For a few years after college I lived in the same college town with a friend of mine. I worked in a restaurant. He worked in a bakery. We drank whiskey together and talked about becoming artists a great deal. One week in the summer near the end of the time we lived together his father came to visit from Arizona. This was his biological father, but not the man he grew up with. They seemed to have a nice relationship, but for me it was a confusing mix of friendliness and paternal respect that seemed to get twisted up and misconstrued from time to time—but this may have been my own misunderstanding. My friend decided he wanted to bring his father to Graceland Too, and he asked if I’d come along.
Graceland Too is this house that used to be the biggest tourist attraction in Holly Springs, Mississippi—which is to say it was the only tourist attraction. College kids would drive the half hour up from Oxford in varying degrees of drunkenness to bang on the door and wake up the self-proclaimed biggest Elvis fan in the world, Paul MacLeod. His house was a madman’s shrine to Elvis. MacLeod crammed full this decaying two-story edifice with memorabilia, records, posters, and for the most part, junk. Graceland Too operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The cost of admission was five dollars, but if you visited three times you became a lifetime member and never had to pay again. There was no paperwork—MacLeod just remembered. Many of my college friends were lifetime members, though I never went on one of their late night pilgrimages—I never understood why they’d want to leave a party where the beer and whiskey resided to take what would be a multi-hour journey to stare into the darkness of fanaticism and simple mental illness.
But I was enjoying spending time with Ryan and his father so I agreed to go along. Graceland Too had been painted pink, an homage to Presley’s pink Cadillac, but the day we visited the house was painted a dark blue. Fake Christmas trees, also blue, perched haphazardly in the yard—MacLeod now celebrated Presley’s Blue Christmas year around. We arrived mid-afternoon and stood sweating in front of the door, banging a large brass doorknocker over and over again. It seemed no one was home. I couldn’t believe it, since my friends often took the tour in the early hours of the morning. Finally, MacLeod swung the door open.
Paul MacLeod was a shapeless man—he seemed pudgy, maybe pot-bellied, but his arms and legs were lithe and lean. His face was wrinkled and pockmarked, but his chest, exposed by an Elvis themed cabana shirt, was smooth and hairless. His receding gray hair swept back like the King’s, with seventies era sideburns. We paid and he took us through the various labyrinthine rooms of the house. After what seemed like hours, in the second or third room, he started drinking a Coca-Cola. Local legend held that he drank two twelve packs a day. He told us it was like Viagra to him. That it was like dynamite for his dick. Then he said some truly repulsive things about what he did with his dynamite dick. He pulled out a tiny pistol and compared it to his organ as well. Holding the pistol he grabbed me by the arm with a startling, painful strength and didn’t let go for much of his phallic soliloquy. Ryan’s father looked uneasy. Ryan looked embarrassed. I was sort of terrified. If it had been just me and Ryan I might have asked to leave. But I didn’t want to emasculate myself in front of his father, and I wasn’t sure if MacLeod would yet let me leave.
He released me and we continued through the house. The next room had five televisions playing Elvis footage. MacLeod kept a binder where he said he had documented every single time Elvis had ever been or even mentioned on television, ever. I didn’t see how this was possible. How could you know if Elvis was going to be mentioned in a show before it occurred? I didn’t say anything. Out in the back yard we posed for photographs of ourselves in an electric chair. This had something to do with Jailhouse Rock I suppose—it was never fully explained.
At the end of the tour we took a moment of silence for the King, and MacLeod reminded us that after two more visits we could be lifetime members. We assured him we’d return. Before we left, Ryan’s dad told a story he had heard once.
“One of the last conversations Elvis had was with a hairdresser,” he said, “just a few weeks before he died. This barbershop near Graceland. He seemed despondent and the hairdresser asked what was wrong.”
“That’s not true,” MacLeod said. “Elvis’s hairdresser was Larry Geller. He was from LA. Never had a shop in Memphis.”
“Maybe he was out of town,” Ryan’s dad said. “Anyway, Elvis said, ‘Why me?’”
“Why me?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Elvis said, ‘There must be a reason, there must be some purpose as to why I was chosen to be Elvis. I just don’t know why it was me. If people only knew what it feels like.’ The hairdresser didn’t know what to say. A couple weeks later Elvis was dead. “
“That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard,” MacLeod said. “Elvis would never say that. I almost want to give you your money back.”
“It’s just something to think about,” Ryan’s dad said.
We left to get some beers and didn’t talk about it anymore, but I’ve thought about it a lot.
Several years later someone banged on MacLeod’s door asking for money forcefully. MacLeod shot the man with that same pistol he swung around at me and died two days later from a heart attack.
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Scott Ray is from Mississippi and lives in Austin, Texas.
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image: Ashley Beresch. Check out more of her work on Instagram @ashleyberesch
Rejection Letters 