I'm trying to create a rapper for pygame's keyboard to make life easier when I do key logic. Here's my code:

import pygame, pygame.locals as pl
pygame.init()
pygame.display.set_mode((600, 600))
pygame.display.set_caption("Testing stuff.")
x = 0
y = 0
def main():
 while 1:
  keyloop()
  pygame.time.wait(2)

def keyloop():
 global x
 global y
 if key_pressed(pl.K_UP):
  y += 1
  print(y)
 elif key_pressed(pl.K_RIGHT):
  x += 1
  print(x)

def key_pressed(key):
 for event in pygame.event.get():
  if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN and event.key == key: return True
 return False

main()

The issue here is, when you run this, only the up arrow works. I understand why this happens (I loop through the events and clear them when I check for the up arrow being pressed) but is there any way to fix this problem? It would be really nice if I can just do key_pressed() and key_down() which works beautifully because it's a list.
I can't use key_down for pressing keys because it triggers multiple times, and having a timer for each key doesn't seem like the right solution.
I also didn't include key_down because it's not used.