Priscilla Presley Was ‘Uncomfortable and Embarrassed’ During Her Reunion With Elvis After 2 Years Apart
Elvis Presley met Priscilla Beaulieu in Germany. After several months together, he returned to the United States, and the pair went two years without seeing each other. Following a lengthy stretch without speaking, Elvis invited her to visit him in Los Angeles. Priscilla was extremely nervous about their reunion. When she arrived, she was relieved to see Elvis, but she also felt uncomfortable with the way he received her.
Priscilla Presley felt uncomfortable with Elvis’ public display of affection
Priscilla landed in LA in 1962 and drove to Elvis’ home with his road manager, Joe Esposito. When they arrived at the house, a party was in full swing. Elvis was in the middle of a pool game when he spotted Priscilla, and he immediately strode over to her.
“He made his way over to me, picked me up in his arms, and kissed me,” Priscilla wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “I held onto him for as long as I could — until he put me down. ‘It’s about time,’ he said, joking. ‘Where have you been all my life?'”
Priscilla was happy to be there, but she did not like the fact that every person in the room was staring at her.
“Aware that every eye in the room was on us, I was uncomfortable and embarrassed,” she wrote. “I quickly wiped the tears from my face before anyone noticed.”
She also felt uncomfortable with Elvis’ attention. Priscilla wasn’t sure that he liked what he saw.
“As his eyes surveyed me, I became increasingly self-conscious, and I didn’t want him looking too long,” she wrote. “He might find flaws.”
Priscilla Presley also disliked the attention Elvis gave other women
Priscilla took note of the party guests from the second she arrived. She watched as he flirtatiously poked a woman with a pool cue and felt the gazes of other women on her.
Late in the night, Elvis told Priscilla to discreetly walk up to his bedroom. He didn’t want the other guests to know where she was going, likely because she was only 16 at the time. Priscilla bristled at the suggestion.
“I wasn’t sure if I liked that,” she wrote. “I knew he was protecting me, but there were so many pretty girls around, I wanted to make sure everyone knew he was mine — at least for as long as I was here. I’d waited too long to be discreet. I got up, stretched a little, and politely said goodnight to everyone, hoping they would know exactly where I was going.”
She noticed that Elvis seemed different
After two years apart, Priscilla felt she had matured. She also noticed a distinct change in Elvis.
“He’d left Germany a gentle, sensitive, and insecure boy; through the course of the evening I’d see that he now was mischievous and self-confident to the point of cockiness,” she wrote. “He also seemed quick to anger.”
He watched as he snapped at a guest who warned him about a glass perched on the edge of the pool table. As a result, Priscilla sat there, feeling a “surge of uneasiness,” and waiting for Elvis to sit down with her.
