#i am constantly picking at this scab until i have a whole ugly mess of painful scar tissue left behind 😭

[heartbrake-hotel]

I've been creeping around some old posts like a... creeper. Anyway, your tag game is seriously everything! What you wrote about the appeal of 'big daddy era' Elvis, the juxtaposition between being and seeming, the longing but not feeling deserving, the creeping horror that his vulnerabilities are getting harder to hide... My god, you had me by the heart! After so many years, I don't tend to cry over the tragedy of that man, my sorrow and empathy have healed into a hard callus and I veer round it because it feels like picking at a sucking wound, but you cut me back open in such a beautiful heartfelt way!

All this to say, I could read your thoughts and discourse all day.

🥰🥰🥰 hELLO JADE??????? stoppp ittt i can't take any more of this you have me giggling and blushing already !! and this praise coming from YOU of all people.. Oh Help 😩💘 even as i was writing those tags i was thinking i couldn't quite articulate everything i meant to properly, so to hear that it came out not only coherent but resonant, and Especially with such an accomplished bde writer as yourself is praise of the highest order.!

the funny thing is, just minutes before i saw this ask i was rereading ch 3 of an enjoyable slide to oblivion and thinking "that'S IT !!! that's exactly what i was talking about !!!" 🤭 chancy being repeatedly struck by how different elvis is from the man she once knew, the way she sees peeks of his "real" self under the persona but then second-guesses herself and wonders which one is more truthful, if either.??? it's EXACTLY the kind of complicated relationship w image i was trying to describe.!! 🤩

of course, elvis in all his eras serves as a beautiful mess of contradictions- masculine yet feminine, innocent yet salacious, clever yet naive, cocky yet needy, bossy yet pleading, larger-than-life yet lonely, personable yet introspective... but by far my favorite way to explore this complicated nature is through the lens of the mid-to-late 70s. it's the time when the most negative parts of his personality are out in full force, and yet it's also the time during which it's most apparent that he was desperately in need of a care and affection he wasn't getting. even elvis at his worst is still impossible not to love, and that always really speaks to me.!