Backup singer number one wanted to know what made me feel alive. I think, for her, feeling alive meant feeling and or being dangerous to your self and or others—and, in my case, it was shameful to say that a cigarette, which meant turning from God, made me feel alive. I didn’t need her encouragement, so I kept that to myself. I think, inside the shift space, the times you lived in were a part of the people that you interacted with; so I’d become a little like them, and they’d become a little like me—and we’d meet, if we weren’t careful, in defiance and or hunger for revolution—perhaps over a cigarette. I don’t know why the temptation to turn from God—and act out—was so strong; I knew it wasn’t like that for everybody, but, then again, not everybody believed in God. So they couldn’t exactly turn from him in some kind of juvenile protest.
I didn’t get the impression that backup singer number two was ever interested in smoking, but I gather what made her feel live was sex outside of a relationship. She liked to build up to it, she said, and then everything would come together in a resounding yes, followed, nonetheless, by the probability that the longer this went on, the more like a marriage it would be, and, since you already had a partner, you didn’t see the sense in leaving one marriage for another. You toyed with the idea, undoubtedly, but as the intensity of the experience wore off, so did the desire—and we’d go looking, then, for another opportunity to leave our partner. That was my impression of backup singer number 2—I didn’t realize that she was a lesbian until she asked me if I wanted her to inject me with hard drugs—drugs, she admitted, she didn’t, and never would have. So I concluded that she was joking, but, as a friend to Elvis, who abused uppers and downers, and once bought a complete stranger a Cadillac, I figured, if I said I wanted that, then she might have acquired everything.
Backup singer number three was high on the possibility that she’d make a good career out of singing—she sang for her church, and, according to her church, she belonged in the spotlight—it was her destiny, according to them, to share the light that she acquired from her relationship with Jesus. She was quick to agree, she said, and, as she told me her story, she said the reverse had happened—she was angry that she had missed out on so many things while being sheltered from the outside world. That happens when inexperienced bodies are introduced to the highs that only first time users can enjoy. As a Christian, she’d made the mistake of believing what other Christian’s had to say about her—when, if it weren’t for the Church’s desire to spread their faith throughout the universe—she’d never have been a backup singer for Elvis. Likewise, as a person that’s used to believing what people say about you, she wasn’t prepared for criticism or expending herself at her own expense in order to entertain the powers that be.
I tried to isolate which one of them Elvis favored, if he favored one over the other, and I concluded he’d choose backup singer number three so that he, as with his fourteen year old wife, could make an enormous impression. I’d seen a photograph, once, of Elvis with his wife, and it was clear from the photograph that he was smothering her, if only a little, where as, in his mind, he was protecting her. But what he was actually doing was treating her the way other people treated him—with a fierce desire to control the outcome of her life—such that his ego would get a little boost—and, possibly, his faith and his calling might be or seem magnified, albeit in an unstable way.
But, through my power of reasoning, which was increased during a shift, I chose to believe the worst—that Elvis betrayed people—until, through some seemingly extradimensional force, my reasoning crossed a threshold, and I could not longer say that I was right. That’s what happened here—I chose to believe that Elvis betrayed people until an overwhelming force told me that I had no way of knowing, and, what’s more, each version was probably fifty percent true, which, I deduced, meant that Elvis was a flirt—perhaps not in an obvious or conscious way, but in an ingratiating way—such that he might have expected you to treat him like he treated you. That wouldn’t have been a problem to a fan—but even a fan might question a man that wants more than any one person can give—such as greatness. But I think Elvis knew that he was great, and would be remembered as being great, for a long time, if not an indefinite time, to come.
I wondered, then, why Elvis had brought me his backup singers—if, that is, he did; they might have been coming to me in order to even something out in the universe without respect to Elvis, although there was no doubt that Elvis was the connection between us. What was I supposed to learn from these backup singers? Was I supposed to learn anything? Learning is what makes us divine, and, because it’s too horrible to believe that I’ll lose everything I’ve learned, I choose to believe that I go somewhere when I die, and all that I’ve learned comes with me. Then I became ashamed, suddenly, that I thought backup singer number 2 wanted to inject me with drugs—possibly to take advantage of me. She wasn’t like that, and I knew that from spending shift-time with her, which was a kind of time that meant some things, usually significant things, last longer than others.