Here’s something I wrote almost 17 years ago as part of a larger project about identity, specifically about my identity.

Lisa Marie Presley and I were born on the same day, which means my mother was pregnant with me for the same nine months that Priscilla Presley was pregnant with her. I’ve always shared a special, almost psychic bond with Lisa Marie, as if in utero we experience some sort of transubstantiation where I became, for one brief moment, Elvis’ son, and she was mingled in the white trash blood and assorted effluvia of my family. When I was a child, my mother called the radio station every year to have the DJ wish me a happy birthday. After my own birthday wishes, the DJ would read the list of celebrities who were also celebrating birthdays. In this way, my link to Lisa Marie was re-established year after year.

Some of my earliest memories include knowing that she and I shared a birthday, and I distinctly remember knowing this when I lived in Kansas, which puts this as something I learned as early as two or three. Now it’s just weird that she’s no longer here.

Last Friday, January 13, was the first time I woke up without her, and I did feel … untethered. But I know that there was no real connection between us except for the coincidence of birth. I also know that her death was merely a cipher for my own, which is something that I think about more and more these days, especially after the truly awful annus horribilis of 2022.

On February 1, 2023, Lisa Marie would have been 55. Rest in peace.