Today, I was sitting in the office of my gastroenterologist when a patient and her daughter started to argue about the date. The patient said it was the seventh and her daughter insisted it was the eighth. It was settled by a woman checking in that said she knew it was the eighth since it was Elvis' birthday, the same birthday as her father that would be 99 and also 3 days after her eldest child was born. The conversation quickly turned to Memphis, banana and peanut-butter sandwiches with the bulk resting on Graceland. It took a dark and nasty turn when all of a sudden the patient spat out how "The King" must have been turning over in his grave when his "princess" married "that" Michael Jackson. I sat bolt upright. She sighed with such exasperation "at least they didn't have children." So children she has had with anyone else is just fine but at least NOT with MICHAEL? I don't dare assume her position on Michael and his children but there was this blatant disgust of him. It could have been the big race thing OR the generation gap, and unfortunately the big big did he or didn't he.
I didn't hear this bunch once mention how The King carried on a sexual relationship with a fourteen year old girl. Or, since her father basically blackmailed Elvis into marrying Priscilla, and when he ultimately did, that made him somehow all the more decent. His affairs the entire time they were engaged and married, the drugs and booze, all this is seen as acceptable behavior for a REAL man, a star. How can anyone expect a child of such dysfunction to choose anything but more dysfunction? She saw someone like her father: talented, isolated, strange, lonely and confused in more ways than any of us in the public could ever know.
So, today at the gastroenterologist's, I got an earful of bullshit.
When I got in my car, what CD was I playing? Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall."
No comments:
Post a Comment