A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  We also loved going to see Tom Jones. Elvis was in awe of his voice and a true fan. He also liked Tom personally. The first time Elvis took me to meet Tom and attend his performance, we had been living together less than a year. He wanted me to wear the sexiest dress I owned.

  “Honey, I want you to wear that white crocheted see-through dress from Suzi Creamcheese I just bought you,” Elvis said. “That dress and your body is gonna blow Tom’s mind! I can’t wait to show off my new love to him. He’s gonna eat his heart out!”

  I thought that was funny that these two grown men, superstar performers, had such a boyish, even puerile show-off competition going. But I wore the dress and elicited the reaction Elvis had wanted. It was a very different story a mere year and a half later, when Elvis and I were going to see Tom perform again. I broke out one of my sexiest dresses and came out all set to leave.

  “Honey, what the hell are you wearing?” Elvis said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “The last time we went to see Tom you were anxious to show me off and asked me to wear my sexiest dress.”

  “Well, that’s when you were my new girlfriend—now you’re my woman! You’re the woman I love and live with, and I don’t want Tom, or Dick, or Harry, or anyone else looking at you with lust in their eyes. You’re mine. Go change into something that won’t cause eyes to bug out.”

  Funny how just a little passage of time, and growing closer to one another, made Elvis so much more possessive and protective of his woman.

  While he enjoyed musicians of any kind, he identified more with regular people than he did with the biggest stars, something that he and I shared. He never felt like he was better than anyone. He felt a commitment to, and a bond with, his legions of admirers. This could be especially challenging when it came to his female fans. Being the girlfriend of one of the world’s biggest heartthrobs definitely had its challenges, which were particularly apparent during our times in Vegas.

  One night, when I was watching Elvis perform, I happened to notice this young woman who was sitting at a ringside table. She caught my eye because she was very beautiful, and because she was staring at him in a noticeably crazed way. I’d seen plenty of women stare at him intensely, of course, but this was another level of fervor. Finally, she jumped up during the middle of his show, reached up to the stage, and grabbed Elvis around his neck. The bodyguards had to pull her off, which was no easy feat, as she had a death grip on him. That quick action would leave him with a neck sprain. As they finally hooked her under her arms and dragged her away from the stage, her dress lifted, and it was clear for everyone to see that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. She must have thrown them at Elvis earlier in the show. People sure went crazy around him, or more accurately, he brought out the crazy in people. Or, even more accurately, he brought out the crazy in women.

  As he was famous for doing, he always bent down from the stage and kissed some of the ladies in the front rows and gave them scarves during his closing number, “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” Well, of course they wanted a real kiss from Elvis Presley, and so they kissed him on the lips. I understood this was part of his special relationship with his fans, but I had my limits. Being a bit of a germaphobe, when I went back to his dressing room after his show, I always made him brush his teeth, gargle, and sanitize his lips before I’d give him a kiss.

  Elvis and I sometimes talked about how it would be nice to embark on a more normal life. But of course he was mostly living his dream, and it was hard to argue with the perks.

  “You know, how can I possibly complain?” he said. “I have people paying me to do what I love to do. I have people doing things for me. And the cost is that you lose some of your individual freedom.”

  And yet, while he definitely appreciated all life had afforded him, at the same time he often experienced a sense of isolation.

  “I feel an intense loneliness in my heart,” Elvis sometimes said to me.

  “But, honey, people love you,” I’d say, pointing at the monitors in our bedroom that revealed the fans clustered outside Graceland. “Look at the gate. Look at all those people down there that just want to get a glimpse of you. They love you. They’re so devoted to you.”

  “But they love Elvis Presley,” he said. “They don’t know Buntyn. They don’t know little Gullion. It’s an impersonal love. It makes me feel really lonely to know that not many people know me, the real me. But you do, Ariadne. You know who I am, and you love me, and one day maybe you’ll write a book about me. About the man, not the myth.”

  His loneliness was an extreme, influential part of his complex self—that’s why he so loved that song “Do You Know Who I Am?” which he released in 1969, and why, I think, his fans have always responded to it. Elvis definitely had that desire and the corresponding fear that if people knew the real, flawed him they might revoke their love.

  To be fair, Elvis had always felt some degree of that feeling of isolation. From the time he was a little boy, he’d had this heightened sensitivity to life, and to other people, at least some of which came from growing up in the South. There’s a great deal of emotion in that landscape, and I think being an impressionable young boy, Elvis felt that. And I do believe it was a huge part of his unique and matchless gift as well. When you listen to him sing, it’s like it truly came from his soul. There was this kind of hollowed-out feeling, a true depth of pathos and humanity, that he was able to express in his music.

  I think that’s one of the reasons he was so glad to have found a companion in me. I could understand and sympathize with his deepest, darkest moods, and not only keep him company during the sleepless nights when he once again greeted the dawn, but also meet him in the silly humorous place that allowed him, for a time, to forget the pressures and expectations that went along with his wonderful, rarefied position. One night, after his second performance, Elvis went to his dressing room, and I went to mine. Having both changed, we came out hand in hand to where the stairs went down to the main part of our suite. We stood there for a beat, and then descended in step with each other.

  Immediately, the whispers rose up: “Oh my God, there he is.”

  “Oh my God, isn’t he gorgeous?”

  “Oh, man, that’s his girlfriend. She’s pretty.”

  “No, I think she’s too skinny.”

  “No, I think she’s pretty.”

  All of these little rumblings were audible as we cruised down the stairs together. When we were sure all of our guests were looking up at us, we smiled in unison, revealing that both of us had blacked out our two front teeth with eyebrow pencil.

  As if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, we glided up to the first group of guests and shook hands all around with the widest grins plastered on our faces.

  “So nice to meet you,” we said, natural as could be, trying to keep from laughing as we watched them do a double take but try to keep their cool in front of us.

  They weren’t sure if, because we were from Tennessee, that’s how we did it, taking our teeth out when it was time to relax. It was so funny to see people’s reactions, and so we really played it up, walking around the room and meeting everyone.

  “This is my girlfriend,” Elvis said.

  “Hi, I was Miss Tennessee,” I said, smiling, blacked-out teeth on full display.

  Some people laughed, but others were afraid to laugh, which was even funnier.

  As much fun as we had during that Vegas stay in early 1974, I could sense something was changing between us that would mark the beginning of a new and unwelcome chapter in our relationship. At first I just noticed a few almost imperceptible changes here and there—moments when Elvis seemed less attentive, distracted even. While his ongoing drug abuse was certainly part of the problem, there was something else going on as well.

  Elvis was not monogamous by nature. Even if he had been, I can’t imagine the amount of discipline it would have required to routinely look away from the available, willing women who regularly threw themselv
es at him. When we returned to Graceland after our Vegas run in February, Elvis decided he wanted me to stay there while he went out to California on his own. And having spent nearly eighteen months together with me, pretty much nonstop, Elvis was beginning to grow restless for his previous lifestyle. As important as this was to him, he was quite candid about his struggle.

  “I’ve broken my fidelity record for all time,” he said. “I’ve never been this faithful to anyone for this long in my entire life.”

  Sometimes we find ourselves believing what we want to believe. But I was certain he’d been completely faithful to me for the first year, at least, as he’d set up our life together so that he was never out of my sight, unless he was behind a closed door in the bathroom.

  “But honey, I think we need to have a little breathing room for a few days,” he said. “Like our favorite book, The Prophet, says about marriage, ‘Let there be spaces in your togetherness, stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart.’ Sweetheart, you know by now how much I love you and you should feel absolutely secure in that. That is not going to change. I love you.”

  Elvis was smooth when he needed to be, and he had a quote for just about every occasion or circumstance. He was surprisingly well read.

  While I always appreciated his honesty, I was understandably conflicted about this in ways that went far beyond just the thought of him being with another woman. Though I couldn’t deny how hurt I was by that prospect, the caretaker in me was concerned most urgently that whoever he was with wouldn’t be able to watch out for him appropriately. I was already losing sleep over his prescription drug habits and that was when I was in the bed right next to him. Whoever the women sharing his bed would be, they wouldn’t be attuned to his needs, or to possible changes in his breathing. This was not a simple matter of being jealous that he might have sex with another woman. I knew no one else would be as accustomed to his propensities, weaknesses, and needs as I was, and I worried about what that might mean. Would they know enough to send him to the hospital as I had? Probably not.

  But beyond his well-being, there was the toll that this shift in our relationship would take on my feelings as well. I felt threatened, territorial, and angry. My heart and my soul were crying out: That’s my man. That’s the man I saved my virginity for? That’s the man I love. Why does he need to do this?

  As I weighed the different sides of this, there was a part of me that wanted to be unselfish about the possibility of him spending the night with someone new. This may sound like a crazy, almost delusional rationalization, but I was well aware that a private tête-à-tête with Elvis would more than likely consist of delving into his books on spirituality, and there would need to be a connection on that level for a physical one to ensue. And sometimes I would half-admit to myself that he was almost too fascinating, too much a bigger-than-life, one-of-a-kind phenomenon, not to be shared with others on a more personal level. I knew better than anyone how he was trapped by his own fame, and I didn’t want to make his life more restrictive than it already was. I wanted him to be able to experience other people, if that’s what he needed to be happy and feel inspired and fulfilled.

  And so, after eighteen months of the most passionate, all-encompassing love I’d known, I had to decide if the possibility of infidelity on his part was going to be a deal breaker. For the time being, at least, I determined it wasn’t. However, no matter how I tried to talk myself into understanding and accepting this new situation, the foundation of our love affair began a slow corrosion that would permanently alter our relationship.

  While he was away in Los Angeles that first time, I found myself restless in our bedroom at Graceland, unable to stop myself from worrying: I’m sure he’s with another woman, even if it’s just to fill the time, or to fill the empty space in the bed. And while I know he’s not necessarily having sex with her, he’s most likely sharing emotional intimacy. She looks at him and sees the King; she doesn’t know how much help he needs to take care of himself.

  It was a difficult few days for me, but when Elvis returned to Graceland, he had clearly missed me, no matter what he’d been up to, or with whom, while he was gone. And if our process of coming back together wasn’t seamless and instantaneous, it was relatively easy to act like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And so we did just that.

  That March, in 1974, Elvis entrusted me with a project that would consume much of my energy and creativity right through to July. It gave me a focus when he was away without me, which began to happen more, as I had anticipated it would, usually only for a few days at a time. During this time, many of the decisions I made, some based on Elvis’s instructions, helped create what has become the iconic interior design of Graceland that so many people know today.

  In particular, Elvis had big plans for a simple space that had begun as a screened-in porch before being enclosed.

  “Honey, I want this to look like you’re in the jungle,” he said. “And we’re going to put green carpet up the wall.”

  “Really, honey, you want to put it up the wall?” I asked, not quite picturing it.

  “Yeah, I want green carpet to climb the wall like moss is climbing the wall,” he said.

  He and I actually went to Pier 1 Imports and bought the oversize fake fur chairs and some of the other wilder decorations. His taste was unique, to say the least, but it was his own.

  It was his home, and so I was happy to help him make it over to his specifications. He had great taste in some ways, but then again, let’s be honest, he could also lean toward the garish. His bedroom was all done in red and black with touches of gold, and so now he wanted the dining room and living room to be red and black as well. We had these enormous, high-backed, studded, red fabric chairs made for the dining room. Everything was exaggerated, and over the top. It looked like a bordello—it truly did. It wouldn’t have been my taste, but it was totally Elvis.

  After he passed away, Graceland restored these two rooms to their original white design. No disrespect to them, but I think this decision might have been a mistake on their part. Of course, it’s a much classier, prettier place done all in white, and honestly more to my own taste. But he’d had such a strong impulse to redecorate as we did in 1974, and so I feel like something that was a real part of his vision was destroyed.

  I’m glad they left the Jungle Room. Think about it. Some of these rooms are so renowned they’ve been mentioned in songs. I’ve always loved the line from Marc Cohn’s wonderful “Walking in Memphis,” where he sings: “there’s a pretty little thing waiting for the King and she’s down in the Jungle Room.” When I first heard that, I thought, Hey, I was that pretty little thing.

  The downstairs basement rooms were fun to decorate with the assistance of a man named Bill, who was quite a talented decorator. We did the pool room with a tentlike feel, gathering fabric for the ceiling and the walls. The TV room had three TVs, so one could watch CBS, NBC, and ABC at the same time. Remember, those and PBS were the only main networks back then. I designed the TCB and lightning bolt zinging through clouds on the back wall, and wanted mirrors on the ceiling to make that room appear higher and more open. I bought cute ceramic monkeys to place around and lighten the atmosphere as well.

  I also planted gladiolas and a beautiful bush with gold-and orange-toned leaves, a coleus, in the meditation garden, so we could all enjoy seeing the gladiolas bloom. One time, I was outside the door at Graceland, in that front area of the lawn, planting some daffodil bulbs to come up in the spring. I was wearing coveralls, and I had my hair pulled back. A tour bus stopped down below the house, and I could hear the fans talking as they took pictures through the gate.

  “Oh, does she work here?” one asked. “Is that the landscape person?”

  I never wanted to turn around and have them see me looking like that. Instead, I was happy to have them think I was a worker bee, which, in a way, I was.

  Though the redecoration of Graceland was very much Elvis’s vision
, it also affirmed my role in his life and my place in his heart—this was my home, too. Despite the new, unspoken reality that Elvis was probably straying during times when we were apart, he still made me feel like the lady of the manor in ways that really mattered to me, reinforcing that I was his only love.

  Still, my heart broke a little bit every time I suspected him of spending time with another woman. And yet, I stayed. I stayed because I loved him. I stayed because I couldn’t imagine my life without him. I stayed because the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. And most of all, I stayed because I knew how much he needed me—whether he always knew it or not.

  “And When She Danced”

  Can you go back in time

  To a place in your mind

  To the one who knew

  A part of you

  That you just couldn’t find.

  If you asked me to choose

  Between a memory or two

  When it’s said and done

  I’d take the one

  Whose love I had to lose.

  ’Cause when she danced

  I lost my innocence.

  I loved her then

  I always will

  She left with me

  A burning memory.

  She took with her

  A part of me.

  If I could get back where I’ve been

  Feel the passion I felt then

  I’d be there right now

  And yet somehow

  It never comes again.