Child Bride (36 page)

Priscilla’s sex life with Elvis, which had been a problem since they met, now blossomed into a crisis in their relationship. Priscilla had been driven by her sexual impulses since childhood; she was also a ripe twenty to Elvis’s world-weary thirty-one. She had no interest in his spiritual journey or the books he pleaded with her to read. She wanted to have sex with him; he wanted to see inside her soul. During his moratorium on sex, Priscilla literally dropped to her knees one night as Elvis was reading to her from one of his philosophy books, begging him to make love to her. He fell asleep holding his book. The moment encapsulated the problems and basic incompatibilities in their relationship.

Elvis’s self-questioning reached a peak during the long bus ride from Tennessee to California to begin shooting
Frankie and Johnnie
in May of 1965. He believed he experienced a vision of Jesus in the desert, and interpreted it to mean that he should join a monastery, that his epic popularity had been given to him so that he could teach the masses about the divine. That “changed his life,” said Larry. “When we got to L.A., Elvis was totally different. We go into the den, he closes the doors; there on the other side are Joe, Red, Alan—they’re listening.”

“That’s it,” Elvis told Larry. “I quit. I’ve had it. I’m through with show business, Larry.”

“I said, ‘What? What do you mean?’ ”

“Larry, after what I’ve seen, I’m not going to go out and make another teenybopper movie,” responded Elvis. “You’ve got me on the spiritual path, and that’s good. I want you to find me a monastery. I want to become a monk.”

Elvis was pilloried, after his death, for this detour from the path of fame, but he was, in the opinions of those closest to him, completely sincere. “He was trying to get out of making a movie that he wasn’t happy making,” said his later Vegas backup singer Kathy Westmoreland. “And he wanted to stop making movies, and he wanted to know what to do with his life and yearned for the public again, for live performances. And he was questioning everything and wanted to go to a monastery, and checked one out.” The spiritual leader whom Elvis met at the monastery convinced him that he was on the right path, according to Kathy, “that God had him where he was supposed to be.
It helped to establish in his mind that he was doing what he was supposed to do, he was just being used in a different way; not everyone had to be a priest.” To sing was Elvis’s calling, his pulpit; that was how he touched people’s souls.

Elvis’s forays into the metaphysical ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. One time, for example, Priscilla and several of the wives attempted to communicate telepathically with Elvis and their husbands, and were convinced they had reached each other through ESP. Despite Priscilla’s occasional efforts to humor Elvis, the chasm between them was growing ever more immense. Elvis’s fondest wish was that Priscilla would accompany him on his spiritual quest; if they were true soul mates, he would say to her, she would join him. He had Larry prepare her astrological chart and study her numerology to see if they were compatible. Larry also created lexicons from the letters in her name, part of Elvis’s concentrated effort to see whether they belonged together, if he could
trust
her. “That was an issue with Elvis,” recalled Larry. “Elvis was not into astrology or tarot cards or telling the future. That bordered on the occult, and he was not into anything occult. However, Elvis was
very
much into numerology.” One of his favorite books was Cheiro’s
Book of Numbers.
He also spent time with Daya Mata, the leader of the Self-Realization Center on Mount Washington in Los Angeles, and entreated Priscilla to attend lectures by Manly Hall, a multilingual intellectual spiritualist whose talks bored her. In Larry’s opinion, she lacked intellectual depth. Elvis and Priscilla were on two separate paths with different interests; what kept them together was his intense belief, or hope, that they were twin souls and her determination to get married.

Elvis’s metaphysical pursuits did not cause him to abandon his love for or belief in Jesus, and though he sometimes saw himself as a modern quasi-prophet, he disliked his nickname, “the King.” “He would never let one time go by when someone hollered out in the crowd that he’s the King,” recalled Kathy Westmoreland. “He said that there was only one King, Jesus Christ.” Willie Jane Nichols recalled Priscilla reading the Bible to Elvis once when he was sick. “He liked to hear her read the Bible. And I imagine he was explaining things to her.” Elvis would watch
The Ten Commandments
again and again, describing the biblical events on screen to whoever was with him; one of the stars of that movie, unsurprisingly, was Debra Paget.

The rented house on Perugia Way in Bel Air became the setting for an almost nightly ritual of Elvis holding court in the
manner of a sultan, seated in the center of a circle of nubile young women who hung on his every word as he recited the Gospel or pontificated on his latest interest or theory—adoration and interest he was not getting from Priscilla, who had lost all patience with his spiritual quest. “Oh, he’d go off on many different subjects, whether it be metaphysical or religion—could be history or politics, television, movies, movie stars,” said Sandi Miller, one of the girls in attendance. “If something came on the TV that triggered something, maybe somebody would bring up a subject, or if somebody had an unusual name, he’d go into, ‘How did you get that name?’ Medical stuff. He loved medical stuff.” Priscilla grew to detest the Perugia house and Elvis’s Bible readings, which went on “into the wee hours of the morning. I’d walk in, and I’d walk out. And he’d want me there next to him, but I mean there’s only so much you can
take.
Especially when the other women have other ideas, too. And they were all listening, you know: ‘He’s so
wonderful!’
[Asking me jealously,] ‘What do you mean you’re going to get water for him?’ And this is someone I’m, you know, ready to
marry!
They were like little birds, with their little feeding mouths, on the floor, and he’s feeding them. I look back, and it’s such a decadent kind of
bizarre
picture, when he held his court.” Priscilla saw each quivering starlet in the living room as a rival or potential replacement. “I was also a threat to these girls. I mean, I was
hated.
I was not someone they were happy to see. They
coped
with me. I was just as much of a threat to them as they were to me. You had this conglomeration of people who were constant intruders—for
me.
”

Priscilla, one of the aides would recount, “tolerated Elvis’s fucking around because she knew she was gonna marry him.” The soirees at Perugia were not entirely bacchanalian; Elvis, according to later girlfriend Barbara Leigh, “was happy when he was sharing and teaching. He liked to do that with women or men, or whatever. There was something endearing about being with a young girl or a woman who is listening to you and you can teach them something. That was one of his greatest pleasures.” The misfortune was that Priscilla had no interest in or curiosity about Elvis’s religious pursuits, any more than did the majority of his mostly redneck retinue, who saw them, and Larry Geller, as dangerous distractions from his life and career. “Him and Larry would sit there and talk about what he was on earth for, to teach people,” Joe Esposito complained. “Trying to make
Elvis a philosopher. It was twenty-four hours a day. While things were going by, time and music was going by, and they were just talking about this philosophy, and nothing was happening. So it offended a lot of people around Elvis. And Priscilla, too.”

Priscilla took to playing Hollywood gin with the other girlfriends and wives while the court was assembled in the living room. Patti Parry saw her as “very secure. She was a toughie, but she didn’t know what was going on.” Priscilla knew enough to be embarrassed by the recurring harem in the living room, and to question whether she and Elvis would ever marry.

“The guys were all handpicking who could come in, you know. They were choice girls,” Priscilla said. “Every time I’d come by, there’d be some new girls at the gate, and Sonny and Red would bring them in and they’d be on the floor. I mean, it was just—it was so unhealthy, so bizarre, that you become—you just don’t feel good; you just don’t care. You wonder, ‘What’s all this
about?
This is, you know, my future
husband.’
This was someone that we’d been talking
marriage
about.”

According to Dee, Elvis would hear from the Beaulieus “every day, ‘When are you going to marry my daughter?’ ” Elvis would tell Priscilla, she would later say, “Okay, we’re not going to do it
this
year, but in two years, sure.” “And you go, ‘But in the meantime, what’s going to happen in two years?’ ” said Priscilla. “Someone downstairs is going to be—you know, with their mouths open—could be the right one!” Elvis was full of rationales for the delay. “Career had a lot to do with it,” was Priscilla’s explanation. “He was just starting out again. I was still in the background.… It meant a lot to the Colonel that [Elvis] still be number one. Meant a lot to Elvis, too—still be a bachelor. That was the thing, that he had to be a bachelor. They had pretty well come to terms on that.”

Elvis spoke publicly as if Priscilla existed not at all. He told columnist Hedda Hopper, as part of the press surrounding
Tickle Me
in 1964, that he was “really looking now” for the right girl to marry. “When I do, it will be for just that once. I know that means I’ll have to follow the rules. Maybe I’m not ready for that yet. Or I haven’t met the right one.” Hopper repeated rumors that Elvis had been “rushing” his costar, Jocelyn Lane, words that scarcely added to Priscilla’s sense of security.

Elvis was also jealous where Priscilla was concerned. He reportedly warned a few of the entourage to keep their distance, and he lashed out once at Jerry Schilling in Graceland. “Priscilla
came down the stairs one day,” Jerry recalled, “and she didn’t really look good and she said she wasn’t feeling well. I said ‘How are you? Is there anything I can get for you?’ That was the essence of it. I didn’t know that she and Elvis had been in a major fight. She goes back upstairs and she said, ‘At least Jerry Schilling cares.’ So I’m sitting down there—I hadn’t been working for Elvis that long—and he comes down and you could tell his attitude, the way he came down the stairs. And he goes, ‘Goddammit! I don’t need anyone asking Priscilla how she feels. I’ll take care of that!’ He never looked at me, but I knew where he was coming from. It was the hardest thing he’d ever said to me.”

Rumors flew, after Priscilla’s memoir came out and she repeated the incident, that she and Jerry, who was an extremely polite and attractive man, had an affair. “Contrary to all beliefs and speculation, no, we never did,” he said. His wife in later years, Myrna Smith, said Jerry told her he and Priscilla were never romantically involved, and this was likely the truth, despite Elvis’s fans’ suspicions, for Jerry was not known to lie and idolized Elvis too much to betray him with his girlfriend or wife.

By 1964–1965, Priscilla was completely lost in the relationship with Elvis, unhappy with the lifestyle, uncertain whether they would ever wed. The ritualistic parties on Perugia were driving her mad. “The overall feeling, not being able to get his attention,” she said,
“night
after
night
after
night
after
night
with these girls.
Every single night.
It was something I just couldn’t handle anymore.” She devised a calculated and dangerous plan—a fake suicide attempt—to shock Elvis back into line, proof of the depth of her desperation. “I
wanted
him to think that I was going to [kill myself]. I wanted to be out. I wanted to be as close as I possibly could to that point. It was almost like that last ploy, to maybe make a change of mind here.” Priscilla chose as her means an overdose of Placidyl, the drug that had accidentally sent her into a coma during her first Christmas visit to Graceland. She costumed herself glamorously in a long white satin gown and timed the event for just after 2:00
A.M.
, as Elvis was settling into his sultan routine. “I went down, like I would normally do, before I went to bed—eyelashes on!—because in my mind I’m thinking, ‘Well, if he’s going to find me, and if I go, at least I’ll look halfway decent!’ ” Then she returned to the bedroom, arranged her hair, gown, and body alluringly on the bed, and took just enough Placidyl pills to frighten Elvis, but not necessarily
to kill herself. “Although, you know, when you’re so angry, so mad, and you’re so desperate, at that point it do esn’t matter. You just want out. I was conscious enough to know that this is a lot [of pills]. But knowing that he’d have to come in and catch me. He had to come in and find me at one point. So I was very clever in knowing how much I would take and what state I would be in when he would find me. So that’s what cautions were taken. Did I really think I was gonna die? Well, there was one side that goes ‘I don’t care,’ and there was that other side, ‘I hope he
sees
me! I hope he finds me, you know, before it happens.’ ”

Elvis discovered Priscilla, as she had planned, before anything dire happened to her, but his reaction was not what she had written into the script. Rather than dissolving into tenderness and remorse, begging her forgiveness, “he was
very
angry at first. He asked me, ‘Why would you do this?’ Elvis usually got angry at first, before you could talk to him. You had to let him go nuts. And he went nuts: Why would I do this to myself? Why would I even consider such a thing?” Priscilla laughed at the memory.
“Guys!”
she exclaimed. At the time, she was as frustrated as he. “The girls were still out there. And I said, ‘Why don’t you go out the door and take a look?’ Not that that was an excuse.”

The obvious question was why would
Priscilla
stay in a relationship in which she was so plainly unhappy and to which she and Elvis were so unsuited? She had a difficult time answering that question thirty-some years later. “Because he did offer me other things,” she said finally. “We did have a life.” That may have been true, but the greater truth was that she was holding out for marriage. She had come this far in pursuit of her childhood plan, and Priscilla was not one to quit. There was also a question of pride, according to her later boyfriend Mike Stone. He said, “I know it became a point where she felt that if they did not marry she would really look like a laughingstock in some ways, that she had gone to live with him since the age of fourteen [sic] and grown up under him primarily—and then not have the marriage take place.”