Why Would you Stop?

Guy and I used to watch it, and talk about it. The part where he says "shove it up your nose". Guy used to get excited and he'd talk about what a feeling it must have been,  to be singing with that amazing band behind him, to be stoned out of his mind, and just to be Elvis. What a glorious mess. He can't stop. Would you have been able to stop?

Monica is looking at buying a house. She asked me if I wanted to come along with her to look at a few. Sure, I told her, why not, I am not a bad person. What a grown up thing to do! She says she likes my perspective, though I am not sure what that means. She has another date with the blind man on Wednesday. She says she cannot tell if she likes him or if she just pities him, and she has to figure it out. There was a blind man in prison I knew who was locked up for stealing a lot of money from a church. I am not sure if he was a bad person or not. Monica is not made of money, and the first house we see is very small. Too small for Loving Hand and Burning Hand I say, but she says, "I could make it work!" The second house is a wreck, there is an open house and everything is a mess and the owners are clearly hoarders who have let life get away from them.They are sitting in a van outside smoking cigarettes, and their 5 dogs (!) are sitting on the back porch pawing and scratching to be let in, or maybe just wanting to be told that everything is going to be ok. I wish I could tell them that. If I could be that guy. The carpets, the kitchen, everything, is a disaster. Monica says she sees through the mess and feels the potential of the place. All I see is sadness. I could not live here, but it is not my house hunt.

I have been feeling at times a big emptiness lately. I wonder what it was like to be Elvis, to have such success and such big thrills and to still have such huge appetites that were so impossible to sate. I think if I had what he had I might not have made it as far as he did. I am poor and lazy. What if I wasn't? Could I say no to so many temptations? I once read a biography of Elvis by Bobbie Anne Mason. She writes short stories that remind me of my mom. Elvis really loved his mom. I forgot that I read that book, and then I kept wondering how I knew so much of Elvis' life. Then I remembered.

Curt, you are so complicated! Monica says. I do not feel complicated. I just feel hopeless. Where is my great moment, my pinnacle? If you found yourself on a Las Vegas stage in front of an amazing band singing a great song, and you were Elvis again, wouldn't you want to stay there as long as you could? As long as you could sustain it? Forever if you could? Is there something better? Will I ever taste anything remotely like that?

Monica says that the blind man lost his sight when he was working in downtown Philadelphia building a skyscraper. He had a wife and kids and his life was good, and work was hard and tedious but he was excited to think that someday whenever he drove by that building with his family he could point to it and say "I helped build that," to his sons and his daughter and that they would know that there dad didn't just leave the house in the morning to do nothing, that he was a man who built things. Then there was an accident, and then his marriage was over, and then there was nothing left except that he was a blind man. All of his old adjectives turned into a single one. But he had turned to Jesus, and he was starting to understand things, Monica said. A man who could overcome something like that, Monica said. Monica was apparently drawn to broken people.

"Which house do you like better?" I ask Monica.

"I like them both," she says, "but I'm not sure how much. I'm not sure if I like them for me."

I try to picture Monica living in the houses with her dogs, and I can picture it, but it doesn't make things any clearer. Buying a house is a big commitment. You don't know how long the roof is going to hold out, whether something will happen and you won't be able to make your mortgage payment, whether a rendering plant will be built next door that will destroy the value of your property. Houses have secrets, I say. Monica says that good things can happen too, that maybe you buy a house one day and then find out that Elvis was born there and you won't have to work another day in your life! Sometimes there are good secrets, she says.

I remind Monica that there's only one Elvis, and she seems to have had enough of talking to me for the day.