‘Time, Elvis!’ says Buddy from the other side of the door half an hour later. I feel like a colossus, a gigantic Elvis striding across the dressing room, down the corridor and through the bar of tiny midget-trolls towards the stage. I walk on, and the applause sounds like a helicopter, no, like a waterfall. I can’t see many of them clapping, but that’s what it sounds like. I perceive a great distance between me on the stage and the people out there in the audience, a chasm, or an ocean, maybe even an eternity, that I must make a bridge across. Somehow, I must reach out to the trollpeople, and convince them that we are really of the same race. I must lay down a bridge of sound, and the sound is that of my voice. Across the void, in the far distance, the little trollfolk are looking up at me, Elvis, a leader of men, perhaps a god, no – better than a god, a king, the King, Elvis Presley. For I am Elvis. Yes, I am indeed fucking Elvis! Who’s the King? I fucking am, Elvis fucking Presley, that’s fucking who! I feel I should speak. Yet what words could I possibly bless them with? There are no words. All words are inadequate. So instead I must stand here, saying nothing, bestowing the gift of my very being on these trolls of Elk, who, despite their deformities, are still my people. You’d think they’d be grateful.
Chapter 14
‘Oi! Elvis, get on with it!’
‘Wakey! Wakey!’
‘Dime bar?’
The crowd taunt me in their troll language as I stand there, unable to articulate the wonder of my godly being in words. I can see Buddy looking at me with concern through his goggles. And then I remember. I’m meant to be introducing Buddy. That’s why I’m there. I can do that. I can do that with words.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, as you know Elvis Presley was the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, but there were a few contenders to the throne. Yet no matter how much they tried to take his crown, Elvis always came out on top. Whoever dared to challenge him, Elvis struck them down with his almighty wrath. There was Jerry Lee Lewis, he coveted the throne of Rock ’n’ Roll-land, but Elvis filled him with desire for his thirteen-year-old cousin which made him marry her, and lo! his career ended. Then Little Richard said to the people, “Elvis is not the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, for it is I – Little Richard, a gaylord with big hair.” And Elvis was much displeased with him and convinced Little Richard that gospel music was interesting, when in fact it’s really fucking dull. And it came to pass Little Richard no longer wanted to be the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, but instead wanted to be the King of Gospel, and nobody gives a fuck who the King of Gospel is. Eddie Cochran, he was so foolish as to take on the King, and Elvis took him out in a hit-and-run car smash, also giving Gene Vincent a good mashing for good measure at the same time. But Elvis still had to face the greatest threat to his Kingship. He was a big fatty who went “Hellooooooo Baybay” down the telephone to underage girls. His name was the Big Bopper. Elvis did him in by making his plane crash and fixed it so it looked like an accident, thus vanquishing his foe. Also killed in the plane were minor musical figures Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly, which leads me to the small matter of introducing you now to the one, the only, the dead, Buddy Holly!’
Buddy bounds on stage with overenthusiasm as the boos and laughter that have drowned out most of my speech are mixed with some slight applause. As he assumes his position, I grab his arm and mutter in his ear: ‘Don’t think you’re anything special, you bed-wetting piece of shit. Why don’t you just piss yourself now and be done with it, it’s all you’re good for, all people will ever remember about you. Just a big puddle of piss on the floor with you standing in the middle of it. Go on, sing! People will just laugh at you, you and your stinky piss-smelling trousers and your blue jacket with the yellow piss stains on it. Go back to your dormitory and your piss-filled bed, you bed-wetting freak!’
And I walk over to the side of the stage. Buddy looks at me for a second, pale and agitated, then shouts in my direction, ‘Leave me alone! I’m not afraid of you! You can’t hurt me now I’m all grown up! I’m Buddy Holly!’ and launches into the most blistering version of ‘Rave On’ you could possibly imagine. Of course the mix is excellent – you can hear his vocals crystal clear, but there’s something else going on as well. The audience lap him up as he sings like a man possessed, quite possibly by the spirit of Buddy Holly himself, or at the very least by one of the Proclaimers. By the end of the song they’re even singing along to the chorus. He stands and soaks up the applause. You can tell from his teary eyes and uncontrollable grin that this alone is a dream come true for him. It would be a nightmare for me if it wasn’t for the charlie, especially as he keeps on looking my way in disbelief and sticking his thumb up. ‘Pisspants!’ I shout at him, but I don’t think he hears. Soundcheck Stu starts the backing track for his next song and he’s away again. He soars, and takes the audience with him through about eight songs, nearly all hits. They just fucking love him. I know he’s good, but this is ridiculous. It’s as if he’s tapped into some primordial tribal spirit by accident, and is drawing the trolls of this rotten village together in some sort of communal experience. He carries them with him until, twenty minutes later, he finishes with a version of ‘Peggy Sue’ which sounds like it’s going to explode. And then, as he reaches the last few bars, something does explode, this thing being Buddy’s bladder. As the song ends, he is blatantly standing in a large, spreading pool of his own piss.
First of course the trolls are cheering. Then they see the puddle. The cheers become mixed with laughter. ‘He’s pissed himself! Look, he’s pissed himself!’ they say, nudging each other and pointing to the expanding puddle. For a moment it looks like all of Buddy’s hard work has been obliterated in one emptying of the bladder, as the laughter increases and his face turns an ashen grey while he mutters to himself, no doubt explaining himself to the boys in the youth hostel dormitory. Em bravely walks right into the puddle of piss and takes his hand to lead him off. But then something very strange happens. The laughter dies down and turns back to cheers, as they remember how good he was. Big burly men jump on stage, then lift Buddy up on their shoulders, pissed trousers and all.
‘I’m Buddy fucking Holly!’ he shouts at the top of his lungs as they carry him round the bar on a lap of honour. He punches the air as he goes, and shakes their hoofed hands. Meanwhile a woman is dispatched to mop up the puddle discreetly before it reaches the PA and blows us all to kingdom come. All the while, I’m just standing there, pondering this unlikely and strangely pagan event. What is his secret, I ask myself. And more importantly, how the fuck do I follow that?
Fortunately the clean-up operation buys me enough time to nip back to the dressing room to do some more charlie and therefore strengthen my sense of godlike greatness. I snort a couple of lines, and I’m just about to go out again when Buddy walks in with Em wrapped round his waist. He’s not wearing any trousers. They are both grinning ecstatically. ‘Thank you Elvis,’ he says, barely holding back the tears, ‘I couldn’t have done it without you. Your tips took me to a level I could never have dreamed of reaching. It was like I was smashing those bullies’ faces in with music! Just got to time that bladder thing a bit better, though.’
‘Yeah, thanks Elvis,’ says Em. She’s crying her eyes out and her mascara’s running down her face, but in the black smudges where her eyes used to be, I sense that I’m forgiven. ‘Good luck,’ she mouths at me as I begin my walk of fate back to the stage.
A wave of disappointment travels across the room and hits me in the stomach as I take the stage again. I’ll show ’em, I think to myself amid the booing, I’ll fucking show them who’s King. I give the signal and launch into ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. But of course Soundcheck Stu is working his magic and you can hardly fucking hear me. I point up at him frantically for him to raise the level, but he just smiles serenely back at me like the cunt he is. I’m not taking any of his shit now though. During the instrumental break I dive over the mixing desk and grab him by the throat. ‘You mix me properly or I swear to god I’ll break your fingers off and shove them up your
fucking arse.’
He rolls his eyes and tuts at me, but he pushes the vocal channel up on the desk just in time for the next verse. For the first time since I came out of the nick second time round, I can actually hear myself when I sing. I finish the song, and look out to see a room of grudging, mildly entertained Neanderthal faces, some of whom are even bothering to clap in a way that doesn’t sound sarcastic. I’ve cracked it! I’ve reached them. Just got to keep up the momentum and they are mine. I’m hitting them with the hits now. ‘All Shook Up‘, ‘A Big Hunk o’ Love‘, ‘Viva Las Vegas’. The reaction from the trolls grows bit by bit with each number. And I am in the zone. I am most fucking definitely in the zone. I don’t care that I’m dressed as fat Vegas Elvis, and I’m not even wearing padding, I’m dancing like I’m young sex Elvis in the prison rec yard. I probably look fucking stupid, but you know what, they’re mildly liking it. I have quite definitely and irrefutably won them over. I am the King and the trolls are my subjects. Which means I can do what I want with them.
The time has come to go out in the audience and converse with my flock. I spy my ideal family sitting in a booth – little man, big fat wife and bored teenage daughter with bottle-blonde hair and big tits, texting on her mobile at a hundred strokes per second to her friends she’d much rather be out with. Christ, she’s got a lovely pair, I think to myself. It would only be right if I could get my hands on them. I am the King after all. As my subject it is her duty to offer them up to me, should I decree it. Or maybe I should think of her as her father’s property and put my demand to him in the first instance. Yes, my understanding of feudal custom is a bit rusty, but I think that’s how it works. I walk up to them, radio mike in hand. ‘Well, uh, good evening sir,’ I say to the little man. ‘Are you having a good time?’
‘Yes thank you,’ he says, barely audible as his lips don’t move when he speaks. Obviously evolution hasn’t taken them that far yet.
‘And, uh, what is your name, sir?’
‘Colin.’
‘Sorry sir, I, uh, didn’t quite catch that. Speak into the microphone if you will.’
‘Colin.’
‘Did you say Colin?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And, uh, who are these lovely ladies with you tonight?’
‘Sarah, my wife, and that’s Debbie, my daughter.’
‘Your, uh, lovely daughter, Debbie. And how old is Debbie?’
‘She’s seventeen.’
‘Seventeen years old, well that’s just swell. Uh, does she fuck?’
‘You what?’
‘Now Colin,’ I say, ‘seeing as I’m uh, your king and all, I have the right to make your daughter what they call my concubine. What this means is that it will be her duty to, uh, service me sexually. Now, I should imagine you must feel, uh, pretty honoured by that, Debbie.’ I point the microphone in her direction.
‘Are you taking the fucking piss out of me?’ she says.
But I’m not listening. I’ve become mesmerised by her smashing pair and forget where I am and what I’m meant to be doing, until someone punches me in the side of my face and I nearly fall down. I catch myself on their table, but knock over everybody’s drinks. ‘Uh, whoopsa-daisy,’ I say.
I realise I’ve just been punched by big fat Sarah. She’s steaming mad and bright red with it, like something out of the Beano. Next thing I know my arms are pinned behind my back and I’m being lynched by the trollpeople! This is no way to treat their king! One of them holds me up as various males and females of the species pound me in the face and chest. I get a good kick in the bollocks for good measure. The organising committee half-heartedly flit around asking people to stop, but you can tell their hearts aren’t really in it.
‘My people,’ I gasp, ‘why do you treat your, uh, king this way?’
‘Shut it, you perv,’ one of them says, then punches me in the mouth. It’s a good job I’m out of my mind on drugs, or this would really hurt.
‘Leave him alone!’ a woman’s voice cries from across the room. Through the blood congealing on my eyes I see Em and Buddy, who’s wearing a pair of borrowed trousers, make their way through the mob.
‘OK, that’s enough!’ shouts Buddy over and over again. It takes a while, but eventually the trolls remember that they like him and do what he says. The pair of them carry me by my arms to a settle, but no sooner have they put me down, then they have to move me again to a corner of the stage after the club secretary insists that they mustn’t get blood on the upholstery.
‘Elvis, are you OK? Can you hear us?’
‘Forgive them, they know not—ughhh…’
‘Elvis, we’re going to get you to hospital, OK?’
‘No, no doctors. They would not understand… my internal organs… from another dimension…’
‘Elvis, we’re going to get you out of here. Buddy’s going to bring the car round the side entrance, and I’ll wait here with you.’
‘No need, my angels will take me… back to Heaven… in the spaceship…’
Why have my people turned against me like this? Now I know how God felt about that Golden Calf business. They must be made aware of my power. I must give them a sign, but what? Em is washing the blood off my face with a cloth. While she does this, her huge breasts are pressed right up to me and I can feel them squash against my chest. Naturally this gives me the horn something rotten, and I immediately see what form the sign must take. Using all my will power, I direct my sizable manhood out of the buttonless fly of my boxer shorts and force open the hole that is forming in the crotch of my trousers. Soon enough, my bulging bell-end, lustrously and vibrantly purple-pink, is poking out like a beacon from my gleaming white Elvistrousers.
‘Oh my god, that’s disgusting.’
‘He’s a fucking disgrace.’
‘I didn’t know they came that big.’
In the darkness, I see troll-like forms make their way towards me, and I get the feeling I’m about to be lynched again.
‘Oh, Elvis,’ says Em, patiently. ‘Can’t you ever keep it to yourself?’
Just then, I feel myself being dragged backwards out of a door, and carried for a short while before finally being laid down somewhere. There’s the brief sensation of forward movement, and then I black out entirely.
Chapter 15
I’m pushing a shopping trolley around a supermarket and I’m naked except for a pinny. The trolley is full of toilet roll, and it’s coming out of its packets and unrolling onto the floor. I’m in the fruit section, but when I give the fruit a squeeze, it shoots a sticky fluid in my eyes and an alarm goes off. Gay Elvis and Fatboy charge round the corner with their own shopping trolley and the alarm turns into them singing a Vegas-period Elvis song, ‘Burning Love’. They career into me, knocking my trolley away with theirs and shout the song into my ear.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve been caught with your cock out in the supermarket, you dirty man!’ screams Gay Elvis.
‘Actually it isn’t out, I have a pinny,’ I reply.
‘It’s not covering it up though!’ Fat Elvis points down at it, and I see that it’s erect and the pinny isn’t remotely covering it.
‘Keep it away from the fruit!’ screeches the Gaylord.
‘Oh my god, you dirty fucker, you’ve come on the apples,’ says Fatboy.
He was right, I had.
‘Anyway, we’re off,’ Gay Elvis brays into my ear, ‘we’re going to sing for Elvis. You’re a joke. See you.’ They zoom off, and I see their trolley is full of Elvis records. They’re all the same one, the Blue Hawaii soundtrack.
‘Well hello, dear boy,’ a voice says behind me. It’s Eddie. I run down an aisle as fast as I can, still pushing my trolley. I turn and see that he’s chasing after me with his trousers round his ankles. It doesn’t slow him down at all though. ‘This way,’ cries Bridget, who’s sitting behind a checkout in her mod gear. I push my trolley up to it, where she takes the unravelling toilet rolls and starts rolling them all up again. ‘You
really shouldn’t have done this before you paid for them,’ she says.
‘I know, I know, I’m sorry,’ I reply. I feel something hit the back of my legs. It’s Eddie with his trolley.
‘Do you think I could fit all of this up there?’ he asks me, with a wink.
I look to Bridget for help, but she just says, ‘I’m sorry, shrimp, I can’t let you go through until I’ve rolled all these up.’ Eddie keeps on hitting me with his trolley, as if he’s working up to something. Christ, I think, this is going to be bad. But then suddenly I feel like I’m being sucked out of the supermarket by a giant vacuum cleaner and thrown into a wall of fuzz, like the screen of a detuned television. The fuzz somehow gets inside my head, and I start to wander around in it. I’m in there for what seems like hours, until I begin to think that I hear voices, but I can’t make out clearly what they say. Then I can see lights and shapes. There’s one final suck of the vacuum cleaner and I find myself in the back seat of Buddy’s car, being held upright by Em.
‘What’s going on?’ I blurt, making Em jump.
‘It’s OK, Elvis,’ she says soothingly, ‘we’re just taking you to hospital. You’ve had a bit of a knock.’
‘No, no, I can’t. Let me out, please.’
‘Elvis, you’ll be OK. You just need to be looked over and stitched up a bit.’
‘No, I don’t want to go. I really don’t.’ I can’t stand hospitals. Not since I was just a lad and Bridget tried to kill herself the first time by swallowing aspirin. They poured charcoal down her throat with a funnel to counteract it. I caught a glimpse of her coughing it all up before they closed the curtain round her. It’s stayed with me forever. ‘Look, I’ve got cocaine in my system, OK? I can’t see a doctor right now.’
‘You take cocaine?’ says Buddy. ‘Actually, that would explain a lot, come to think of it.’
‘Oh Elvis, you big silly,’ sighs Em. ‘You’ve really got to be looked at. You’re not exactly in a good way, you know.’
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