The “Excitingly Alive” Elvis Lipstick

I would have been ALL OVER THIS in 1957.

And you know there’s an 80-year-old Granny, living somewhere in Arkansas, or maybe Marfa, who has kept her Elvis lipstick all these decades. She’s never shown it to anyone, not even her husband of 51 years.

Occasionally, she takes it out to look at it, thinking about that crazy time in 1955 she drove down to Shreveport with her best friend Ethel to see him play. Her parents had forbidden her to go. She lied and said she was sleeping over at Ethel’s house. Ethel lied and said she was sleeping over her house. They got away with it. They were hoarse for days afterwards from all that screaming. They screamed for the whole entire show. They could barely hear him. It didn’t matter.

Ethel died in 2003.

So now, once in a while, when she’s missing her friend, she takes the decaying lipstick out of its case, looks at it, and remembers, remembers Elvis’ pink suit, his gleaming black hair, and she wonders what now could ever make her feel so much that she would scream for that loud and for that long.