would watch a documentary instead of hiring an impersonator who won’t mention the opiates and the bog death. But hey they didn’t need him for that anymore either, No, with the Pink Matter they could perfectly project the Elvis in their head onto the world. He was retro now. Which he guessed made sense, they could avoid some desperate stranger who didn’t take their shoes off.. And yet, something in him wanted to believe that Bree could handle a little truth, that the flecks in those warm eyes held something too big to be held by these gates. So before he knew it he was singing(?) in a baritone:
“Truth is a prison,
Past made present,
No future and we’re drowning
Tomorrow’s dreamers,
Won’t even remember,
What’s it like to forget their failures
The bars hold firm,
The water rises,
No future and we’re drowning.
We’re drowning,
We’re drowning,
We’re drowning,
We’re - “
Cee was interrupted by lips meeting his. He hadn’t even realised his face was wet with tears until this moment. Seeing the surprise on Cee’s face, Bree quickly pulled away.
“I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, you were just so sad and so beautiful”
Cee looked up again at the first person to call him beautiful for what felt like a decade. Now he saw it all. The wrinkles, the tiredness, the bags under the eyes. The shadows of tears cried and tears yet to be cried. Knuckles which had been silently clenched so many times, All illuminated in the shaft of natural light coming from the small disused window. In that moment of recognition, he took Bree’s hand and let him back to the couch.
Time stood still.
In a haze of heat and fluid their miseries bled together and for a moment, they felt something approaching whole. Sweat and ichor and spit. Alchemy. A moment, which couldn’t last forever, but what if it did? What if the shaft of light could make their bodies divine? Immortal, writhing, messy and beautiful things beyond this cyclical self-consuming world. Suddenly his ascendance was interrupted by the buzz of Cee’s phone lit up by a message: “Where are you? The kids are waiting! Don’t make me keep your tip!”.
“Shit, shit, didn’t you tell Ryan I was here?” Cee blurted, back in the half-accent as he scrambled off the sofa, throwing his costume back on and overcompensating with his perfume.
Bree shrugged and slowly rose, as if nothing had even happened. Opening the door, he led Cee for a leisurely stroll down those two sets of stairs and they were met by a frantic man wearing the mask of control on a pallid face and wearing it badly.
“Brandon, there you are! Oh it is so lovely to see you Mr Presley, I didn’t realise you were already here!!” after shooting a quick look at Bree, Ryan continued with a plastered on smile “you’ll be in the living room, there’s a peach flavoured tea there for you, the kids will be there in 15, they’re just finishing a film.”
Cee did as the wiry man told him, feeling deep set eyes piercing into the back of his neck he stepped through the indicated door and began to set up his equipment. He wondered how Bree had ever met a man like this, with such an empty shine to his perfection. But he knew. He wondered what Bree got out of an arrangement like this. But he knew that too. Now he just wondered what Brandon had to sacrifice.
All this wondering and the kids still hadn’t arrived yet. A long 15 minutes grew into a longer unpaid hour, at exactly 87 minutes of waiting, the group of 5 children who couldn’t be older than 9 entered. Each of them were dressed exactly like their parents’ favorite star from when they were younger, making a supergroup of Post Malone, Machine Gun Kelly, one of the BTS boys (Cee never learnt their names), Justin Timberlake and a mini King of Rock wearing a birthday crown. From the moment the kids walked in, it was clear that they were going to be bored, but Cee put on a show anyway (after two coughs and a jump), executing every memorised move to perfection. A living breathing perfectly-accented highlight reel - all the moments that people wanted to remember. At the end all the kids filtered out, eager to be set free and the only people left in the room were Ryan, Brandon and Cee. With eyes red from tears contrasting a washed out face, Ryan rushed Cee with an uncomfortably tight hug and cried “Thank you! That was tremendous! Hope you have a safe trip home Mr Presley!” Cee looked to Bree for help but Brandon wouldn’t meet his eye, so once he’d wriggled out of the hug he packed his props and made for the door.
Just as Cee was about to step back out onto the Welcome mat, Bree passed him a brown paper bag with a wink “for the road”. The door closed promptly as soon as he moved from it, automatic locks clicking into place. He looked over his shoulder then checked his phone - no tip notification. He looked into the paper bag and saw a bottle of stout and a crumpled note, he unfolded it and there was a number - presumably Bree’s. Cee put the note back and headed for his bike, picking it up out of the bushes and brushing off the leaves onto the paved floor.
After Cee got out of the gate, again requiring the QR code on his near-dead phone he cycled away in the ridiculous outfit. He knew he was going the wrong way, but he just had to leave this perfect little oasis with its perfect people and perfect arrangement of magenta glowing eyes. Once the house was out of sight, he checked his phone again. No tip. He stuffed the stout in his bag and held the note in his hand as he kept cycling.
The impersonator made his way back to the one road in and out and there he saw the graffitied message and symbol once again. Someone had tried to clean it, return to the pavement to its previous prettiness but it hadn't worked. Now the green bled out further and further, staining more and more of Paradise.
Cee checked his phone again, no tip.
Cee threw Brandon’s scribbled number into the pooling green and with the same hand put the finger up to the world once again, and this time he didn't holster it till this place was long out of sight.
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