Baby, Let's Play House Part 7

It was a storybook evening-he looked like a movie star, and Dixie was proud to show him off to her friends. But she was troubled by the changes in Elvis. She knew in her heart that he had been unfaithful to her, which went against all the teachings of their church. And she didn't like his new friends, especially Red West, and a crowd of guys who had begun to hang around when Elvis was in town. They all smoked and drank and used offensive language, and the surprising thing was that Elvis seemed to want them around.

Why did he need them? It used to be that all Elvis and Dixie needed was each other, and they were hardly ever alone anymore. And what kind of future were they going to have if he was running around the country all the time?

They argued about it, but they had argued before over his possessiveness. Elvis was always jealous of what she might be doing while he was away, though she had more cause to worry than he did. Yes, she went to Busy Betty on Lamar and danced, but she wasn't dating anyone. Was she just supposed to sit home for three weeks while he was away? She wanted to have some fun, too.

Friends on both sides had begun to doubt that they would marry, because "neither one would accept the other's terms," in the words of Barbara Hearn, who went to school with Dixie at South Side and worked with her at Goldsmith's department store.

But each time Dixie gave Elvis back his cla.s.s ring-once or twice he even asked for it back-they'd both cry and want to make up. Sometimes he would angrily speed off in his car, and before she could even get back in the house, he was there again, and they'd sit on the porch and hold each other, both in agony over their decision. What were they going to do?

"It was kind of a mutual thing. His career was going in one direction, and I didn't feel that I could be a part of it. [It] consumed him, and there wasn't much time for anything else."

They kept patching it up, saying they could work it out, but by the end of the summer, they both knew it was over. She had wanted him to stop at the top and go back to a simpler life. But he said, "No, I'm in too deeply." He was already swallowed up by the myth, by something he couldn't control.

"He felt like there were too many people depending on him, and he couldn't do what he wanted to do. He was told to go here, and go there, and these people can come, and these can't. . . . I knew that it was not ever going to go into anything."

She and Gladys cried about it together, but they would always be friends. They were family almost. And that would never change. Whenever he was back in Memphis, they would see each other, and the respect and love would always be there. Even if Dixie married someone else and Elvis decided to quit the business and stay home and have children with her, well, she would just get a divorce. That's how much he meant to her.

Less than a week after Dixie's junior prom, Elvis continued his pursuit of Anita Carter. On May 12 they were at the Gator Bowl Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. Elvis went on first, and when he came offstage, the Carter Sisters were ready to follow. As usual, Elvis had worked up a sweat-he could literally lose several pounds in one performance-and as he pa.s.sed by the Carters, he started stumbling and tottering around, finally collapsing in Anita's arms. Carter. On May 12 they were at the Gator Bowl Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. Elvis went on first, and when he came offstage, the Carter Sisters were ready to follow. As usual, Elvis had worked up a sweat-he could literally lose several pounds in one performance-and as he pa.s.sed by the Carters, he started stumbling and tottering around, finally collapsing in Anita's arms.

A shout went up, and somebody laid Elvis out and said he was unconscious. Anita held his head in her lap and stroked his forehead, and the Colonel ordered an ambulance to take him to the hospital. Red was worried as h.e.l.l, as were Scotty and Bill and D. J., who was now working the road with them. They sat around in Red's hotel room, scared to death, wondering if he were dying from some mysterious disease, and awaiting word from the hospital.

About 1 A.M. A.M., Red heard a knock on the door, and there stood Elvis, "healthier than a herd of cattle, grinning from ear to ear." They pumped him full of questions, and he told them he was fine. Only when Scotty, Bill, and D. J. went on to their rooms did Elvis say he'd faked the collapse just to get his head on Anita's lap.

It wasn't true. He really was ill, and running a fever from exhaustion. The emergency room doctor gave him a shot and suggested he take some time off. Instead, Elvis asked for a peanut-b.u.t.ter-and-banana sandwich, and concocted the story about faking the collapse out of embarra.s.sment. But clearly he was infatuated with Anita, who faked her own collapse with Elvis sometime later. However, their relations.h.i.+p never really moved beyond flirtation.

Elvis then turned his attention to Anita's older sister, June, whose marriage to country singer Carl Smith was in trouble. But June dismissed him out of hand. "Elvis got a crush on whoever was handy. It was just his thing. He liked women. I decided I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole. Lord only knows where he'd been. He was a s.e.xy man who really thought he could have any woman that he saw. But he couldn't, and I think that was a big shock to his ego."

Elvis wasn't one to give up, though, and on a trip to Nashville with Red, he decided to look her up. As Red recounted the story in Elvis: What Happened?, Elvis: What Happened?, June was off at a gig, and so Elvis and Red simply forced a window in her Madison, Tennessee, house, and broke in to wait for her. They made themselves at home-fixing a meal in her copper pans and skillets (and ruining them in the process), and going to sleep, fully dressed and dirty, in the master bedroom. June was off at a gig, and so Elvis and Red simply forced a window in her Madison, Tennessee, house, and broke in to wait for her. They made themselves at home-fixing a meal in her copper pans and skillets (and ruining them in the process), and going to sleep, fully dressed and dirty, in the master bedroom.

Carl came home the next morning, found the forced window and the messy kitchen, and like a scene from some hillbilly rendition of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," wondered, "Who's been breaking into my house? Who's been eating my food?" And finally, "Who the h.e.l.l is that sleeping in my bed?"

Elvis woke up and casually said, "Oh, hi, Carl."

"You would have thought he would have chewed us out," Red wrote. "But he gave us a big h.e.l.lo and laughed. He showed us all around the big house."

Smith had seen far crazier behavior from Nashville's honky-tonk crowd, and he took it all in stride. That night when June and her sisters came home, they had a big southern dinner and stayed up half the night talking and singing.

"I kept praying that [story] would never get out," June said. "I saw Red right after he wrote it, and he said, 'June, I should never have put your name in there. I did everything I could so that people would know that you were really a good girl.' And I appreciated Red doing that, but I didn't think it was anybody's business. Elvis was my friend. We had a lot of fun together. We sung late at night, playing the piano, but I wasn't going to run and jump and play with him like the other women, and he knew that. But he also knew that we were just real good friends, and we stayed that way."

June and Carl Smith divorced in 1956, and June went out on the road doing shows with Elvis on her own. She was always sentimental about the experience-"I've got two or three little notes and pictures that Elvis gave me"-but she ended up with more than memories and souvenirs.

"Elvis introduced me to Johnny Cash's music. We would stop in all of the little restaurants down in the South to get something to eat, and he always played Johnny's records on the jukebox. He loved to hear him sing. He tried to sing all of his songs right in my ear, and I heard them over and over and over. Then John walked up to me one night [in 1956] when I had come home from New York to do the Opry. He said, 'I'm Johnny Cash. I know you work with Elvis Presley. He's a friend of mine and I would like to meet you.' And I said, 'Well, I should know you already, and I believe I do. I've had to listen to you enough.' "

Their son, John Carter Cash, says that his mother would get a mischievous twinkle in her eye whenever she mentioned Elvis and told him, "You know, son, your father was always jealous of Elvis."

And so was Carl. Underneath his good humor about the break-in, there was tension: June kept a billboard poster of Smith on which Elvis had drawn a silly mustache and goofy gla.s.ses. Below it, he scribbled, "Painting by Presley."

After Carl moved out of the house, June would sometimes let Elvis stay there "to rest" at the end of a tour.

"Like most children," John Carter wrote in Anch.o.r.ed in Love, Anch.o.r.ed in Love, a memoir of his mother, "when I was young, I thought my mother was capable of doing no wrong. . . . I know without a doubt that she was a good person of high standards and solid morals. On the other hand, she was being charmed by one of the greatest s.e.x symbols of our time. The temptation to give in to his advances, at least in some small way, would have been tremendous. I have a hard time blaming her." a memoir of his mother, "when I was young, I thought my mother was capable of doing no wrong. . . . I know without a doubt that she was a good person of high standards and solid morals. On the other hand, she was being charmed by one of the greatest s.e.x symbols of our time. The temptation to give in to his advances, at least in some small way, would have been tremendous. I have a hard time blaming her."

On May 13 the Hank SnowJamboree tour was back at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville for a second night, with fourteen thousand screaming fans in attendance, nearly all of them there for Elvis. Two nights earlier, in Orlando, headliner Hank Snow found Elvis a hard act to follow, the girls yelling for Elvis to come back out onstage. for a second night, with fourteen thousand screaming fans in attendance, nearly all of them there for Elvis. Two nights earlier, in Orlando, headliner Hank Snow found Elvis a hard act to follow, the girls yelling for Elvis to come back out onstage.

Parker always denied that, insisting, "Hank Snow could follow anybody. He was a great artist." But Charlie Louvin, who with his brother, Ira, played Elvis dates on the Snow shows, remembers it being true. Unlike Bob Neal, who never planted screamers, Parker wasn't just banking on throngs of hormonal teenagers-he helped orchestrate them.

"The Colonel sent Tom Diskin to Woolworth's to give kids free tickets to the shows. The only thing they had to do was scream 'We want Elvis.' A professional act like Hank Snow or the Louvin Brothers couldn't work with a hundred kids hollering 'We want Elvis.' Hank would sing two or three songs and then just say, 'h.e.l.l, you can have have Elvis.' " Elvis.' "

Faron Young, also on the Orlando bill, remembered that the announcer tried to subdue the crowd, telling the audience that Elvis was out back signing autographs, only to have the auditorium empty out.

Possibly in deference to Snow, whose ego outsized his small frame, Elvis, sporting a pink lace s.h.i.+rt that looked like a woman's blouse, closed his Jacksonville set with the crack "Girls, I'll see you all backstage." Before anyone knew how to stop it, a swath of frenzied teenagers broke through the police barricade and chased Elvis into the dugout locker room. Mae Boren Axton, a forty-year-old Jacksonville schoolteacher who handled publicity on the show for her old friend Tom Parker, was sitting with the Colonel as he counted the money from the night's take.

"All of a sudden I heard Elvis's voice shouting, 'Mae! Mae! Mae!' I jumped up and ran down there, and so help me, about five hundred kids had crawled under those pull-up doors. Elvis had climbed on top of the showers, and he was hanging there darn near naked. They'd torn his lace s.h.i.+rt apart, and everybody had pieces of his coat, and they even had his boots and socks off."

By the time the police got things under control, Elvis, clad only in his pants, looked sheepish and scared. The police helped him down, but Mae found that quieting the crowd was another matter.

"I heard all this screaming, and I went up out of the dugout and saw this girl I had taught. I said, 'Hey, honey, what's the matter?' 'Oh, hi, Miz Axton, boo hoo, hoo, hoo . . .' I said, 'Wait a minute. What is it about this kid Elvis?' And she gave one of the best definitions I've ever heard. She said, 'Oh, Miz Axton, he's just a great, big, beautiful hunk of forbidden fruit.' "

The Jacksonville riot marked the first time the Colonel knew precisely what a gold mine he had in his new client. It also marked a turning point in the young life of thirteen-year-old Jackie Rowland, an Elvis fan who got backstage through the efforts of her grandfather, a policeman.

Lying transfixed on the floor, eating a bowl of peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly mixed together, Jackie had watched Elvis on television. Weight had always been an issue for the five-foot-tall teenager, and when she arrived at the Gator Bowl that night, she weighed 190 pounds. Wearing her blue Kirby Smith High School band sweater and a pair of blue suede shoes, "I'm sure I must have looked like a giant blueberry. Or maybe a grape."

Backstage, Elvis signed her program and introduced her to the Carter Sisters, and then talked to her longer than he did most of the girls. When it was time for her to go, he kissed her on the cheek, "and, of course, I was in love. He was so handsome, and so nice to me, and not condescending about my weight."

It got her thinking, fantasizing about what it would be like to see him again, especially if she could diet herself down to the size of the other girls. If she lost weight, she asked her mother, Marguerite, could she go to Tennessee to see Elvis? "Sure," her mother said. "If you lose the weight, I will take you to Memphis."

Two months later, on July 28 and 29, Elvis was back at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, and yet another riot ensued. Fellow performer Marty Robbins, who had joined the bill as a way to repay Colonel Parker for a favor, remembered it vividly. "They really mobbed him. I couldn't imagine that happening. They chased him in the dressing room, underneath the stands in a shower room. He was on top of the showers, trying to get away from people. Guys and girls, alike, were trying to grab a shoe, trying to grab just anything."

Robbins knew for certain that Elvis was going to be completely irresistible to women, because of what happened in the next town, Daytona Beach. "When we went out on the beach to go swimming, the girls were all looking at him like, 'Boy, there is something something!' He had everything in his favor. He had youth, he had good looks, he had talent, he was single, and then when he got Colonel Tom Parker on his side, that was it. He was the best manager a person could get."

Mae Axton had also seen the reactions in Daytona Beach and Orlando. She'd worked all three cities after getting calls from Bob Neal and Sam Phillips, asking if she could help establish Elvis in the Florida markets. The daughter of a Texas rancher and confectionery shop owner, she was a big-hearted gal who dabbled in songwriting, freelance magazine writing, and promotion work to supplement her teaching job.

As the mother of two sons, Johnny, eleven, and thirteen-year-old Hoyt (later a singer-songwriter on his own), Mae had a soft spot for young men trying to make their way in the world. She also wanted to help Bob Neal, throwing in fifty dollars of her PR money for Elvis's fee, and arranging for a free motel room in each of the three cities. Elvis called her when he got to the edge of Daytona Beach, and when she met him, she found herself instantly charmed.

"He had a quick, sensual smile that [made him seem] shy and vulnerable at the same time. And he was so sweet and polite and nice that you couldn't help but love the kid. I wanted to make things easy for him."

They visited for awhile, and then she had to do a radio interview, she said, but she told him to wait, that she wouldn't be gone long.

"When I came back, the other guys were down at the beach, looking for the cute girls. But Elvis was leaning over the grillwork on the balcony, staring at the ocean. I said, 'Hi, honey, are you okay?' He said, 'Mae, I can't get over this ocean.' Now, he grew up on the mighty Mississippi, but he said, 'It's so vast, just no end to it. I'd give anything in the world if I had enough money to bring my mama and daddy to Florida and let them see the ocean.' "

It touched her that his priority was his parents, when most twenty-year-olds would think about having fun. Later that year, she and Tommy Durden would write Elvis's breakthrough hit, "Heartbreak Hotel," and she would let the Colonel cut Elvis in for a third of the writers' credit. He hadn't written one word, but just maybe Elvis would see enough royalties to make that Florida dream come true.

More and more, Elvis relied on women behind the scenes such as Mae Boren Axton and Marion Keisker to create or advance some fundamental aspect of his career. Both Mae and Marion were mother figures, but not every woman who aided him would fall into that age group. and Marion Keisker to create or advance some fundamental aspect of his career. Both Mae and Marion were mother figures, but not every woman who aided him would fall into that age group.

On May 28, 1955, sixteen-year-old Kay Wheeler and her sister Linda huddled together in the darkness of their bedroom in Dallas, Texas. With their parents asleep, they turned their radio up as loud as they dared, hoping to pick up a rhythm-and-blues station that would let them hear something along the lines of Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love," or the Penguins' languid "Earth Angel."

The Wheeler girls were white and lived in a typical 1950s brick tract house in a respectable middle-cla.s.s neighborhood. But after their cousin, Diana, played them "Little Mama" by the Clovers, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters' more risque "Work with Me, Annie," they demanded more of their music than the vanilla hits of the day. And so they began making pilgrimages to buy rhythm-and-blues records at the "colored" record store, riding the bus downtown and "walking self-consciously along a street lined with p.a.w.nshops, run-down stores, and hip Negro bucks who examined [them] with frank stares and amused grins," as Kay described in her book, Growing Up with the Memphis Flash. Growing Up with the Memphis Flash.

Fifty-five years later, she still remembers the thrill. "Here we were, these nice little suburb kids, smuggling these 78 rpm records into our room the way people would do drugs or something. And I guess we were-we were doing rock and roll."

On that late spring night, glued to the radio, the Wheeler girls stumbled on a broadcast of the Big D Jamboree, a country radio hoedown show much like the Louisiana Hayride and the Grand Ole Opry. There, they heard an unknown song from an unknown singer, who delivered a stuttering, hiccuping vocal of s.e.xual threat: "I'd rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man."

The Wheelers caught their breath. That knifepoint guitar! That doghouse ba.s.s! It wasn't quite blues, and it wasn't entirely hillbilly, but it sure got them way down deep. Kay turned up the volume to find out who and what it was: "Elvis Presley," with "Baby, Let's Play House."

Kay looked at her sister.

"I think I'm going to faint."

She didn't, but she and Linda talked about him all night, wondering about his name. Had they heard it right? Was he colored, or was he white? Then two weeks later, a girl at school started telling Kay all about how a guy named Elvis played in Gladewater, Texas, and n.o.body could hear a word he said. He was so good-looking and s.e.xy the girls screamed every single second.

Five months pa.s.sed before Kay actually saw what he looked like, on a poster at the Melody Record Shop. He was leaning back with his pelvis tilted forward and his mouth wide open. Was he in pain? It was hard to tell. A lock of greasy hair fell on his forehead, and that cinched it. She had to have it. Kay felt her cheeks burn, but she was a tiny thing, size four, so who would notice? She quickly removed the poster from the wall, put it in her bag, and walked out the door. At home, she and Linda shrieked with delight. G.o.d, he was a dream dream! "I'm going to meet him," Kay announced, and that was that.

Her opportunity came a few days later, though it was indirect, unplanned, and would take some time. She was visiting her Aunt Billie, secretary to the president of KLIF, the popular Top Forty radio station in Dallas. They were in Billie's office when deejay Bruce Hayes stopped by with a record in his hand.

"Listen to this name, 'Elvis Presley,' " he said. "Have you ever heard anything so corny in your life?"

Kay couldn't stand it.

"It was like making fun of him. I'd just gotten the poster, and we were flipping out over him, so I just blurted out in my antagonistic teenage way, 'Well, he's going to be big! I've already got a fan club for him.' "

It wasn't true, of course, but when Hayes asked her for her address on that Sat.u.r.day afternoon, she gave it to him without thinking. And she never heard him announce, "If you want to join the Elvis Presley Fan Club, write to Kay Wheeler. . . ."

The following Tuesday, she wasn't feeling well ("I was good at playing hooky-if I had the least bit of cramps I wouldn't go to school"), and she was in the den lazing around in her robe when her mother called her.

"Kay! There are all these letters on the front porch in stacks, and they're all to you!"

"What?"

There were hundreds of them, bundled together and tied with string, all of them asking about how to join the fan club, or wanting a card or a photo.

"I laid these letters on the floor all across the room, and I just couldn't believe it. I was flabbergasted. It was a crazy moment. A crazy crazy moment, especially since I didn't have a fan club." moment, especially since I didn't have a fan club."

But soon she would, sanctioned by Colonel Parker's office in Tennessee. ("It was like they courted me.") Bob and Helen Neal had started the first regional fan club, but they didn't have the pink-and-black pa.s.sion of a teenage girl with a poster of a prominent pelvis. Within weeks, Kay Wheeler would be the president of the first national Elvis Presley fan club. And no one could have guessed at the power of a sixteen-year-old Texas girl to muster the troops, which would soon be growing by the thousands every day.

Elvis joins June Juanico on horseback, Gulf Hills Dude Ranch, July 1956. Gladys considered her part of the family. "I still love Elvis," June says today. "He's never been replaced." (Robin Rosaaen Collection) (Robin Rosaaen Collection)

Chapter Seven.

Biloxi Bliss.

On June 26, 1955, Elvis and the Blue Moon Boys played the Slavonian Lodge in Biloxi, Mississippi. The previous February, Elvis had appeared in two shows at the Jesuit High School Auditorium in New Orleans, on a bill with fifteen-year-old Martha Ann Barhanovich, who briefly recorded for Decca under the name of Ann Raye. Her father, Frank "Yankie" Barhanovich, a district manager for the American National Insurance Company, moonlighted as a talent booker, mostly because Martha hoped to make a career out of singing. Biloxi, Mississippi. The previous February, Elvis had appeared in two shows at the Jesuit High School Auditorium in New Orleans, on a bill with fifteen-year-old Martha Ann Barhanovich, who briefly recorded for Decca under the name of Ann Raye. Her father, Frank "Yankie" Barhanovich, a district manager for the American National Insurance Company, moonlighted as a talent booker, mostly because Martha hoped to make a career out of singing.

After the Jesuit shows, for which both performers were paid $150, the teenaged Martha begged her father to bring Elvis to Biloxi, where the Barhanoviches lived. "Daddy was booking all these people not as young as Elvis, and well, I just knew he needed to book him for people my age." And so the elder Barhanovich brought Elvis to the area for three nights that summer, the first at the Slavonian Lodge, named for the people of South Slavic origin, the Croatians who populated the region and dominated the oyster and shrimp trade.

The local newspaper, running a story in advance of the show, reported that it was expected to be a sellout, given Elvis's popularity on the Hayride, and since "the teenagers just love him."

Salvadore "Penue" Taranto, a member of Johnny Ellmer's Rockets, which often brought 300 to 400 kids into the Lodge, was there that night, and he was blown away. He'd heard Elvis on the jukebox, but he was unprepared for a full show of music that would soon be termed rockabilly. "It was so different from any type of music that you couldn't even relate to it at the time. Here was everybody making fun of this guy shaking like he had something wrong with him. But what he did, he did good. When he popped that first hit, he really took off."

The following day, seventeen-year-old June Juanico had just gotten home from work when she got a call from her girlfriend Glenda Manduffy, who had attended the show at the tiny lodge. She was practically screaming into the phone about this guy Elvis Presley and the way he moved, and how it was wall-to-wall females in the place, and she couldn't get close enough to him to really see him. But he was going to be at the Airmen's Club at Keesler Air Force Base that night and the next, and c'mon, c'mon, June, let's June, let's go go!

June thought about it a minute. She had a steady boyfriend, the six-foot-four Norbie Ronsonet, and you were supposed to be eighteen years old to get into this place, but reluctantly she went. She'd already heard other people say "You need to go and see him!" And so she caved. She called Norbie and told him she had to go somewhere with her friend, and that they'd be late getting in.

The first time she'd ever heard of Elvis, she was listening to the radio. "That's All Right (Mama)" came on, and then later, "Good Rockin' Tonight."

"My first thought was that he was a nervous old man, an elderly hillbilly."

When June and her friend got to the club, they saw maybe thirty-five women in a sea of airmen. They picked a table right by the stage, because Glenda kept saying, "Wait 'til you see this guy! He's so good-looking!" To really get a good look at him, June realized they needed to be on the dance floor, since the couples would block their view between the table and the stage. She was skeptical about him-this nervous old old guy-but when he finally came out, her jaw dropped. "I thought he was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever seen." guy-but when he finally came out, her jaw dropped. "I thought he was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever seen."

Elvis noticed her, too. He picked her out of the crowd, her suntan showing off her white dress as she danced. Still, she didn't go over to him during intermission, when he stood and talked to a clutch of folks, mostly airmen. "Come on, Glenda," she said, orchestrating a game of cat and mouse. "Let's go to the ladies' room."

When they pa.s.sed by him, he and June exchanged brief eye contact. Then as the girls made their way back to the table, Elvis reached through the swarm and grabbed her by the arm.

"Where are you going? You're not leaving, are you?"

It was the first time she'd really looked into his face, and she just about died. He had those big dreamy eyes, but he didn't look like anyone she had ever seen, either. His voice, laced with Memphis tw.a.n.g, was playful and seductive, a mix of little boy charm and adult sensuality. But he also seemed like a gentleman.

"No," she said. "I'm going back to my table."

"I get through here in about an hour. Will you stay until I get off? Then you can show me the town."

She felt herself getting goose b.u.mps, but she didn't want to show it. She'd never even kissed on a first date, and she didn't want to send the wrong message. She hadn't screamed at his performance like the other girls.

"Well," she said, "Biloxi is such a small town, there's really nothing to see."

"Oh, really. Well, show me what there is is to see." to see."

He promised he'd take good care of her, and he could see by the look on her face that she thought it was all happening too quickly. He said, "In this business, if I meet somebody and I don't make a fast move, I'm not going to make a move at all. I may never see you again."

She was excited and scared, but she heard herself say okay, and after his second set was over and he loaded up the equipment, he pulled around front in his parents' pink-and-black Crown Victoria with a ba.s.s strapped on the top. She'd never seen anything like that-it made the car look like a tank with a gun turret.

"I have to go back to the motel real quick to change clothes," he said, and when they got there, he didn't invite her in ("the room's a mess"). She sat there a few minutes, wondering if she'd done the right thing in even coming, and then Scotty and Bill came out of the room and stood on either side of the car. It frightened her-she didn't know they were just getting the ba.s.s down-and then finally Elvis came out and they went to Gus Stevens's restaurant to see comedian Dave Gardner do the floor show. They stayed a long time, just listening to music, but they were both underage-Elvis was still just twenty-so they left before anybody found out, and went and parked at the pier at the White House Hotel.

They talked in the car for a while, and then he wanted to go for a walk. He took her hand, and there was just enough moonlight that she could watch for the cracks in the pier's old boards so her high heels wouldn't get stuck. Suddenly, he stopped. He turned her around so he was behind her and slipped his hands around her waist and kissed her neck. She felt a shock of electricity, and squirmed, but he promised he wouldn't hurt her. He kissed her tenderly, first her forehead, and each eye, then her nose, and finally her lips. She kissed him back in a way that had a future in it.

"Where did you learn to kiss?" he asked, surprised at her pa.s.sion.

"I was just getting ready to ask you the same thing!" she said, and she still remembers what it was like: "Soft, full lips. Nothing too sloppy. Oh! It was just marvelous, a little pecking here and there, a nibble, and then a serious bite. It started small, and then got bigger, and then went little again before ending up with a lot of eye contact."

They sat on the end of the pier and talked and smooched and talked and smooched, and said the usual things that young lovers do, about not wanting to be any other place in the world in that minute. Then she thought about what her mother always told her about being in a compromised position, and got her wits about her and asked what time it was. Elvis tried to look at his watch, but the moon was so pale he couldn't tell if it was 1:15 or 3:05. It was definitely past her curfew, though, and she said, "Oh, my G.o.d, my mother's going to kill me! I'm always home by midnight!"

They parked outside her mother's house, and it was just supposed to be for a minute. "Do you have to go in?" he asked, his voice saying he hoped she didn't. "Well, not yet," she told him, "but if that light comes on right there in the corner of the house, I've got to run."