Elvis Aaron Presley on Grooveshark I
Want You I
Need You
I [hi]
Love
You.
The song changes
and then
the King is singing I'll have a blooo
blooo Christmas without you and
I am sitting here man yeah
it is getting dark outside and my house is shadows really
empty
no voices no hey
can you get me this or that no
I'M TELLING screamed from two floors below.
It is too cold in here for this white undershirt.
The song changes.
Elvis Aaron Presley is singing Amazing Grace and the music wraps itself around my heart and squeezes until I cannot breathe. My fingers are on the keyboard. Always with the asdf. Johnny Typer.
A snapshot of me. Driving fast.
Going nowhere.
I sigh. I call my mother. She answers on the third ring. After I say hello
I go does my dad look like Elvis?
She laughs and says no. Why?
I say I can't remember what he looks like.
My mother goes you know who ppl used to say he looks like? Robert Mitchum. Do you know who he is?
I go yeah.
She goes why did you ask me that? Why don't you just let it go and call your father? It's been so long. He's 67 years old. You can't keep holding this grudge.
I go I'm not holding a grudge. But it is what it is right?
She sighs. Yeah. You're right. It is what it is.
I bet I haven't seen him in 20 years.
Sure. At least 20. But he wants to talk to you. He calls me a couple of times a year. He leaves his number for you every time.
Time passes. I don't say anything because I don't want my mother to hear my tightening throat. Tears are in my eyes but not on my face. No cars drive down my street. Suspicious Minds starts for the zillionth time since last weekend.
My mother says his wife is on permanent disability. SSI.
I go yeah. I remember her going in and out of the hospital a lot back then.
The problem - says my mother - is that he is going to die some day and you are never going to have a chance to say anything to him. He knows he made many terrible horrible mistakes. But honey we all did. And we have to move on from that time. We have to keep going forward and creating better lives for ourselves every day that we are alive.
I say, Mom. What kind of guy tells his son that he has to go becuz it's either the wife or the boy? Who does that?
She goes I think you may be mistaken. He adored you. And she was insanely jealous of you. It drove her crazy. She hated how close you two were.
Nevertheless that is what he said. Plus something else along the lines of you're gonna be out of the house in a few years and I'll be alone.
My mom goes I think maybe you've created this in your head.
I say April 12, 1982.
She sighs again. And does not reply.
It's snowing.
And dark.
And I do not do well when I am left by myself. Elvis says that someone will grow to be an angry young man someday. I agree. The inside of my head is crying but my face is blank.
Hi.
I am a person sitting in a room in a house in the middle of this vast country and I have not seen my father in more than 20 years. Hi. I pull my heart from my chest and hand it to you and in return you click the bless button or maybe email me and say damn man. You can write.
Hi. Pretty soon we will all be 67. And my father who I have not seen in 20 yrs will most likely have died without ever meeting his four grandchildren from his oldest boy.
