Excerpts from Rita Moreno: A Memoir

Elvis asked me out several times, and things always went the same way between us. He was his “real self,’ a shy, bumbling kid from Tupelo whose favorite book was the Bible. He was also what some of his detractors accused: a mama’s boy. Our “sex” activity fell far short of my expectations and needs, typically ending up in my Sunset Boulevard apartment with the roar of traffic as our accompaniment. The red glare of the traffic lights lent a carnal glow to our activities.

More specifically, my dates with the King nearly always concluded in a tender tussle on my living room floor, with Elvis’s pelvis in that famous gyration straining against his taut trousers. I could feel him thrust against my clothed body, and expecting the next move, I knew I would have to confront my own conflicted motives when the time came, but it never did.

“We can just do this,” he’d whisper in my ear as we moved around on the floor. “We can just do this, okay?”

“This” was called “grinding,” and it was all he really wanted to do. Maybe Elvis was inhibited by inbred religious prohibitions or an oedipal complex, or maybe he simply preferred the thrill of denied release. Whatever put the brakes on the famous pelvis, it ground to a halt at a certain point and that was it.

Later, I discovered that my experience with Elvis was typical. Natalie Wood stormed out on him when he refused to “do it,” and many others claimed that all he liked to do was cuddle with teenage girls or watch them cavort girl-upon-girl. He was a fine match for his teen fans, arrested, apparently, at their level of development. I was already a fully grown woman with adult desires—and I had been with Marlon.

In a way, Elvis’s ambivalence suited my own. I was still so deeply in love with Marlon Brando that I truly didn’t want any- one else. Elvis and I were in perfect sync. We rolled around sey- eral times, and I don’t believe either of us ever found release, only that hunk-a hunk-a burnin’ love, which, when I heard the song afterward, did sound more like a hymn to sexual frustration than satisfaction.

Eventually, though, I realized that I couldn't fake it anymore. There were only so many times that I could be in a clutch with a kid whose pouty lips could hardly express an idea or recount an experience. After Marlon’s intellectual curiosity, sexual appetite, and chameleon-like changes, the truth is that Elvis bored me. He was more like a baby brother who couldn’t make interesting conversation.

One night, as I watched Elvis wolf down a bacon, mashed banana, and peanut butter sandwich that had been home-fried in — bacon fat, I realized that he probably desired that sandwich more than he desired me. I liked Elvis well enough, but there was just nothing left to say or do.

When Marlon, in a fury of passion and jealousy, reeled me in again, I sprang back into that man’s boat, hooked once more. I kissed Elvis’s Cupid’s-bow lips good-bye and never turned back.

Still, my heart ached when, twenty years later, I heard the news with everyone else that the King had been found dead in his bathroom of a prescription drug overdose. He was sad and bloated during those last years, and I was told he had to be buck- led into a girdle before he could don a costume. Elvis staggered toward his tragic end at forty-two, and I could not help thinking, “Poor boy.”