Lee applied the last few swathes of makeup, delicately brushed the powder off his hands, and placed the enormous black pompadour hairpiece on his head. The wig stood two feet tall and extended out nearly as wide, adding nearly 20 extra pounds to his head. It gave him constant neck strain — not that he could do anything about it. The hairpiece wasn’t just part of the uniform, but part of the story, like the face paint on a clown, or Yorick’s skull in Hamlet’s hand.
To be an impersonator of the great Elvis: The King, The Singer, El-Vis, The One Who Sees, a powerful and holy being from a forgotten era, required sacrifice. And hip mobility.
The impersonation followed the same basic concept regardless of where you went: He was a big, singing, itinerant American folk hero from their Century of Prosperity who traveled from town to town, sharing his songs and solving problems. Elvis was the physical manifestation of the American Dream, a particular kitsch deity created during the 20th century that faded as the Empire did. Even though actual Americans hadn’t existed in a millennium, everyone understood what he meant.
They said there were Elvis impersonators even back when he was alive. But when the Sino-Saudi alliance finally organized the fallen Earth into a functional administrative state and deliberately stripped all American cultural customs out of the worldsphere, the performance of Elvis exploded from a niche into a mainline genre. The powers at hand saw it as a totalizing representation of everything hyper-individualized: if they allowed all American cultural influence to filter into this one absurd cartoon being, then it was more useful than destroying the vestiges of their culture.
And so now every colony, the colony of Litch to El-Fasri to Nadya-Hallogay on the very edges of the system, has at least one El-Vis impersonator, one indelible form of entertainment that you can count on no matter where you go: No matter what shithole mining contract you end up on, at the end of every night, you can drink space beer and watch someone reenact the life and times of The King.
But while anyone could do an impression, to be an El-Vis impersonator was reserved for those with specialized training. It was a ritual, a pantomime, an oral tradition that required years of apprenticeship under a master, memorizing the subtle secrets of the El-Vis story and its performance. The honor of performing The Life of El-Vis was reserved only to practitioners of the highest stature. And Lee was of the highest stature.
He threw back a shot of space whiskey and nodded at the stage hand, who nodded at the director, who nodded at the techs, who opened the curtain, and the crowd roared as Lee — no, not Lee, El-Vis, The King — stepped out onto the stage. He pivoted his hips, shaking his pelvis.
He pronounced the traditional Elvisian benediction: “Thanku, thankuverimuç.” The crowd cheered as he began The Act.
ACT ONE: IN WHICH ELVIS BECOMES THE MESSIAH
El-Vis is a white orphan adopted by black parents (Note: Child El-Vis is usually performed by the impersonator on their knees). When he reaches age, he fells a tree with his powerful hips. He tells his parents that he must not tell a lie. (SONG: “Don’t Be Cruel”)
El-Vis now goes across the country, spreading apples with his blue ox and fighting their enemy, the Kernal, singing his songs all the while. (SONG: Medley: “Hound Dog” -> “Blue Suede Shoes”)
El-Vis takes his first child bride as he conquers the hearts and minds of the people — Priscilla, the queen of the nation. (SONG: “Love Me Tender”)
ACT TWO: IN WHICH ELVIS BECOMES THE WORLD-EMPEROR
El-Vis fights a great battle to free the slaves, and he becomes crowned The King of America. (SONG: Medley: “In the Ghetto” -> “Jailhouse Rock”)
El-Vis, together with his army of freedmen, battles against the steam shovel wielded by the evil Kernel, and together, the two groups build the Twin Towers of America: The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. (SONG: “All Shook Up”)
El-Vis, feeling the need to extend his Mandate to Heaven, goes to war. In the army, Elvis rides the atom bomb, astride the curve of the bomb like a cowboy, and releases impossible, miraculous oblivion over the Japanese Imperial Terror State. El-vis is crowned King of the World. (SONG: “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Elvis-style)
ACT THREE: IN WHICH ELVIS DIES AND LIVES ETERNAL
El-Vis is God-Emperor, clad in a white suit, ruling from the seat of His power in Las Vegas, the most opulent palace in America. He rules with his council of twelve followers, and every night, he sings not just for his audience in Las Vegas, but everywhere. El-Vis is not just beloved. He is the Sun and the Moon. He is synonymous with America, with existence, with life itself. (SONG: “Viva Las Vegas”)
But traitors emerge in his midst. One of his disciples, Judas Priest, decides to break the law and take down The King once and for all. Judas the Usurper, Judas the Regicide, places El-Vis on the cross. (SONG: “Suspicious Minds”)
El-Vis accepts his fate, and, with his last breath, with his arms bound, he brings the two towers down, and with them, he ends the myth of America, the American Dream, the King, the Seer. (SONG: “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Orchestral Version)
This number was always the most important. It was the song that didn’t just communicate the tragedy of El-Vis’s betrayal, but the self-generated hurt that came from El-Vis knowing he should have done more with his tenure as king, if he only knew it would come to the end. It was the song that could bring every single member of the audience to tears if performed correctly, and Lee performed it perfectly every night, pronouncing every strange American phoneme as if it was native to him. When he finished, El-Vis was dead, the American Century had gone, and darkness had fallen.
But that wasn’t the last number. You always want to leave the audience smiling.
El-Vis, after dying, was resurrected, with state-of-the-art anti-grav space lifter technology. Lee sang “A Little Less Conversation (JXL Radio Edit Remix)” and flew over the audience until he rose into the rafters, subsumed into the atmosphere, as the American experience became part of the world’s experience and blended together into the space the rest of us inhabit.
“Thanku, thankuverimuç,” he said.
Now, while contemporary scholarship in Elvis biography doesn’t dispute the existence of an actual archaeological Elvis Presley sometime in the mid-20th century, most scholars believe that the elements of the El-Vis story common in impersonations are in fact collaged from several different influential figures of the early American age, including heads of state, figures from legend, and sundry celebrities. However, some El-Vis true believers maintain that lived exactly as he does in the story. After all, they say, those people did have a flair for the dramatic, and everything was bigger in America, the same way everything was always bigger in prehistory, back before things evolved to be normal.
— Henry Luzzatto (@herny_luzzatto on Instagram and Twitter) is a Brooklyn-based writer and musician. Originating from deep in a peat bog, his work is featured in The Baffler, body fluids, ExPat Press, and more.