Elvis, Axl, and Me

I met Elvis for the first time in the deli across the street from the elevated line on White Plains Road and Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. Elvis was the only customer besides me. He was sitting at the next table. I could tell it was him right away, even though he was dressed up as a Hasidic Jew. He was wearing a yarmulke on top of his head, and lopsided, shiny black wig with peyes on the sides that drooped past his chin, a fake-looking beard to his collarbone, and a shapeless black coat, which didn't hide his paunch, even sitting down. His skin was as white as flour, and his eyes looked glazed, as though he spent far too much time indoors.

"I'll have that soup there, with the round balls floatin' in it," he said to the elderly waitress. He pointed at a large vat of matzo ball soup. Elvis's Yiddish accent was so bad he might as well have held up a sign saying, "Hey, it's me, Elvis Presley, the Hillbilly Hassid, and I ain't dead at all!" But the waitress who was wearing a huge hearing aid, just nodded, not appearing to notice anything unusual about the customer.

Sipping my coffee, I stared surreptitiously at Elvis, amazed that he was alive and pretending to be a Hasidic Jew on Pelham Parkway. Unlike all those Elvis-obsessed women who made annual pilgrimages to Graceland and who'd voted on the Elvis postage stamp, I'd never particularly had a thing for Elvis. Elvis just wasn't my type. He was too goody-goody for me. Even back when I was a little girl and I'd be watching him swiveling his hips on The Ed Sullivan Show, I could tell that, underneath, he was just an All-American Kid.

My type is Axl Rose, the tattooed bad boy lead singer of the heavy metal band Guns n'Roses, whom I'd recently had a very minor nervous breakdown over. Although I've never met Axl Rose in the flesh, and although he's very immature and very politically incorrect, I know that, somehow, somewhere, I will meet him one day, because I know that he's destined to be the great love of my life.

Still, even though Elvis is a lot older, tamer, and fatter than Axl, he is the King of Rock 'n'Roll, and that's nothing to scoff at. Even Axl himself would have to be impressed by Elvis.

I waited until Elvis's soup had arrived before going over to him. Boldly, I sat right down at his table. "Hey, Elvis," I said, "it's nice to see you."

He looked at me with surprise, nervously twirling on of his fake peyes. And then he blushed, a long, slow blush, and I could tell two things: one, he liked my looks, and two, he was at all sorry that I'd recognized him.

"Why, hon," he said, in his charming, sleepy-sounding voice, "you're the purtiest darn thing I've seen her on Pelham Parkway in a hound dog's age. You're also the first person who's ever really spotted me. All those other Elvis sightings, at Disneyland and shopping malls in New Jersey, you know, they're all bogus as three-dollar bills. I've been right here on Pelham Parkway the whole darned time, baby."

"Tell me all about it, Elvis." I leaned forward on my elbows, feeling very flirtatious, the way I used to when I was still living downtown in the East Village. That was before I'd moved back her to Pelham Parkway, where I grew up. The reason I moved back was because, the year before, I inherited my parents' two-bedroom apartment on Holland Avenue, after their tragic death when the chartered bus taking them to Atlantic City had crashed into a Mack truck. During my East Village days, though, I'd had lots of flirtations, as well as lots and lots and lots of dramatic and tortured affairs with angry-looking, spike-haired poets and painters. But all that was before I discovered Axl Rose, of course, and before I had my very minor nervous breakdown over him. I mean, my breakdown was so minor I didn't do anything crazy at all. I didn't stand in the middle of the street directing traffic, or jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, or anything like that. Mostly I just had a wonderful time fantasizing about what it would be like to be in Axl Rose's arms and play with his pierced nipples and run my fingers through his long, sleek, red hair and all over his many, many tattoos, and watch him walk across my living room to change the channel on the T.V. and he would be wearing those skintight, nearly see-through, white Lycra biking shorts and then walk back to the couch where I would be sitting and waiting for him to ask me to marry him. In the meantime, though, since I had happily bid good-riddance to the spike-haired poets and painter, and since Axl Rose wasn't anywhere around, I figured I might as well do some heavy flirting with Elvis.

"Okay," Elvis smiled, almost shyly, "I'll tell you the truth. And the truth, little girl, is that I'd gotten mighty burned out."

I liked hearing him call me that --"little girl." Mindy, the social worker assigned to my case at the hospital after my minor breakdown, used to say, "Nancy, you're not a little girl any longer, and rock stars like their women really young. Do you truly believe -- I'll be brutal and honest here, it's for your own good -- that if, somehow, you actually were to run into Axl Rose on the street, he would even look your way?" Mindy was a big believer in a branch of therapy called "Reality Therapy," which I'd overhead some of the other social workers calling "Pseudo-Reality Therapy" behind her back. Mindy was only twenty-three, and she'd actually had the nerve to laugh in my face when I tried to explain to her that ultimately it would be womanly, sophisticated, and knowing mind that would make Axl go wild with uncontrollable desire, the kind of desire no vacuous twenty-three-year-old bimbo could ever evoke in a man. Axl and I were destined for each other precisely because we were so different, and together we would create a kind of magic unequaled in the history of the world and, in addition, I would educate Axl, change him, and help him to grow into a sensitive, mature, and socially concerned male. But Mindy had stopped listening to me. So after that, I changed my strategy. I kept agreeing with her, instead. "You're right, Mindy," I would declare emphatically, "Axl Rose is a spoiled rock 'n'Roll superstar and a sexist pig who probably likes younger girls than I, and there's no way our paths are ever going to cross. I'm not obsessed with him any more. You can sign my release papers now, please."

"Little girl," Elvis repeated that first day in the deli, maybe sensing how much I liked hearing him say those words, "I ain't gonna go into all the grisly details about myself. You've read the newspapers and seen those soppy TV movies, right?"

I nodded.

"I figured you had," he sighed, stirring his soup. "Everyone has. There ain't been no stone left unturned -- even the way I had to wear diapers after a while," he blushed again. "and the way I used my gun to shoot out the TV set, and all that other stuff I did, and how the pressures of being The King, the greatest Rock 'n'Roll singer in the world, led me to booze, drugs, compulsive overeatin', and impotence. . . ."

I nodded again, charmed by the way he pronounced it impotence with the accent in the middle. My heart went out to him, because he looked so sad and yet so proud of himself at the same time. And I really, really like that he'd called me little girl twice.

"Want some of this here soup?" he offered. "I ain't never had none better."

I shook my head. "Go on, Elvis," I said. "Tell me more." I was really enjoying myself. True, he wasn't Axl, but he was The King.

"Well," he said, taking a big bite out of the larger of the two matzoh balls left in his bowl, "what I decided to do, see, was to fake my own death and then spend the rest of my life hiding out, somewhere where nobody would ever think to look, somewhere where I could lead a clean, sober, and pious life." He wiggled his fake peyes at me. "And little girl, that's when I remembered an article I'd read, about how the Bronx is called 'The Forgotten Borough,' because nobody, but nobody, with any power or money, ever comes up here."

"I can vouch for that," I agreed, sadly. "I grew up here."

"And, hon, I did it. I cleaned myself up. I ain't a drug and booze addict no more. As for the overeatin', well, even the Good Lord must have one or two vices, is the way I see it. And I ain't impotent no more." Elvis smiled.

Of course, he had completely won me over. I invited him home with me after he'd finished his soup and the two slices of honey cake he'd ordered for dessert. When we got back to my parents' apartment, he grew hungry again. I went into the kitchen and cooked some kreplach for him.

"Little girl, I just love Jewish food, Elvis told me sincerely, spearing a kreplach with his fork. "I'm so honored that you whipped this up on my humble account."

Elvis ate three servings of my kreplach. He smacked his lips. "Better than my own mamma's fried chicken," he said, which I knew was a heapful of praise coming from him, since, according to the TV movies, Elvis had an unresolved thing for his mother. It was my turn to blush. And then he stood up and, looking deeply and romantically into my eyes, sang "Love Me Tender." And although his voice showed the signs of age, and wear and tear of booze and drugs, it was still a beautiful voice, and tears came to my eyes.

After that, we cleared the table, and he said, "One thing I do know is how to pleasure a woman."

I didn't tell him about my obsessive love for Axl Rose, and I'm very glad that I didn't. Because since then I've learned that Elvis has no respect at all for contemporary rock singers. "Pretty boy wussies with hair," he describes them. He always grabs the TV remote from e and changes the channel when I'm going around the stations and happen to land of MTV. Once, before he was able to change the channel, we caught a quick glimpse together of Axl, strutting in front of the mike in his black leather kilt and singing his pretty heart out about some cruel woman who'd hurt him and who he intended to hurt back. I held my breath, hoping that Elvis, sitting next to me on my mother's pink brocade sofa, wouldn't hear how rapidly my heart was beating, wouldn't see that my skin was turning almost as pink as the sofa.

"What a momma's boy and wussy that skinny li'l wannabe Rock 'n'roller is," Elvis merely sneered. He switched to HBO, which was showing an old Burt Reynolds movie. "Hot dawg! A Burt flick!"

In time, I've grown so fond of Elvis, and we have such fun together, that I mean it when I say that I am fond of him. It isn't his fault that Axl Rose, who captured my heart first, is my destiny.

Elvis and I lead a simple, sweet life together. He comes over three or four times every week in his disguise -- the yarmulke, the fake beard and peyes, the shapeless black coat -- and we take little strolls together through Bronx Park. Then, when he grows tired, we head back to my parents' apartment, and I cook dinner for him. In addition to my kreplach, he's crazy about my blintzes and noodle kugel.

After dinner, we sit side by side on my mother's sofa and watch Burt Reynolds movies. Sometimes we watch Elvis's old movies, too. His favorites are Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas.

And Elvis is content just to keep on dating. He never pressures me to move in with him, or to get married, which -- as much as I care for him-- is fine with me since Axl is my destiny. "Little girl," Elvis always says, "I love you with all my country boy's heart and soul, more than I ever loved Priscilla, I swear I do, and there ain't a selfish bone in my body, but my rent-controlled apartment on a tree-lined block, well, it's a once-in-a-lifetime deal, so I just can't give it up and move into your parents' apartment with you."

"Hey, Elvis, no sweat," I reply, sweetly. And I tell him that, much as I love him, I can't move in with him, either, because his apartment -- a studio with kitchenette -- is just too small for both of us. "I understand, little girl," he says, hugging me. "I really do. You've got some of that feisty women's libber inside of you, and you need your own space."

But the truth is, it's not my space I care about so much. The truth is that I've got long-range plans, which don't include Elvis. Here's how I figure it: down the road, when Axl, like Elvis before him, burns out -- and it is inevitable that he will, given the that boy is going -- when he's finally driven, like Elvis, to fake his own death in order to escape the pressures of Rock 'n'Roll superstardom, and when he goes into hiding under an assumed identity, well, then, I think the odds are pretty good he'll end up living right here on Pelham Parkway. After all, Axl and I are bound to meet up some day -- destiny is destiny, and there's no way around it. It's Divine Mission.

I'm not saying it will happen just that way, mind you. All I'm saying is that, if Elvis Presley is alive and well and disguised as a Hasidic Jew in the Bronx, well then, anything is possible, and I do mean anything. And anything includes me and Axl, right here on Pelham Parkway. It's not that I want to hurt Elvis, believe me. But I figure he probably won't last long enough to see it happen, anyway, considering how out of shape he is, and all.

The way I picture it is this: Axl holding me in his tattooed, wiry arms and telling me that all his life he's been waiting to find me, even though he hardly dared dream that I existed in the flesh, the perfect woman, an experienced woman who can make kreplach and blintzes and noodle kugel, a woman who was the last great love of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n'Roll himself. It could happen. That is all I'm saying.