Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [314]
“He said, ‘You got it, baby,’ and I pulled the scarf off from around his neck, and it was hot and sweaty, and he smelled wonderful. I had my ring hand up through his hair, and he was looking in my eyes, and he kissed me with those lips that were like big, soft, warm, puffy pillows. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I wonder what this would be like for more than just a split second?’ ”
He winked at her then and went on to the next song. “That’s when I realized a couple of his hairs were stuck in my ring. I wrapped them in a tissue and stuck them in my bra, and when I got home, I put them in a Gerber’s baby food jar, where they’ve been ever since.”
In time, he came to recognize her face, and one year, he pointed her out to the crowd and officially dubbed her “Rockin’ Robin.” She felt they knew each other then, and so she grew bolder. One night she tried to walk her fingers up his jumpsuit, hoping to tweak a hair off of his leg. “He just looked at me like, ‘What are you doing?’ ”
Uh-oh, she thought. Busted.
As a contributor to the book All the Kings Things, she became an internationally recognized expert on Presley collectibles and formed a family with other serious fans. Some of them ran to the extreme: “I’ve known women who went to so many Elvis concerts that they got divorced over it. Their husbands said, ‘It’s either me or Elvis,’ and the women said, ‘I’ll take Elvis.’ ”
Sex and love was a topic Elvis and Larry Geller discussed many times, particularly with Larry’s return to the camp in August 1972. During one engagement, they stepped outside on the balcony of the Hilton about five one morning as the sun rose over the desert. They were talking about his struggles, and indirectly, his loneliness, and the difference between personal and impersonal love.
“Elvis looked at me and said, ‘I want you to put yourself in my shoes. Do you realize I can never know if a woman loves me or Elvis Presley?’ And trying to be my philosophical self, I said, ‘Elvis, as far as I am concerned, you have had only one real true lasting love in your whole life.’ He looked at me and he said, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘The world. Your fans.’ He said, ‘You’re right, man. That’s the truth. And that’s a heavy price to pay.’ ”
On September 4, 1972, Colonel Parker and RCA President Rocco Laginestra held a press conference in Las Vegas to announce Elvis’s next big record-shattering event, “Aloha From Hawaii,” a live concert to be delivered worldwide in January 1973 by satellite technology. The show, staged in Honolulu with some of the proceeds going to the Kui Lee Cancer Fund, would reach 1.4 billion viewers. But the “live” label was largely ballyhoo, as both Europe and America would receive a delayed signal.
“It’s very hard to comprehend,” Elvis said, repeating himself over and over, crumpled in a chair at the press briefing. For many who witnessed it, the more perplexing thought was why Elvis’s speech was slurred, and why he perspired so heavily, wiping his upper lip. His eyes, visible through tinted glasses, seemed dull and dazed.
On some days, Elvis appeared clear, lucid, and largely unaffected. But other times, particularly after the divorce action was entered on August 18, his use of sedatives, or downers, was obvious to all. One night, a boy came up to Jackie Kahane after a show. “Mr. Katane,” he asked, mispronouncing the comic’s name, “Elvis wasn’t drunk, was he?”
At the time, Lamar Fike reports, Elvis’s usual pattern was to take a Valium, a Placidyl, a Valmid, some Butabarb, and codeine simultaneously. But now, after a sprained ankle took him to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis that July, he began adding Percodan and liquid Demerol to round out his potent and potentially lethal cocktail.
Dr. Nick later learned that “he began getting acupuncture three times a week with Demerol and Novocain in California. He felt so good afterward that he just went more and more.”
Considering the severity of his