Elvis is in an office chair swigging electrolytes from a plastic bottle. Plastic is still a prom queen here in Las Vegas. She’s having an eternal bachelorette’s party at the MGM Grand, where she sits on the laps of cigarettes still smoked indoors and the cheap thrill of paying for things with tokens.
Elvis’ chair is in a refrigerated office. Loose-lipped rhinestones hang off his third-day black suit like little punched jaws in a punched jaw pageant.
Behind him, flowers in a glass case are being fanned individually for sale. One girlish pink posy bothered by interjections of Baby’s Breath goes to the couple before us. The lady’s hand flinches when it grips the bouquet and I listen to crime podcasts so I immediately search for blood or a thorn before remembering that this is not Real Elvis and these are not Real Flowers. She’s just old.
Her husband-to-be is wearing penguin tails and walking the part. He’s slowly shuddering towards the pink Cadillac that’s permanently fixed to the pavement outside, strung pretty with laminated signs like necklaces that appeal desperately to the daily stampede of love. Or hope. I can’t tell which this is a church for.
NO SITTING ON THE HOOD OF THE CAR!
The old penguin man looks like he’ll be getting married on his knees if he’s not allowed to sit down soon. A red Ford two-door truck groans into the mouth of drive-thru like a fat rude tongue. The drive-thru portion of the Chapel of Love has a separate lane dedicated to it so we all shuffle to the right to honour the choice of convenience over costume. The driver is in a singlet and slides. It’s a free country.
Outside, we’re lined up as me, my wife-to-be, Rose Lady and her husband-to-be. Funny how a few simple sentences from a bank employee dressed up as Elvis and ordained by the state of Nevada can take your life from a position in a queue, from being in waiting, potential energy, unrealised, to be, to being. Only the just married exist in Las Vegas. And aren’t we all, only just?
Elvis unsticks himself from his Posturepedic chair to make us official in the backseat of the Cadillac. It’s 100 degrees and the Texas rose pinned to my lapel in stuck in a frustrating cycle of slow-fainting towards the floor. I can tell it’s starting to genuinely annoy our photographer, who is burnt out after a full weekend of weddings (six yesterday, two today) as well as managing a blur of a husband and a smear of a child, who will become addicted to Gatorade, then Red Bull, then whiskey in the next ten-to-fifteen years. To be. Neither the husband nor the baby know how to cook their own taco shells so they’re waiting for our photographer to finish up with us so they can eat.
She’s hungry too, but it in a different way that will lead her to swear off corn chips and mama’s boys in the same time as it takes her son to give up Lemon Lime Blast for a job in finance and a beer subscription. We met her on the internet and that’s where she’ll return to tonight, to two-dimension. Shame, I think. I like her.
The world keeps dipping in and out for me because I’m kissing Aurelia and that’s generally what happens. Between kisses, I can see the old man is still standing, now for his own set of pictures underneath the JOAN COLLINS! and MICHAEL JORDAN! signs. Both names are irreligiously swarmed by fat babies, candy hearts and christened by the junkie across the road yelling Y’ALL ARE HAPPY. By her tone, I can’t tell if that’s a question or a statement. I yell back YES! I’m not sure whose question I’m answering. Elvis’. The junkie’s. My new wife’s. YES to a lifetime of matching silks and cliches and surprising my loved ones on the internet to the point of not surprising them anymore, so much so that my hard leftist followers will question me about surprise erasure. To which I will lecture them about invisible surprise. Which is the point surprise turns to knowing. Which is the point knowing turns to love. At which point, it smiles and adjusts the Texas rose on her Vegas lapel and asks if Elvis has been paid for or if we need to tip. I think I’m ready for that.
As we kiss for the camera under the drive-thru wedding window, I realise that I haven’t seen a single cemetery or sign for a funeral home since we got here. And how neon never died in America. And that it's possible nothing does. That instead of being put in the ground, America goes up in lights and so we have neon. Or becomes fake refrigerated flowers. Or plastic diamonds on Elvis’ cotton suits, in the middle of summer on the outskirts of town. Anything but death.
My wife is handed to me by a slow wrap of floral sense-return after a particularly deep French kiss. I say I love you to the city, the junkie, the old man and her before we’re beeped from behind by another car waiting for the drive-thru. I look back to catch a glimpse of the next lucky couple and it’s a man with his mother in the front seat and a bridal gown with a head stuffed into the back. Looks like a loofah’s exploded back there, I whisper to my wife. She laughs and it sounds like wide streets. She looks at me with the next ten summers stitched into her cheeks. She says I do to long hair in the drain plug, staying up late to smoke weed and order cheesecake and an “our coffee place” that we’re loyal, but not wedded, to.
-TN
LOVE IT !!!! congratulations .. both of you of course ..
How lovely to be a fly on the wall for an Elvis Vegas wedding - congratulations ❤️🔥