‘Treat me like a fool, treat me mean and cruel…’

The last time I walked through the Valletta monti, I paused by a stall selling T-shirts and beach towels. It wasn’t as though I intended to buy either commodity, mind you… nor did I even plan to visit the monti in the first place.

But you know how it is: if you park anywhere on the east side of our capital city (and, let’s face it, ‘where to park’ is hardly an option in Valletta these days) and intend to walk towards the centre, there is little choice but to eventually cross Merchants’ Street at some point or other.

But back to the stall. I wasn’t interested in the beach towels, because as a rule I’m not much interested in the beach. Not even Betty Boop, whose curves graced most of the ware on offer, could possibly hope to change that. But the T-shirts were another story. 

There was a Jimi Hendrix one asking me if I was ‘experienced’ (not as much as you, Jimi, but I’m working on it…). Another portrayed a long-haired Freddie Mercury striking his Neil Diamond lookalike ‘Jazz Singer’ pose from the ‘Killer Queen’ era. There was – to my surprise – a Depeche Mode T-shirt, sandwiched between Lionel Ritchie and around three thousand Michael Jacksons.

But the T-shirt that arrested my attention was (literally) of an altogether different class. ‘KINGS NEVER DIE’, it said, on top of a picture of Elvis Presley taken off the cover of “That’s the Way It Is” (RCA Records, 1970). 

Not my favourite Elvis album by any means, though it does contain a haunting live rendition of Paul Simon’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ at the end of Side B. Worth it just for that. But the picture on the cover transcends the album in many ways. It shows Elvis at the beginning of his decline. Not yet the desperately unhappy, overweight man who would fatally overdose on diet pills seven years later… but the signs of physical exhaustion are already visible. He seems to be leering on stage like a drunk, eyes averted downwards as if overcome by a spell of dizziness. The lines of his face are heavily accentuated: more so on the T-shirt, of course, being an embossed print in acrylic. You get the sensation that he probably keeled over backwards a moment after the photo was taken.

This was not Elvis the young heartthrob from Tennessee, who induced multiple orgasms in teenage girls the world over just by swinging his hips on the Ed Sullivan show. Oh, no. This was another Elvis: an Elvis battling terrifying inner demons of his own, and probably already staring death in the face.

All this, under that stark (and oh! so ironic) strapline: ‘KINGS NEVER DIE’. There is a touch of the final rhyming couplet of Shelley’s Ozymandias in there somewhere. “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair…”

In brief, it was impossible to see that T-shirt and not immediately fall in love with it. And fall in love with it I did. I loved it tender. I loved it true. And I’m not even that much of an Elvis fan myself – though I still think he had the best singing in voice in (white) rock and roll history, with the possible exception of the aforementioned Freddie. But others whose cultural tastes are more refined than my own…. and who, unlike myself, actually remember the King in his heyday, and cried like babies when news of his death was broken on August 16, 1977… heck, they would probably (like Elvis himself, in ‘Love Me’) ‘beg and steal’ to be able to own something even one millionth as cool as that in their wardrobe. 

And there it was, on sale at 5 euros at the Valletta monti. Make that 7.50, and… why not? I’ll take a Betty Boop towel too, thank you very much.

At this point, you might well be asking: OK, so why am I not currently running around wearing the coolest T-shirt ever in the history of rock and roll inspired fashion design? Why does this resounding statement, this contemplation on the sheer futility of all mortal aspirations, not make an appearance on the beach, as I recline on my newly-acquired Betty Boop towel to soak in the early February sun?

Well… sad fact of the matter was that I was in a hurry at that particular moment in time (late for court, as it happens) and there were other customers to be served before me. For yes, even though the same monti has become a repository for all human contempt and opprobrium… with people falling over themselves to come up with new and ever-more demeaning insults to heap onto the hawkers who sell such glorious items at such bargain prices… there is always a sizeable throng milling about the market on weekday mornings. 

Makes you wonder how much of this sudden elevation in cultural standards is actually real, and how much put on just for people to show off how superior they think they are. What, so the monti is suddenly the pits of the pits… a place no person of ‘proper breeding’ (whatever that is) would ever be caught dead buying an I-pad cover from… yet you have to fight through the multitudes to get the attention of a hawker? It doesn’t add up. Either that, or the huge howls of indignation we heard all week don’t add up to an actual representation of the social realities of Malta in the 21st century.

Makes you wonder who among us is really out of synch with the popular mood. Makes you also question whether… but hush, no more. I might offend the sentiments of some self-appointed cultural guru somewhere. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we? It’s not fair to hurt the feelings of all these well-brought up ladies and gentlemen, you know. It’s only ‘fair’ when it works the other way round: when it is these same walking, talking and crapping embodiments of misplaced snootiness who insult others. 

And insult others they do, all the time. As the King who never died himself sang in 1966… ‘Treat me like a fool, treat me mean and cruel.” Prophetic words: it is exactly how people who refuse to buy into this revisionist illusion of Valletta as a ‘cultural icon’ – when we all know it is a city built upwards on the backs of hard-working men and women – are being treated today.

They are ‘fools’ for not buying into a patently affected overnight disdain for the lowest common denominator. They are ‘treated mean and cool’ for selling (at less than a tenner) superior habiliments of the utmost quality (and coolness) known to man… by detractors who prefer to spend a fortune on designer clothes that everyone else will be wearing that season anyway.

Fools, indeed. In any case, I’m the biggest fool of the lot. I didn’t buy that T-shirt there and then, when I had the chance. An eternal optimist, I was deluded by the hope that it would still be there when I hurried back after my court session was over (many, many hours later). No such luck, of course.

Some other person who shares my own culturally elevated and refined tastes snapped it up as fast as you could say: “It’s a-one for the money”. It was gone. All that remained were the lone and level sands of disappointment, stretching in all directions as far as the eye could see. 

And I’ve been dwelling in Heartbreak Hotel ever since that T-shirt left me…