Ives friend and boss, Mr. Mannis, is dying. Always a tall and handsome man, Mannis is reduced at the end of his life. He's pale and thin, a frail shadow of the successful advertising executive he once was. And he's afraid. Never a man of faith, Mannis clings to Ives and Ives' belief in prayer and God. Most of all, Mannis holds on to human companionship. He's not ready to say goodbye.
I find this passage particularly heartbreaking because it's about a man who is filled with a kind of despair at the end of his life. He's staring into a dark question, and he doesn't have any way to find the answer. Lacking belief in God and heaven and eternity, Mannis turns to the comfort and stabilty of his friendship with Ives.
I think there is something very sacred about strong, intimate friendships. I am lucky to have a few very close friends, persons who know all of my gifts and faults. I don't see these individuals every day of my life, In fact, one particular friend I see maybe once a year. Yet, when we get together, time seems to fall away. We start talking, and it's as if we're continuing a conversation suspended only a few hours before.
In the month since the death of my sister, I have heard from each of my closest friends. One of them spoke at my sister's funeral. Another called me the night she died and let me simply cry in his ear. Another came to the funeral home, hugged me, and stood beside me for a while, acknowledging the generally shitty situation. I do not have to explain myself to these people. They know, and they bless me with their knowing.
Once upon a time, a man named Elvis lived on the highest cliff in the kingdom. He chose to build his home on this spot to discourage visitors. Elvis didn't like his family, and he didn't trust any person enough to become friends. He simply wanted to be left alone.
One day, Elvis got very ill, but nobody knew. When Elvis realized he was about to die, he sent word to his brother via carrier pigeon. His brother received the note, killed the pigeon, and ate it for dinner.
After much suffering and coughing, Elvis died on a cold, rainy morning.
When Elvis got to heaven, he looked at God and said, "What did I do to deserve dying alone and unloved?"
God looked at Elvis and said, "You were an asshole."
Moral of the story: never send a carrier pigeon to a hungry relative.
And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.
Time for another Elvis story...
Elvis Presley
by: Laura Boss
In the mid 1970s Elvis was playing Las Vegas. I was sitting at a second row table because my husband was an active player at the craps table and at chemin de faire. (He only gambled on vacations but when he played, he played big.) At any rate, there was a stage with two of Elvis' body guards, two burly guys who stood on each side of the massive velvet curtained stage, arms folded across their chests, looking as if they were black belts in karate, looking as if they would love someone, some woman in the audience to just try to run up on stage to Elvis, though Elvis had not even made his appearance. The women in the crowd were in their thirties like me and were obvious in their tawdry sequinned outfits out for a big night. These women for the most part were mature versions of the high school crowd that I didn't fit in with. They were the early teenage fans of Elvis while I went with the student council crowd and college prep crowd. These were the fast girls from my high school and perhaps every other in this country who dated the guys with the Brillo pompadours and sometimes "went all the way." Sometimes even having to leave school in junior or senior year to get married. These were now the women in the audience screaming for Elvis to come on stage. I felt embarrassed by these women of my generation and embarrassed that I felt that way. Finally, the music blared and the music was so dramatic and almost like a musical proclamation of awe that I almost expected God to appear. But it was Elvis, black, black, greased hair, white rhinestoned cowboy suit that looked like he was wearing a girdle underneath to hold his paunch in, tanned skin that almost looked like pancake makeup. He was charismatic in the way great stars are. I understood why those women started screaming louder. He sang with a sweet mixture of sexuality and innocence and pomposity, working up an enormous sweat. He would take a hankie from his neck and wipe off sweat and then stare with audacity and a broad smile at someone in the audience and then toss it out. The women in the audience went wild, screaming out his name, leaping up to reach the sweat soaked neck scarf; some women took off their panties and threw them up to him. I was still embarrassed by these women of my generation, but I could see what they saw in Elvis. In the middle of all this he answered an earlier rumor that had floated around the nightclub when a blonde child carried by a very thin attractive blonde woman had sat at a front row table and it had been whispered that the child was Elvis' daughter sitting with his current girl friend. Then Elvis continued his strutting the stage, singing, wiping his sweaty face and neck and throwing out sweat soaked scarves. Finally, the ticket parade of panties stopped. The evening was over. My former husband mocked the women and Elvis. But I was reassessing both. I thought maybe I could have learned a lot from those "fast" girls in high school. They were not so wrong about Elvis and maybe they were right about taking their chances with passion when it struck.
I became an Elvis fan--though I don't think I could have thrown my panties to anyone performing even if it had been God.Adventures of STICKMAN
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