Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [86]
The irony, of course, was that Elvis felt free to do whatever he wanted with other women. “My husband tells everybody that Elvis and I dated steadily for a year. And I say, ‘No, I dated him steadily for a year. He didn’t date anybody steadily for more than fifteen minutes.’ ”
Their relationship was thoroughly chaste. “Lots of hugging, kissing, and closeness—perhaps activity a lot of girls would have killed to participate in—but nothing sexually explicit. Reputation was a big deal around my house.”
Barbara never asked him about it, but she suspected that he divided women into “good girls” and “road girls,” the latter of whom were fair game and didn’t mean anything to him beyond the moment. “He was very, very respectful to women. If you could see how he treated me, my mother, his own mom, his grandmother. We were people he cared about. The ones who went backstage were in a different category. They were fans.”
On April 15, 1956, Elvis, billed as “the Nation’s Only Atomic-Powered Singer,” played the Municipal Auditorium in San Antonio, Texas. There to meet him was Kay Wheeler, the virginal, seventeen-year-old president of the first national Elvis Presley fan club. Kay was in something of a teenage daze. A year earlier, she hadn’t even been able to find a picture of Elvis. But by early 1956, working from her Dallas home and aided by her two sisters, she had built the club into more than 20,000 members, each of whom received a large autographed photo of Elvis, a “Presley pink” membership card, and a four-page monthly newsletter, “The Presley Press.” Though the Colonel’s office had encouraged her efforts, Kay was as atomic-powered as the object of her affections, and only Colonel Parker matched her devotion and energy in promoting Elvis into a major heartthrob. Campaigning radio stations to play his records, and instructing the flock to do the same, she hardly had any time for homework, let alone her boyfriend, Pat.
At the beginning of the month, Kay had received a letter from Parker’s secretary, Carolyn Asmus, telling her that Elvis would be on tour in Texas, and inviting her to attend the kickoff show in San Antonio. Shortly thereafter, she received a telegram from the Colonel himself, authorizing her to go backstage. When the big day came, she chose a clinging, pale beige sheath dress, dangly pearl earrings, and a pair of spike heels. Then she boarded the Greyhound bus for a 270-mile ride that would mark her first trip away from home. “Hell and high water wouldn’t have stopped me. I looked out that Greyhound window thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to see Elvis.’ ”
When she arrived at the auditorium, an old, dirty structure that seemed too unglamorous for what was about to unfold, she flashed her telegram to a guard, who waved her through. Backstage, Tom Diskin, the Colonel’s second in command, pointed to an unmarked door and nonchalantly said, “Elvis is in his dressing room. Just go on in.”
Kay took a deep breath, straightened her dress, and turned the tarnished doorknob. She hoped he would like her. She thought he might, because even she could see she looked a little bit like his mother.
He was sitting in front of a mirror, smoothing down his dark blond ducktail, and turned to look over his shoulder at her.
Her knees went wobbly. “Hi, Elvis,” she managed. “I’m Kay Wheeler, the president of your fan club.”
“My fan club president?” he asked. He seemed surprised. Kay thought he knew she was coming, but there wasn’t time to think about that now, because he had on a blue satin shirt that matched his eyes, and his voice was soft and sensuous, and he had a mischievous grin on his face, and he was looking straight at her. “If any man ever stepped out of a dream,” she thought, “it was Elvis Presley.”
He stood up and walked toward her, staring, she thought, as if he were trying to read her mind. The room began swirling, but she could see he was still smiling, and she thought he was about to say something. Instead, he reached over and put his hands on her shoulders, and then began