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People are fascinated with twins, one of the strongest, most inexplicable bonds between two people. Ther eare some loves that
go beyond luck or mere attraction, standing outside the world and all it asks of us. Imagine - Someone you've known forever.
Holding your hand, listening to your deep, darkest secerts. The first voice you hear and also, quite possibly, the last. Someone
understanding you needs and your fears, your ambition, your jokes, the ticking of your psyche because he/she shares so percisely
the same inclinations.
A twin - Someone to care about more than anyone you will ever know. It is almost a dream, isnt it? That perfect love to
shut out the world. Yet where is love, there is fear. And the death of an twin, or worse, having to to the serviving parent,
is every twins greatest nightmare.
Jesse Garon, Elvis's older twin, was stillborn. The only sibling to one of the world's most recognized men was buried
in a pauper's grave in Priveville Cemetery, Mississippi, without a handstone. So the Presley's were never sure, exactly, where
Jesse rested. Elvis, with his dramatic side, had decided he and Jesse HAD to have been identical -alike in every way. Elvis
loved the idea of being a twin. It was his secret agaisnt the world. He loved day-dreaming about Jesse, as a boy and a man
with his walk, the sound of his voice - Someone Elvis has known forever. Someone who understands him even better then Elvis
understood himself.
For us, trying to conjure up a twin of Elvis - a man so singular, so absolute in his talent and the and the way he viewed
the world, we almost can't perceive it. It's is unimaginable that there could be another one of Elvis.
Was Elvis obsessed with Jesse, as the press would have us believed? When Elvis was making films in Hollywood, one newspaper
contocted a story that he had long talks with Jesse, which really hurt Elvis. Yet close friends and Priscilla have said he
never talked about his brother. Ever. Yet only Larry Geller really got Elvis to open up and talk about his twin brother.
Did he feel guilty that he was the surviving twin? Did he ever wonder why he was here, with his world-wide success - greater
perhaps then anything he had ever imagined - and Jesse was not.
' I always felt a bit lonely when I was little. I suppose it might have been different if my brother had lived. Alot of
things might have been different. But he didnt live and I grew up alone' - What Elvis used to say to people.
Elvis never looked into his brother's eyes, heared his voice or held his hand. With Jesse died at birth, he didnt even
have a picture of him. For Elvis, and for us too, Jesse was a myth, an idea of his mind, still from this loss, he held on
thought. He knew what it was to love and to lose that love. This loss, it was said, haunted Elvis his whole life. He searched
for that love, that conncetion - in Priscilla, in women, in his fans. Elvis never stopped looking.
And yet, in an odd way, Jesse was always with him. His mother believed and told Elvis that ' when one twin dies, the one
that lived got all the strength of both' - A devilish burden. Yet in a quiet way Elvis carried Jesse's energy - His imagined
love, his concern for his own well being. That voice Elvis never heared.
In the end, Elvis's twin is a ghost. A phantom. Having died before he lived, Jesse was perfect. He would never grow up
in this flawed world of ours, instead he was consigned, forever, to be the benign grace of Elvis's heart. As someone whose
faith was as strong as his voice, Elvis never had any doubt that he would see Jesse in heaven. Part of his life was here -
with RCA, Col. Parker, the girls, the money, the fame and Glaceland - Yet Elvis always knew that he would see Jesse again.
There were many mysteries in Elvis's life, and for him, Jesse was just another one. Further along we'll known more about
it. Further along, we'll understand why.
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